How to Use the Edit Your Novel Checklist for Your First Draft Read-Through

How to Use the Edit Your Novel Checklist for Your First Draft Read-Through

Beth Barany introduces the Edit the Future Science Fiction and Fantasy Revision Lab and walks through how to use the Edit Your Novel Checklist, available at edityournovelchecklist.com or via email: beth@bethbarany.com.

She explains that the checklist supports a first read-through of a rough draft where the writer does not edit, but reads like a reader with some distance, choosing a method such as printing, using an e-reader, changing fonts, or having software read the text aloud, and making only notes or marks.

Writers should identify their genre (speculative fiction and subgenres) to evaluate reader expectations.

The checklist covers three areas: 

• story/plot (emotional and plot pacing, logic, act structure, scenes, reader expectations), 
• character (GMC, point of view, setting, dialogue, consistency, reader expectations), 
• and proofing (tense, punctuation, word usage, spelling, metaphor/simile, reader expectations).

After reading and noting, writers score each element 1–5 to gauge work needed. Next episode covers story structure and examples.

00:00 Welcome and Checklist Link 

00:23 Set Up Your Copy 

00:52 First Read No Editing 

03:18 Reading Methods Examples 

04:12 Know Your Genre 

05:43 Checklist Overview Sections 

06:12 Story and Plot Checks 

07:18 Character Checks 

08:19 Proofing Checks 

09:21 Score and Next Steps 

10:19 Wrap Up and Next Episode

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Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Hi everyone. I am your guide for the

