So, you’ve formulated your idea and you’ve written your review or your essay. Congratulations! Your work is done, right? Well, unfortunately, you’re not quite finished yet. Once you’ve completed your first draft, you must edit it. The self-editing process will look different for every writer, and it may take some time for you to find the method that works best for you. Some people edit as they go, while others write a rough draft and then begin revisions. Either way, you will be looking at two separate but very important aspects of writing as you edit: mechanics and content.
Mechanics are the nuts and bolts of writing: grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc. If your mechanics are faulty, people won’t be able to understand your writing. So your first step in editing your work is to make sure that your mechanics are sound. Check your spelling and grammar. If you’re unsure of a word’s spelling or definition, look it up. You might need to correct the spelling or use a different word entirely. Writers often joke that 90% of writing is Googling a word to make sure you’re using it correctly, and this practice has saved more than a few writers from making an embarrassing blunder in print. If you need help with grammar or punctuation rules, there are plenty of guides available. Strunk and White’s Elements of Style is the gold standard for grammar reference books, and there are many AP style guides available for free online. Grammarly is another free online tool that can help you catch mistakes, though you should not depend solely on software or spell check programs to do your editing for you.
Note: Different publications may have different style guides, so it’s always best to adhere to their house style. For example, most publications italicize film titles, but some place them in quotation marks. Additionally, pay attention to the publication’s country of origin. Canadian and British English often use different spellings than American English. If the publication does not have a style guide available for you to review, read several of their articles to get a feel for their rules. (This is a good rule of thumb when pitching or submitting to a publication anyway; it’s always best to know their voice and the kinds of articles they publish.)
Fact-checking also plays a part in making sure your mechanics are solid. Confirm that you correctly spelled film titles and names of actors and filmmakers. If you list release dates, make sure those are correct. Even if you’re sure you’re right, check it anyway. It only takes a second to fact-check, and it could save you from making a costly mistake. While no one is perfect, a writer who habitually makes errors will lose credibility with readers and editors alike. You want to put your best work out into the world, and making sure your facts are accurate can help you do that.
One of the most important ways to edit your work is to re-read it. If you think you’ve re-read it enough, do it some more. You can read a review 12 times and miss a typo that you catch on the 13th read-through. You know what you’re trying to say, so your mind often glosses over small mistakes that another reader will catch the first time they read the review. That’s why it’s so important to take time away from your writing when you edit it. Reading a review or an essay with fresh eyes will show you things you missed. You don’t have to wait a week between writing a first draft and revising it; you can do something as quick and simple as listening to a song, reading another writer’s review of a different film, or grabbing a glass of water. A quick mental reset can often give you the distance you need to edit your work as if you’re seeing it for the first time. Reading your work aloud can also help a great deal with this. Sometimes our eyes miss things that our ears will catch. If something sounds wrong, take a closer look at it and revise as needed.
Now that you’ve finished editing your work from a mechanical standpoint, you need to look at the content of the piece. (As stated above, many writers do these things simultaneously. For clarity’s sake, this article outlines the two processes separately.) A content edit can be much more difficult and labor-intensive than a copy edit, which is the term for editing that focuses on mechanics. Content deals with the structure and analysis of your piece. This is the real meat of your review. Are your thoughts organized, or are you jumping from point to point without any logical transitions? Readers need to be able to follow your train of thought, so you need a cohesive structure with transitions that make sense. You may work well with an outline, or you may prefer a more free-form approach to writing. Either way, a reader must be able to understand how your sentences and paragraphs relate to each other.
Here we come to the biggest question: what are you trying to say, and how successfully are you saying it? Having a great idea is just the start; you also have to be able to support it in order to have a good piece of writing. Are you backing up your arguments with evidence from the film, or are you simply making assertions without any proof? Conversely, are you summarizing the film rather than analyzing it? Many writers fall into the trap of writing a synopsis rather than a review. While knowing the premise of a film and its major players is important, the reader doesn’t need a full plot rundown. If a plot detail is important to your analysis, include it; otherwise, remove it from your draft and see if the piece reads better without it.
Many times a film critic will review movies that general audiences haven’t seen yet. So while it’s important not to give readers a play-by-play of every plot beat, it’s also important not to assume they’ve seen the film in question. Always give your readers enough information to follow your train of thought. Re-read your review or essay as if you’ve never seen the film before. If you find yourself asking, “Wait, who’s that character?” or “What bank robbery? You never said there was a bank robbery,” then you haven’t given your reader enough information to understand your argument. There’s a fine line between giving too much and too little plot information, but ideally you want to give the reader enough information to understand your arguments without giving away the entire movie. (Though we live in a spoiler-phobic world, sometimes discussing surprising or climactic moments is necessary for the argument you want to make. For new films especially, it’s common courtesy to mark a piece as containing spoilers if you’re going to discuss such plot elements. Many readers won’t return to your work if you give out unexpected spoilers!)
Ultimately, your goal as a writer is to be understood. Are your mechanics solid enough that readers can understand what you’re saying? Misspellings and improper punctuation change the meaning of a sentence, so make sure your review is actually saying what you think it is. When you read your piece, is your thesis clearly articulated and supported with text-based evidence? Does your review maintain focus, or do you stray from the point? Can a reader who has never seen the movie you’re discussing understand and enjoy your article? Make sure you can answer these questions to your satisfaction. Self-editing is all about reading your work over and over again and tweaking it to make sure your idea comes through. You started out with a great idea; now you just have to polish the review to make sure that idea shines as brightly as it can.
I don’t do this all the time, but I would add that either reading it out loud or getting Word to read it aloud for you. It helps you notice if you’re using a word right after using it in a previous sentence.