Polishing Your Novel Before Editing

You can polish your novel before sending it to a developmental editor in a number of small ways. This makes you look less of an amateur writer, and allows your editor to focus on the "big stuff" like characterization and plot. Here are a number of small ways to improve your manuscript without huge effort:

Punctuation and Format

1. Punctuate your dialogue commas correctly. Where you have a dialogue tag after spoken words, you put the spoken words in double quotes, and then you have a comma inside the ending double quote, and then you have "Fred said" at the end. The comma looks weird, but that's the correct style. And it's the same for a period (full stop), question mark or exclaim, with all of them before the closing double quote. The punctuation is effectively part of the spoken words.
2. Fewer semicolons. These are an uncommon punctuation style that confuses reader. You want about 12 not 120, except if you're writing a thought-provoking introspective literary piece.
3. No parentheses or brackets. The use of parentheses (round brackets) is common in nonfiction but unusual in fiction. And square brackets are used as "to do" markers by writers to tell their editors. Curly brackets are also not used.
4. Fewer colons. Don't use colons to introduce spoken dialogue, use a comma. Occasional colons are fine in narrative, but they are an advanced type of punctuation that will stick out to the reader if there's too many.
5. More exclamation marks? There are plenty of articles on the internet telling you to use exclamations sparingly. After all, didn't you know that F. Scott Fitzgerald said they were like laughing at your own joke. Well, he wrote books literally 100 years ago, and the pendulum is swinging the other way. Genre fiction like thrillers, mystery, romance, etc., now tend to use a lot more exclaims, especially in dialogue. Other genres, notably literary fiction, still tend to take the great author's advice to heart. It's your choice (like everything).
6. Avoid other puncutation. You don't usually see any of these other uncommon punctuation characters in novels: forward slash, backslash, ampersand (use "and"), at signs (@), tildas, less than, greater than, dollar signs (use "dollars"), pound signs, equal signs, arrows, and so on. Rare exceptions might be when you are actually relating a phone-text sequence.
7. Use italics sparingly. The use of italics is usually reserved for thoughts, but you can't italicize a paragraph because it's annoying to the eyes. Consider italicizing only the most interesting, entertaining, or perverse of your viewpoint character's thoughts.
8. Avoid bold, underline, big letters, or colored fonts. You don't use any of these fancy texts in most genres, with the exception of humor/comedy, children's books, grade school, and picture books. Italics is the extent of the excitement for you in most genres from literary fiction to mysteries. An exception is that some typesetting styles use a stylized fancy font for the first letter, or first word, of every chapter.
9. Hyphenate sparingly. If you have a better-than-average plot idea about lovelier-than-they-really-look characters, you might in-a-fit-of-excitement tend to over-use over-hyphenated not-so-great styles. A cluster of hyphens doesn't read well.
10. Square brackets are notes. Change placeholders or "to do" markers into square brackets. This helps tell the editor to ignore it, as it is unfinished, or otherwise won't appear in the final book.
11. Avoid double line-spacing? If you are submitting a printed hardcopy to an old-school publisher, then, by all means, follow their style guidelines for printed manuscripts. But if you're working with an editor, or submitting computer files to a publisher that wants electronic submissions, you'll often find that they will simply want the manuscript file in single line spacing. An editor will often return you a marked up softcopy file, such as Microsoft Word with "track changes" turned on, rather than some scrawled over printouts.
12. Ellipses. Use ellipsises (ellipses?) correctly for trailing off (or is it tailing off?). The standard format for an ellipsis is three dots with spaces (i.e. space-dot-space-dot-space-dot). To look more professional to an editor, you don't actually want Microsoft Word to convert your dots into one of those fancy ellipsis code characters. And yes, it can cause typsetting problems if the three dots split over a line. And yes, it looks weird when there are four dots, when you put an ellipsis after a sentence ending with a period.
13. Use three stars as scene separators. Don't do this too often, because these are a kind of half-substitute for ending a chapter. But if they make sense, and there's no smooth way to join scenes, use "***" without spaces, or "* * *" with three stars with spaces.

