E.R. Yatscoff's Blog, page 20

More On Self-editing

Anne Enright puts it, 'Only bad writers think that their work is really good.'

A good tip to keep your story on track is doing a re-read.  After your terribly mangled first draft divide your story up into clumps of chapters.  Print out each section.  Why print?  I believe you can edit more comfortably by settling back in a chair and using a red pen for corrections.  Your story does look better on paper.  Keep track of each chapter and look for suspense, interest, exposition, etc.  In short summarize.  Your story should appear like a 'staircase' graph, that is slowly going up the risers (suspense, adventure) and flattening out to give readers a breather (tread).  A peak/valley graph works well with high points being the suspense/adventure/ excitement and the valleys occur developing the story or moving it along. This can develop your pace and flow.  Many detective stories do this.  As the evidence comes in they have to analyze it, theorize, and plan their next moves.  My firefighter mystery has the fire captain and arson investigator doing this.

Re-reading also reinforces many things in your mind such as chronological order, names, and titles. It also keeps track of things you may have overlooked or forgotten in your hasty 1st draft: I thought they were there in the day, was it a blue car?  did she have on a necklace?

You really should do this because you will find stuff.  You don't want readers tripping over speed bumps.

Best-selling novelist Michael Crichton (The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park) said,"Books are not written, they're re-written."

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A new short story for your Christmas gift

My Big Christmas Tree is just posted a new short story in time for Christmas.  Check it out tat he Read Me tab.

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10 Rules to Self-Editing – Basic 1st draft editing – The First 5

Congratulations!  You've finished writing your novel. You should be proud of the accomplishment.  Everyone wants to write a book, but few actually put pen to paper and try.  But just hold on there.  I'm going to spoil your day and I won't apologize.  Actually, you've only written a 1st draft.  It's probably an unreadable mess.  Can you fix it yourself?  Should you?  If you don't care enough about your work to properly edit it, you deserve whatever bad reviews you get.  These reviews will haunt you, staying online for a long, indeterminate time.  With traditional publishers and agents you are giving them ammo to shoot you in the head and putting you out of their mystery.

Self-editing a first draft is like representing yourself in court.  A writer who edits him/herself has a fool for a client.  You don't have an overall view of the case yet, you can't possibly be objective, you will internalize too much thereby driving yourself and everyone else crazy, and will probably incriminate yourself.

Asking friends and relatives to edit your work is a bad idea; they're not qualified and they won't be honest with you because hurting your feelings is not what they want to do.  However; if you do ask for their opinion they will love your work thereby providing encouragement to your ego.  Editing is hard work but must be done.  I'm sure you'll still find errors in my eBooks but they'll be minor and won't interfere with the flow.

RULE # 1- Finished the 1 st draft?  Wonderful.  Every writer and writer guide will tell you to put your feet up and stow your manuscript for at least a month.  It's good advice.  Give your prose some thought, an overall big picture thought from start to finish.  Better yet, don't give it any thought.  You must resist and not go back to it.

RULE #2-  Writing is a creative process.  You do not need distractions of any sort.  Turn off Spell Check and Grammar Check.  Let your mind go and it will take you on a journey. If you use a pencil,  a mechanical one keeps the lead flowing along with your words.  Writing is an art and the art is drawing the readers into your world seamlessly with all the imagery, dialogue, and characters that inhabit it.  It is essentially, painting a picture for a blind person.  Editing gets rid of speed bumps providing a smooth ride for readers.

RULE # 3- Do not show your 1st draft to anyone.  This includes my writers group.  Don't bring us 1st drafts.  They are ugly because it's the nature of the beast.  The art is in the editing: adding color, characters, imagery, sharp dialogue, pace, structure, tension, etc..  If you are bursting with pride that you actually completed a novel and prematurely spring it on some unsuspecting reader your ego risks an ass-kicking.  And deservedly so because it's likely crap.  This will depress you and provide a too-easy excuse for giving up.

