Everyone's Guide to Wattpad

Editing

Every single piece of work you read has involved edits before. Without editing, stories would be worse than a first grader trying to write a biography of George Washington! You need to edit.

What Should I Edit?

Edit everything. Everything. Fix all gramatical and spelling mistakes. Fix the plot a little bit. Editing involves every subject of writing, and every time you change or fix something, you've already edited. Add dialogue. Take some away. Add a comma. Do you get the point? Surely you brilliant selves already know what editing is. This was the easy part, but the question is: WHEN should I edit?

When to Edit

Great question, but how about we start with: When to NOT edit. Do not edit while you are writing your work. I am guilty of this, and my stories go nowhere fast because I will trip on a sentence over and over until I think it's perfect. I end up changing it later, anyways. Let your thoughts flow from your fingertips. Let the words speak. Fix the grammatical and spelling errors later. Just get your thoughts into words.

Now, when should you edit? I tend to edit grammar and spelling after I write my piece, for one. However, that's me. I'm usually so burned out after writing that editing dialogue and plot pieces come the day after.

Do not publish your story part until you have edited it to decency. A story piece that is published as soon as it's written usually never gets edited later down the road. New writers tend to do this to see how their story does. Is it impressive to the readers? No! So, in the end, the early publishing did more harm than help.

Editing never ends. You can edit the same story until you hit perfection, which is nearly impossible. There's infinite ways to write a story, and you can constantly be changing it up. This is why writing is an art. You need to have that inner-writer-sense to know when your story is near that perfection mark. Don't worry if you don't get there, though. Every story has its flaws.

Again, editing never ends. Every time you read your story, you should be looking for mistakes. If you spot one, then fix it. Instantly. Don't say you'll come back to it, because chances are, you won't. This has happened to me a dozen times. I can never remember where the mistake is.

Publishing Your Story

This is going back to what I mentioned above. Do not publish your story as soon as you have written it. Chances are, there needs to be things that have to be switched around. Edit your story, come back to it tomorrow, edit it again, then again, then again. Then, publish, and then edit, then edit, then edit until editing is no longer an issue. In other words, don't stop editing.

Over editing

Is there even such a thing? In literal terms, no, but you can harm your story if you edit your plot too much. Editing your plot line can affect the timeline of your story. Sometimes, you edit to the point where the scenes don't click in anymore. I'm guilty of this (as well as everything else I've mentioned in this guide). Edit thoroughly but cautiously, because repairing your plot as you write more scenes that don't click can get nasty. (I had to pull the amnesia card because I made changes that didn't fit in right.)

Go now, and edit your story. Edit until Ed becomes It.

-OrangeGuy