editing

Editing tips for novelists

So you’ve finally finished your novel? You’ve typed those immortal words, ‘The End’ and you feel on top of the world. After weeks, maybe months of toil, no social life, and too much coffee, you feel wonderful. You have created something unique, something unlike anything else in existence, and you know that you will be rich and famous within six months. Not to put too fine a point on it, you feel like a god.

Then you look around and notice your messy home, the thick layer of dust blanketing everything beneath, the rolags of pet hair that have collected along the edges of the room, the piles of mouldering dishes in the sink, and your hairy armpits. You and your home may have suffered writer’s neglect, but you don’t care, you’ve been doing something far more important than mere housework.

After the initial glow of completion settles, you get to thinking about publishing your creation. The problem is, you can’t just publish right away and wait for the royalties to flow in. There is much to do to your new baby before you can begin to think of publishing. What you have in front of you is not a novel but a first draft. It requires further work to turn it into a book worthy of publication.

You’ve done the easy bit, now the real work begins.

There are several further steps on the road to publication you must take. You may not need to take every step, but it is probably best that you assume for the moment that you will have to. That way, it won’t be a shock later. These further steps are as follows:

Proof read

Re-write (if necessary)

The above two steps may be repeated several times, so be prepared!

Edit (either yourself or via an editor you’re paying)

Re-write

Edit

The above two may also be repeated more than once.

Final proof read

Formatting

Publication

It’s a lot of further work isn’t it? What? You didn’t realise all this was necessary? Welcome to your baptism of fire my child. This is the life of the writer.

You can do all of the above yourself if you wish or if finances make it necessary. You can also pay others to do every step of the above but unless you’re rich beyond the dreams of avarice, be prepared to do a lot of it yourself. The problem with hiring editors and other writers’ services providers is that you have no way of knowing just how qualified they are when you hand over what is going to be a large amount of money. Don’t assume they’re on the level just because they advertise their services with a slick looking website, or have a list of authors willing to endorse them. Take nothing for granted, the internet is a den of iniquity and being scammed is as easy as falling off a log.

Read books in your genre and while you’re reading, look for mistakes. Are there spelling errors, grammatical errors, plot holes, or timeline anomalies? Does it look and read like someone took care enough to make it as perfect as possible, or does it come across as amateurish? Get others you trust to do the same and ask them what they think. If all seems well, approach the authors on their social media and ask about their editors. You can then approach the editors concerned and ask about the process, their fees etc. The cost is usually along the lines of so much per thousand words, or per page etc, and remember, the cost will be high. This will be your biggest expense so it pays to take your time, do your research properly and not get scammed. Another thing to remember is that there are different types of editing service and you will have to pay separately for each one. Some editors can do some or all of the different types, others can’t and you will have to find other editors for the other types of editing.

Copy Editing – this is usually the least expensive type of editing and usually concentrates on spelling, punctuation, and grammar.

Line Editing – The editor goes through your manuscript line by line and analyses each sentence. They will consider your word choice, the power and meaning of the sentence, syntax, and any trimming or tightening that they feel needs to be done to improve it.

Mechanical Editing – This type of editing is where the editor applies a particular style to your work when editing, such as The Chicago Manual of Style or the Associated Press Style. The clue is in the name; they will concentrate on the mechanics of your writing, spelling, capitalisation, abbreviations, punctuation, and any other style rules.

Substantive Editing – This is concerned with how your work is presented, the big picture. It works at anything from sentence level to chapter level and involves any big restructuring that may be necessary to tighten your work.

Developmental Editing – This type of editing goes into every aspect of the work. It looks at the big picture, the pace, characters, timing, point of view, tense, plotline, subplots, and dialogue. The editor concentrates on making the book enjoyable. They want to know if the characters are likeable, if the story flows well, if there are any places where information is missing or wrong, if the chapters are in the right order, and many other aspects that will hopefully enhance the reading experience. This is the most extensive and costly form of editing.