RULE #4- Go on the offensive.  It gives me great pleasure to attack little words like was.  You should now be prepared to spend time using your word search.  When you search with the following words you should have them automatically highlighted in color.  As you scroll along through your work look for concentrations of colors and reduce accordingly.  Search for was by using the word find option.  You can replace probably 70% of them by restructuring sentences.  An example of not attacking was can be seen in a sample download here:  http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/15808/4/illegal-fun-under-the-sun

"There were a lot of cops around but there was not much they could do. The teamster's position was that it was just a traffic accident and that the guns were legal"

Sorry about that, Chris, I gotta call you on this.  You got lazy.  I found a lot of other errors there, too.

There must be thousands in his story, this paragraph especially annoying: "I was living in this ratty little apartment with my high school girlfriend. It was the first place either one of us ever had and it was a real wakeup call. It was 1969. Jimmy Hendrix had just died and Janis was about to go, in the next year. Everyone who was anyone was getting high or so it seemed. The war in Vietnam was raging and I was seriously thinking of burning my draft card. It was a crazy time."

Yeah, it was crazy.  Do you really want family and friends to read something you wrote appear like this?  Come on, be a pro, show some class.  Show them you didn't write this on a serviette or on a Vietnamese sleeper bus.

RULE #5- Don't be intimidated.  You may have flopped in high school English but you didn't use Spell Check and Grammar Check there.  Technology makes it simple.

 

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10 Rules to Self-Editing – Basic 1st draft editing – The Last 5

Okay, if that wasn't enough work here's more:

RULE #6-  Put that in your cross-hairs.  That can usually be deleted outright without any replacements.  You will find hundreds of these demons.  My word find program in MS Word shows me how many I have.  I write down the amount and compare the body count at the end of the check.  I'm always amazed how many I've offed.

Rule #7-  Had needs killing, especially had been.  Last but not least, ly.  Readily, hopefully, hungrily, etc..  You probably can't eliminate all these, but have a look at them, especially two in the same sentence or paragraph.

RULE # 8- Sentence structure.  Search for and you'll find plenty of them.  By eliminating some you'll be forced to restructure sentences, ending up with sentences of varying lengths which look good and read well.   James Lee Burke is the only writer I know who can string together a quarter page of ands and get away with it.  Oddly, it works.

RULE # 9- Contractions.  Do not, would not, will not, can not, sound too formal.  Find not with a word search and cut them down with an apostrophe.  When people speak they usually say not for emphasis, otherwise it's contracted:  I would not go near that woman.

RULE # 10- Overall structure.  Be consistent on spacing between sentences, lines, paragraph indents, italics, and capitalizations.  Use the giant reverse P up in the formatting bar of MS word in the title bar. Proper structure is pleasing to the eye and flows better, especially if you can vary sentence length.  eBook readers are probably more tolerant of some improper capitalizations.

Now that you've accomplished all that work, read it aloud.  This should eliminate problems with pace and awkward phrasing.  Keep a calendar and timelines for your story.  Have some realistic expectations.  You can't be in Hawaii one day and the next day infiltrating Nth. Korea on a lark.  Only on TV's Hawaii 5-0 can this be done.  I turned it off.  Book 'em, Dano!  Even if you take your manuscript to an editor for a fee you'll pay less because you've already done some grunt work.

Do all these 10 rules yourself and you'll understand why professional editors charge so much–it takes time.  Simply destroying was and restructuring in a 100,000 word manuscript will take hours.  Think of editing as taking readers for a drive around your town.  You need to achieve various speeds (pacing and flow), obey signs (punctuation), show them the sights (imagery), talk to them about your town (dialogue), plot (a route), tension (radar traps, animals and kids running out in front of you), avoiding speed bumps (creates jarring prose requiring rereading the sentence) etc..

After completing these time-consuming tasks you'll be far ahead of where you were and in doing so will probably find other errors along the way to patch up.  Good luck.  It's not supposed to be fun.

