Make-A-Story™ Monday - This Week's Writing Prompt

Writing to spec – you’ve heard the term. It means writing what the publisher wants. Can you do it? In our new feature - Make-A-Story™, we ask you to create a story with these elements. The story can be set in any time frame, any length, must adhere to our guidelines and have our standard Christian world view.
 
A broken lamp
Special instructions
A glass of orange juice

Tactical Tuesday: Advice for Self-Editing

It’s the little things that make my eye twitch when I run across them in a published book. These are mistake such as misspelled words or wrong term usage (clinched instead of clenched when referring to a tightened fist or jaw, for example), and a myriad of tiny errors that can be and sometimes are missed even in the best of edits.

In a perfect world every book would be published without an error or two. We’d all like to say we could catch every missing comma in a manuscript, but if you think about it, the average novel consists of 60,000 words. Those words translate into approximately 272,000 characters. What are the odds? Authors can beat the odds if they take a proactive stance.

That’s why self-editing is so important. The job can’t be left only to the “professionals.” Any author who has submitted what they believe to be a near-perfect manuscript can attest to the fact that an editor will most likely find something to nitpick on every page of the story.

Authors who sweat those small thing are a great asset to an editor. No, they aren’t expected to catch everything in a novel, but when they do their best, that helps to produce a cleaner product, which helps eliminate reader eye twitches.

Here are some common mistakes that should be on every author’s style sheet or check list:

The aforesaid mentioned clinched versus clenched along with other difficult words, such as affect/effect, then/than, assure/ensure/insure, desert/dessert, hoard/horde, setup/set-up/set up, underway/under way and the one I struggle to grasp: further/farther.

Words that can be compounded but are not always so: a part/apart, a while/awhile, any more/anymore, every day/everyday.

Words that are often written as two words when the correct form is a compound: backseat, seatbelt, backyard.

Words that are always two words, unless hyphenated. For example, it is never goodnight, but good night or when used as an adjective describing a noun, good-night kiss. Also, it’s always good-bye.

Words that are often misspelled. For instance, it’s not hairbrained but harebrained. The word is tell-tale not tale-tell, tell-tell, or tale-tale, espresso and not expresso, and no matter how much anyone insists that it is working its way into the English language, it is never alright but all right.

Words that are often confused, such as anxious vs. eager, as vs. like, among vs. between.

Also, publisher preferences are good to note. Pelican Book Group prefers OK instead of okay. 
Because I personally prefer okay, I have to be very cautious about this. Noting it on my style sheet or checklist helps me to remember to check my edits when I’m working on a review or an acquisition. Other preferences might include blonde/blond and the various ways it can be used. Internet terms are also publisher preferences. Internet vs. internet, online vs. on-line, and e-mail vs. email.

I find collecting this information fun and useful. What I don’t collect, I make sure to look up in the Chicago Manual of Style. When I do look them up, I usually place them on my list.

These are just some of the ways that authors can help eliminate that eye twitch. Mine never twitches more than when I find a mistake I missed in my own work.

Happy editing.

Make-A-Story™ Monday - This Week's Writing Prompt

Writing to spec – you’ve heard the term. It means writing what the publisher wants. Can you do it? In our new feature - Make-A-Story™, we ask you to create a story with these elements. The story can be set in any time frame, any length, must adhere to our guidelines and have our standard Christian world view.

A city view
Two lost kittens
A flat tire


Tactical Tuesday: Advice for Self-Editing

A myth exists that an author toils alone when he is taking words and forming them into sentences that make paragraphs, that turn into pages, which become scenes, and then morph into chapters that become a novel.

The truth: an author who works alone, who doesn’t seek out an objective voice, who doesn’t have to steel against the criticism of others, is a writer who is soon out of touch with the market, with fans, and with the reality of the condition of his work.

I was reminded of this recently when I submitted to my critique groups after a long hiatus from submissions. Yes, I knew the draft I sent was the first, but I did believe I’d caught the essence of the story. The characters were alive to me. Their story vivid.

I sent the chapters off with dreams of receiving accolades for my prose from my trusted writing pals. I imagined reviews such as “perfect, ready to print, and this work couldn’t get any better.”

I’ll pause here to give you time to get a grip and stop laughing.

Even I knew my dreams were not grounded in reality. I’m the author. I should think that my writing is where it needs to be. My characters need to become my best friends so that I know everything about them. My story should, in the very least, be formed inside my head.

The job of critique partners is to shake the author from the land of dreams and cause her to focus on the problems they find. In that regard, my critique pals did not fail.

Yes, I did receive some glowing feedback, but my critique partners would frighten me if they sent back a manuscript absent lines, filled with red and blue along with bubbled comments explaining why I need to delete or add or change portions of the manuscript, even a lengthy summary at the end of the document telling me what does and does not work. For the most part, I learned what I already knew deep down: I’d brought on too many characters at one time (a major flaw I work hard to overcome with my partners’ help). I’d used words that didn’t fit the description. Horror of horrors, I’d used telling rather than showing. My heroine was not grounded and at times not likable (no one wants an unlikable heroine), and overall, the chapters need lots of work.

After the first few minutes of staring opened mouthed at the comments, I smiled. Now, fully grounded, I could dig in and put the mess in order.

Criticism hurts, but a lack of criticism can destroy a career.

If an author toils alone, dismissing the critique process, he fails to taken into account that his own subjectivity might preclude him from publication. Before critique, I thought the heroine in my novel was completely likable, a sweet individual, who’d suffered some loss. For my critique partners, she had moved on too quickly from her loss, was a little unstable at times, and she just didn’t come across as the nice gal I wanted to depict, and once those flaws were pointed out to me, they glared from the page. Egad!

If I didn’t have critique partners to point that out, I shudder to think how my character’s life would have turned out.

An author does not want their first major criticism to come via an editor’s desk, provided after review of a submission. Joining with a critique partner or critique group can eliminate some of that criticism, and in the very least, it can help the author learn to accept criticism in a constructive way.


Happy editing.