Some editors lump several of the above together into one, others do not. As with everything in life, be sure to ask for details.

If you’re planning to pay for an editor, there is much to do to your manuscript before sending it to an editor. This will not only save you money but will show the editor that you have an eye for details and are someone worth giving their time to. That’s another thing, just because you’re willing to pay them, doesn’t mean they will agree to do the work. They can refuse you if they deem you unworthy. It’s a bit of a cliquey crowd so be aware.

If you write your novel using Word, then I cannot recommend highly enough that you download and install WordTalk. It is a text-to-speech add-on to your Word system and will ‘read’ your work back to you. I have no words to adequately convey my love and gratitude to whomever invented this wonderful thing; how I ever managed before I discovered it is beyond me. With a few clicks, you can sit back and listen to someone reading to you, and you will notice a gazillion more mistakes than you ever could by reading your work yourself. Believe me on this, I know. There is something about listening to someone else talking that allows your brain to ‘hear’ mistakes far more easily than it can ‘see’ them when you read the work yourself.

Using WorkTalk, go through your work and correct any spelling errors. Don’t trust the in-built spell checker by itself as it often gets things wrong. It is designed for American spelling and will flag British spellings as mistakes, so be aware all you British authors out there. One of your best friends is Thesaurus.com which you can use not only to check spelling, but for when you wish to find a different word that conveys the same meaning as the one you originally chose. Sometimes it’s worth finding a slightly more sophisticated way of saying what you want to say and this website will enable you to find such alternatives easily. I also use it to find the right words for my book titles.

Punctuation is very important and you must pay adequate attention to getting it right. It is through punctuation that the reader knows how to read each sentence, when to take a breath, and helps our brains to understand what it is reading. There are many books and websites giving in depth information on punctuation rules, so I won’t go into too much detail here. There are a couple of things I will mention though.

Use commas, they tell the reader to take a breath. Try reading a sentence without them, it’s jolly hard work.

Get your apostrophes right. This is worth taking the time to research properly, as getting them wrong makes you look like an idiot. There are few punctuation mistakes guaranteed to annoy more than this one.

When punctuating dialogue, speech quotes go outside commas or full stops, always. Each person speaking must be on a new line, (not punctuation I know but this has just occurred to me).

Avoid exclamation marks. Although they accurately display surprise and astonishment, for some inexplicable reason they are frowned upon at the moment.

A question mark takes the place of a full stop at the end of a sentence. You don’t need to use both. One or the other only.

At the end of a sentence, use one space between the full stop and the first word of the next sentence. This is the only area where I, as a British novelist, have given in to the demand to do things the American way. The British way is to use two blank spaces, but demand to use just one is so high that the vast majority of editors will flag this up as an error, not knowing that it is actually a difference in cultural style rather than a mistake. Ho hum.

The above points are just a few important things you should make an effort with before sending out your manuscript to an editor, if you’re using one. It is worth making the effort, for it will not only increase your own knowledge, but showing a willingness to make the effort will endear you to your editor. The subject of punctuation is so much wider than just the above, and if you’re doing the editing yourself, take plenty of time to research the accepted rules and plod through your work gradually. Some aspects of punctuation are a little archaic and can be safely ignored, others will be difficult to understand but work at it, it’s worth it. Many of the websites will give not only definitions of the rules but provide examples too and this is very helpful when trying to make sense of what the hell they’re talking about. If, like me, your childhood education was a little (or a lot) lacking, this will be a big learning curve.

Dialogue tags are the subject of much debate among inexperienced writers. These are the, ‘he said, she said, he replied, she nodded’ that you see at the end of pieces of dialogue. Whichever terminology you use is your own choice, but there are some things worth pointing out. You don’t need a dialogue tag for every single piece of dialogue in an extended conversation. This is a mistake many writers make and one I made myself until I took the time to learn and experiment. You need only such dialogue tags as are necessary to help the reader know who is talking at any one time. In a back and forth conversation, the details of the conversation will largely tell you who is talking and you can limit tags to every third or fourth line of speech. For instance.

