There is nothing quite so painful- or liberating- as self-editing. As the publishing world becomes more processed, traditional editors become more rare, forcing us writers to buckle down and do the job ourselves.

‘Murder your darlings’ advised Sir Q, but he offered no promise of resurrection, nor any guarantee you are murdering the right ones. Where on earth do you start? Some writers have believed editing to be a ‘butcher’s’ trade’, conjuring images of a florid fellow wielding a cleaver, apron spattered with the gore of the deleted. Byron likened the editorial process to being emasculated, and vowed his work ‘would have no gelding’.

Others still, however, have lauded their editors, DH Lawrence even dedicated ‘Sons and Lovers’ to his; Edward Garnett. But self-editing is a relatively new trend, and there is a plethora of books, writing courses and web sites, all offering techniques and neat tricks on how to edit your own work.

One of the most important points to grasp is an understanding of what you are writing and who your reader will be. If you are writing a factual article about a new type of dishwasher, it stands to reason that you cannot wax lyrical about the crockery; it is irrelevant to the reader and should be cut. Similarly, if you have written a nerve-cracking thriller, you don’t want to be cluttering the narrative with incidental detail that drags the pace. For example, according to Stephen King, there is nothing more ‘irritating than a wardrobe inventory, if I want to read descriptions of clothes, I’ll get a catalogue.’ You may have written the most lyrical of lines about a pair of sumptuous tweed trousers, but if they are irrelevant to the story, cut them out.

To successfully self-edit, you need to quite literally step away from the work. Put it on file for at least a few days, then come back with suspicious, narrowed eyes, wielding an unforgiving blue pencil.

First, check that you have achieved what you set out to; have you delivered an article on dishwashers or did you stray into the greater world of General White Goods? Have you written a buttock-clenching horror or have you slipped into fantasy? The point is, if you have n’t achieved what you set out to do, then do it again. You can perhaps use the deviated work somewhere else; but you cannot let your inner-writer make any commercial decisions (inner-writers are notoriously nepotistic).

Next, look at the structure of your work. A strong structure is essential to successful pacing and tension; without it your work will droop, taking with it any interest the reader may have started with. Even the driest articles on plankton or some such must have a recognisable structure, or the piece won’t work. The author might drift off on a tangent and never return, leaving the plankton buffs wallowing in a sea of facts that have no cohesion. A good way to look at structure is James Scott Bell’s theory of ‘Three Act Structure’. Each book must have a beginning, a middle and an end, with the structure dictating the timing of when events in the plot happen. If you have these three things, in the right proportion (Act 1 takes a quarter of the piece, Act 2 two quarters and Act 3 the final quarter) then your work will have increased its chances of success right from the off. If your work does n’t follow the Three Act Structure, and you think the Three Act Structure is, actually, a crock, dreamt up by creative writing tutors to fill lecture hours, just try writing a quick one page synopsis, tinkering with your plot to make it fit; you will be surprised by the results.

Once you have your recognisable structure, it will become far more apparent which scenes you need to cut. Charming sketch of family life, including your main protagonist ironing? Cut it out. Lengthy paragraph of the virtues of organic fruit for children? Cut, cut, cut. In fact, bear in mind the words of Alfred Hitchcock, when he said that a good story ‘was life, but with the boring bits cut out.’

Speaking of boring, there is nothing quite so irritating than being consistently told things, like watching an old film with a hoary, half-deaf relative who assumes you are both blind and slightly dim. Sometimes it is unavoidable, but on the whole it is the mark of a lazy writer. Don’t underestimate the intuition of your readers, or their conditioning to reach conclusions following certain triggers. The risk of being too subtle is far smaller than being overbearing and intrusive. In his book ‘On Writing’, Stephen King urges writers to be ‘graceful’ when giving information and the tattoo on the heads of Creative Writing tutors everywhere reads; ‘Show, dammit, don’t tell.’

If so far, all you have understood about editing is the need to cut, then good. There is no point flinching away from the delete key; fear and arrogance will leave your work flabby and sluggish, full of literary lesions and semantic boils.
But here the brilliance of the self-editing process makes itself apparent. Having ripped and slashed and savaged, you are now uniquely placed to rectify, rewrite and rejuvenate. You now get a chance to play with your prose; noone else can do that for you, because you are the writer, the original creator.

And just when you think you’ll go berserk, bear in mind the words of Justice Brandeis, ‘There is no great writing, only great re-writing.’ Just don’t forget to edit the rewrite.

Carlie Lee (BA Pub) studied Publishing and English at Oxford Brookes University, and has spent her whole life writing. After university she worked for BMW producing leaflets, brochures and articles for magazines. Since having children she has written two books and for several E-Zines and is under the mentorship of a respected literary agent. She runs a literary consultancy called Pen Friends UK (www.pefruk.co.uk ); offering a critique and support service to writers of all levels and genres.