A Simple Guide To Beautifully Efficient Editing—Instead of a Soul-Sucking Game of Whack-A-Mole
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Have you ever passed a draft to a coworker wanting them to battle-test your logic, but all they do is catch one errant comma? (“Thanks for nothing, Tracey.” *Eye roll*)
Or perhaps you’ve asked a teammate to polish a piece on a tight deadline, and been aghast when they started picking apart its fundamental ideas?
Or my personal (least) favorite: Maybe you got 11th-hour feedback from an unexpected reviewer and had to rewrite entire sections, leaving you with an unshakeable premonition you’ve added errors right before you’re about to publish?
If you can relate to any of these scenarios, then you’ve felt the frustration of an ill-defined editing process firsthand.
The root of the problem lies in a common misconception: While many think of “editing” as one monolithic thing, there are actually several distinct types.
If you can learn the difference between the types and introduce this common language to your team, you’ll gain the power to avoid many preventable editing headaches—both by applying the right type of editing to others’ work at the right times and by articulating your own requests for feedback with razor-sharp precision. But the most gratifying part of a better editing process is that it protects you from inefficiencies that drain your precious creative juices.
In this blog post, I’ll explain the three main types of editing and give you the tools you need to start using them right away. It’s ideal to go through each of the three types sequentially, but keep in mind that every creative process is different. If you’re pressed for time, you may have to combine phases. Or if you have the luxury of a breezy schedule, you can apply one type of editing multiple times or with multiple reviewers.
Note: There are varying schools of thought on how to name and divide up various types of editing, especially amongst book publishers and magazine editors. In this blog, I’m suggesting a functional (and simplified) model geared towards content marketers.
1. Substantive editing—carving out the big picture
If writing were a sculpture, then substantive editing would be squinting at the slab of clay, tilting your head to different angles, and hmm-ing pensively. In other words, it’s about envisioning the big-picture possibilities for the piece.
During the substantive editing phase, healthy debate is welcome—and even necessary—to produce excellent writing. If there are internal disagreements about major things like what matters to your brand or how to define your product, it's your job to surface them here.
If these decisions are above your pay grade, you can ask your manager for direction, or even facilitate these discussions yourself if your company culture allows for it. Get all stakeholders in a room, and don’t put pen to paper until you’ve reached alignment. Otherwise, you will be having these fights in the comment section of your Google doc. (*Shudder*)
You can ask for substantive editing at the outline stage or the draft stage, but I personally recommend the former. You may feel reluctant to circulate a few hastily scribbled words on a page because it doesn’t look like much. But doing so saves a ton of time and effort down the line. Since ideas are likely malleable at this stage, it’s easy to accommodate changes. There are no careful word choices to slash, no transitional sentences to rewrite, and no grand overarching narratives to recast.
The key is to be crystal clear that you want a substantive edit from a coworker. Ask them “Hey, would you mind evaluating this outline for its ideas? No need to worry about structure or grammar yet—just trying to ensure the big ideas make sense.” There have been many times in the past when I’ve shared rough ideas with teammates, only to cringe when they dwell on word choice or point out a spelling error. Ultimately, I’ve come to realize that if I haven’t properly articulated what feedback I'm hoping to receive, then the mistake is mine and not the rogue proofreader’s.
Here’s a list of questions you can ask yourself if you’re doing a substantive edit, or ask your teammates to comment on.
Is this the topic most likely to spark engagement with your audience and move them along their buyer’s journey?
If it’s a well-trodden topic, what will make your angle fresh and exciting?
Are you using the best format for the topic? (E.g. Are you writing a colossal ebook when a brief video would suffice?)
Are there big ideas missing from the scope of the piece or extraneous sections to omit?
Are the sections roughly uniform lengths? If there are two baby sections and three mammoth ones, can you merge or divide sections to keep lengths more consistent?
Does the order of the sections flow naturally?
Are there any flaws in the logic? How can you address any holes that a competitor or skeptic may poke?
Are there any stats, anecdotes, or customer quotes you can use to make the piece more persuasive or compelling?
How can you “show and not tell”? Perhaps offer a screenshot or link to a resource?
After you’ve gotten your ideas on paper and spent some time refining them, you’re ready to advance the piece to the next stage.