“But what about Harry?” he said.

“He’s not coming,” she replied.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because he’s visiting his sick mother,” she shrugged.

“That’s inconvenient,” he snapped.

“I know but he sends his apologies,” she said.

 

See what I mean? It’s clumsy isn’t it? Now try this.

 

“But what about Harry?” he said.

“He’s not coming,” she replied.

“Why not?”

“Because he’s visiting his sick mother.”

“That’s inconvenient.”

“I know but he sends his apologies.”

 

Much better isn’t it? You know who is talking all the time but it flows nicely and allows you to concentrate on the story being told rather than how it’s being said. Try it with your own work and see what you think. You can copy and paste bits of dialogue into a blank Word document and play with it before changing your manuscript. Use your WordTalk app and listen to how it sounds. This can be life changing when you get it right.

When analysing your writing, you must learn that there will be much you can cut out. A lot of what you write is unnecessary and you will find that by cutting these things out, your writing will sound more sophisticated. One of the most important is the issue of adverbs. An adverb modifies a verb. If you remember from your school days, we were taught, (in my school anyway) that a verb is a ‘doing’ word. It is a word that tells of action. Run, walk, sit, talk, laugh, jump, smile, cry, skip, build, scratch, fall, talk, sleep, all these are things you do and are verbs.

Adverbs modify verbs such as those above. Run quickly, talk slowly, sleep deeply etc. Many adverbs  can be identified by the ending ‘ly’ but not all. There are a few, such as, always, often, sometimes, seldom, and never, which do not, but the ‘ly’ trick is very helpful.  The vast majority of adverbs can be cut out without the need for further modification of the sentence. Take the sentence below as an example.

He ran quickly to the end of the street.

If he is running, then he will be moving quickly. You therefore don’t need to point this out, we can work that out for ourselves. Go through your manuscript sentence by sentence, identify the adverbs and take them out if possible.

Avoid beginning every sentence with the same personal pronoun. A personal pronoun is I, he, she, it, they, etc. You will find as you read through your manuscript, that you have long passages where every sentence begins with I, he, she, etc one after the other.  Changing this is important but slow work and will require you to think about how to re-word the sentence. It is worth the effort though, as you will find when listening to your work later.

I looked up at the sky. I noticed it was getting dark. I decided it was time to go home.

I looked up at the sky and noticed darkness approaching. The lengthening shadows told me it was time I was getting home.

The second example sounds more sophisticated, it rolls off the tongue in an easy flow, whereas the first is clunky and akin to driving a car with square wheels.

Make sure you use your words correctly. Do not use, ‘affect’ if you mean, ‘effect’ for instance. There are many examples of such word pairs and although many are spelled alike, they have distinct and important differences in meaning.

Some other examples of such confusing word pairs are as follows.

Accept/except

Altar/alter

Desert/dessert

ie/eg

Farther/further

Good/well

Its/it’s

Lay/lie

More/most

Past/passed

Than/then

That/which

There/their/they’re

Your/you’re

Two/to/too

Toward/towards

There are other pairs of words that people often get wrong. They are not interchangeable and to use the wrong one serves only to make you look bad. Do your research, google is your friend here. Go through your manuscript and find each example and make sure you have used it correctly.

One of the fundamentals of telling a good story is to make sure all of your facts are right. This is where lists are helpful. It matters not whether you are writing of real places or inventing another world in a science fiction epic, your facts must be consistent throughout your work. If you say Henry is twenty years old in chapter three, then in chapter ten you say he is twenty five, but only a few weeks of time have elapsed in the story between those two chapters, you look like a dick. People will notice. Believe me on this, there is always that one person who notices and points it out.

