Self-Editing Part 2

Last month, I began to discuss how you can approach editing your own story with four tasks. Today’s discuss will pick up where that left off. You addressed what you saw as issues with the story’s structure. You now have to start turning your manuscript into something that readers expect when they read in this genre and its tropes. This takes understanding your book’s primary genre, its subgenres, and the tropes.

If you pantsed your manuscript, you probably read widely in the genre and tropes and therefore have a reader’s instinct for the genre beats and how tropes are presented. But in the writing, you may have been too eager to get to a particular type of plot point (because when we love things, we can rush toward them) Or you can dread certain elements and have put them off far too long (same thing: what we dislike, we distance ourselves from.)

But now, by identifying and analyzing comparable titles, you’re going to find those things that could mean you crash and burn with readers.

This is not to suggest that if you discover your inciting incident is in the fourth scene, but everyone else’s is in the first or second scene, that your book will not do well in the market. But you’ll want to know what readers look for. That can only come from research in the genre.

Get ye to a bookstore!

Support Indie bookshops this month and every month. If you prefer ebooks and audiobooks, you can also support them by shopping through bookshop.org. You may also already have what you need in your own reading piles or ebook library.

You are looking for comparative titles. Often called simply “comp titles”, these are books that are similar to yours. The books do not have to be similar in ALL ways. Find books that have similarities to what you’ve written in one or more categories:

1. similar plot or plot tropes
2. similar setting
3. similar character tropes.

That is, you could have written a historical romance similar to Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton books, but yours are set in America’s roaring 20s. That means you need to have places where you introduce the setting and the situation that don’t include “presentation to the queen” or “gentlemen’s clubs” but rather “debutante balls” or “public and private dance halls.” You’ll also have different mores and social situations.

You’ll also have different character types. You might have a reporter instead of a debutante. Or a businessman instead of a lord of the manor. There might be elements of The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald, but also Mary, Everthing by Cassandra Yorke, or She Danced Anyway by JJ Ranson. There’s some upper crust, but the 1920s had working women who weren’t servants. Also, mingling between the classes might sometimes be frowned on, but it was far from unheard of and certainly not a reason people were shunned, exceptions notwithstanding. Characters representative of a group is a kind of trope, so not writing them as caricatures means knowing that and writing accordingly.

So here’s your three tips for more revisions.

1. Analyze your plot. Do your scenes with key moments occur at roughly the same place as other books? If not, is there a plot reason for this, or does that mean that you need to look at other books in related genres for better comparisons?
2. Analyze your setting. Would characters in those other books recognize your settings, or would they find something in the details anachronistic?
3. Analyze your characters. Are they similar or very, very different in their mindset from other characters in similar books? Is there a background reason established for why they might be so different or do you need to work it in? Also, can it be worked in a way that fits the time period?

Stay at the scene level as you work through each of these groups of questions. For any sort of revision session, address only one to two scenes at a time, so that you focus on answering all three types of questions before moving on.

~ Lara

Workshop on Facebook

June’s Workshop writing prompt is to work the word or idea of “parallel” into a scene or two. . I also host free Writers Chats on Monday evenings (8pm Eastern). For full details of either the prompt or chat, join my writers Workshop on Facebook.

Availability

I am currently booking editing clients for September 2025 onward. I already have several projects scheduled through June, July, and August, and I am planning a little personal time off, too. Do not wait until the last minute. Book now.