 

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10 Rules to Self-Editing – Basic 1st draft editing – The First 5

Congratulations!  You've finished writing your novel. You should be proud of the accomplishment.  Everyone wants to write a book, but few actually put pen to paper and try.  But just hold on there.  I'm going to spoil your day and I won't apologize.  Actually, you've only written a 1st draft.  It's probably an unreadable mess.  Can you fix it yourself?  Should you?  If you don't care enough about your work to properly edit it, you deserve whatever bad reviews you get.  These reviews will haunt you, staying online for a long, indeterminate time.  With traditional publishers and agents you are giving them ammo to shoot you in the head and putting you out of their mystery.

Self-editing a first draft is like representing yourself in court.  A writer who edits him/herself has a fool for a client.  You don't have an overall view of the case yet, you can't possibly be objective, you will internalize too much thereby driving yourself and everyone else crazy, and will probably incriminate yourself.

Asking friends and relatives to edit your work is a bad idea; they're not qualified and they won't be honest with you because hurting your feelings is not what they want to do.  However; if you do ask for their opinion they will love your work thereby providing encouragement to your ego.  Editing is hard work but must be done.  I'm sure you'll still find errors in my eBooks but they'll be minor and won't interfere with the flow.

RULE # 1- Finished the 1 st draft?  Wonderful.  Every writer and writer guide will tell you to put your feet up and stow your manuscript for at least a month.  It's good advice.  Give your prose some thought, an overall big picture thought from start to finish.  Better yet, don't give it any thought.  You must resist and not go back to it.

RULE #2-  Writing is a creative process.  You do not need distractions of any sort.  Turn off Spell Check and Grammar Check.  Let your mind go and it will take you on a journey. If you use a pencil,  a mechanical one keeps the lead flowing along with your words.  Writing is an art and the art is drawing the readers into your world seamlessly with all the imagery, dialogue, and characters that inhabit it.  It is essentially, painting a picture for a blind person.  Editing gets rid of speed bumps providing a smooth ride for readers.

RULE # 3- Do not show your 1st draft to anyone.  This includes my writers group.  Don't bring us 1st drafts.  They are ugly because it's the nature of the beast.  The art is in the editing: adding color, characters, imagery, sharp dialogue, pace, structure, tension, etc..  If you are bursting with pride that you actually completed a novel and prematurely spring it on some unsuspecting reader your ego risks an ass-kicking.  And deservedly so because it's likely crap.  This will depress you and provide a too-easy excuse for giving up.

RULE #4-

Go on the offensive.  It gives me great pleasure to attack little words like was.  You should now be prepared to spend time using your word search.  When you search with the following words you should have them automatically highlighted in color.  As you scroll along through your work look for concentrations of colors and reduce accordingly.  Search for was by using the word find option.  You can replace probably 70% of them by restructuring sentences.  An example of not attacking was can be seen in a sample download here:  http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/15808/4/illegal-fun-under-the-sun

"There were a lot of cops around but there was not much they could do. The teamster's position was that it was just a traffic accident and that the guns were legal"

Sorry about that, Chris, I gotta call you on this.  You got lazy.  I found a lot of other errors there, too.

There must be thousands in his story, this paragraph especially annoying: "I was living in this ratty little apartment with my high school girlfriend. It was the first place either one of us ever had and it was a real wakeup call. It was 1969. Jimmy Hendrix had just died and Janis was about to go, in the next year. Everyone who was anyone was getting high or so it seemed. The war in Vietnam was raging and I was seriously thinking of burning my draft card. It was a crazy time."

Yeah, it was crazy.  Do you really want family and friends to read something you wrote appear like this?  Come on, be a pro, show some class.  Show them you didn't write this on a serviette or on a Vietnamese sleeper bus.

RULE #5- Don't be intimidated.  You may have flopped in high school English but you didn't use Spell Check and Grammar Check there.  Technology makes it simple.

Stay tuned for the next 5

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10 Myths on Writing eBooks for Children

Okay, so what qualifies me to do this?  My juvenile/middle grade eBooks have garnered good reviews and are well-edited due to writer workshops, my writers group, and exhaustive attention to detail.  Also, I have a website and you probably don't.  If you care to look at samples you'll find them at Smashwords and Kindle and most all the other eBook sites.

