I have a manuscript, now what?

First: congrats! That’s monumental!

You may have learned different versions of an editing cycle in school that boils down to ‘revise, copyedit, proof.’ You may have seen a complex flowchart with 25 steps for writers in workshop. These are valid, but to prepare a work for publication, the following is a tried-and-true process for producing the cleanest, most cohesive manuscript possible.

1. Beta Reading

‘Beta’ here refers to the second in a series of items, so we begin by getting a second set of eyes on the work. You might have had a friend or colleague look over it to tell you what they think, and that’s also beta reading. A beta reader should give broad feedback and constructive criticism from the lens of a reader who is a consumer and also a writer. We won’t deconstruct anything major in beta reading, but we’ll discuss what worked, what didn’t, and what was enjoyable. Don’t start sending out a manuscript to agents or publishers without getting an impartial set of eyes on it first, at the very least.

2. Substantiative Editing

Time to dig in. We’ll examine the tone, structure, plot, and rearrange and cut as necessary. This is an involved process between writer and editor, and will require collaboration, though you have the final say.

3. Copy Editing

Now that the work has been turned upside down and given a good shake, it’s time to copy edit for mechanical errors. We weren’t looking for mechanical errors in the process of substantiative editing, though we may have caught a few and changed them along the way.

4. Line Editing

Unlike copy editing’s search for mechanical errata, line editing is about hunting line by line for consistency, function, and the little idiosyncrasies that crop up in the process of producing a long work. We might go back and forth adding corrections and finding more errors a few times until it’s all sorted out and cohesive.

5. Proofreading

Now the manuscript gets a final washday shine. I realize that copy editing, line editing, and proofreading sound similar at first, but truly, I just want your manuscript to be so clean you could eat off of it. So now in proofreading, we’re done playing with the structure and bones of the work and we’re just trimming errors one last time.