You’ve written The End at last. Now it’s time to go over the entire manuscript again. You think you’ve found every typo, grammar error, and odd sentence. You think you’ve fixed any awkward scenes but alas, it may not be so. Here are three editing tips that will make a tremendous difference in the final product. The three tips challenge the brain and break the writer out of the blindness they have from looking at the scene too long and knowing the story too well to see errors.

1. Print out the entire manuscript and with a pen in hand read through it and mark errors. Seeing it on paper rather than the screen reveals those odd spaces, wrong words that Grammarly or other editing program missed because the word is spelled correctly, but it’s not the word you wanted.  I once wrote reticular (a part of the brain) when I wanted reticule ( a handbag).

 Your brain gets a fresh look and correcting with a pen opens it to possibilities of making the sentence even better. You might want to run a giant X across a scene, then read the chapter without that scene and see if you like it better. Yes, you can do that by cutting and pasting a scene in a delete file until you decide if you want to keep it. But using a pen and turning pages causes the mind to catch changes it was blind to while typing on your screen. Try it and see.

Start with a chapter or two if you are worried about using too much ink and wasting paper. Here’s an additional tip, you can print on the back of documents you were going to discard, and you can set your printer preference to draft to use less ink.

2. Read the manuscript out loud. Or have your spouse or friend read it to you while you follow along. In Word , there is a Read Aloud icon in the Review tab. That monotone voice startles the ears. Following a long as another reads, make me focus more. I can read much faster than it takes the audiobook narrator to finish a story. So, following along as the story is read to me makes missed mistakes become blaring ones.

3. Use Beta readers. Find some friends who love to read and ask them to read your manuscript and note any typos, etc. These are not the same Beta Readers you would use for your final galley read through.

Adding these three editing run-throughs to your schedule will save you a boatload of money when you hire a professional editor, and your publisher will bless you for making their life easier. And FYI publishers won’t acquire a manuscript that needs this type of editing. It’s a win-win to take the time to find as many errors as you can before submitting.