I'll reiterate everyone else - find your own process. Personally, I think reading a lot helps. You'll learn to develop an...."ear" for good prose. This mixed with your own writing style is a decent way of learning to line edit. Reading Strunk and so on will teach you to target certain phrases, but with most writers the end product isn't so clinically perfect. It's a semblance of perfection flawed in a way that's appealing.
Anyway, two things I'd ask you to seriously consider.
1) From Brandon Sanderson: "Through practice, the author will foster in his or herself a skill both conscious and subconscious, one that recognizes what belongs in a particular novel and that which does not." The key here is subconscious. Working to all these prompts and so on effectively train the conscious to target and analyse areas of concern or issue. That's fine. However the ultimate aim of all this advice, is to program good habits into the subconscious. You'll hear sportsman talk about muscle memory - this is exactly that. You work through the ugly, stupid and limited devices of practise so that you start to do the core of them subconsciously. And only the core. Around that core you'll add your own blend of style. Which leads me into....
2) Beware Hyperbole! This (coupled with a personality that's far too literal and various other issues) is why I struggle to write any more. It's very, very easy to toss about comments that sound beautiful and inspiring. In all your study of the craft of writing, how many times have you read something like "Make sure every word is exactly where it should be!" or "Every paragraph should move the story forward!" or "Polish it until it shines so bright no agent can close their eyes against the light!".....crap like that. I did what you did - ingested everything I could on the craft of writing so I could unfuck anything I write. You know what? It's such bad advice. Don't get me wrong - at the core it's true as maths, but essentially it's as false as "giving 110%".
So my advice to you is this (However you choose to apply it): internalise as much as you can of the ideals of the advice you're reading, but strip every article or lecture down to an idea rather than a checklist. So rather than "Ensure each scene has the 857 rules of conflict, motion and character", think instead 'if I skipped this scene, would then next one make sense?'. That sort of thing. Vague notions, feelings, whether something fits. Then read a lot, until you can differentiate a passage you think is clunky, versus something you read twice because it makes you go all tingly. Then use those checklists as prompts until you've built up your subconscious to take all those ideas of good practise and turn them into an instinct.
Once you're there, editing (hopefully) becomes a fluid, natural, free process. And all the advice you've read will feel clunky, simplistic and fake.
Anyway, two things I'd ask you to seriously consider.
1) From Brandon Sanderson: "Through practice, the author will foster in his or herself a skill both conscious and subconscious, one that recognizes what belongs in a particular novel and that which does not." The key here is subconscious. Working to all these prompts and so on effectively train the conscious to target and analyse areas of concern or issue. That's fine. However the ultimate aim of all this advice, is to program good habits into the subconscious. You'll hear sportsman talk about muscle memory - this is exactly that. You work through the ugly, stupid and limited devices of practise so that you start to do the core of them subconsciously. And only the core. Around that core you'll add your own blend of style. Which leads me into....
2) Beware Hyperbole! This (coupled with a personality that's far too literal and various other issues) is why I struggle to write any more. It's very, very easy to toss about comments that sound beautiful and inspiring. In all your study of the craft of writing, how many times have you read something like "Make sure every word is exactly where it should be!" or "Every paragraph should move the story forward!" or "Polish it until it shines so bright no agent can close their eyes against the light!".....crap like that. I did what you did - ingested everything I could on the craft of writing so I could unfuck anything I write. You know what? It's such bad advice. Don't get me wrong - at the core it's true as maths, but essentially it's as false as "giving 110%".
So my advice to you is this (However you choose to apply it): internalise as much as you can of the ideals of the advice you're reading, but strip every article or lecture down to an idea rather than a checklist. So rather than "Ensure each scene has the 857 rules of conflict, motion and character", think instead 'if I skipped this scene, would then next one make sense?'. That sort of thing. Vague notions, feelings, whether something fits. Then read a lot, until you can differentiate a passage you think is clunky, versus something you read twice because it makes you go all tingly. Then use those checklists as prompts until you've built up your subconscious to take all those ideas of good practise and turn them into an instinct.
Once you're there, editing (hopefully) becomes a fluid, natural, free process. And all the advice you've read will feel clunky, simplistic and fake.
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