No matter how many articles you read on how to edit your own work, sometimes it just doesn't sink in.

Sure, you know you should be varying your sentence structure more - but somehow that repetitive sentence structure slips by you, and you don't notice until someone else points it out to you. And speaking of repetition - there's that annoying little phrase that you tend to overuse without meaning to. And what about effective dialogue? That's not easy!

How DO you pick up on this stuff, if you don't have someone else to critique your work?

There's one very simple solution which can have amazingly effective results. You COLOUR-CODE your writing.

If you're editing work on your computer, use the HIGHLIGHT icon (on your toolbar) to pick various colours. (In Microsoft Word, the 'highlight' icon is the one with the letters 'a' and 'b' and a pencil.) If you have printed work out, then use a selection of different highlighters.

Colour-coding works in different ways for different purposes, but in the end it's the BALANCE of colour that shows you where you're going wrong. Here's a guide to colour-coding your work:

1. CHECKING FOR REPETITION

The most common mistake here is repetitive sentence beginnings: starting too many sentences with the character's name or with the personal pronoun "He" or "She". Go through your scene and highlight every use of the character's name (or He/She) when it's used as the first word in a sentence. It's okay to use it now and again, but avoid having two sentences in a row start with the same word. Also try to avoid using it more than twice in one paragraph. Tip: Don't just try to swap one word for another. Look for a completely different way of saying the same thing.

Here's an example. In the following paragraph, the name "Laura" has been over-used. It appears three times in six sentences. "She" has also been over-used: it has been used to begin three of those six sentences. When you use colour to highlight these words, this will be obvious. Let's see how we can change the sentence beginnings and also change the STRUCTURE of those sentences.

ORIGINAL:

Laura shuffled through the papers with trembling fingers, trying to find the right one. She jumped when the door behind her creaked open. Laura whipped around, her heart thumping. Then Laura frowned. She was sure she had locked it behind her. She stared at the door, then tiptoed toward it and slowly eased her head around it to stare down the corridor.

RE-WRITTEN VERSION:

With trembling fingers, Laura sorted through the papers, trying to find the right one. The door behind her creaked, and she whipped around, her heart thumping. A frown creased her forehead. Surely she had locked it behind her? She stared at the door, then tiptoed toward it and slowly eased her head around it to stare down the corridor.

We have now used "Laura" ONCE instead of three times.

We have used "She" to start ONE sentence, not three.

It all flows a lot more smoothly. Notice how we have completely re-cast the sentence structure to achieve this result.

2. CHECKING FOR BALANCE IN DIALOGUE

Well-written dialogue consists of more than just the spoken words. You need to have a mixture of the words spoken by the characters, speech tags ('he said'; 'she complained' etc); actions performed by the characters; thoughts from the viewpoint character, and observation of body language by the viewpoint character.

Too often, dialogue is not a smooth blend of all these elements. Instead, writers rely too much on speech tags ("he said" after every utterance) or use what I call the 'sandwich technique' (they have a paragraph or a page of what the character is thinking, followed by half a page of direct speech (no tags), followed by a chunk of action.

By colour coding your work, you can expose bad habits with dialogue. Try this: highlight all speech tags in yellow, all direct speech in pink, all actions in green, and all thoughts in blue. It will immediately become apparent if you rely too heavily on one particular way of creating dialogue - there'll be too much of one colour! You should see an even mix of all colours.

3. CHECKING FOR THE RIGHT TONE

Recently, I checked through a synopsis for a friend. What came across was a lead character who was constantly in the doldrums. Not only that, her FRIENDS were having a hard time too. By the time I finished reading the synopsis, I felt quite depressed.

Now, I knew that this was not the type of character the author had envisaged. Her character was a girl who went through tough times, but bounced back. She never stopped trying. Her friends were also facing challenges - but they fought back, too.

Did this come across in the synopsis? NO. The impression the reader would get was of a girl who was constantly depressed! The book sounded dreary - yet I knew the synopsis was creating the wrong impression. The reader needed to feel that this was a girl who would NOT give in... that here was a lively, funny girl who would take on whatever life threw at her and overcome problems. A girl with a proactive attitude who was fun to be with!

How could I get this across to the writer?

Colour-coding was the answer! I highlighted all the "negative" words and phrases in green - whether they referred to the main character or the secondary characters. Then I started again and coloured all the "positive" words and phrases yellow. By sitting back and looking at the balance of colour, it was very obvious that this character needed more 'sunshine' in her life!

Thanks to the blocks of colour, my friend could IMMEDIATELY see what I was getting at, and rewrote her synopsis. The result was nothing short of amazing. The tone of it completely changed, and the main character and her friends became people that I would want to spend time reading about.

Use this method to check the tone of either a scene or your synopsis. If you're writing a romance, highlight words that convey the 'essence' of the genre. If you're writing a mystery or a thriller, do the same - but of course, if you change the genre, you'll be looking for different types of words.

4. CHECKING FOR PERSON AND TENSE

All too often, beginning writers make mistakes with both TENSE and PERSON. They start writing a scene in the past tense, then abruptly switch to the present tense. Or... they start a scene with "I did this" and "I did that" then suddenly switch to "Jason did this" and "HE did that." Naturally, the reader is confused! (If that reader is the editor, wave goodbye to any chance of publication.)

Do a search for words like "IS" and "WAS". If you are writing in the present tense, you'll see lots of uses of the word "IS". If you're writing in the past tense, you'll see "WAS" a lot. Colour those in the present tense yellow, and those in the past tense pink. If you are mixing tenses, it will become very obvious exactly where you need to fix up your work. Do the same with "I" and the character's name, or "me" and "him"/"her".

Using colour will imprint these things on your mind. Whereas you might miss inconsistencies or repetition when all you are looking at is black text on a white background - you certainly won't miss them in living colour!