Often, authors go to editors after they’ve self-edited their novel more times than they can count and after they’ve read it so many times they can no longer recognize even simple or obvious mistakes. Sometimes, however, there are things the author can fix themselves, but they don’t know what to look for. This happens most frequently with newer authors or authors who haven’t dealt with editors much.

Luckily, we’ll talk about several things you can look for right here in this article!

1. Passive Voice

Passive voice is the most common issue I find in most manuscripts. And if you look closely, I used passive voice to say that! This style is most often used in academic writing, which means most writers who have gone through the education system are used to writing that way in order to increase word count and get better grades. In the publishing world, however, passive voice distracts readers and makes the pacing drag.

We’ll talk more about passive voice in a later article, but for quick reference, you can find where you’ve used passive voice by looking for “be” verbs; these include was, is, had, are, etc. As you search your manuscript for these words, ask yourself if you can write the sentence without those verbs. For example, if we write the sentence, “She had run to the store before coming home,” can we say that without the word had?

Yes! “She ran to the store before coming home.”

You don’t have to delete every passive sentence, as that would end up harming the flow by making all the sentence structures too similar, but as you delete as many as possible, you will tighten your writing up and improve the pacing.

2. Repetition

Every author has a word they like to use over and over. In fact, you’ll probably find you use several words or phrases much more than you realize. One of mine is the word also. I once was looking over a cover letter I’d written, and that word showed up no less than two or three times per paragraph! That’s way too often.

As you’re reading through your manuscript, look out for words that pop up often. Or better yet, have someone read your work and look for any words or phrases they felt were repeated a lot. Then, once you have an idea of what your words and phrases are, use the find feature on your program to look for every instance where they show up in your manuscript. On a PC using Microsoft Word, you can use the shortcut ctrl + f. Then, you can type in any phrase and click search, and Word will search the manuscript for you. You can then look through those and find places to rewrite and replace the words and phrases to avoid that repetition. Like with passive voice, you don’t need to get rid of every time you use the words and phrases, but you need to get rid of enough that it won’t be repetitive for the readers.

3. Common Punctuation Errors

There are certain punctuation rules that everyone knows but that sometimes slip through the cracks when you’re writing thousands of words. For these you can do a find and replace in your program to quickly fix all the instances of what you search for. In Microsoft Word on a PC, you can use the shortcut ctrl + h. The following are some common issues I run into that you can search for before sending the manuscript to an editor:

• Double spaces instead of a single space
  • The fix: In the “find” search bar, type two spaces. In the “replace” search bar, type one space. Then, click “replace all,” and repeat until it comes up with zero results.
• Periods and commas outside the end quotation marks instead of inside them
  • The fix: In the “find” search bar, type the quotation mark followed by the punctuation mark (“. or “,). In the “replace” search bar, type the punctuation mark followed by the quotation mark (.” or ,”). Then, click “replace all.”
• Unnecessary spaces at the end or beginning of paragraphs
  • The fix: In the “find” search bar, type space ^p or ^p space. In the “replace” search bar, type ^p. Then, click “replace all.”

You can use this tool to search and replace many things, so feel free to try it out with some common things you know need to be fixed (but make sure to save your work before trying it the first time so you don’t accidentally mess it up beyond repair).

These are just a few things you can look for before sending your manuscript to the editor, but even doing these simple tasks could save you in the long run. If you think about it, every mistake you catch equals one less the editor will be charging you to fix. And over an entire manuscript, that adds up quickly.