Myth#1 – It's easy to write a kid's ebook.  For me it is.  It's easy t for anyone to write a piece of unreadable garbage.  Everyone wants to be a writer but no one wants to put in the necessary work, lots of work.  The genre requires smaller books but the same character development, sharp dialogue, imaging, tension, etc., as adults but in a smaller framework.

Myth#2 -I've raised my kids, I'm a parent/teacher therefore qualified to write for kids.  Sure, I changed a flat tire last week so now I'm capable of swapping out my engine.  Your story, above all else is the vital ingredient.  After that it's how you put your story together.

Myth#3 – Writing for kids is a good way to get rich quick.  Unless you wrote a great book and a publisher decided to divert some of Jeff Kinney's marketing budget to your book–good luck. Publisher's and agents are closing doors tighter because eBook competition has cut into their sales.  Writing for the eBook sites means first of all, no marketing budget.  You've got to Tweet, Facebook, blog, and pass out business cards and try to get attention via a news release.  It's not easy.  Keep your day job.  I know author's who self-publish and sit at tables at community art and craft shows, festivals, farmer's markets, etc, but they have a hard copy book.  I wonder how it would go if I set up a table and sold my Smashwords coupon code to readers?

Myth#4 – Get an illustrator for my picture book manuscript.  It's tough slog getting a traditional publisher to read your book.  Remember, this is just step one.  Now you've thrown in illustrations that may or may not sink your work. Don't give them any excuse to toss your work into the garbage. Illustrations attract attention, a first look.  Are your illustrations good ones? Or will they turn readers away? One interesting tech advancement are eReaders that will display color.  I know that submitting simple text for eBooks can be a frustrating process.  What an image may do once its processed is anyone's guess.  I'd study this before jumping in.

Myth#5 – I should make my story rhyme.  It difficult enough creating an engaging story and now you're going to try and make it rhyme, too?  Go into a bookstore or browse on-line sites and see what's there.

#6 – Children's writing shouldn't use difficult words.  Yes and no.  Depending on the age group you're writing for you should adjust somewhat.  Don't ever use cutesy words.  You can always throw in a three or four syllable words here and there in younger readers, but don't make a habit of it.  Running for a dictionary interrupts reading. I think kids are better readers today because they are on the internet which is another reading area.  Don't 'dumb down' your writing.

#7 – You should have a moral or teach a lesson.    Forget it.  Kids already get crapped on from all angles.  Books are their escape.  Generally, any story you write will have its own morals/life lessons/ advice by default.  You can put in some of it, but do it subtly and cleverly.

#8 – A children's story can't have serious, weighty, or controversial subject matter.  Yes, they can.  Kids are playing video games where they see death and blood and gore and mayhem.  TV and movies have their share as well.  Blatant sexuality is in music videos and on websites they surf.   But wait, there's more: death and dying, physical illness and dementia, alternative lifestyles, divorce, and drug use, are already out there in books.  Many children are dealing with some of this subject matter .  When you write about they may see another way to cope with their issues.  I read a YA/Tween book which had so much swearing and crudity I nearly wrote the publisher.  The only way this book got published was because the author was an Indian 'reflecting Northern realities' and the literati was trying to encourage Indians to write books.  It was so bad and the worst piece of crap I've ever read.  Also, there was no story, just teens hanging out sniffing gas and doing drugs, and beating each other up.

#9 - When in trouble get an adult to bail out my main  character.  My favorite and worth a rant.  Your character must succeed or fail due to their own efforts. Having adults in the story is almost unavoidable, perhaps to provide advice.  In Archie's Gold, I have Lyle Raintree, an Indian ex-con, giving advice to Archie about where the feared Boogie lives, but Lyle doesn't lead him any further.  When your character has a problem, conflict, or obstacle your young readers emphasize with it and realize they too, can work out their real-life problems. This only works out if you write reality stories like I do.  You can't use a magic wand in real life to dispel your issues.  It's too easy for characters in fantasy to get out of their situations with devices of spells and wands and friendly creatures.  I tried writing a story with a talking creature and I ended up killing it off because it became so annoying.  It did however; taste quite good.