Your geography must be correct and consistent, whether you are using real places or imaginary ones. The timeline must flow properly throughout your work. If your hero says he will do something in three day’s time, you must make sure any action between that declaration and the action takes three days. This can be difficult to keep track of and I have spent many an hour reading and making notes to make sure it was indeed six days as my character had already said, rather than five as I thought. Keep a list of events and divide it into days/weeks or whatever is appropriate for your work. Enter points in the appropriate day/week and in this way you keep track of your timeline.

If your work is set in today’s time or the past, your science has to be one hundred percent correct. You cannot say your hero drove a Ford Escort if he lives before they were invented. If your work is set in the future or in another galaxy, you can invent most of your science, but again it must be consistent throughout the work. Make more lists and enter details of every gadget, gizmo, engine, and component you invent, their name, basic make up and functions. This will save you hours of time searching for wherever it was you mentioned it before.

Anything medical must be right and appropriate for the time and setting in which you’ve placed your work. If someone falls ill and is cured, make sure the cure was actually available at that time. Research, research, research. Then research some more.

I write science fiction space operas and what I do with anything science or medical based is simple. I begin with a foundation of today’s accepted knowledge and invent on top of that. I find this gives the work a subtle but important authenticity that helps the reader accept it without questioning it. Let’s face it, in real life our knowledge and skills build on what we knew previously and I do the same in my writing.

A large proportion of any novel is what is known as descriptive. This is scene setting stuff like details of the location, the weather, how the characters are feeling, what they’re thinking etc. Novels need descriptive so don’t avoid it. By the same token, don’t go overboard with it or you will bore your readers. We want to know about the rustling trees, the chill morning air, the way your character’s nightmare disturbed him, the architecture etc but we don’t want a thousand word essay on the shape of the clouds. Hitting the right balance of descriptive is something that comes with practice. This is where reading helps. The more books you read, the more you will get a feel for the right amount of descriptive.

Finally, avoid info dumps like the plague. Again, the clue is in the name. An info dump is where you give a truck load of back information about your character or some other aspect of your story, all at once. This will bore readers stupid and they will just forget it anyway, so don’t do it. We want to know your character’s back story, but give us little bits throughout the story. If we find out everything about him right at the start, there is nothing else for us to discover about him, he has no mystery to captivate us.

When you meet new people in real life, you don’t find out their life history within five minutes of meeting them. You learn about them over time, through conversation and by being with them consistently. Keep this in mind when introducing us to your characters. Let us get to know them in the same way we get to know our other friends, gradually. It’s the same for any other aspect of your story, whether it’s a space ship engine, a house that has been lived in by seven generations of one family, or a secret family recipe for haggis. Give us the details bit by bit and you’ll keep our interest.

 

This is in no way meant to be an in depth guide to every aspect of self editing and should not be taken as such. I mean this to be a few basic but important points on which you can build your own wealth of knowledge and experience. Whether you intend to self edit or pay someone else, the above will give you a starting point from which you can fine tune your raw draft into a sleek and beautiful work of art. It is your legacy, it is worth taking the time to make it as perfect as you are able.

Update and reminder

Editing has begun on my next release, Dreamspinner, which I hope to have ready for release by the end of October, maybe a little earlier. I’m very excited about the concept of this novel and proud to have been able to bring the story out in a form that I hope will excite and hold readers. I will keep updating as progress continues.

Just a reminder that you can still enter my Goodreads giveaway for the chance to win one of three signed paperback copies of my novel, Fetish ~ Sinclair V-Log BY915/M.

We all have dirty little secrets, don’t we? 

When Sam Sinclair is called home to help solve the murder of a fellow law enforcer, he assumes the motive was revenge. Within hours, this case quickly becomes everything but straightforward. As the evidence points to deviance of the most horrific kind, they realise that a new breed of killer is stalking the streets of Sam’s home city. Fear grips the people of Alimenika and even the most hardened of criminals are terrified into silence.

