How To Edit Your Stories – 4 Best Tips

Editing is often described as the “surgical” phase of writing, and for most authors, it’s a harder than writing the book! Because you’ve spent hours upon hours with the story, it’s easy to get “manuscript blindness,” where your brain automatically fills in gaps, corrects typos mentally, and assumes the reader understands the internal logic that hasn’t actually made it onto the page.

But even beyond these core struggle, there are a few specific pain points that make the editing process a “love-hate” relationship for writers. In today’s article, I’ll give you four pro-tips to help alleviate some of the hardships of editing your stories. So, without further ado, let’s learn how to edit your stories with ease.

How To Edit Your Stories

At its core, editing is the process of refining a raw manuscript (your first draft) into a more polished, professional piece of storytelling. This is when do things like fix grammar and punctuation as well as make sure your pace is on point and your plot flows well.

In general, you’re editing to ensure or improve clarity and impact. In the first draft we’re (as writers) still figuring out the story ourselves. Editing allows you to remove the “scaffolding”—the filler scenes, repetitive descriptions, and filter words—that slows down the reader’s experience.

By sharpening the dialogue and tightening the narrative arc, you ensure that your intended message and emotional beats land exactly as you envisioned. Without editing, even the most brilliant story can remain buried under the clutter of a messy draft.

Despite its necessity, the process is notoriously difficult, primarily because of the loss of objectivity. After spending months with a story, we often become unable to see the gaps in logic or the typos right in front of us. That said, here are four key tips to edit your stories.

How To Edit Stories Easier – 4 Key Tips

Since editing is often more grueling than the actual writing, the best tips are those that force a “fresh perspective” and break the work into manageable pieces. That said, here are some actionable tips to help authors survive and thrive during the editing process.

1. The “Cooling-Off” Period

The most effective way to gain objectivity is distance. After finishing your first draft, put it away for at least two to four weeks. Do not look at it, do not talk about it, and do not think about it. When you return, you’ll be able to see the text for what is actually on the page, rather than what is in your head.

2. Read the Manuscript Out Loud

My next tip is to read the manuscript aloud. This works well because our ears are often better editors than our eyes. Reading your work aloud—or using a “text-to-speech” tool to have your computer read it to you—will instantly highlight things you’d otherwise miss, such as:

• Clunky or repetitive phrasing.
• Unnatural dialogue.
• Sentences that are too long to breathe through.

3. Change the Formatting

To trick your brain into “seeing” the text as a new document, I recommend you change the font and the layout you used while writing the story. For example, if you wrote the story in Times New Roman switch to something like Courier or Garamond for the editing process.

Furthermore, you can also increase the margins or the font size. And even export the book to an e-reader (Kindle/iPad) or print it out. I find that seeing your words in a “published” format makes errors jump off the page.

4. Create a “Reverse Outline”

If you’re struggling with pacing or plot holes, create an outline after the book is written. For every chapter, write one sentence explaining its purpose. If you find a chapter that doesn’t move the plot forward or reveal a character’s motive, it’s a prime candidate for the “cutting room floor.”

Editing With LivingWriter

While human editors are the gold standard, there are, of course, tools to help with the “self-editing” phase, catch the low-hanging fruit and polish your manuscript before you show it to anyone else. Voted the Best Writing App in 2025, LivingWriter makes editing your stories easier than ever.

1. The “Stash”

LivingWriter has a unique feature called the Stash. If you have a paragraph or a scene that you love but realize it doesn’t fit the current chapter, you don’t have to delete it or move it to a separate Word doc. You simply “stash” it in the sidebar. It stays tied to that manuscript, waiting for you to drag and drop it back in later if you change your mind.

2. AI Editing & Analysis

LivingWriter has leaned heavily into AI features that act as a “writing companion” during the editing process. Things like AI Rewrite, Analysis, and Summarize, take a lot of the mental block that comes with the editing process.

• AI Rewrite: You can highlight a clunky sentence and ask the AI to rewrite it in a different tone (e.g., “more descriptive,” “less formal,” or even “Shakespearean”).
• AI Analysis: It can analyze your chapters to give you a breakdown of the tone, pacing, and overarching narrative to see if your “dark thriller” is actually sounding too upbeat.
• AI Summarize: If you’ve lost the thread of a long chapter, the AI can summarize it for you, helping you see the core structure so you can spot plot holes more easily.

3. Smart “Story Elements” for Consistency

One of the hardest parts of editing is consistency. Did you change a character’s eye color in Chapter 4? LivingWriter’s “Story Elements” automatically recognize your characters and locations as you type. If you rename a character in your elements board, the “Smart Text” feature helps ensure those changes are consistent throughout the manuscript.

4. Revision History & Version Control

Unlike Scrivener (which requires manual “snapshots”), LivingWriter functions more like Google Docs. It has a robust Revision History that saves your progress automatically. You can go back to a version from three hours ago or three days ago, compare the changes, and restore old text if an edit goes sideways.

5. Chapter Statuses

During the editing phase, you can assign Statuses (e.g., “First Draft,” “Needs Revision,” “Editing,” “Complete”) to each chapter. These are color-coded in your sidebar, giving you a visual “progress bar” of how much of the book is actually ready for the next stage.