Writers on Writing is our regular conversation with a writer or industry professional about the writing craft, industry insights, and their own practice. This week, we spoke to Pamela Hewitt about assessing your manuscript’s strengths and weaknesses.
Editing can be such a daunting task, especially after finishing a whole manuscript. What’s your best piece of editing advice?
‘Write with fire, edit with ice,’ as the saying goes.
Editing is creative but it’s different from writing. It’s more analytical, more focused. When you’re writing, the most important goal is to lay out the narrative, to wrap words around the characters and the setting, to build the world that is your story. Editing can be playful and intuitive but it’s also a time to hold up ideas, descriptions, sometimes specific words. When you edit, you step back to assess how well the text succeeds and to come up with ideas to improve what’s on the page.
What are the common issues in unpublished manuscripts that writers should pay attention to with their edits?
No two manuscripts are alike. I love working out where the strengths are so that writers can build on them. It’s equally important to identify where the quality drops. Is it to do with, say, characterisation, pace, style or dialogue? How can editing improve this text? Once you know those aspects of your writing style that can be tightened or developed, it’s a key to taking your work to a new level of writing quality.
What is your usual process when you sit down to start editing?
First, I pick out a passage from somewhere deep in the text. Does it engage my attention? Do I want to keep reading? That first look tells me something about style, genre, presentation and quality. Often I can see straight away where the strengths are and what needs work.
Pamela Hewitt is an accredited editor who has worked in editing and publishing for over 35 years. After an in-house career in educational and academic editing, she established a freelance editorial practice focusing on memoir, fiction and creative non-fiction. A qualified teacher, Pamela has presented editing and writing programs around Australia and internationally. Many manuscripts Pamela has worked on have won major literary prizes.
Join Pamela Hewitt’s course, Online: Edit Your Manuscript for Success, Monday 16 June to Friday 25 July 2025, online.
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