An Idiot's Guide to Line Editing

Introduction, or I know nothing about sculpture, and it shows

What, exactly, are we talking about?

There are three different types of editing. They are developmental editing, line editing, and copy editing. You should think of them as being at different scales: I like to imagine that, if you are a sculptor, a development edit is like using a sledgehammer, a line edit is like using a chisel, and a copy edit is like using sandpaper. I will not lie, I'm not completely sure that sculptors use sledgehammers, but I'm not here to learn about sculpting, so I'm going to pass over that in silence. I promise this will make sense in a minute.

So what does that analogy mean from an actual, you know, useful perspective?

Development editing is large scale, structural editing. You're going to move sections around, delete chunks, slim bits down, and bulk other parts up. You're looking at overall pace and tone. You might delete a character, or split one into two. You might even change substantial parts of your plot.

Generally it's the first edit you do. I am terrible at it, and I hate it, so you're on your own. In my sculpting analogy, maybe development editing is more like using a chainsaw and superglue. Don't like the pose of the left arm? Cut it off, glue it back on better.

Next is line editing. This is when, now you're happy with the whole flow of your story, you make every sentence beautiful. This is, I think, the best bit. Why? Because you're letting your prose breathe. You had all these amazing ideas. You got them down. Well done! You read it all, realised that it needed pruning, and so you moved some stuff around and deleted the text which didn't move the story along. Even more well done! And now, it's time to make every dang word shine.

This is the bit that's gonna make your readers jump for joy, when every clause stands out like a spark in the darkness, and the whole flows effortlessly. It takes a long time. Every little curve of Michelangelo's David needs to be chiselled out, including his butt. But, I promise you, it's going to be fun. Yes, I totally said butt there. My book, my rules.

Lastly, we get to copy editing. This is, frankly, dull as hell. It's making sure all your grammar and punctuation and whatever is correct. You do that last because, if you're like me, you probably break some commas or whatever when you're development and line editing, and they all need fixing up afterwards. I'm not going to teach you that because, well, these days your editing software does a pretty good job, and look, grammar manuals are everywhere. Also, I'm terrible at it.

The plan is to break this up into one bite-sized lesson on line editing per chapter. I'll keep going until I run out of things to say. Then I can use this as a reference when I do my line editing; and maybe you can to?

Oh, there is one golden rule to bear in mind. This rule is that all books about writing have mistakes in them. Given I'm not even claiming to be an expert, these will probably come thick and fast. Let me know what I got wrong in the comments.

Onward!