Revisiting Gaps & Sticking Points: Story Savvy Self-Editing Episode 46

There are absolutely words out there containing the letter combination ‘ASD’. I just have yet to use any of them in my own writing, let alone in all caps, hence why I mention using that as an easily searchable marker to come back to. Please forgive my hyperbole around this in the episode; what I meant to say was that there weren’t any common-use words with that combo I’d run across in writing fiction. 

In case it’s helpful, here is the full list of ways I’ve seen writers use to mark things they intended to come back to later. If you don’t have a consistent marker you use every time, it may be worth your time to search all of these possibilities to check if there are any results worth checking on today’s topic:

Come back to

Fill in later

To be determined

TK

TBD

*

#

_

( )

[ ]

Lastly, the other episodes I reference in the transcript below can be found here:

Episode 43: Name Intros & Choices

Episode 44: Name Consistency & Regulation

Happy editing!

Episode 46 Overview:

Revisiting Gaps & Sticking Points

“Have I filled in anything that I said I’d come back to later? And are there any other gaps or sticking points I need to revisit?”

This episode of the Story Savvy Series, a practical writing craft podcast, explores final checks for manuscripts to help you polish your draft before sending it out. Learn tips on editing repetitive words, avoiding head-hopping, and for beta reader prep while confidently polishing your manuscript. Packed with self-editing tips for writers, developmental editing advice, and tools for stronger fantasy novel editing, this episode helps you wrap up your final-pass revisions.

Join developmental editor Rebecca Hartwell [hartboundediting.com] and aspiring fantasy author Agnes Wolfe [agneswolfeauthor.com] as they guide you through this week’s topic. Discover how to smooth out placeholders, clean up structure, and prepare your pages for outside feedback with confidence.

In this Episode: 

• Final checks: fill gaps, resolve placeholders (_/TK/TBD), and refine line-level polish
• Reliable flagging methods 
• Immediate wins that improve readability and presentation
• How much to tidy before sending to betas and/or a dev editor
• What to do when choices remain open and how to communicate that
• Clear signs that it’s time to call the edit done

Resources:

• Expert Developmental Editing 
• Dragonheart Academy - Dragonheartacademy.com

See you next week for episode 47: Last Read Before Outside Feedback

Episode 46 Transcript:

Revisiting Gaps & Sticking Points

Rebecca Harwell: Hello and welcome to the Hart Bound Editing Podcast. This is episode 46 of the weekly Story Savvy series, where we tackle the 52 biggest self-editing topics and tips to help you make your good story great. As an aspiring author asks me, a developmental editor, all of the questions that you have wanted to. We have covered so much in this series so far, including last week's episode on improving nonverbal communication in fiction. Today, we are going to start talking about doing final checks on our manuscripts. By the end of this episode, you will hopefully be able to do some quick, easy, and very visible polishing to your book. Joining me to ask all of the questions is my good friend and co-host, Agnes Wolf. Hello.

Agnes Wolfe: Hi, I'm an aspiring fantasy author who hopes to release her first middle-grade fantasy later next year, and also the host and founder of Authors Alcove. I'm here today to tackle revisiting gaps and sticking points at the very end of self-editing. One of my favorite questions to ask first is to have you define what exactly we are talking about this week. So, I know we're talking about revisiting the gaps and sticking points in our work. What exactly are you referring to here?

Rebecca: So, pretty much any version of to be determined, or to come. I've seen those in abbreviated in manuscripts of TBD, TK, whatever. We're also talking about anything you told yourself that you would come back to and figure out later, make a decision on later, move later, whatever that situation is. And, unrelated to that but still within this episode, we are also going to talk about doing final checks on making sure that your chapters are in order and otherwise handled correctly.

Agnes: So, isn't the point of getting outside readers like a developmental editor or beta readers, basically to have them do those final checks for us? I've probably asked this question before, but why are we bothering with so much polish before getting even just casual feedback?

