Love your line edits
By Claire Fuller

If you’re doing or have recently done the line editing for your novel, I feel your pain. This is exactly what I’m doing now for my sixth book, Hunger and Thirst. I say I feel your pain, but secretly – or maybe not so secretly – I love line editing. For me, it’s closely aligned with writing poetry: making sure every word is the right word in the right place and nothing is wasted and that I’m saying exactly what I want to say while aiming for the most beautiful sentence I can create.

Here are eight actions I do when I’m line editing, which might help you.

Read aloud

Yes, I know this is what everyone says, but I’m going to say it again. Read your work aloud and try to listen to the rhythm of the words as well as the words themselves. It’s a way of checking for unintentional rhymes and that your sentences are different lengths and use different constructions. Writing that uses the same constructions and sentence lengths over and over can sound repetitive no matter what the words are.

Check opening and endings

Check the opening and the ending paragraph of your novel, and then the opening and ending of every chapter, and then opening and ending of every scene change, and every paragraph. Look and correct it if you find many of your openings starting with the same sentence structure or even the same word. (If you’re writing in the first person, check that you don’t start too many sentences with I).

Hunt down the repeats

Keep a checklist of words you find you repeat. (You can copy and paste some of your novel into a Word Cloud – there are lots of free ones on the Internet – which will tell you how often you use each word.) Search for the repeated words in your novel and either delete or change. Then search for all the instances of the new word. Repeat.

List ‘fluff’ words

Keep a list of fluff words. These are fillers that you are probably using subconsciously. You’ll have your own, but you can find a starter list here: https://clairefuller.co.uk/claire-fullers-fluff-words/ Search for each of these words and either delete or change. Then search for all the instances of the new word. Repeat.

Look out for ‘ly’

Search the document for ‘ly’. This will pick up the majority of adverbs (although not all). I’m not saying you shouldn’t have adverbs but it’s good to know what you’ve got and check that each one deserves its place in your novel.

Writer’s tic?

Do you have a writer’s tic? Try and notice and search for it. (My characters are always leaning in doorways, and they do make a lot of cups of tea.)

Be sentence strong

Check for words that vacillate (quite, almost, slightly, partly, a bit) – be strong in your sentences.

Read aloud (again)

Read aloud, again. Print out your novel a few pages at a time and stand up and read it aloud as though you’re at Cheltenham Literary Festival in front of an audience of three hundred. What makes you cringe? What do you want to change? I guarantee you’ll find something.

Happy line editing!

Find out more about Claire Fuller, our novel judge here.

Deadline for novel submissions – it doesn’t have to be finished, we need 5,000 to 8,000 words max and an overview – 31 May 2025 midnight UK time. Enter here.