You have poured your heart, your mind and your soul into your new literary masterpiece. Some of you have even given blood, sweat, tears, hair and lack of sleep to your worthy cause. Was it all for naught?
My advice to you is simple. Once you have finished your book. Walk away and read someone else's book. Take some time away from your book, in order to distance yourself from it and create some unfamiliarity. This might mean taking anywhere from a week, up to a couple of months away. This is important so that when you read over your manuscript the next time it will be like you are looking at it from an outsider's perspective.
We all want to believe that we are the masters of or literary universe, but in reality this is not always the case. What we are masters of, is the process we choose to follow when writing, editing and eventually publishing our new book. Not everyone can afford an author for a book which may only capture mere pennies on a dollar for you in overall sales. Even if you can afford an editor, you don't want to send them an unorganized, slip shod writing mess and have that be the impression they get of you as an author.
So, what do you do?
You do what every author before you has done, and attempt to edit your work. A good friend of mine and fellow author suggested the following practice. Read the words you have written on your page aloud exactly as they are. Make believe you are a voice actor reading for an audio book recording. I guarantee that you will come across mistakes that you didn't notice on your first pass. Maybe even record yourself, so you can listen back in your car on the way to work, or on your ear buds at the gym. You'll be happy you did.
Then get a scratchpad and get to editing.
Look for the following things:
1. Sentence Flow. This will be determined by commas, periods and other punctuation. "Never underestimate the power of a perfectly placed comma."
2. Subject-Verb Agreement. Do your subjects match their verbs in terms of singularity or plurality? This is a commonly overlooked writing error. Not sure? Google it.
3. Continuity. Does your story follow a specific time line? Does it flow effortlessly, or are you constantly jumping around? These are other things you may notice. Was the sun rising on the first page of the chapter? Only to set three pages later? What happened in between? Fill in the blanks for the reader, or rewrite the section to make more sense.
4. Correct Tense. Does your story shift from one tense to another? Most writers tend to write completely in the present, or the past tense. Others tend switch between the two. Do you do this correctly? It is important to keep your reader informed of what has happened, what is happening and what may or may not happen in the future. Do you use flash backs? Inner dialogue? and Conversation? These things need to be correctly denoted using quotation marks or italics.
5. Typos. You may find a lot of these by reading what's on the page and not what you think you wrote. This is why it is important to step away from your story, and return to it after some time has passed. Is there a double word? Did you write "to" instead of "the" or "in?" So many times, the mind is in hyper drive when we are first writing that the fingers cannot keep up, resulting in typographical errors.
Don't let the dread of editing, destroy the joy you experienced from drafting your new story. The read aloud and listen back is an invaluable and inexpensive tool to catapult you into becoming a better author.
Good luck and happy writing!
Cheers!
Drakov
Special thank to
No comments:
Post a Comment