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A good process for editing written material Here is a back issue of Marketing Booster, the email newsletter that Richard Groom writes and sends free every fortnight to subscribers. You can subscribe here or read over 60 back issues using the back issues index page. Last week, I ran an in-house copywriting workshop for the marketing department of a local company. When I was phoning everyone before the workshop to find out what issues they wanted to tackle, one of the common themes concerned the editing process. Like most people, they all understood the value of involving others when writing new marketing materials. But it seemed that they weren't getting the most from working together. So at the workshop, we looked at the editing process. What do you do once you've written your first draft? How do you reach your final version? We looked at a three-stage process: STAGE ONE Get some feedback on your first draft. You don't necessarily want someone to write all over your printout. What you need is for them to give you feedback in person. Get their initial reaction to the piece. See if they can view it as a normal reader would. They should comment on the overall message, not necessarily at the construction of individual sentences and paragraphs. Did they understand what you were saying? Did it hold their interest? Is the text compelling and convincing? Does it raise too many unanswered questions, or drone on about unimportant stuff? Is it clear what readers should do next, ie call for more info, visit a web site etc.? STAGE TWO Take the feedback gathered on stage one and work on your text to reach a second draft, fixing any problems that the feedback highlighted. You might do all of this yourself, or, if your writing skills are still developing a lot, you might get a colleague to do some of it. If you do get someone else to do it, give them a clear briefing on what you want them to achieve. Do they need to reduce the word count? Are you having trouble making a particular technical point clear and simple? If possible, do the editing yourself, as if too many people become involved it's easy to end up with a very dry, flat piece of writing. You might need to do several edits before you reach the finished version. I usually get to draft three, four or five before I'm done. But be careful not to edit so much that you lose the flow and pace of your writing. Each time, try to sleep on it and come back afresh. Read it from start to finish in one go. Does it sound like a coherent piece of writing that holds the reader's attention? HERE'S AN EXTRA TIP, learned from my experience of writing hundreds of items in lots of different formats: When you think you're nearly done, do some simple formatting to make your document look like the finished version. So if you are writing for a brochure, lay your text out in roughly the way the designer will, page-by-page and with headings, subheadings, pull-quotes and captions all in appropriate typefaces and sizes. If you are writing for the web, lay your text out so it looks on screen the way the web page will, with the right column width, typeface and size etc. Why do all of this? It's because most people will probably scan-read your finished product. They won't all read it from the top, line-by-line. So check that it looks OK when scanned. Do the main points stand out? Are there enough interesting subheadings to draw people into the text? Are the paragraphs so long that they look daunting instead of inviting? STAGE THREE You need to get someone else to proof-read your final draft. This isn't the same as editing. You don't want someone to change all your sentences around. It's just about removing errors. See the proof-reading checklist in the 'free writing tips' section of this website for more on how to proof-read. In summary, there is actually a lot more that could be said about this process, but there you have the basics. Sometimes, we try to combine all three stages - feedback, editing and proof-reading - into one step. This rarely works, for example because it's not effective to think about spelling before you've even clarified whether the message is right. It's important to have a process that focuses on the right objective at the right time. Copyright 2003 Richard Groom |