BETH BARANY 0:03

Edit the Future

Speaker 0:04

Science fiction and Fantasy revision Lab. And today I am going to go through the Edit Your Novel Checklist. to walk you through it. So if you don't already have the checklist, be sure to get it at. Edit your novel checklist.com or just write me and I can send you the link. Alright, so once you sign up for the edit your novel checklist, you'll be jumped over to a Google Doc that you can copy and put on your Google Drive download. Make it your own. It's editable so you can. Of course make any changes that you want to the document. This is a working, living document, so use it, even print it out and, and put it with your writing materials. Put it on the wall. this is for you to use. So number one, you want to decide how you wanna read your manuscript. The edit. Your novel checklist is designed to be a reference document as you do your very first read through of your first draft, your rough draft, your discovery draft, however you wanna call it. And if you've never done this before, or even if you have, take a moment and think about how you wanna read through your manuscript. The point is not to make any edits. The point is to read it. As a reader, meaning you might need some distance from the time you wrote it, a week, a month, a year. Really, there's no hard and fast rule on how much distance you need from your manuscript, but what I, what I've noticed is that writers need like a cooling off period so that they can read their whole manuscript the way a reader would. That's the goal. You wanna have some distance and you wanna have some curiosity. Oh, what is this thing I wrote? Some technical things that can help you do that is you can either print it out so it's on paper, or you could send it to your Kindle or iPad or another reading device, so it feels like you're reading it like a reader would, put on a tablet or put it on a different kind of computer screen or in a different kind of font. There's some people I know who will have Microsoft Word read the manuscript to them. Yeah, that's an option as well. Whatever works for you. So choose how you want to read through your manuscript. Great. Once you have decided that, what I recommend is number one, read through this checklist. It's short. It's like four pages long, all told three pages of checklist, one page of instruction. Read through the checklist, put it in your mind, and let it just float there. don't be restrictive about it. You can always revisit it whenever you want. Your goal in this readthrough is to pay attention to whatever jumps out at you as incorrect. Maybe it makes you uncomfortable for some reason. Maybe you find your attention waning, moving away, or you're like, Ugh, lemme check email. Let me play my games. Those are points to just notice. Put a question mark on the manuscript. Put a check mark. Put a sticky note, but you're not editing. please do not edit your manuscript. Right now. You're just reading it through so you can get a lay of the land so you can get a big picture so you can notice maybe the things that you don't like, but also the things that you do like. So just real quick, when I go through, um, my manuscript for the first time, I like to put it onto my Kindle. It's a little black and white, gray scale Kindle, and that way it's not easy to make fixes. So I'm not tempted to make fixes and I just make mental notes. Of what I wanna change. Granted, I've been doing this a long time, but I'll even write them down in my notebook or, um, in Scrivener where I keep all my story notes. Ezra, my co-teacher and husband and also a writer, he likes to print out the manuscript. He likes to write in the margins, circle things, and sometimes he will put the manuscript on his iPad and read it aloud to himself to find typos, clunky sentences. He does that actually. Uh, when he is really certain, the manuscript is pretty clean, so you can do it. You don't have to stick to one way of reading through your manuscript. You can change it up. Third piece of preparation, you need to know your genre. Just make your best guess. I'm inviting in people who are science fiction and fantasy writers. We can also call that speculative fiction, right? That's the broad umbrella term. And inside of that lives science, fiction lives, fantasy lives, horror lives, science fiction, romance, fantasy, adventure, romance. Let's see. Spicy, romantic, fantasy, all kinds of things, right? So you decide what is your genre for now, make your best. Best guess. Maybe it's a mashup. Awesome, I love that. And just write it down on the checklist, just so you can keep it in mind, because I'm gonna be asking you questions for as you go through your checklist. So remember at this stage, do not edit your work. Just make notes in the margins or on sticky notes or in Scrivener or on a notepad. Use track changes, although that's kind of starting to push it. Uh, but if that is fun for you and easy, do that. We're looking for fun. We're looking for easy, and we're looking for you to read your book as a reader, so as much as possible. So whatever supports that. Because I repeat, you're not making changes or fixes or rewrites, none of that. You're just reading to notice strengths and weaknesses, what's working and what's not working. That's your job in this read through and this big picture evaluation will help you get. Get a big picture of how your manuscript is doing. So there's three main parts of this checklist. The first part is about the story, the plot, what happens. The second part is about character. And the third I call proofing, but it's not like final proofing. It's just all the dibby, dabby things, grammar, punctuation, that kind of thing. Because most likely you're gonna notice those things in this first read through. So I have made a checklist section for that as well. So let's start at the top with story and plot. Emotional pacing. Does the story move at the right pace for the emotions you want to convey? Or does it move too slowly or too quickly? Plot pacing Based on your genre, how is the balance of dialogue and action? Story logic? Are there gaps in story logic or in the actions of the characters? Can you follow the flow of action from one moment to the next? Act structure, act 1, 2, 3, et cetera. Does your story have a compelling beginning, rising action and complications, and then closing resolution as appropriate for your genre? Does it start in the right place? Have enough action in the middle, have a satisfying ending scenes? Do your individual scenes start and end at the best point of interest for you? Does each scene have a compelling beginning, rising action and complications and closing resolution? Okay. And then reader expectations. Do you meet reader expectations for your genre for plot and pacing? Do you surprise the reader and yet fit the genre? Alright, our second section on character goal, motivation, conflict, or GMC, do your characters have clear goals? Clear reasons, motivation for their actions and goals. Do they have conflict, preventing them from reaching their goals? Point of view. Do you stay in one character's point of view per scene setting? Is the setting conveyed from the point of view character? Is the information shared relevant to the story's tone and moment dialogue? Yeah. Does the dialogue sound different for each character? And some more questions on dialogue. Does the dialogue move the action forward or enhance character, or is it appropriate for the pacing of the moment, such as to lighten the mood, for example, consistency? Does the character stay in character? And lastly for this section, readers expectations. Do your characters behave as your readers expect they would for your genre? And then the third section, proofing grammar. Do you keep the story in the tense? You've chosen punctuation. Is your punctuation correct and consistent given your artistic purposes and genre conventions? Word usage. Are you using specific nouns and verbs versus vague nouns and verbs? Are you using emotionally charged adjectives as appropriate for your genre spelling? Is your spelling correct and consistent for your artistic purposes and genre conventions? Metaphor? Do you use metaphor and simile to convey emotion rooted in the point of view of the character? And lastly on the checklist, reader expectations. Is your book clear of errors in a way that makes the reading easy and clear for readers of your genre? So that is the edit your novel checklist. Hope you found it helpful. Be sure to grab your own checklist at edit your novel checklist.com. Or you can just email me, Beth at Beth Barany DOT com. Once you have gone through your manuscript and read the entire thing and made notes using the edit your novel checklist, now it's time to score all the elements simply on a scale from one to five. One being needs the least work and five being needs the most work. Go through every element on your checklist and give it a number. Just number it from one to five, and you can do granularly on every single element in the three sections. The story and plot section, the character section, and the proofing section. And once you're done. If you feel like it's fun to do, go ahead and add up your score. That will give you an overall sense of how much work you need to do. Don't let this number intimidate you. This is just information, just helping you understand where you feel you are in your manuscript. Alright, that's it for this week, everyone. Next week, we are gonna start at the high level, and we're gonna cover story structure, specifically talking about stories, beginning, middles, and ends for your types of stories, for your genre. And I'll be covering some examples and I'll be asking you to identify those in your story. All right. Happy writing, everyone. Happy editing and connect with you in the next episode. Write long and prosper.