Rebecca: This has a couple of different answers. One is that you want to get the most out of any paid editing services that you can. Which means you want to do what you can on your own first, so that a paid editor, be that developmental or line or anything else, can only help you with the stuff that you need their help with, that you can't see on your own or figure out an answer to on your own. So, the better shape the manuscript is, within reason, before sending it to an editor, it's more likely that they can help you with the really deep stuff that you need the help with. The other consideration here, particularly for beta readers or alpha readers or something more casual, is that these readers are likely to eventually keep talking about your book. So, if you have a beta reader who gets an absolute disaster, if your book comes up after you've done the rest of the polishing, and you've published, and fix all of the issues, they're still gonna essentially remember the book as being really, really messy, and because they're not professionals, they may just go around talking about it in those terms without fully acknowledging that you've fixed all of those problems after they read it. So, it's not a bad idea at all to just give even your feedback readers early on in the process as good an impression as you can, for those reasons.

Agnes: That makes a lot of sense. I know that I had you do it very early on in the process. And I think that there is some worth in that as well, but I definitely see what you're saying as well. So, a few weeks ago, I was talking about how I created a race of elves in my book that I was still working out a name for the race. I forgot to put that into my book before I sent it off to you, and I know that was actually a source of confusion for you as you were reading. You're like, who is this person, and why are they different, and this does not make sense. So you knew that they were not human, yet they were very humanoid, and you had a lot of questions and feedback on that. Are there things I could have done knowing I did not yet have a name for that race of elf that would have made it more easy to come back to and fill in later?

Rebecca: I recommend that everyone pick a very specific symbol or phrase or something that they try to always religiously used to mark anything that they're gonna come back to. In my case, it's an all-caps ASD. It's super quick and easy for me to type on my keyboard, and also, that doesn't appear in any words in the English language that I have found so far. So, when I get to this stage in my polishing, all I have to do is search ASD, and I will find every single place that I'd ever flagged for coming back to. You can use anything that you want. I've seen people use hashtags or asterisks, or, like I said, TBD, TK. Just make sure that when you search it, you're only going to find the spots that you flagged for this reason, And that all of the spots that you, like with your elves, decided that you would come back to later and figure out, are flagged with the same thing. It's all about consistency. Beyond that, I recommend also having some sort of editing notes off to the side, and this has come up in pretty much all of the episodes. I like having a workspace, writing workspace, where you can run through ideas, you can brainstorm all of these lists, you can keep track of your checklists, whatever that case might be. And in those notes, at any stage in the self-editing process, when you find a moment that you're like, you know what? I can't make that decision right now, or I feel overwhelmed, I need to move on, I'm stuck, I need to move on, whatever the case is. Make a note, market the same way you would in the manuscript, and just have it written down somewhere else as well of, I still need to come up with a name for this race, or I still need to figure out what kind of car they're driving in this scene. That sort of thing.

Agnes: So, what are some common gaps that people often forget to go back to in these later rounds of edits? Aside from what I just already mentioned.

Rebecca: Sure. I most often see names that are like, oh, this is Jake, and then where the last name would be, it's just in brackets, “decide later.” So make sure that you fully decided on any names like that. Occasionally, there will be a moment in a scene where, again, it's often in brackets or parentheses, where it just says, I need to figure out how they get to this location, or I haven't figured out how to end this conversation kind of thing. That's really the most common that I've seen, but it's a very individual question, because each individual writer is going to have their own strengths and weaknesses, and they're going to have their own individual things where they are really confident making certain decisions. I know authors who, they have names, really cool, unique, inventive names for their entire cast before they ever start writing. That is not me. And then there are other authors who absolutely know their plot, start to finish, there are no gaps in the scenes, everything flows really nicely, but all of their names are essentially placeholders, and when they go back to do something more with that, they will occasionally miss them, like we've talked about in previous episodes. So, there are some commonalities, but it's important to sort of keep an eye out and learn what your own are to check in future.

Agnes: So, what if I know there's a certain thing I still haven't decided on, like I had just described a couple questions ago, which I just can't make up my mind about before getting an editor or beta reader, so I have not yet filled it up. How should I handle that next time?

