How to Edit a Book: A Self-Editing Checklist in 7 Passes

To edit a book yourself, put the draft away for a few weeks, then go through it in passes from big to small. Fix the structure first, then scenes, then sentences, then consistency, and proofread last, on the formatted pages. Give each pass one job. Polishing the commas in a chapter you later cut is wasted work, and most self-editing goes wrong because authors start with the commas.

Below are the seven passes in order, what to look for in each, and the free tools that make them faster.

Key takeaways#

• Rest the draft for two to six weeks before you edit. Distance is the cheapest editing tool there is.
• Edit from big to small: structure, scenes, characters, sentences, consistency, then a proofread.
• One pass, one job. Trying to fix plot holes and typos at the same time means you do both badly.
• Read your book aloud, or let Word read it to you. Your ear catches what your eye skips.
• Self-editing makes a professional edit shorter and better value. It doesn't replace the fresh eyes of someone who has never read your book.

Before you start: rest the draft and save a copy#

When you finish a draft, you remember what you meant to write. That memory fills the gaps on the page, so you can't see them. Time is the fix. Two weeks is a minimum for a novel; a month or more is better. Write something else in the meantime.

Then save a fresh copy of the file ("My Novel v2") and keep the original untouched. You will cut things you later want back.

One more trick: change how the book looks. Print it, send it to your Kindle, or switch the font and size in Word. A new look makes familiar sentences feel like someone else's, and that's exactly what you want.

Pass 1: Read it through like a reader#

Read the whole book in as few sittings as you can, and don't fix anything. Keep a notebook beside you and jot down page numbers with a word or two:

• Bored — you wanted to skim.
• Lost — you weren't sure who, where or when.
• Why? — a character did something that didn't ring true.
• Wow — something that works. Protect these.

At the end, write one sentence that says what the book is about, and one that says what changes for the main character (or, for non-fiction, what the reader can do after reading it). If you can't write those two sentences, that's your first editing job, and it's a structural one.

Pass 2: Fix the structure with a reverse outline#

A reverse outline is a list of what's actually in the draft, not what you planned. Go chapter by chapter and write one line per scene:

1. 1What happens in the scene.
2. 2Whose point of view it's in.
3. 3What has changed by the end of it.

The third column does the work. A scene where nothing changes (no decision, no new information, no shift in a relationship) is a scene you can cut or merge. Look at the list as a whole too:

• The opening. Does chapter one start where the story starts, or with two chapters of warm-up? Many first drafts begin a chapter or two early.
• The middle. Is there a stretch where the stakes stay flat? That's where readers put a book down.
• The ending. Does it pay off what the opening promised?

For non-fiction, do the same per chapter: what the reader learns, and whether each chapter builds on the one before. Move, cut and merge now, before you touch a single sentence.

Pass 3: Characters, timeline and continuity#

Start a simple "book bible": a document with every character's name, age, appearance and key facts, plus a timeline of events with dates or days. Then check the draft against it. Typical slips:

• A name spelled two ways (Katherine and Catherine), or two minor characters with names that look alike.
• Eye colour, ages or the number of children changing between chapters.
• A week that has two Tuesdays, or a pregnancy that lasts eleven months.
• A character who knows something they haven't been told yet.

Word's Find box (Ctrl+F, or Cmd+F on a Mac) is your friend here: search each name and skim every hit.

Pass 4: Scenes, pacing and dialogue#

Now work inside each scene:

• Arrive late, leave early. Cut the knocking at the door and the goodbyes unless they matter.
• Check the balance of summary and scene. Big moments should play out on the page; routine ones can be told in a line. Our post on show, don't tell has before-and-after examples.
• Read the dialogue out loud. People interrupt, dodge questions and rarely use each other's names. If two characters sound alike, cover the tags and see whether you can tell who's talking.
• Trim the tags. "Said" is nearly invisible. Adverbs on tags ("she said angrily") usually mean the line itself isn't doing the job.

Pass 5: Line edit your sentences#

This is where you work on the prose itself: rhythm, clarity and word choice. The most useful tool is your own ear. Read the book aloud, or have the computer do it. In Word, go to the Review tab and choose Read Aloud (available in Office 2019, Office 2021 and Microsoft 365; on Windows, Ctrl+Alt+Space starts it), as Microsoft explains. A flat computer voice is merciless: clunky sentences, missing words and repeated words all stand out.

Then hunt your crutch words. Everyone has them. Use Find to count how often these appear, and cut or replace the ones that add nothing:

• just, really, very, quite, actually, suddenly
• started to, began to ("she began to run" is usually "she ran")
• filter words: saw, heard, felt, noticed, realised ("she heard the door slam" is weaker than "the door slammed")
• that (often removable: "he knew that she was lying" works as "he knew she was lying")

A worked example:

Before: Suddenly, she felt that she was really starting to get very nervous as she began to walk towards the stage.

After: Her legs went stiff on the walk to the stage.

That's 20 words cut to 10, and the nerves are shown instead of named. You won't rewrite every sentence this hard. Save the deep work for openings, chapter endings and big moments.

Pass 6: Copy edit for consistency#

Now make the book consistent. Start a style sheet: a single page listing every choice you make, so you make it the same way every time. The big ones:

• UK or US spelling. Colour or color, realise or realize, towards or toward. Pick one and set Word's proofing language to match (Review, then Language).
• Quotation marks. British books usually use single quotes for dialogue ('like this'); American books use double ("like this"). Either is fine; mixing them isn't.
• Numbers. Twenty-one or 21? Most fiction spells numbers out; non-fiction often uses figures above ten.
• Capitals and hyphens. Mum or mum, email or e-mail, Chapter One or chapter one.
• Names of places, brands and invented words. Write the spelling down once and stick to it.

Run the spellcheck last, and don't accept its suggestions blindly; it doesn't know your character is called Rhyannon. If you want to know how far a professional takes this, here's what a copy editor fixes.

Pass 7: Proofread the formatted pages#

Proofreading comes after formatting, not before, because laying out the pages creates new errors: a broken line, a missing italic, a chapter heading on the wrong page, a short last line stranded at the top of a page. Order a printed proof or export a PDF and check every page for:

• Typos and doubled or missing words.
• Page numbers, running headers and chapter openings.
• Odd spacing, stray blank pages and orphaned lines.
• Front and back matter: title page, copyright page, contents, acknowledgements.

Read slowly, and read a page or two backwards if you're skimming. Our proofreading checklist has the full list.

How long does self-editing take?#

Longer than writing the draft feels like it should. A rough guide: allow a week or two for the read-through and reverse outline, as long as it takes for structural rewrites (this is the big one), and then a chapter or two a day for the line and copy passes. If you're planning a launch date, our guide on how long it takes to edit a book covers professional timelines at different lengths.

Where self-editing stops working#

There's a point where you can't see your own book any more. You've read it so often that your eye slides over the same mistakes, and every sentence sounds fine because you know what it means. That isn't a failure; it happens to professional writers too. It's the signal to hand it to someone else.

First, fresh readers: beta readers tell you where the story loses them. Then an editor, who tells you why, and fixes it at sentence level.

If you want to see what an edit would do to your pages before you spend a penny, send us a sample. Our editing service starts with a free sample edit of up to 1,000 words, returned as track changes with editorial feedback, normally within 24-48 hours, with no obligation. Do your seven passes first: the cleaner the book you send, the more of the editor's time goes on the things only an editor can catch.