R. Chapman's Blog - Posts Tagged "editing"
My Husband the Author
So, about 5 years ago, my husband started to write a science fiction book for relaxation. He always told me he had a story in his head from when he was younger but was not confident enough to write it down. So after many years and finding the right writing tool he finally sat down to write and boy did he write. He wrote over 170,000 words for the first book for his trilogy.
He was wordy and overly over the top and repeated himself immensely. We had an editor look over the story to see if it was any good. Feedback came back as positive but needed a ton of work to make it readable. Best advise was to have me help him edit his work and make it more concise and then to resubmit it.
Well, its been some time since that beginning. I learned how to edit a book by asking advice and reading articles online. He learned to take criticism from me and to add dialog and not to use 'that' everywhere. While his first book is still being edited, he completed the trilogy and even added a fourth book. Each book is better and better as we both have learned how to write and edit.
Meanwhile, he found inspiration for his latest book The Dwarf, The Dead and The FBI. A bit a departure from the world of science fiction but a genre he was still comfortable in. He even stopped me from editing the first book to work on this one. While horror is not my thing I did my job and read the book and found that I could kept reading it. I was amazed at how well this book's flow was. But as always I had to go back and edit the book, find the flaws, fix the grammar and still miss stuff in the end.
We are very proud of our book and what it represents. Not just a story but of our journey into writing and editing. I still encourage him to keep writing and he is again back into his favorite genre of science fiction. I still hope that he may one day do a follow up book to the Dwarf, despite my disliking horror.
Please follow us for more updates and feel free to ask any questions. Thank you! Tanya
He was wordy and overly over the top and repeated himself immensely. We had an editor look over the story to see if it was any good. Feedback came back as positive but needed a ton of work to make it readable. Best advise was to have me help him edit his work and make it more concise and then to resubmit it.
Well, its been some time since that beginning. I learned how to edit a book by asking advice and reading articles online. He learned to take criticism from me and to add dialog and not to use 'that' everywhere. While his first book is still being edited, he completed the trilogy and even added a fourth book. Each book is better and better as we both have learned how to write and edit.
Meanwhile, he found inspiration for his latest book The Dwarf, The Dead and The FBI. A bit a departure from the world of science fiction but a genre he was still comfortable in. He even stopped me from editing the first book to work on this one. While horror is not my thing I did my job and read the book and found that I could kept reading it. I was amazed at how well this book's flow was. But as always I had to go back and edit the book, find the flaws, fix the grammar and still miss stuff in the end.
We are very proud of our book and what it represents. Not just a story but of our journey into writing and editing. I still encourage him to keep writing and he is again back into his favorite genre of science fiction. I still hope that he may one day do a follow up book to the Dwarf, despite my disliking horror.
Please follow us for more updates and feel free to ask any questions. Thank you! Tanya