2. Stylistic editing—refining the beauty and flow of your phrasing
Now we’re into the meat of what most people think of as “editing.” And, in my humble opinion, we’ve gotten to the fun part! Most of us got into writing careers because we began as avid readers. Because we savor a clever turn of phrase, and we “squee” when we encounter a delightful word. We pause when reading and think, “Damn, I wish I had written that.” Now’s the time for us word nerds to come out and play, to revel in our craft.
A beautiful illustration of engaging style from Gary Provost.
In this phase, take a page from Marie Kondo’s playbook and hold each sentence close to your heart, asking if it sparks joy (that is, supports your argument). If it’s not contributing to your thesis, it’s just taking attention away from sentences that do. Usually in this phase, I like to have a second Google doc open called “Rejects Bank.” It’s hard to kill your darlings, but I find it easier when I can put them in another document where I can rescue them later if the direction of the piece changes. (They rarely ever make it back into the piece, but it’s very effective for soothing my broken heart.)
“If a sentence is not contributing to your thesis, it’s just taking attention away from those that do.”
You can also use this phase to verify that your intentions for the piece have landed. Since you, as the writer of the piece, will supplement what you see on the page with the ideas in your brain, it’s best to get someone with fresh eyes to test whether or not your logic actually comes through. An uninitiated reader has no idea what to expect, so they can easily spot logical leaps or missed details needed to convey a point.
Can I recast an idea to make it more evocative?
Have I been varying my sentence lengths?
Is this the most vivid word I can use to describe an idea?
Have I stated my point as clearly and succinctly as possible?
Are there any words or sentences I can remove to make what’s left behind shine brighter?
Now that you have a carefully considered and beautifully written piece, it’s time to move it into the third and final stage of editing.
3. Copy editing—polishing to perfection
Grammar nerds, it’s your time to shine! Copy editing is the process of ensuring your writing is clear, correct, and error-free. While it may seem tedious or trivial, publishing something with a typo takes the spotlight away from the substance of your writing and can be a major hit to your brand’s credibility.
You can thumb through fun grammar guides like Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing or Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English. By brushing up on common pitfalls, you can take advantage of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon—the reason why when you think about yellow cars, you’ll “suddenly” start seeing them everywhere. Similarly, with common grammar hang-ups in mind, they will become much easier to spot in a draft. Once you’re clear on what a “dangling modifier” is, you’ll be happily reuniting modifiers with their intended clauses like a content marketing matchmaker.
At this stage, it’s important to communicate to the rest of your team that it isn’t wise to add in new ideas—since new ideas need to be vetted through all three stages of editing. Failing to keep new ideas out of the draft during copy editing means you could be playing a drawn-out game of inbox Whack-A-Mole for weeks on end.
If you’re resource-constrained and stuck copy editing your own work, try putting your writing in a different font, color, or format. It can be a great way to clear your mental cache and trick yourself into thinking you’re seeing something new, making it much easier to catch mistakes.
After your work has gone to design, you’ll want to give it a final proofread. Designers can sometimes inadvertently introduce errors, so it would be a mistake to assume that your piece is ready to publish just because it was perfect in your Google doc. My rule of thumb is to reread the piece until you have a read-through where you don’t have to change anything. Then you can be confident you’re ready to publish.
Are there any spelling or grammar errors?
Have I fact-checked stats, verified spellings of names, ensured numbered lists are correct?
Is your editorial style consistent? Are you sticking to American or Canadian spelling throughout the entire piece? Are all citations formatted the same way?
Are all design elements correctly working in tandem with the text?
Beautifully efficient processes protect your creative juices from getting drained
Creative energy is precious and finite—that’s why as writers we’ve got to protect it. Given the right conditions, producing a piece of writing can be fun and exhilarating. But heap on a pile of constraints, inefficiencies, and miscommunications, and it’s got the potential to feel yuckier than sitting in the dentist’s chair. When this happens, even whip-smart writers end up churning out crap.
Ultimately, building a process that conserves your creative energy is one of the most worthwhile investments you can make as a writer. There’s great enjoyment to be found in pouring a torrent of creativity onto a page, then getting exactly the type of feedback you need to polish it up and make it shine. Best of all, next time you play Insomnia Jeopardy you’ll be able to spend less time in the “fear of errors” category and more time in “ideas for a screenplay.”
