Self-Editing Checklist for Aspiring (Travel) Writers

You could hire me to edit for you, sure. I’m good at it, and fast, but I’m also expensive. Or, you could just pay attention to the following rules:

1. Speak plain English, by god. Jargon and complicated phrasing doesn’t make you look smarter. It alienates your readers — who might very well be your customers. Plain. English.
2. If you can replace the place name with any other place name and the sentence still works, you need a different sentence. Plus, it’s likely you’re using a cliché. Don’t.
3. Your affection for a place is swell, but telling the reader you love it is not nearly as effective as telling the reader why you love it, what you love about it.
4. People back home aren’t, by default, two dimensional boring middle class cliched unimaginative nobodies. The people in the country you’re writing about don’t, by default have only the qualities you observe and they are not anonymous objects. Show some respect.
5. How many times did you use I Me My Mine? So many! Go Whack-a-Mole on those bastards and cut every single one you can. Now do it again. One more time. Yes, even in your first person essay. Go.
6. Are you Gabriel Garcia Marquez? If you are not, your sentences are probably too long.
   

   “She said I’m tired of begging God to overthrow my son, because all this business of living in the presidential palace is like having the lights on all the time, sir, and she had said it with the same naturalness with which on one national holiday she had made her way through the guard of honor with a basket of empty bottles and reached the presidential limousine that was leading the parade of celebration in an uproar of ovations and martial music and storms of flowers and she shoved the basket through the window and shouted to her son that since you’ll be passing right by take advantage and return these bottles to the store on the corner, poor mother.” —The Autumn of the Patriarch, by Gabriel García Márquez

7. Use the active voice, and if you’re not, know why. Yes, understanding active voice is tricky; take the time to learn it.
8. All that sensory stuff helps make places real, so consider adding how places smell, sound, or even feel. We default to what we see too easily, and even then, we could look in the corners more.
9. Really. Actually. Totally. Etc. Get rid of those adverbs. The meadows are really green?  The station was totally crowded? You can do better.
10. Read your piece out loud before you hit publish. You won’t believe the stuff you find. It’s even better if you can find someone indulgent to read TO, but reading out loud to yourself is a great place to start.
11. If you generalize or engage in any logical fallacies, you deserve a smack on the back of the hand. With a rolled up logical fallacy chart. Know this stuff and use it. Bonus? Once you know this stuff, you can shoot down arguments like a Navy Seal sharpshooter. You will be a terror. It’s fun.
12. It’s not really about editing, but read, it will make you a better writer. Read more. A LOT more. No, more than that.
    

    If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that. — Stephen King

Please add your own self-editing practices in the comments.