How do you know when a manuscript is done and ready to be queried or published? If your answer is when you type the last word, you deserve a Nerf bat upside the head. Typing the last word of your manuscript, or “The End” is a momentous occasion, but it does not mean your work is ready to see the light of day.
What you’ve completed is your rough draft. Now it’s time to edit. And editing has many stages. First you want to read through and see if the story line makes sense. Did you forget to foreshadow the fact the main characters brother will turn evil in the last chapter? If you did, go back and layer that in. Did you change the best friend’s name halfway through the book? If so, make sure the name is consistent. Watch out for plot holes big and small. In your head, you may know that the main character has a pathological hatred of Crocs (the shoes not the animals) but if you failed to mention that trait and it’s important to the final scene, you need to go back and add it in.
Once you’ve fixed character’s consistency issues and any plot hole problems, it’s time to edit out common but unnecessary phrases you don’t realize you use. Just to make yourself cringe, do a “Find All” for the word “that”. In an 80,000-word manuscript, I bet you’ll come up with several hundred, which can be eliminated. Once you have your “that’s” under control, search for other overused words: very, many, some, always, up, down etc. Check for overuse of look, saw, heard and other filter words, which keep your POV from being deep.
For the love of all creatures great and small, use the spell and grammar check features on your computer. Every book, no matter who produces it, will have a few typos. Multiple typos are not forgivable. If the author didn’t care to take the time to make her book the best it could be, why should I spend my time reading it?
Once you’ve gone through all of these self-editing steps, send your work off to a beta reader, a friend who reads a lot and who loves your genre. Make sure the beta reader knows you want an honest opinion. She will spot things you were too close to see.
If you are self publishing, you might want to find an editor who will read your work and give her opinion for a reasonable fee. Do your due diligence. Make sure the editor reads your genre and that she has good referrals. Know what you are paying for. There are different types of editors who do different things.
Finally, before you send your baby out into the world, whether you’re querying or uploading, let it sit for a few weeks. Once your head has had a vacation from the manuscript, go back and read it with fresh eyes. You may decide the story needs more conflict, or you may decide it’s perfect the way it is.
You never get a second chance to make a first impression with a reader. I’ve stopped reading interesting stories because I found a typo on every page. I’ve stopped reading because an author used 4 “that’s” in one sentence. Don’t give the reader an excuse to put your book down. Make it the best it can be before you send it out into the world.