Tag Archives: editing

Backwards Editing

Backwards Editing sounds interesting, even though misspellings should be handled by the word processor (and simple grammar errors by Grammarly). However, looking at sentences, one at a time, could never be wrong.

How is it done?

You start at the end of the text by reading the last word (aloud), then the second to last, etc. Or, you do the same for sentences.

The point is to prevent the brain from (unconsciously) filling in the blanks with what you already know about your text and make it more obvious what you’ve actually written (or not).

When you look at whole sentences, you check for problems with sentence structure and flow.

I.e. a promising tool for self-editing.

Update: This old gem… Yeah, my current WIP is 150 000 words in the first draft. Of course, I edited it backwards…

I hope you didn’t believe me. It would take a year and a truckload of psychotropic drugs to keep me from eating the screen.

No, backwards editing is likely something that may work for shorter texts and emails, but not for a 150 000 word beast…