Creating Your Own Style Guide and Editing List

In this post, I’m passing along some thoughts about tools that work for me and might help some of you too—creating your own style guide and editing list.

Style Guide

One of the most well-known style guides is the Chicago Manual of Style. You can use the book or the online version to look up editorial conventions. For instance, if you are writing a fantasy story or novel and the characters have titles, you can use Chicago to see how and when the characters’ titles ought to be capitalized.

If I am working on book, I like to take this process one step further, and make my own style guide that lists the words that I’ve already looked up, and also specialized words that might not be covered by Chicago. I jot down words I’m not sure about as I go along. That way I can look them up later without having to remember what they are.

When I have my first draft, I go back through my manuscript and check to make sure everything on my style guide is consistent throughout the book. Search and replace is great for this, but I recommend that you check each instance instead of making a global change. Otherwise you might accidentally change part of a word. For example, if you want to change king to King, you wouldn’t want to end up with maKing or similar words in your manuscript.

Editing List

When I first started writing fiction I found that I used certain words in my first drafts that could usually come out. I made a list of them, and after I’ve written a new story or book, I search for these words and see if any can be removed. Some of the words on my list are really, very, so, and then, because I know from experience that I overuse them.

You might have different words on your list. Based on your own experience, you can create a list that fits your writing style and use it to check your work. I prefer to wait until I have a first draft before doing this because if I edit too soon I find it distracts me from writing.

If you give it a try, post a comment to let me know how this went for you. I’m also open to hearing how other people edit their work, so feel free to post your suggestions as well.

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