Do I Need An Editor For My Book?

Yes, you do need an editor for your book. That’s the simple answer. Whether you’re writing fiction, children’s fiction, non-fiction, memoir… if you want anyone to be interested in reading your book you need to go through editing.

There are other useful stages of the writing process too which can help you control the financial cost of hiring an editor. These include alpha readers, beta readers and self-editing. 

There’s a massive elephant in the room, though. Let me explain.

“The first six chapters are unnecessary worldbuilding and backstory. Start the story 20,000 words later.” …

“I can’t really care about your lead character and your reader won’t either.” …

“The plot of the novel isn’t driven by any significant character motivation. Your character needs a much stronger reason to go after their goal and go through all those difficulties.” …

“The style isn’t engaging yet. There’s a lot of ‘telling’ in places where ‘showing’ would be much more effective.

The editor might go further and say, “The premise of your novel is severely flawed. It just doesn’t work.”

Not a great feeling.

You’re pretty much back to the drawing board. Unless you decide to ‘publish and be damned’ and discover the hard way through terrible reviews that the editor was right.

Learn to Tell a Great Story

Editing is valuable. Actually it is invaluable. You should definitely get your book edited. But that isn’t the first point at which you should seek support. When you write with support, learning and developing your awareness of structure, characterisation and style, you’ll create a much better first draft than you would have all on your own. 

While writing can be a lonely business, being a writer doesn’t have to be. The act of writing is often solitary but learning about it and developing your skills can be a highly sociable thing.

Investing in help and support doesn’t mean you won’t need an editor. It does mean your manuscript will be in a much better state when it does go to an editor. This makes the editing process less painful, you’ll understand why the editor points out certain things – and it’ll certainly make it cheaper and quicker. In the long run, you’ll also get better reviews on your book and greater success as an author. Win, win, win.

It’s sort of like knowing the cheat codes to a game. You end up further ahead of the others by working smart.

How to start writing a novel

You want to write a novel. You’ve got some story ideas bouncing around your head, but you don’t know how to even begin. Every novel you read makes you want to write your own book too, yet it also scares you. 

Those novels you read are just so… good. They’re polished and clever and well written. It makes you feel that you could never write something good enough so you maybe shouldn’t bother.

Advice for writing a novel

If you’re a new writer, I’ve got a reassuring message for you here about how novels get written. Before you start searching for advice like ‘Tips for Writing a Great Novel’, there’s something very important and powerful to understand.

A novel – in its finished form that you’ve always read – is not downloaded onto the page in a perfect flow. It does not pop out of the writer’s brain, down their arms, through their fingers and onto their manuscript as a crafted story. Novels do not appear as a manifestation of their authors’ stream of consciousness.

Every writer of a great, good, or even decent novel has a process. This process does not involve being a conduit through which a perfect novel streams out fully formed.

How to write your first novel

It’s unhelpful to think of writing your novel in terms of typing Chapter One and trying to get the words to come out right.

You’ll get on better if you think of the story in your mind as a lump of marble. It’s unformed at the moment. It’s not much to look at. But the potential is there for something beautiful. In fact, the material that the final work of art is formed of is already there. Your job as a writer – as a storyteller – is to find that story and to shape it into what it’s meant to be.

All novel writers do this in one way or another. They take an idea – their lump of marble – and they start shaping it. The rough shape of their plot and characters often begin to emerge first. The world the characters live in starts to become real. 

Gradually the story becomes more defined. The problems, emotions and motivations of the characters come into focus. Eventually, the novel is ready to share with the world. It is unveiled like a statue at an exhibition. Everyone marvels at the writer’s talent and skill, perhaps unaware of the work behind the scenes.

You can do this too. You can write a novel. It is not only for those ‘special’ ones. The only difference between them and you is the place they are on their writing journey.