Novel Craft Editing Workshop: Content Editing Checklist

Content editing, also known as substantive or developmental editing, involves reading through your work, while ignoring the small lapses you see, in order to evaluate its structural soundness. While content editing, you should ask yourself if your novel is coherent, logical and complete. Here's my checklist:

Plot

• Is it believable? 
• Is it predictable?
• Are all needed elements included in your first chapter? (I'll go into detail about this in a future post.)
• Are there plot holes? 
• Could you tighten tension and pacing?
• Have you included twists?
• Does your story evolve naturally?
• Have you included enough subplots?
• Does everything weave together smoothly?
• Does it resolve well?
• Is something missing? If so, what?
• Have you proved your theme?
• Does it drag on too long or conclude too abruptly?
• Have you tied up every thread?

Characterization

• Are your characters' believable?
• Do their motivations ring true? 
• Are their fears realistic?
• Do their personalities have depth?
• Do they speak differently or all sound the same?
• Is all speech appropriate to the time period?
• Is the dialogue natural?
• Do they have distinguishing characteristics?
• Does the plot flow from their desires and fears, and are these consistent in proving your theme? 
• Are your characters' reactions missing or implausible?
• Have you made your main characters' deepest fear come true in the black moment?
• Is there definite growth on the part of your main character toward a personal epiphany?
• Do any other characters experience epiphanies? If so, do they grow toward them?
• Does the climax and resolution evolve from your characters' motivations?

Setting

• Is your story's setting dominant or nonexistent?
• Is it believable?
• Is there something missing? What?
• Have you anchored well enough in the time period?

Areas to Revise or Delete

• Instances of telling you should change.
• Inconsistencies
• Retellings
• Back story dumps.
• Scenes that don't take the story forward or that seem weak.
• Anything that might work better at a different place in the story.

Content editing isn't the easiest part of the editing process. Bear in mind that how well you handle this first process determines the ease with which you'll go through the rest of the editing processes. 


If you have anything to add to my list, by all means, leave a comment and let me know.