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How do you define your story? A surprising number of authors find it difficult to answer that simple question, but whatever your genre or form it’s an important question to know the answer to.

So, how do you go about doing this and doing it right? How an author defines their story varies of course, but knowing the following is a good place to start:

Your genre

Getting this right will give potential readers – and your designer – a launching point for understanding your book. By assigning it to a genre, you group your story in with others they may know, allowing them to immediately get a feel for your book.

Your book may fall under more than one genre, but you should limit it to no more than two. Focus on the overarching themes of your story to pick out which genre/s fit your story the most.

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Who you’re writing for

Stating your intended readership is much like stating your genre – there are pre-assigned notions with media intended for certain audiences that give people an idea of your book by associating them with others.

A book written for children is different from one targeted at young adult (YA) audiences, and different again from the adult market. There is a standard of content to uphold in each of these readerships and all are unique onto their own.

Who your main characters are

This doesn’t have to be a detailed recount of their tragic backstories, or a comprehensive description of what they look like. Choose a few of their defining features that characterise them the most.

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Where your story takes place

Is your book set in the primary world? The secondary? Is it a recognisable location like London or Dubai, or have you set yours in a more localised or rural area? Is it completely the same as our world, or does it have a mystical/technological twist? Does everything take place on a different planet, even? This should be the easiest question to answer if you’ve already done the worldbuilding for your story.

What your main problem/theme is

In fiction, this would be the main issue that your characters are trying to resolve and the thing/s stopping them from doing so. Are they having to repair their skip but are stuck on a desolate planet with little supplies and no form of contact with the outside world? Are they woefully underprepared children of prophecy, but the evil is looming and everything coming to a head?

In non-fiction this could look like the main point that you are trying to get across. If your story is about a person’s life, is it a story of resilience in the face of hardship? A tale of pioneering success?

Some stories are hard to sum up in a single sentence. For your publishing team and potential readers to understand your work and get excited about it, however, you need to be able to answer the question ‘what is your story?’ as comprehensively as possible.

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While nothing compares to a professional edit, there are some things you can do to make sure your manuscript ready to be seen by an editor.

Leave it for a week or more

When you’ve finally reached the end of your first draft, you’ve no doubt been living and breathing your story for months on end. You know everything that happens, when it happens, and how it happens, making it difficult to read over your work and flag issues.

Set it down, walk away, and take a mental break. This will let you come back to it with fresh eyes and a clear mind, ready to tackle inconsistencies and confusing language that you just couldn’t see before.

Print it out

Seeing your work in a non-digital format helps you see it differently. When we read on a screen, we tend to skim over the words more than we do with physical ink-on-paper. So that you don’t have a mammoth pile of loose paper strewn around your workspace, there are a couple of things that you could do, depending on your style:

• Get it printed and bound. Places like Officeworks have services that can cheaply bind volumes of paper with comb binding without having to worry about sourcing and purchasing the equipment yourself.
• Print chapter by chapter. This can be a strategy to help you with both the amount of paper to staple and the breaking down of tasks. Seeing your book printed in whole could make starting the proofing process daunting, while seeing just single chapters and being able to check them off once you’ve completed it can bring as sense of accomplishment and let you know how far you’re getting.

Whichever way you choose, make sure to adjust your manuscript to 1.5pt line spacing, get out your red pen and sticky notes, and get to work.

Read aloud

Reading your work out loud is a great way to catch complicated sentences, typos, missing words—you name it. If you find it difficult, have a home situation where this isn’t viable, or just generally don’t feel comfortable speaking your book out loud, there are built in functions in writing software that can read it out for you, meaning you can sit back and relax with your headphones in a notepad at the ready for dotting down corrections.

If you’re using Microsoft Word to type up your manuscript, go to ‘Review’ and click ‘Read Aloud’. If you’re a Pages user, go to ‘Edit’, ‘Speech’, and click ‘Start Speaking’. There are other apps out there (like Natural Reader and Speechify) if you use old or other software that is lacking this feature.

These are just three of the strategies you can implement to help you refine your drafts into a manuscript that’s ready for the editing process. There are plenty of authors out there with their own methods and tips for drafting their work—and plenty are more than willing to share them with other writers. Have a look through author pages and interviews with your favourite writers and see if they have something to teach you.