Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

Ciao, SEers. Today is part eleven of the series, and we’re continuing with self-editing. We’ve reached the mid-level revision. By now, you should have corrected the biggest issues in your manuscript. It’s time to read it again and look for problems with execution.

Is your dialogue sharp? Are the words you chose appropriate for the speakers? Did you use realistic language? Did you bury dialogue in the middle of a paragraph of exposition, or does it always start or end a paragraph so it doesn’t get lost? Did you use enough attributions (but not too many)?

Have you analyzed your paragraph structure? Is there only one actor per paragraph? Did you head-hop? Is any paragraph suffering from author intrusion?

Have you analyzed your sentence structure? Is your message always clear? Did you vary the sentence style to create a pleasing rhythm? Did you find any awkward structures that need…