A fetish is just harmless fun, until someone dies of course and as more victims come to light, Sam and his team must delve into the darkest side of man’s nature before they can hope to stop this monster’s reign of terror. Swept along by the most unsettling case of his career, the killer’s insidious influence makes Sam doubt himself as never before.

As his personal life is turned upside down, he suddenly becomes the killer’s latest plaything. Unable to free himself and battling the rising panic, the accusation of his own deviance forces him to examine his actions during those terrible four hours, almost twenty years ago.

To enter the giveaway, click below. Good luck.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Fetish by Merita King

Fetish

by Merita King

Giveaway ends September 12, 2015.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/widget/150897

We have lost control of our book details at Amazon

I noticed today that we are no longer able to log into our books’ details via Author Central at Amazon. We can no longer do any of the things we used to be able to do, like change the blurb, add a bold tagline, make sure the line spacing of the blurb was right, add a character outline or a review. I used to do all those things but now I can do none of them. I have no access to them, other than via the publishing platform dashboard, which does not allow me to bolden or underline, and always removes line spaces.

Just another of the rapidly increasing number of reasons never to publish with amazon ever again. I never have any of these problems at Smashwords or Lulu.

Fuck you Amazon, fuck your owners, fuck your governors, fuck your shareholders, fuck your grandmothers, and fuck the horse you rode in on.

Happy New Year

I can’t believe how fast 2014 went by. I always thought it was an old person’s thing to comment on how fast the time is going, but now I’m doing it myself. Maybe that means that I’m now old instead of just middle aged. I don’t feel like an old person despite being 53 in a couple of weeks, I still feel 25 inside my head. I often look back and think, “where the hell has the last week gone?” It’s not just me experiencing this either, many people I speak to say it too.

2014 saw some changes for me, most of them welcome. My beloved car finally broke down and had to be sold as I could not afford to get it repaired. The head gasket had gone and I don’t have that kind of money. Having no transport meant I could no longer keep doing my job, which entailed me driving to different peoples’ homes to clean their house. This meant I’ve had to start claiming benefits, which is a laborious process designed to make you feel like a scrounger. It is taking forever, but I hope it will be all sorted soon.

My health problems have caught up with me more than ever before, and I spend a lot of time in pain. I have what is called a Pars Defect in my lumbar spine, which is now affecting my life far more than ever before. It seems to me that being forced to give up my job, which was very physical and left me in agony most days, was timely. It is nice having more time at home. Being able to lie in is a treat I haven’t experienced for years. It is a blow to my ego to  have to use a walking stick, but it does help a little so I try not to complain. I never realised how difficult it is to go shopping with a handbag, several bags of shopping, and still be able to effectively use a walking stick. It’s impossible, so I often find myself unable to use my stick. Luckily I can do the greater part of the grocery shopping online, which saves me having to haul too many bags on the bus.  That’s another thing, the bus fares around here are criminal!

2014 also saw my mother sell her house in Cornwall and move up here near me. I’ve been trying to persuade her for ages and am delighted that my persistence has finally paid off. She now has a lovely ground floor flat a couple of miles away, in a nice area near to all the amenities she did not have in Cornwall. It will also be nice to have someone to pop in for a coffee and natter a couple of times a week or go for a meal on a weekend. When she first announced she was moving away down to Cornwall, I felt very abandoned for a long time. It was weird and not something I expected to feel. It was not pleasant and although I got used to being so alone, I was always aware of how alone I was. She has been away visiting relatives for Christmas and New Year, so we will be out buying her some new furniture the moment she gets back.

My other excitement is that I am now a proud cat mommy. I named him Samelan, after the main character in my Sinclair V-Logs science fiction novels. He’s a beautiful stripey tabby and has the most hilarious nature. He has a foot fetish and will bite my feet and toes whenever I go barefoot, he likes playing football with his toys (and is a very skilled dribbler too), and is toilet training with the Litter Kwitter system. He doesn’t meow very often, but ‘trills’ all the time, and will reply when I talk to him sometimes. Every morning at 7am he wakes me up by trilling and batting me with a paw, after which he sits by my alarm clock as he knows I always reach for it to check the time before getting up. I’m fully expecting one day for him to learn to press the button on the top which lights up the clock face. I cannot express how much of a difference it has made to my mood, having someone pleased to see me, seeking my company, and eager for me to get home just to spend time with me. I’m sure he’s saved my life.