Word Choice

1. Fix those contractions. You want to use all of the contractions in fiction, in both dialogue and narrative. Word pairs that could be contracted sound stilted in dialogue and narrative. We don't usually say "did not" or "I am" or "you are" and our thoughts don't usually sound this stilted either. Change "did not" to "didn't" and "would have" to "would've" and many more.
2. Delete those undermining words ("weasel words"). There are a lot of half-hearted words in the English language, and you will often need to remove a lot of them: At best, they are redundant, and at worst, they undermine the sincerity of what you're trying to say. Stop hedging your bets and say it straight. Some examples: maybe, really, rather, just, somewhat, a little, a bit, possibly, probably, nearly, almost, apparently, virtually, practically, literally, actually, and many more.
3. Be very, very, very careful. The word "very" is often overused. You can often convert a pair of words using "very" to a more specific word, such as changing "very fast" to "rapidly."
4. Boosting words - Synonymously to "very", there are a number of other "boosting words" that aim to emphasize, but often make things worse. Consider simply cutting these words if overused in exposition (and somewhat also true for these words in dialogue). Some more examples of the dreaded pseudo-boosters are: especially, certainly, surely, undoubtedly, in fact, without a doubt, and many more.
5. Words that make your editor's head explode. There are a few words that are known to be off-limits. Here's some of them:
   • "got" or "gotten" or "gotta" - Find a better way to say it, even in dialogue.
   • "good" - Can't you find a better adjective?
   • "bad" - This word is just plain horrendously abysmally uninspiring.
   • "literally" - Often wrongly used to mean the opposite.
   • "actually" - This word is actually very annoying. Literally.

   Exception: These words are used by real people in spoken dialogue. Don't change dialogue to use bigger words in a way that it ends up being unrealistic or sounding stilted. Sometimes a small word is best. The need to fix these words is greater in narrative.

6. The "it" word - Usually needs to be replaced with something more specific, although perhaps not in dialogue.
7. Not a good word "that" - Often "that" is redundant and needs to be simply removed. It's one of the most overused unnecessary words in manuscripts.
8. Avoid text-speak in narrative. OMG, they stand out too much, even in spoken dialogue or internal thoughts, LOLOL. Some abbreviations are also a form of hidden cussing, so take care. Although text-speak might suit a blog or online article, novels are usually a little more formal. The exception here is less formal genres, such as humor/comedy, children's, and grade school fiction. A rare exception in literary or genre fiction might be where you've actually included some text messages, or the passage is supposed to be someone's letter or diary. Otherwise, save them for your author's blog.

   Exceptions: If you're writing a modern piece of work with a young protagonist, especially if in a first-person POV, it might be appropriate style for them to not just speak, but also to think in these text-like phrases. And first-person narrative is supposed to be their thoughts.

Sentence Structure

1. Say "said" in the right way. The word "said" (or any of the other dialogue tags), should be after the character's name. The modern style is "Fred said" not "said Fred". If you have trouble remembering which way, it's the same as with the pronouns, where you say "she said" not the archaic "said she."
2. Watch those sentence starter words. There are a number of words that are just poor style at the start of a sentence. Here's some of them:
   • "And" - This is unusual sentence structure, especially in prose, but also somewhat in spoken dialogue.
   • "But" - Similar to "and", try to avoid starting sentences this way. Especially true for narrative, but also somewhat true of dialogue text.
   • "Or" - Opposite to "and" but just as bad.
   • "Then" - You don't need to say "then" in fiction, because it's always implied that things happen one after another.
   • "Because" - Also an awkward way to start a sentence.
   • "Also" - And this is awkward, in it's own way.
   • "However" - This is a nonfiction word that sounds pompous or stilted in fiction.
   • "Anyway" - This is an abrupt ending to any prior narrative, and can break the immersion.
   • "Anyhow" - Similar to "anyway" but it's even worse because it's also overly casual style.
   • "Somehow" - Use sparingly.
   • "And then" - Like in tennis, this is a double fault.
   • "But then" - Ditto, like Patrick Swayze in Ghost.
   • "Or else" - Another way to put your foot over the line.
   • "Whatever" - Not always wrong, but use with care.
   • "Whenever" - Similarly.
   • "Whoever" - And again.
   • "Thus" - Are you writing Shakespeare?
   • "As" - This is used more than most of the words on this list, but it's not the best way to start a sentence. Don't overuse.
   • "Suddenly" - Sounds like you're creating a coincidence, which readers hate, or otherwise it's over-pushing style.
   • "Coincidentally" - Yes, you're really creating a coincidence, and if you must do that, maybe don't highlight how dumb it is by telling the reader that.
   • "Soon" - This can be okay, or it can also be like "then" in that it's emphasizing the progression of time which is implicit anyway.
   • "Something" - Be specific, don't talk about "things."

   Hint: If you use "match case" in the search function options, then capitalize the first letter of the word in the search form, you can find all these sentence starters quickly, in both dialogue and narrative.

   Exception: Be careful when removing these sentence starters from spoken dialogue. People really do use these words, and you want your dialogue to sound realistic.

   What words should start sentences? There are some perfectly good ones like "I" or "He" or "She" or the very underrated "The."

3. Fewer em dashes in sentences. If you like those sentences where some side-clause - a very important one - is embedded in the middle of the other sentence, you can use them. Spoiler alert: I can't stand them when I'm reading. And you don't want many of them in an immersive genre, because they slow down readers, and often make them go back and re-read the sentence. A slower, more thoughtful genre, such as literary fiction, allows more of these.