Harsh Editing Advice | Tough Love for Editing a Book

Time for a bit of fun! I'm giving some harsh editing advice! Just a few things, hopefully nothing too earth shattering. If you need a kick in the pants for editing your book, hopefully this helps.

A note for #2: Obviously self publishers will almost always hire an editor for their work, so this bit isn't in regard to that stage of publishing. This harsh advice relates to needing an outside editor to rewrite your early drafts to make them coherent. Another person shouldn't be rewriting your book FOR you (and heavy editing is rewriting).

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Camera: Canon t6i
Mic: Rode VideoMic Go Light
Lighting: Limo Studio Soft Kit
Editing Software: Pinnacle Studio 22

[marinewauquier]

If you can't bring yourself to delete or edit a sentence/a scene because of how perfect/beautiful your writing is, create a document specifically to copy the sentences or scenes : you'll always keep a trace of your genius work AND your agent, editor, and publisher won't resent you for not being cooperatove on your editing.

[madmadame]

"Generally, I have an adverb problem, " she said without a trace of irony. ;)

[MichaelRichardson]

I’m an academic writer, but I find that a lot of your advice applies to all types of writing. I just realized that I used a crutch word way too much in a recent publication and now I can’t unsee it 🤦‍♂️

[jillswan]

I’d add: don’t try to incorporate everybody’s feedback all at once, verbatim. This is the opposite of the ego-driven response—the person with confidence so low they assume their writing is always garbage and try to edit their book to satisfy their CPs and beta readers.

[lilithcrow]

Perfect timing. I just finished my first draft yesterday.

[deadringer-cultofdeathratt]

Your harsh advice videos are among my absolute favorite “writing” videos on this platform.

[thegirlwiththecontroller]

Being stuck at home is really getting my creative juices flowing and really making me want to pick up writing again. Thank you for yet another great video.

[aylapantswb]

My challenge is still trying to hold off on editing until I finish the first draft. All my previous writings have stalled because I couldn't stop myself from going back and editing the same scene over and over before moving on. This time around, I'm trying really hard to resist temptation!

[stigdyrdal]

Your tough-love videos are always so inspiring! They're some of my favorite videos you do!

[BriarMaeriSibyle]

when i was writing my first 'novel' thingy that basically just got thrown out, i used 'nodded' so many times you'd think my characters were bobbleheads

[gomiho]

I 100% agree. Some people think that "art" means whatever you can throw down and then you're done. Artists research, they hone their craft, they are extremely knowledgeable about the kind of art they produce not just what they do but the art style itself. Writing is no exception.

[NixLaLoupe]

The biggest piece of editing advice that I've ever had to teach myself is to go with your gut feeling. You are capable of looking at your work as you would anyone else's work. If you feel like something isn't right, isn't flowing right, has something problematic going on, you are in control and you can fix it. It might take some time to consider, but you can put your best work out there.

Think of all the times that you read a book and something didn't stick right with you. If you're like me, you thought about all the ways that it could have been better. Do that with your own book. Implement change.

[acrimsondaisy]

it's interesting how we have different repition words in writing and in speaking - for example, in my writing, I overuse "in fact", "actually", and "even" but when I talk, I overuse words like "really", "like", and "fucking" - words I barely use in writing and vice versa

[chaoticmimo]

another pro of fanfic: you work your self-editing skills A LOT 😂👌

[livmilesparanormalromanceb]

I was just re-watching your harsh writing advice, so this is perfect. Thank you! :)

[AndreaHecklerWriter]

My first-draft characters spend waaay too much time smiling, laughing, and nodding 🙈😂 So thankful for revisions!

[MichelleSchustermanAuthor]

omg I always tell my students to take weeks/months from their first drafts before revising, and I am 100% guilty of literally never doing it myself 😂 Great advice, Alexa! I have a shelved novel or two where the premise itself was the problem, so I really appreciate that last bit. It's brutal but real.

[annalenastache]

Your videos have really been helping me with editing! I actually found the word "really" four or five times on one single page... I never would have thought to look for crutch words if it hadn't been for you!

[elizalagonia]

I'm lucky to have a CP who is a trained editor since this is my first novel. He told me right off the bat my issue was I was writing a screenplay as a novel and some of the scenes I had in there, that would work in a tv show or in a movie just slowed my book down completely. He knows me really well and he understood what I was going for and showed me what I was doing wrong.

I also had him and someone else questioned the introduction of a couple of my characters. The bad thing was the moment they said why the didn't like the introduction of these characters. One character I really like and will probably get them in later in the series, but the other character I realized the piece is so much stronger without her.


Very good advice. Thank you.

[nuny]

This is amazing, because I just started going through the edits of the first draft of my book, and this will be really helpful! Thank you and keep doing what you're doing!