Editing with AutoCrit
Once a work in progress (WIP) reaches THE END, the focus shifts to editing. This can be a challenge.
Fortunately, many tools exist to assist authors with this critical step. My primary tool of choice is the AutoCrit on-line editing platform. The features are amazing and are improving all the time.
I choose Romance as the genre to which to compare my work. A score is generated based on general topics of Pacing and Momentum, Dialogue, Strong Writing, Word Choice, Repetition, and Readability. Each of these offers subtopics with reports highlighting suggested changes. I focus on pacing, adverbs, showing versus telling, and repetitions within the subtopics. I consider these and either accept or disregard them. Over the years of using this system, my writing has strengthened, and my initial scores have improved from the 70's to the 90's.
I've identified four authors who have similar writing styles and do a comparison with them. Recently, I've also done a comparison against General Fiction. It's interesting to see the difference in the scoring.
They added a story analyzer feature. For my current WIP, I used this feature to review possible contradictions, foreshadowing events, and a timeline analysis. As a result, I caught and corrected discrepancies in my writing. Very handy!
I also use MS Word's Read Aloud feature. I set the view to 200% and listen as the program reads through my story. This helps me find punctuation discrepancies such as commas instead of periods and missing quotation marks. I also identify awkward phrasing and repeated words. Find is a handy feature as I catch myself using words too often in my dialogue, like starting with "So" or "Well."
I don't make use of Beta readers, but many authors do. These folks read the story and offer constructive critiques.
Professional editors are available to hire for a variety of editing focused on different aspects of writing, such as the big picture of your story, the plot, the structure, the pacing, your characters, the theme, the sharpness of the prose, spelling, typos, and punctuation.
No one ever said writing a book that's ready for publication is easy!