Rebecca: I recommend, first of all, just doing what you can, but it is okay if there's something where you're just like, you know what? I don't know how to end this scene, but that is a great thing to specifically ask your developmental editor or your beta readers to watch out for and help you with. That can be really, really helpful. The important part is that you remember to mention it to them ahead of time. So that they don't get there and go, what's happening? If you can just keep track of what those things are that you just cannot decide, or cannot get past a hurdle on before getting outside feedback. Great. Just write it down. present that to that outside reader and say, hey, here's where I'm at, and be very clear about whether you want help from them on it or whether you want them to just ignore it and you will deal with it yourself later, which I have seen as a dev editor, and I'm always happy to accommodate.

Agnes: So, I know another issue that I had in the version that I had sent you was that my chapter numbers were a mess. Like, I think sometimes I wrote chapter 10, and then I'd write chapter 1-1, and sometimes I'd go to Chapter 13 because I deleted an entire chapter, and I didn't double-check those sort of things. Do you have any foolproof ways to make sure that before I send it off to my next reader, that I have made sure that all of those are correct and consistent?

Rebecca: Again, I think that using consistent terminology can be very helpful. So, for myself, I just make sure that every chapter heading has “chapter something.” And yeah, sometimes when I'm drafting, one might be chapter 1-3, and then the next one will be chapter 14 spelled out. But the important part is that the heading of every single chapter has the word chapter in it. So then, when I'm doing my polishing at this stage, I've usually exported my manuscript to Microsoft Word at this point, and I will just put the word chapter into the search bar. And occasionally, I'll have a character talking about, oh, well, in that chapter of my life, and that'll be a false flag, but I can just get past those. And I go through, just clicking through, and I make sure, just visually, does this look right, and is it in order? So, I will put chapter in there, and I'll click next. Okay, Chapter 1. Spelled out. Perfect. Next. Chapter 2 is spelled out, and I just click through visually checking and counting up 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in my head, and I usually do that twice, because the first time I'm looking for whether I'm using numerals or spelling it out, and sometimes if I'll leave, oh, this chapter is this many word counts, and I need to delete that. And then on my second round, I'm really just counting in my head, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, to make sure that I don't have duplicates, or missing any numbers like that. It's pretty quick and easy, it takes under an hour, and it can make a big difference in how a casual feedback reader perceives it, and it's very helpful to a developmental editor, because I'm often giving feedback on hey, these are my thoughts for Chapter 10, and then these are my thoughts for Chapter 11. And if that then skips chapter 15, I have to mention that in the notes, and it can be hard to follow where I'm talking about, that kind of thing.

Agnes: Makes sense. What about those things—I know that we can do TK, or you did ASD, or asterisks—but how are we supposed to remember everything we intended to come back to, especially if we do not have those TK, asterisk, whatever?

Rebecca: Yeah. Again, make lists. When you encounter these earlier in the editing process, if you can, at this stage in the process, obviously this is a little late to mention it, so for the next book, bear that in mind. But also, you can just re-read through whatever editing notes you already have from earlier stages in this process. And just see if something jogs your memory of, alright, well, I've got a note here about how they sail from this continent to the other one. Oh, wait, no, I kind of remember, I needed to actually, like, write out the scene where they're getting on the boat. Let me go do that paragraph really fast. So, read through, see if anything jogs. Remember, you can try just skimming through your table of contents, your list of chapter titles or numbers, see if anything jogs your memory there. But also try brainstorming all of the different ways that you might have flagged something that you need to come back to. If you were to, in this moment right now, flag something, what would you write down? Okay, well, if you couldn't write that, what would you write down instead? And go search those. So maybe it was an underscore, maybe it was brackets, maybe it was parentheses, maybe it was asterisks. Anything that you can think of that might have for your past self, indicated, I need to come back and fill this in. Try searching for it. If it doesn't come up, cool. If it does, check it. It's not the end of the world if you miss something, but it's worth seeing if you can catch it before moving on.

Agnes: Alright, so I'm going to add a question that I did not prepare you for, and hopefully you can answer this. How do we know it's our final edit?