So what of 2015? I did make a New Year’s resolution to give up chocolate, and I am determined to stick to it. Rather than go on a typical diet as such, I have tried to introduce permanent healthy food habits, one at a time. Years ago I gave up sugar in tea and coffee. A couple of years ago I gave up milk in tea and coffee. Last March I gave up smoking, and this year I intend to stop eating chocolate in any form. It is an education trying to find desserts and sweet things that don’t contain chocolate. This substance seems to have infiltrated into every area of our diet. It’s even in breakfast cereals now, crazy. At the same time as I shall be learning to do without chocolate, I shall be eating more fruit and veg, which I already love so no problems there other than the cost of them. Once I have eliminated the worst stuff from my diet, I can turn my attention to reducing portion size. I hope to end this year with a far more healthy relationship with food, even if I have not lost a significant amount of weight (which would be nice too).

So far I have 2 novels to publish in the coming year. One is finished to first draft and the other will be finished to first draft within the next couple of days.  I shall probably participate in the July Camp Nanowrimo, as I have done in the past 2 years, which will take me to 3 books this year. I like to do 3 a year, it’s a comfortable workload for me.

I want to pay a little more attention to marketing this year. I am in the process of building a list of tweets that I can use with the new drip feed app I’ve found. Due to Feed 140 breaking down, I had to find another drip feeder, and Dropial is the only one I’ve found that allows you to build a list that will drip in a continuous loop. The only downside to Dropial is that it insists on the list containing a minimum number of tweets, so I’m busy building it at the moment. Once that is done, I want to blog more, and use all the other social media I am part of, a bit more often. I cannot afford to pay for advertising, so free social media is my shop window at the moment. I would like to do interviews, but no one is asking  – unless you’d like to interview me or do a spotlight for me?

One other thing I want to pledge to this coming year, is to begin re-editing and re-releasing my backlist. As time has gone on I have learned more, and I can clean up the early books and make them slicker and more error free. There is also one I want to do a new cover for. I want to do at least 2 of my older books this coming year.

As for other 2015 bucket list items, there’s always the following:

Meet Dwayne Johnson

Meet Vin Diesel

Meet Misha Collins

Have Peter Jackson talk me into allowing him to turn one of my books into a movie

Win more than a million on the lottery

Become a best seller for at least one of my books on Amazon

If anyone would like to help me achieve any of those items, let me know. In the meantime, I wish you all a prosperous, educational, and happy 2015.

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As a self published author, one has to constantly run the gauntlet of snobbish opinion as to traditional vs self publishing.  This is a tiresome task and one that never goes away no matter what we do.  No matter how carefully we proof read and edit, no matter how much money we spend on cover art, no matter how many beta readers we send our manuscripts to and no matter how many re-writes we do, our work will always be regarded as shit because it’s not been traditionally published.

This subject came up again on facebook just now, when some knob-head made the following comment,

“Self-published authors are exactly that, self-published.  This is almost like arguing what the difference is between art and garbage.”

We all know there is a glut of badly edited trash out there from self published authors who should never have thought about putting their shit out there, let alone actually doing it, and we all know that the good stuff is buried under this mountain of trash, making it very difficult for our work to be found by readers.  We also know that these trash writers give us good writers a bad name and are responsible for this stigma that plagues us.

