Welcome Day 53 and the first 365 Days' How To installment!
Okay, I'm excited! Starting today and twice each month, I’m dedicating blog posts to sharing writing and marketing tips...
Tips that are very specific along with links to other helpful sites. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m hoping this will evolve into a collaborative, aggregate spot where we can pay forward great ideas and share feedback to meet the goal of making all the writing and marketing in the #busywriterslife much, much easier.
So let’s get started...
How To...Edit Your Novel...
In a recent post on my Synchronicity blog, I wrote about some negative reviews I had received on my first two books due to poor editing.
The reviews not only stung, I was actually a blindsided by them because I had read and re-read through the drafts countless times and thought I had fixed any mistakes.
So what was the problem?
Well it’s called autocorrect and it speaks to why authors can’t rely solely themselves to do the editing piece.
I had shared the following about autocorrect in my blog Synchronicity…
It has to do with the fact that since we know what we want to say, and if the sentence seems clear enough, we actually can’t pick up the mistakes in the sentence or paragraph.
That’s because the brain skews what we perceive as wrong words inside sentences by doing an auto-correct as we’re reading through the lines.
Simply put, the brain actually makes it hard for us to see the mistake.
Here’s how John McIntyre of the Baltimore Sun explains it…
"...experienced readers, the very people you would imagine to be effective at editing, are not necessarily reliable. Experienced readers recognize patterns. They recognize patterns of letters arranged in words. They recognize syntactical patterns. They recognize stock phrases and standard figures of speech. And so the brain tells them that they see the patterns they expect to find. The brain auto-corrects, not worrying about, for example, transposed letters, because it recognizes the shape of the whole word…
Okay...so if that’s the problem, what’s the solution?
Break Down Your Editing Approach and Use a System That Works For You
For example, on a first pass, work to revise/edit the book’s overall content - the tempo, the story line, character development etc. On your second pass trying focusing on punctuation including how it relates to dialogue structure and then also replace overused phrases or words. On your third turn, clean up misspelled words, the duplicate word and so on.
Use Spell Check and Grammar Check Option on Your Computer
If you have recurring mistakes, use the Find and Replace command in Microsoft Word to easily clean those up frequent mistakes. Use the shortcut - Ctrl H to get started. When the pop up box appears simply type in the misspelled word or grammar function in the top box and in the bottom box put the correction. Then select all to fix all the changes
Print Out a Hard Copy.
Use a red pen and go to town. Go slowly and be sure to take lots of breaks. Because of that autocorrect mode, the brain will try to read quickly through the paragraphs overlooking those pesky mistakes.
Read Your Draft Out Loud.
We have a tendency to slow down when we read out loud. Hearing how the sentence structure sounds or realizing we read the same word twice will enable you to pick up on and correct your mistakes.
Don’t rely on your own editing to finalize your manuscript.
Find a writing group and ask for critiques. Have friends and family to do a review and ask them to make notes where corrections are needed.
Get a Professional Edit/Copy Review Done
After the problems with my first 2 books, I was determined to fix the editing problem and I quickly realized that I wasn't a good fit for the primary editing role any more. So I found a great (and very reasonably priced) outside editor, Sharon Stogner from Devil in the Details editing services. I was so much happier and relaxed with the release of my other two books after Sharon and her team did the edits. The best part? No harsh reviews on poor editing.
If you have more tips and ideas on editing, please share them in the comment section below.
And...
If you have more tips and ideas on editing, please share them in the comment section below.
And...
For More Information on Autocorrect:
And More Helpful Links on Editing:
And More Helpful Links on Editing:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kudler/book-editing_b_2990583.html
And a Great and Reasonably Priced Outside Editing Service...
http://devilinthedetailsediting.blogspot.com/
Finally, enjoy Today's Takeaway Lesson.....
"No Regrets...Just Lessons Learned..."
Here's to Being All In,
Maggie
Follow me on Twitter @AuthorMaggie #busywriterslife
Visit my website @ www.maggiecollins.net
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365 Days & Counting...
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thanks for the shout out! As an editor the "find" feature in track changes is a life saver. I use it whenever I need to copy edit dialogue. It is so hard to find all those quote marks and dialogue is punctuation heavy. I search for " quote mark. The program will highlight EVERY quotation mark. Makes it real easy to visual zoom in on dialogue. If you do this while self editing you can fix a lot of your own mistakes and save you money if your editor charges by the hour. :)
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