How to Self-Edit a Book: A Beginner’s Guide to Developmental Editing

You finished writing your first draft. Congrats! But before your messy, passionate, and possibly brilliant first draft is ready to be published in any way or form, it needs to be polished like a diamond until it shines. And this polishing means editing. The problem is what do you do when you can’t afford an editor?

Many writers tend to think of editing as this one-in-all stop, when in fact, there are different levels of editing a book needs to undergo:

1. Developmental editing

2. Line editing

3. Copyediting

4. Proofreading.

Ideally, you’d hire a professional to help you with each of those levels of editing, but what if you’re an indie-writer without a publisher to cover all those costs for you? Can you still polish your book if you don’t have the budget to hire editors for all those phases?

Short answer: you can (I know I have done that with my first book). But you’ll have to be your own editor for a while.

Self editing is not only the last resort of the wanna-be-author-on-a-budget. It is a process you need to undergo even if you intend to eventually work with an editor, and will leave them with less things to pick on. And the first stop on your self-editing journey is developmental editing.

So how do you edit your book on your own on the developmental editing level? And what does developmental editing even mean? Let’s find out.

What is Developmental Editing

Developmental editing is a beast known by many names: structural editing, content editing, that thing you don’t wanna do but have to. The name also hints at the focus of this editorial process and tells you that this is a very high level look at your manuscript as a whole.

If line editing—as the name suggests—looks at each line in detail to ensure that the tone is consistent, the language is clear, and the style is polished, developmental editing looks at the story as a whole and evaluates how it develops.

This is a holistic process, taking into account the story arc (which we talked more in depth about here), the characters, their respective arcs, and the plot itself.

During developmental editing you’ll consider if the line you drew from the beginning to the end makes sense, if the characters evolved, are there plot holes, was the pacing right, and so on.

Being your own editor at this phase is particularly challenging. This is due to many reasons:

1. You’re too close to your own story: you know more than the reader does and can’t always distance yourself from it to give it an objective evaluation.

2. You’re down in the details: whenever you sit down to attempt and look at the plot and structure, you’re getting caught up in the details of the book and lose the big picture.

3. You just don’t know what to look for when doing a developmental edit.

In each case, I’ve got you covered, and there are many ways you can approach developmental editing to turn your messy manuscript into a sound book.

How to Self-Edit Your Plot

If you’ve been with me for a while, you might have noticed that I am a corporate cat and I love to bring software and agile processes into how I approach writing and editing.

One of the approaches that can help you the most when trying to analyze your novel from a high level, is the process map, about which a talked extensively here.

The process map is a method where you take only the main events of your book and write each on a physical or virtual sticky note, then organize them in order. The result will be the event with which your book begins, the book’s ending, and all the major events that happen along the way.

Seeing your manuscript laid out this way can help you detach yourself from the details and look at the general meaning. It’s also a convenient way to visually represent your plot—what is the story really about? How do you take your characters from point A to point B, how much time you spend on each phase, are there high stakes, are there major obstacles in your hero’s way, and how do they resolve them to bring the story to its ending.

How to Use Beta Readers When Self-Editing

After you’ve done all the editing you could on your own, it’s time to get some real-world feedback, and the best way to evaluate if your book is worth reading is by letting people read it (kind of self explanatory, I know).

What you’ll need to do is find a few willing friends who agree to read the book, provide you with feedback, and let you pick their brains. It is important to have a big sample of beta-readers, to make sure all possible problems come up.

If you can’t find people from your everyday life you could also look into writing groups and forums. Royal Road is a great place to upload your work and get some feedback from fellow writers.

One thing to be careful with when collecting feedback from readers is knowing what to change and what to leave as it is. For that purpose, it’s good to prepare some questions you’d want to ask your readers in advance. Some good questions are about:

1. How relatable and consistent are the characters?

2. Does the pacing and flow of events feel natural and not too slow or rushed?

3. Does the first scene hook the reader and is the ending satisfying?

4. Were events, characters and motivations clear and easy to follow?

5. Was it fun to read?

Not every bit of feedback needs to result in a revision, but if you find two or more people pointing out the same issue—you might want to look into it.

AI as a Developmental Editor

It’s popular to bash AI these days, particularly in the writing community. But like it or not, it’s here, and being the pragmatic person that I am, I like to think of it as a tool at my disposal. You can use this tool too without being personally responsible for the environment (for instance, you can only use the free version).

I’ve stated this before and I’ll state it again—I don’t believe AI can and should replace writers. We write because we love to and pour our hearts and souls into our work. But while using AI to generate books for you is something I profoundly frown upon, there’s no reason not to use it as an aid.

And one of the best things that AI can do for you is help you with editing.

This might already not be accurate at the time you’re reading this, but currently ChatGPT+ allows you to upload a full document to one of its chats. You can then define the chat as a developmental editor, telling it what it will be used for and what to focus on. The result will be a dedicated invisible editor (or servant, if you too like D&D) with a reference to your work.

Once you’re all set up with your own virtual and artificially intelligent editor, you can start asking it questions.

You can ask it to evaluate general pacing, whether character motifs and actions make sense, and if there are any plot holes or things that don’t make sense.

You can even ask what additional questions are good to ask!

The possibilities are limitless, and as long as you use it to improve your writing and not do it for you—you’re good to go.

Final Thoughts

The writer’s work is never done—even when they’ve finished writing!

And developmental editing is an important process that can save you from publishing a complete mess. But even without the services of a professional editor, there are different ways in which you can take your story to the next level:

1. Evaluating your story arc using a process map

2. Getting feedback from beta-readers and friends

3. Utilizing AI to uncover plot holes and check for consistency and pace

In the next article we’ll dive into line  editing and learn how do to it on a budget.

In the meantime, you can check out a bunch of other tips and resources in my other posts. And if you found this post helpful, consider subscribing for more writing tips, short stories, and occasional silliness. Promise I won’t spam!