The sticking point for me, and the one thing I cannot get past without getting angry, is that my work is judged by those who have never read it.  No one has the ability to know whether my work is shit or solid gold without reading it first, and my opinion is that until they do, they should shut up and keep their asinine opinions to themselves.  When I commented to this effect, on the same thread as the comment above, I was then told, “I’m not risking money and time on something I don’t trust. You have to earn that chance, you aren’t entitled to it. You do this via marketing yourself. (Of note, angry rants do not help your case.)” To anyone who believes that since I self publish my own work, I do not have the right to express my exasperation, I say this,

“Fuck you.”

My ability to express my feelings has no effect whatsoever, either detrimental or otherwise, to my written work and if you think it does, then you’re probably not the kind of person I would wish for as a reader.  You had probably better stay inside and carry on with your knitting and siamese cats, I’ve got gritty novels to write for readers with an educated and open mind.

In my humble opinion, it is people such as those I mentioned above, that are killing writing and not authors self publishing their own work.  Whilst badly edited work does annoy readers, opinions such as those outlined above do much damage to talented authors trying to get their work out there to those minds waiting to receive it and enjoy it.  It is these talentless and blinkered troglodytes who are hindering the evolution of writing/publishing, not authors missing the odd comma or misspelling there/their/they’re.

As those of us with a few brain cells know, there is no benefit to being traditionally published these days.  They may (may) give you a small advance, but they keep 80% of your royalties, they do no marketing for you and you get no say about the cover art.  A traditional publishing house will demand you present them with a fully outlined marketing plan before they consider offering you a contract and you will be expected to do all the leg work in getting your work out there.  Self published authors keep up to 70% of their own royalties and have total control over cover art, and still do their own marketing/promotion etc.  There are many editors out there advertising their services if you don’t have the knowledge or confidence to do it yourself, so self publication need never be the poor relation of the writing family.

Times without number I find spelling errors and other simple mistakes in traditionally published works by well known authors, but never have I seen comments about how bad this is, nor how this should not be tolerated etc.  No, the opinions are always about how self published authors are the street urchins amongst the traditionally published earls and duchesses.  Until this changes, the writing/publishing world will never evolve as we know it is currently trying to do.

Proof reading? Let Hazel help you

A facebook colleague recently introduced me to a nifty little add-on for Word that has proved to be invaluable when proofreading and editing.  Honestly, I don’t know how I coped without it in the past.

I’m your typical destitute author and because of this, I do my own proof reading and editing.  Actually, I prefer to do it myself and even if I was rich I’d probably still do it.  One of the methods I employ to help me is to read aloud, as this brings a lot of mistakes to your notice that would pass you by when reading silently.  When mother is visiting me on her regular trips up from Cornwall, I read it to her.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a facebook colleague and he told me he finds it helpful to have his computer read his book to him.  When I heard this I was like, “huh?” and he then told me about Wordtalk.  Now, you’ve all no doubt been using this for decades, I’m always the last to know but just in case anyone hasn’t heard of it, it’s fantastic.  It’s an add-on to Word that you can download here.

It will appear on your Word taskbar as Add-Ins.  Click on that and you’ll get the Wordtalk controls.  I have the option of an English speaking chick or an American gal and once you get used to her monotone voice, you will find it amazingly helpful.  For instance, it is programmed to pause slightly at a comma, so I notice right away if I’ve missed one as she drones on forever without taking a break and it sounds totally unnatural.  Put the missing comma in and she takes a breath at just the right place to make your sentence sound just right.  When I read this same sentence aloud myself, I will naturally put this pause in, even without the comma there because subconsciously I know what I meant and how it should sound.

I’m finding that I’m catching a lot of spelling errors and duplicated words that I would skim when reading it myself.  Being a non human without a human  brain to interpret what is meant, all Wordtalk can do is reproduce what is written exactly as it is written, mistakes and all.  This makes the errors much more obvious and easy to correct.

