Self Publishing Today

Well, my break ended up being somewhat longer than I thought, thanks to work and other commitments on my return from holidays.  I read a great book in the meantime, by a writer called Mavis Cheek.  It was one of those deceptively lightweight novels where you find yourself constantly stopping to admire a particularly apt description of a person, place or emotional state (or at least, I do).  It inspired me to get back to my novel again - not that I’ve done very much yet! 

I’m hoping to get back to blogging next week, and to bring you some refreshing guest blogs into the bargain!

Oh boy, Christmas and blogging really don’t mix! Here in Australia, it’s even worse because Christmas is in the middle of our summer – which means that not only are we gearing up for the festive season, most families are preparing for their big summer vacation as well. It doesn’t leave much time for writing, so I can see posts becoming a bit scarce for the next month or so.

However, as I said, sometimes a writing break can be a good thing – especially if you’re writing a novel.  It gives you a chance to get some distance. When you come back to your manuscript after the holidays, you’ll see it with fresh eyes and it’ll be much clearer what needs to be improved.

Happy holidays!

And now for the final stage of editing! If you can, print off the whole manuscript. Get yourself a red pen. Find yourself a quiet spot in a comfy chair, with a glass of water or a cup of tea to keep your throat moist.

Now start from the beginning and read the whole thing aloud. Yes, seriously! Don’t just read on automatic – pretend that your book has been chosen to be an Audio Book for the deaf, and you’ve been asked to record it. Read with feeling, as if you had an audience.

If you’ve been wondering why you’re doing this, you’ll find out pretty soon. Most writers are highly literate, so they read silently much faster than they can read aloud. That means you can skim over mistakes and scan clumsy sentences without noticing. Reading aloud slows you down so you become more aware of the words.

If your sentences are too long, you’ll run out of breath before you get to the end of them. Your readers may be reading silently, but they will mentally run out of breath, too – so get that red pen out and find a way to shorten or split those sentences.

If you trip over words or phrases, it’s a sign your prose isn’t flowing as smoothly as it should. It may just be that you need to improve your punctuation, or you may need to do major revisions. Stop, get out your red pen and revise it until you can read without hiccups.

You may find that exciting scenes don’t sound as climactic when you read them aloud. If that’s the case, you may have rushed them too much. The secret to conveying speed and action in print is to do the reverse – slow down, going into more detail than usual, documenting your character’s every reaction and sensation. Don’t try to rewrite whole problem passages like this on the spot – mark them to be worked on later.

If yours is a long story, it may take you several days to do this exercise, but believe me, it is very worthwhile.

Amanda of becomingafictionwriter.com has pointed out that I missed something – it’s so obvious that I took it for granted, but I should mention it. You need to check your spelling!

Once again, computers make life much easier for us these days because you can use the Spell Checker that comes with your word processing program. Don’t use it mindlessly though – read each suggested correction before you approve it, because spell checkers don’t check meaning, they simply pick the word that’s the closest match. If you’re not sure what the word means, look it up!

I am in two minds about using the Grammar Checker. The trouble is, Microsoft’s Grammar Checker is such an old fuddy-duddy! It follows very strict grammatical rules which would work perfectly well for a university thesis – but it doesn’t work for fiction.

These days when we write fiction, we don’t write as the omniscient author. We put ourselves inside the heads of our characters and write from their point of view. To create that illusion, we need to choose words that reflect the way that character would speak. That means our prose is more colloquial casual than the books of earlier times, which inevitably means it includes a fair amount of bad grammar. If you edit all that bad grammar out, your writing is going to sound stilted and old-fashioned.

It’s probably not a bad idea to run the Grammar Checker, so long as you don’t regard it as the authority. Look at what it suggests and don’t feel guilty about clicking on the “Ignore” button. One of a writer’s most valuable skills is to understand grammar rules well enough that you know when to break them!

There is one word to search for – “said”. Not because it’s bad in itself – in fact it’s the one speech tag you should use! In case you don’t know, a speech tag is, “he said”, “she said”, “he shouted” etc.

Once upon a time, we were told to think up clever alternatives to “said” (he replied, he retorted, he interjected etc). Nowadays, that’s taboo! “Said” is the best word to use because it’s an “invisible word” – readers gloss over it without even noticing it. You should only use an alternative word if it tells the reader how something has been said (e.g. he whispered, he shouted, he muttered).

However, even though “said” is invisible, it’s still better if you can avoid using a tag altogether – and that’s the reason for the search.

You can do using a tag by using context to make it clear who’s speaking.

For instance if you’re writing a paragraph from your hero’s point of view, you don’t need a “he said” because the reader knows who’s speaking. If there are only two people in the scene and the other person speaks, you don’t need a “he said” for that one either, e.g.:

Nathan handed Katie the documents, reflecting that she was looking as cute as ever. If only he could trust her. And where was her partner in crime? It was well past their appointment time. He crossed to the window and leaned out.“Where the devil is he?”

As you can see, it’s obvious who’s talking. However, if it’s a long conversation, it’s a good idea to drop in the odd “he said” or “she said” occasionally. Or use a beat (a short description to show what the person is doing while they’re talking), e.g.

