What is a Line Edit and When Do You Need One?

Line editing is that aspect of your narrative that makes the story sing. It’s the words and language that give the story its soul. This is the stage at which we dial the focus a bit more and begin to look at the story on a sentence level to ensure that your ideas are coming across clearly and poignantly.

A line edit typically happens after a developmental edit or manuscript critique. It’s best to get all your big picture rewrites out of the way before we start poking at the language. It would come before a copyedit but some editors can choose to execute a line edit and copyedit together.

So let’s dive in to it, shall we?

Line editing is a detailed and thorough editing process focused on improving the style, clarity, and flow of a piece of writing at the sentence and paragraph level. Unlike copyediting, which primarily addresses grammar, spelling, and punctuation, line editing dives deeper into how the writing communicates its message.

Line editing usually follows either a dev. edit or a manuscript critique and can occur in tandem with a copyedit. It’s recommended to get the “big picture” issues out of the way before going in to fix the language.

What does a line edit look at?

• Clarity: Ensuring that sentences clearly convey their intended meaning without confusion or ambiguity.

• Flow: Enhancing the smoothness and rhythm of the writing, making sure that sentences and paragraphs transition logically and fluidly from one to the next.

• Word Choice: Selecting the most effective words to express ideas and eliminate redundancies, clichés, or overly complex language.

• Tone and Voice: Maintaining consistency in the author’s tone and voice, ensuring it aligns with the intended audience and purpose of the text.

• Pacing: Adjusting the length and structure of sentences and paragraphs to control the pacing of the narrative, whether it’s speeding up action scenes or slowing down introspective moments.

• Sentence Structure: Refining sentence structures to improve readability, avoid awkward phrasing, and vary sentence lengths to enhance engagement.

Examples of suggestions an editor might make during a line edit:

• In a sentence where the author writes “The room was beautiful,” the editor will prompt a suggestion to use more descriptive language than the word “beautiful” to avoid abstract imagery.

• In a manuscript where a character is constantly being described as having “emerald green eyes,” an editor may advice against too much repetition and suggest other options.

• If a line edit happens separately from a copyedit, it’ll happen first. The goal is to polish the writing so that it reads well and effectively conveys the author’s ideas.

A line edit is truly the part of writing and editing where we look at show vs tell. In my edits, I pay a lot of close attention to this, leaving suggestions in the inline comments about areas where you may want to show a bit more. Again, my suggestions are always simply that — suggestions. The last word always remains with the writer and what you feel works best for your story.

If you’re interested in learning more about what a line edit would look like if you hired my services, then feel free to reach out to request your free sample edit!