self-editing – Booknomics

Author Resource: How to Trim the Fat with Hemingway Editor

Ernest Hemingway, the Nobel Prize-winning American writer, is famous for his writing efficiency. “To be successful in writing, use short sentences,” he said. The Hemingway Editor app is based on this premise.

Write Sweet and Short Prose like Hemingway

If you’ve been advised to write like Hemingway, it’s one way of telling you that your sentences are too clunky and could use some trimming.

Keeping the desirable quality of the brevity of Hemingway’s writing in mind, Adam and Ben Long developed a writing app that grades the readability of your writing from 1-15. The lower the rank, the clearer your writing.

How to Use the Hemingway Editor

The Hemingway Editor is very easy to use. You can paste or type text into it. The app uses color-coding to convey how complicated the sentence is. For instance, if there is a red highlight, the sentence is dense and it would be a good idea to work on it. A purple highlight indicates that a longer word can be replaced by a shorter one. A formatting toolbar is also provided.

In this example, the highlights focus on adverbs and the use of passive voice. Readability is also graded. You can use this app to assess your own content. A few tweaks based on the suggestions provided can clean up your copy.

Hemingway Editor: Recommended or Not?

Highly recommended tool.

Author Resource: How to Be Unpredictable with the Cliché Finder

In the Author Resources series, we explore the different author tools at our disposal. Be it editing, formatting or designing your cover, there are quite a few options that you can explore online. Today we look at the Cliché Finder.

How the Cliché Finder Fixes Your Text

Clichés are stale and overused phrases or expressions that are best avoided in the original copy. Some examples of clichés in sentences are:

When he told her he wanted to touch base, she was walking on air.

“The apple has fallen far from the tree,” he said to her disapprovingly after examining her portfolio.

She was doomed to disappointment when he compared her to her twin brother.

The phrases highlighted above are not wrong at all. For instance, the phrase ‘touch base’ seems professional and is commonly used when you want to encourage someone to contact you. But if you write a blog post, memo or email with a huge number of clichés, it could make your language sound unoriginal.

While it is impossible to avoid all clichés, being aware of the number of clichés used helps. This is where a tool like Cliche Finder comes in. It uses an algorithm to analyze the clichéd phrases, words or expressions used in the text you provide and also highlights alternate words you could use.

How to Use it

You paste the text into a box and submit.

screengrab of how Cliché Finder Fixes Your Text — Enter text and catch those clichés

Once you click the Find Clichés button, you get a list of clichés Now you can rephrase your copy as advised.

Cliché results, spelling mistakes and replacement options — Cliché Results

Cliché Finder: Recommended or Not?

Recommended. This is a useful editorial tool that throws light on (whoops! cliché that 🤭) avoidable phrases. Word of caution: You need not agree with all the suggestions and choose to adopt the changes you see fit.

Self-editing your Manuscript

Before you shoot your manuscript off to the press, you need to do one thing.

Read the book, your book, a few times. Many writers are hesitant to do this. You might remember an old-fashioned teacher asking you to read your paper once before submitting. You may have never followed this advice, but it makes sense to read your manuscript at least once before sending it to a publisher or literary agent for review and also before you self-publish.

read

Why should you self-edit?

Self-editing could help you make important connections that could improve the story.

You could catch a few unnecessary typos, repetitions and grammatical errors.

Since your story benefits from the extra read, do it!

If you find reading from the computer hard, you can take a print out and read. Otherwise, the computer is a good option as you can track changes and go back to the original if you wish.

What should you be looking for in your book?

Once you’ve written the book, and left it alone for a while, you can go back to it and check for plot problems, inconsistencies, anachronisms, etc.

You can separately look for grammar issues, typos, and punctuation. A simple spell check can save your manuscript from loads of mistakes.

Are you using big words just because they make the manuscript look more sophisticated? If the word makes no sense, remove it even if it is a big word and makes you look smart.

Entrust a couple of beta-readers to fill you in on different aspects of the book to give you a perspective of any areas of the book you might need to rework.

Before sending your book to an editor, you need to make sure that your copy is readable. If you can’t read it, nobody can.

Don’t hesitate to take professional help if your manuscript requires it. A fresh eye can do wonders for your manuscript.

Some links that can help you with self-editing:

http://www.jerryjenkins.com/self-editing/

http://amandashofner.com/5-tips-self-edit-novel-effectively/

http://thewritelife.com/self-editing-basics/