There are some things it can’t cope with and there doesn’t appear to be a way to add to its vocabulary.  For instance, in dialogue I sometimes have my characters say “umm,” when they’re not sure about something.  The Wordtalk gal (Hazel or Zina) doesn’t recognise umm as a word so she speaks the letters individually, “you em em.”  There are a couple of other words I’ve noticed so far that she pronounces strangely but that may be due to differences in English and American English spelling.  It’s not a huge deal though, it’s quite amusing actually.

If you haven’t tried it, download Wordtalk and give it a go.  I recommend it highly.

The Big Editing Services Scam

This morning I decided to do a little fun research about the cost of hiring an editor.  Now this is in no way a scientifically based study, I googled and picked one at random, to check out her rates and qualifications.

She charges £17 – £22 per 1000 words.  Multiply that by the number of words in your novel and you’ll get a final cost.  Multiply this final cost by how many books you write per year and you’ll get a yearly cost.

She has some qualifications (allegedly).  A PhD in English Lit, BA in English and an MPhil in medieval studies.  All good qualifications, although I fail to see how a degree in medieval studies makes her qualified to comment on my space operas..!

The job of editor is multi layered.  They have to find your structural errors – spelling, punctuation, grammar, tense, continuity errors, passive voice and all the other structural mistakes we all make when we write.  On top of that, they give their opinions on the other, more abstract areas of your writing, which generally consists of comments about your characters, the environments, situations and the action within the story; whether they like it or not is basically what this part of the job means.  Okay that is simplifying it somewhat, but in essence that what it is.

The structural errors are things we can all learn to correct ourselves.  We don’t need an editor to find our spelling mistakes, wrong tenses, bad punctuation (or none at all), and faulty grammar.  You can google and learn how to punctuate your dialogue correctly, you can learn about the correct use of tenses and you can easily brush up on your grammar.  There are millions upon millions of articles about passive voice versus active voice and it doesn’t take long to find out what a dangling modifier is nor how many adverbs are too many adverbs.

You don’t need to pay someone to do this for you.  You can do it yourself easily, by researching and buying a few books on writing basics. If you pay someone to do this stuff for you, you are either too lazy to do it yourself or you have far more money than sense.  Good for you, whatever blows your skirt up.  Most of us don’t have that kind of money and we’re made to feel unworthy as writers for not shelling out hundreds and thousands of pounds to have someone do it for us.  I once had a gal on facebook tell me she charged “up to 1500” for editing.  Although she didn’t say whether that was pounds or dollars, it’s still a lot.  When I told her I couldn’t afford it, she then posted on her page, naming me by name, that I obviously didn’t value my own work highly enough and that if I did, I would pay.  Those who know me well enough won’t need me to explain how I reacted to that..!

As for the more abstract areas of writing, this is where I have the biggest problem with editors.  No matter what qualifications you have, your opinion as to my characters’ depth (or lack thereof), my story arc, the realism of my narrative or the enjoyment to be gained from reading my work is of no more value than anyone else’s.  This is not something that a degree in English can teach, it is felt by each individual reader.  Some will like it, others will not.

All authors out there feeling bad because they can’t afford an editor, stop feeling bad.  Buy books on punctuation and grammar.  Research the internet about these basic building blocks of writing, all the info is there by the truck load for you to read.  Once you’ve corrected the spellings, punctuation and so on, get family and friends to read it and ask them intelligent questions.  Are the characters believable? Are any characters superfluous to the story? Does the story flow? Are the environments realistic enough?  Is the action right for the story?  Their answers to theses type of questions, rather than just “did you like it?”  will tell you what (if anything) needs to be tweaked, added or taken away.

This gal may be very good at her job, she may be a total fraud.  The thing is, you could be paying her thousands of pounds for a job you can do yourself, with a little time devoted to learning the basics.  People think that because someone calls themselves an editor, that what they say about your book is gospel and you’ll be bound to fail if you don’t apply their recommendations.  This is bollocks.  All they do is give their opinion, which is no more valid than anyone else’s.

Don’t shell out your life savings or remortgage your condo to hire someone to do something you can do yourself.