I’m a Writing Coach and This Is How I Review the Work of New Writers

Steal my editing process and make it yours.

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When I started to write online in 2018, I had no idea what I was doing. I don’t have a professional background in writing, and I’m not a native English speaker.

All I had was curiosity and the discipline to show up for years.

After nearly 200 published blog posts, my stubbornness paid off, and I could make a full-time income through my work. And the main difference between my first crappy posts and my current work is my ability to edit.

Being a good writer is overrated. You can come a long way being an average writer who knows how to properly edit for clarity, conciseness, and value.

That’s how I reached millions of readers, grew an audience of over 60k followers on Medium, generated over 30k email subscribers, and grew a multi 6-figure online business.

For the sake of this article, we’ll ignore how good your idea is. We’ll assume you’re writing a story your (potential) audience is interested in and focus on editing the piece instead of judging the idea.

Generating winning ideas is a whole different story I’ll write in the upcoming days. (You can sign up for my newsletter to be notified as soon as it’s available.)

Be aware I write and teach non-fiction writing that’s meant to educate, help, or inspire. If you’re a creative fiction writer, this whole editing process may not make sense for you.

Now let me share which questions I ask to review drafts of new writers:

1. Do I get it?

If I read your article and don’t understand what your point is or what you’re trying to communicate, it’s a poor piece.

Before doing thorough editing, we need to ask: Does the reader understand what the writer is trying to say?

Is there a key message that could be summarized in a few sentences?

Does the reader feel like she has gained value from the story? Or does she feel confused?

Many new writers lack clarity because they’re in their own heads and forget that someone else will need to understand their story.

They know what they’re trying to say, but they don’t make an effort to clearly communicate their ideas through their words.

Oftentimes, stories are confusing because of the following reasons:

You’re trying to tell too many stories in one piece.

Your story doesn’t have a clear intention or goal. Instead, you’re writing about a theme, and you’re just sharing anything you think or know about the given topic.

That’s the worst you can do because you’ll eventually end up with a brain dump, not a piece of writing readers will enjoy.

You’re writing for yourself

When writing for an audience, you need to keep in mind where your readers are coming from. You need to meet them where they are. You can’t assume they know certain things just because you know them.

Different audiences require different languages, stories, examples, and voices.

Sometimes, writing a great piece means finding balance between sharing enough details without sharing too many details.

It’s about giving enough context without boring your reader with too much background information.

You’re losing focus

Many of my students are afraid of (unintentionally) writing clickbaity headlines, yet don’t know what clickbait really means.

You’re disappointing readers when your title makes a promise you don’t deliver. That’s clickbait. You get the click but don’t meet your promise.

Even though new writers rarely use clickbait on purpose, they often get lost while writing a story because they shift away from the main promise they made in the title.

When writing long-form blog posts averaging 1,000–2,000 words, you need to be careful about sticking to the promise you make in your title.

A clear promise usually leads to a strong title, but once you’ve got that, you also need to make sure you keep that focus for the entire article.

2. Does it flow?

There are different reasons people read articles online:

Looking for a solution to a problem
Wanting to learn something new
Entertainment
Seeking inspiration
And many more

Yet, all readers have one thing in common: They want stories that are nice to read.

Creating content such as blog posts has never been easier. You can literally create an article within seconds using AI tools. But those won’t be worth reading.

As an online writer, you’re constantly competing with thousands of other writers who fight for the attention of the same audience.

Hence, good ideas aren’t enough.

Your stories need to be nice to read too. They need to flow seamlessly.

The ideas you’re presenting have to make sense. As a reader, I need to be able to easily follow the story without re-reading sentences or entire paragraphs.

In today’s fast-paced digital world, you rarely get a second chance.

People see your title, open your post, and decide whether it’s worth their time or not within seconds.

If your writing sounds boring or confusing, you’ll lose the reader, no matter how great your idea is.

3. Does it make sense?

When you’re done editing for clarity and flow, it’s time to practice line editing, where we make sure:

Each sentence makes sense on its own.
Each sentence makes sense in combination with the previous and following sentences.

At this stage, you’re editing your work line by line to make sure everything makes sense.

I highly encourage my students to focus on simplifying their writing during this process by asking questions like:

Is this sentence/paragraph necessary? Does it add value?
Is this the best way to communicate my message?
Could I make this story more accessible/easier to understand for more people?

Editing tools like the Hemingway Editor can help you further simplify your writing.

4. Do we need to fix any (obvious) mistakes?

Next, we edit for grammar, spelling, and typos.

Most new writers overrate this step.

In reality, a typo or minor spelling mistake won’t ruin a well-written, meaningful story. But the lack of clarity or flow will.

Of course, you want your writing to be free of errors, but usually, those are easy fixes, and the first three steps are much more powerful.

For this step, use editing tools like Grammarly, and run at least two rounds of editing to ensure you catch all obvious mistakes.

5. Does the story look good?

Last but not least, we want to make sure our writing looks good and provides a great reader experience.

This includes proper structure, attractive (title) images, and formatting for the platforms you’re using.

If your story looks confusing or overwhelming, readers will click away before even giving your writing a chance. So make sure you’re familiar with the best practices of the writing platform you’re using and create a story that’s not only well-written but also well-formatted.

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