Katie shrugged in exasperation. “How should I know?”

These edits will make your dialogue flow much better and sound more realistic.

There are a few other words that you should search for:

“Then” – a surprisingly unnecessary word. Wherever you find it, try deleting it and see what happens. Most of the time, you don’t even need to replace it with anything!

“That” – similar to “then” above. Often superfluous, you are better off without it.

“Suddenly” – one of those “-ly” words and one of the most over-used words in novel writing!

“And” – there’s nothing wrong with “and” where it’s needed, but often it’s used to connect two sentences that don’t need to be connected. Try taking out the “and” and see whether the two statements stand on their own. If the only reason you joined the two sentences together was to avoid starting with “He” or “She” twice in a row – don’t be so lazy, rewrite one of the sentences!

Oops, I didn’t finish covering “ing”. The other thing an “ing” search can catch is the use of “slow” verbs.

I’m sure you can hear that “I was walking” sounds pedestrian compared to the brisker “I walked”. You want to keep the action moving along, so the second option is usually better. However, sometimes the “slow” verb is essential, to describe something that was going on at the time – e.g. “I was walking the dog when I bumped into my friend Sandy”, so don’t be too quick to consign your slow verbs to the dustbin!

Finally, it’s worth noting that some “-ings” have nothing to do with either of the above, or I’d be in trouble twice in just this one sentence!

Speaking of “I was walking”, another good word to search on is “was”. Once again, there are lots of situations where “was” is unavoidable. However it is a boring little verb which you can often replace with something more interesting. Searching for “was” will also pick up any places where you have used Passive Voice. If you don’t know what that is, Google it and you’ll find lots of definitions – but basically, Active Voice is where your character is doing something, whereas Passive Voice is where something is being done to them. Active Voice always sounds more positive and lively whereas Passive Voice sounds – well – passive. For instance, it sounds much better to say, “The concierge opened the door as Katie approached” instead of “The door was opened as Katie approached”.

Continuing our editing process, the next thing you may need to search for is “ing”.

Searching for words ending in “-ing” covers two common mistakes.

One is incorrect use of the construction “doing one thing, he did another”. For instance, you’ll often see sentences like, “Buttoning his shirt, he followed her” or “Throwing her bag over her shoulder, she set off for work”. This construction can only describe two things happening at exactly the same time.

The trouble is, many writers use it to describe two things happening one after the other, e.g. “Putting down his coffee cup, he walked through the door.” Now, readers may not be able to tell you what’s wrong with that sentence, but they will have a moment’s confusion before their brain works out what it means and creates a mental picture. It’s clearly impossible for him to put his coffee cup down and walk through the door at exactly the same time, and that momentary confusion will make the reader uncomfortable. Make your reader uncomfortable too often and they’ll stop reading, even if they can’t tell you why.

Quite often, writers resort to this construction because they’re trying to avoid starting sentences with “He” or “She”. It’s clumsy and unnecessary. Contrary to what some people may have told you, there is absolutely nothing wrong with starting a sentence with “He” or “She”. What you should avoid is several sentences in a row, all starting the same way. So if you have a sentence starting with “She”, the next sentence should start with something else. Then the following sentence can start with “She” again.

Now that most of us write on computers, we have some easily accessible tools to edit language. One of the first things to do is search for “ly”. Words ending in “-ly” are usually (but not always) adverbs. Go to some writers’ circles and you’d think all adverbs were the work of Satan, but they’re not really that bad. There are times when adverbs are very useful and perfectly correct. The reason they get a bad press is that they can be a sign of lazy writing.

A descriptive verb will almost always be more powerful than an ordinary verb with an adverb. Say you want to describe your heroine making a desperate dash to save her child. Saying “she sprinted headlong towards the park” paints a much stronger picture than “she ran quickly towards the park”, doesn’t it? ‘Ran quickly” sounds positively feeble in comparison with “sprinted”. You could also have used “raced” or even “hurtled”. It takes time to think of these more expressive verbs, and we often opt for the verb + adverb option without thinking. Going back over the manuscript at the end and checking every “-ly” word may sound tedious, but it gives you a chance to check you haven’t been lazy! You may be surprised how often you have used them.

Some word-processing packages have a Word Frequency Checker, which will count how many times each word appears in your manuscript (Microsoft Word used to have it in older versions). This can be a great way of identifying words that you over-use.

When they have to stop reading, most people will go on until they reach the end of a chapter, then put the book down. You can use that knowledge to ensure you give them a reason to pick the book up again.

When you’re writing, it’s tempting to end each chapter at a natural break – where something has been resolved or completed. That’s the worst possible place to end a chapter, because your reader can close the book feeling satisfied. You don’t want that – you want them to be left with a niggling question in their minds, something that will make them pick the book up again as soon as they get the chance.

It’s a good idea not to split your chapters as you write – if you wait until the book is finished, it can be easier to choose good points in the story to make the breaks. Your aim is to end each chapter at a point where something remains unanswered.

There’s no set length for a chapter – it can be as long or as short as you please, and they don’t all have to be the same length either. So you have lots of flexibility to choose the right spot.