It’s often hard to see our own work clearly, especially when it’s freshly written. After the first rush of writing, our prose either feels like the best thing ever, or complete crap. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle: it’s good but needs work.
So, how do we gain distance from our work so we can see it for what it is? In the long run, that just takes experience, but in the short run, there are several things you can do to gain perspective on your writing.
Join a peer critique workshop or create one. The best thing you can do is seek out critique from an educated, well-read reader or another writer in a peer critique workshop, especially if that workshop is led by a more experienced writer. That peer critique workshop format is the basis of most creative writing BA and MFA programs out there, and for good reason. It’s hard to see the apprentice pitfalls in our own work, but easy to see it in the works of others. Learning to identify elements of craft and critique the work of others helps us build self-critique and editing skills.
Shelve the manuscript for a week or a month. When you come back to it, the work will often feel like someone else’s.
Take your manuscript on a trip. A change of scene often offers a new perspective on your work. Sometimes just taking your manuscript to a cafe helps.
Enlist the help of an alpha or beta reader. An educated reader can offer feedback on your manuscript. If you don't have a friend to help you out here, consider a beta reading service like the one we offer.
Read the manuscript out loud. Or, even better, have a friend read it out loud. If you don't get a friend to do that, then consider using a text-to-talk app on your phone or laptop. The flat automated reading voice has a way of really highlighting mistakes. Note each time you or the reader stumbles, not just over a word, but over a concept. Is the dialogue going too fast, or is it too full of chitchat? Is there enough conflict in the scene? Does your character now seem like the same one you pictured as you wrote them? I think you may be amazed at how just reading your manuscript out loud changes how you view your own writing.
Mark up your manuscript as you go along either by hand or using the review (comment and track changes) function on Word. Really challenge yourself here. Make your goal to find and circle at least five things, big or small, on each page and make note on the manuscript of how you’ll fix these problems. If you're making the markups by hand, your manuscript should be truly messy, looking a lot like the spider drawings I use to brainstorm.
But don’t make these changes to your manuscript yet. Let the ideas stew for now (this is one place where procrastination is useful!). A bit of time away always gives us a new view on our work.
All these tricks above are about learning to step back, and view your own work as if you are reading someone else's, with a critical eye.