Rebecca: Essentially, you just have to decide that, and that's gonna look different for everyone. If you have a deadline, that's a solid answer for you. If you know you need to hand off your manuscript to a dev editor, or a line editor, beta readers, whoever, by a certain date,

Whatever edit you get to with the minimum amount of time left is your final edit. And if you're not working with a deadline, it takes a fair bit of introspection and exploration within your own creative process to know when you've reached a point of going, I'm either burning out on this so hard that if I keep editing, I'm going to stop engaging with this project at all and it's never gonna get done-done and published, or, to know, hey, I'm just getting bogged down in going through over and over and over and catching 5 typos per round. I need to let go and accept that there are going to be some flaws going into beta and dev, which they're there always are, and I just need to take that next step. You know it's your final edit when you've done reasonably what you can in a reasonable time period. And for some people, that's a decade, and that's fine. For me, that tends to be I give myself, you know, 1 to 3 months for self-editing. But I'm a dev editor, I'm experienced, I know what I'm doing. That's not going to be the case for everyone. So, I recommend, if you're asking yourself, how do I know this is my final edit? Either give yourself a deadline, or, give yourself some other kind of line where you can hold yourself accountable and say, if I do a read-through, and all I'm fixing are typos and missing words, I need to be done and I need to move on to the next step.

Agnes: I like that a lot, and I do know, this is from my own experiences, giving myself a deadline, hiring you and deciding, okay, you are looking over it, and I remember I had 3 types of edits I wanted to do, and I only was able to get through one and a half times. I wasn't able to get all the way through the end before sending. And I had considered saying, hey, I'm gonna hold off. But I'm actually glad I didn't, and I think that's something that's worth sharing, just because sometimes good enough is good enough before you send it off to somebody. And I think, you know, it is nice to have as polished as possible, but Oftentimes, when it's not as polished as possible, especially if you're setting it to somebody who's a development editor as opposed to, like, a casual reader, I think there's a little bit more safety in just being like, okay, it's good enough, I'm doing it. Anyway, so wrapping up, I have one last question for you. What if we really don't feel ready for final checks in general, or these specifically? Like, we aren't ready to be done, or still have more to get through?

Rebecca: Then the pacing of this series, or the timeframe in which you watched it, isn't right for you. And that's fine. I structured this series as carefully as I could, so that we're getting to the right topics in the right order, at least from my experience and from the authors that I have spoken to specifically on this topic of self-editing process. If that's not holding true for you, that's fine. Just write down what you feel still needs to be done, journal through whatever emotional blockage you're dealing with of, I'm not ready to let go, I'm not ready to let go, I'm not ready to be done, it's not perfect yet. It's all a matter of naming the reason behind feeling like you're not ready for this stage yet, or you don't want to call it final edits. If you can name the reason, it's far more likely that you can then do something about it, or move forward. And if you are getting enjoyment out of self-editing, and you don't really feel the need to publish, be that querying agents or going the self-publishing route, that's fine. Self-edit for the rest of your life! If it brings you joy, and it's fulfilling the desire and the need that you have in writing, great! If you do want to sort of have more of a production kind of mindset around it and get the book out there, have publications, share it with your friends, whatever, Setting those deadlines can be helpful, and if you're coming up on a deadline, and you're looking at your book and going, this doesn't feel like a final edit, I'm not ready for this. Take a breath, and like we talked about in the mental health episode in this series, maybe you need to move that deadline. Or, maybe you need to accept that, like you just said, good enough can be good enough, and move forward. It's entirely up to you as the individual which option before you feels like the right one at a given moment.

Agnes: Well, thank you so much for your insights. It has, as always, helped me so much.

Rebecca: Excellent. And yeah, I love talking about this stuff, and I've so enjoyed this series, and I can't wait to get to the last few episodes here. Next week, we are going to do part two of our final checks here, and go into detail about how to get the most out of your last full read-through before getting outside feedback. For now, huge, huge thank you to everyone who follows along with this series wherever you are watching or listening to it. If you know any other authors who are nearing the end of their first draft, or struggling with revising or rewriting their novel, please send them our way. The more authors that we can help understand and finish the process of self-editing, the happier I will be. Thank you, Agnes, for joining me today.

Agnes: Can't wait to chat with you again next week. See you then.