While there are many good sources on editing a manuscript, I think that the best advice may come from the Great British Baking Show. While Paul Hollywood may be a master of breads, some of his lessons apply to writing and editing.

For me, the biggest lesson from Hollywood is this: Don’t overwork the dough.

If you have watched the show, you have seen Hollywood tear open a loaf of bread and mash it with his stubby little fingers. While the visual makes for good television, Hollywood is checking to see if the dough is overworked, and thus tougher as opposed to more light and fluffy.

From years of watching Good Eats with Alton Brown, I learned that kneading/working bread dough creates more gluten strands, and overworking the dough makes it tough and unappetizing. Definitely not good eats.

The same applies to editing. There’s a chance that going over and over and over your manuscript can cause the prose to be overworked. Did you add too many descriptions? In a fast-paced story, is there a two-page description of a sunset?

The biggest danger in my mind is losing that ever-elusive ‘author voice.’ When writing the initial draft, you are pouring something pure onto the page. There is a rhythm to the strings of words, sentences, and paragraphs that taken together is a sum greater than its parts.

Also, make sure your manuscripts don’t have soggy bottoms. I am not sure what the parallel to writing is, but I love the phrase and they use it a lot on the Great British Baking Show, which is why I used it as the title for this post.

Have you ever overworked an edit? How did you rectify it? Do you have any other baking-to-writing analogies? Let me know in the comments below.