#10 -  Children will read almost anything.  Not really.  The market now is saturated with fantasy.  This puts me in the background because I write true grit and reality.  My characters get in trouble and have to resolve it on their own.  As a writer in the genre you have to compete against rock videos, TV, video games, etc.  so many things that are exciting and have also reduced attention spans.  Adult readers will tolerate a slow beginning to develop a plot.  For the children's genre you've got to jump in feet first, right now.

Over and above everything, write an engaging story.  The classic children's stories endure because of characters and story.

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Writing eBooks for Children

Okay so you're ready to write for the juvenile/middle grade market with a head full of ideas.  How you go about this is essentially up to you.  There are rules and rules are broken every few years.  Presently, the genre is saturated with fantasy and horror.  Thank heavens for Diary Of A Wimpy Kid series.  I have written 5 juvies and am working on the 6th.  Two are at various eBook providers and the others mentioned on my website.  I never did write them thinking of the market.  I wrote them as I saw them through a boy's eyes, living and breathing them.  One nearly turned into an adult story until I toned it down.  How did I do this?  I gave the subplot somewhat less importance and took out some harder edges, and not because I had to.  I still want children to be children.  For a time the Young Adult market was really suffering.  Seemed all there was available was the Sweet Valley High series and stories about a child whose parents are divorced (or going through one) being farmed out to grandparents  and learning life lessons.  Boring to tears.  Then E.L. Stine saved readers with his Goosebumps series and all of  it's copy-cats.  Then Harry Potter came and its copy cats.  Now we have the Twilight and Hunger Games books.  They are getting gorier and there is a lot more bloodletting.   J.K. Rowling's  Harry Potter proves one can do without the gore.

From what I've seen in the genre almost anything goes.  A first time young native writer from Northern Canada wrote a book about glue-sniffing and drug-taking, etc, in his town  There is so much swearing I could barely read the thing, never mind that the story went absolutely nowhere.  But he was a native and therefore pandered to by the literati in Canada.  I think the book may have won some award–and not one for crudity.  Then came the recent  Go The F*K To Sleep which isn't really written for children but they may find the copy laying around the house.  I also watched a commercial which said,  "…freaking crazy…" which was a first on the tube for an ad I think.

On of my eBooks, Archie's Gold is a mystery.  Archie's friends are ex-cons and criminals and street people.  I thought about making it rougher, but figured I made the mean streets mean enough.

So just write your book and see how it ends up.  Don't make your decision until the first draft is done. Don't let anything interfere with your creative process.  You are your own moral compass and will ultimately decide what you want to expose children to.  Unfortunately, eBooks have no gatekeepers so the reins on writers are very loose.

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Loneliness of the writer

When writing, your only friend is yourself.  It can't be helped.  You empty your mind onto a page or screen, attempting to portray your world for others to see.  Setting rules for yourself is a good start: no distractions, no spell/grammar check function on, etc.  And especially being in the mood to write.  Sitting in front of a blank page or screen with no idea in your head is probably a waste of time.  I used to carry a notepads in my jackets and coats to jot down ideas that came to me when I walked or drove around.  It was my 'madman's diary'.  If I died and someone went through my pockets for ID they'd open this up and proclaim me insane as it was full of my own shorthand, scribbles, and references to other sections I 'd already written.

First drafts are ugly because they're supposed to be.  If you let anyone read them you're asking for an ass-kicking.  Writing one page is a start, but not to be confused with writing a letter.  Writing a first draft of a book is an accomplishment that very few people do.  Crack the bubbly.  Now comes the hard work of editing.  Join an online critiquing site or a writers group in your area.  You need feedback, advice on everything from plot, theme, characters, dialogue, chronological order, structure, etc.  If you think you can do this on your own, forget it–you probably can't.   Next week I'll let you in on some self-editing you can accomplish alone.

With eBooks many writers have skipped this process and posted their work for sale.  It's up to readers to download the samples and trash the offenders by posting negative reviews.  These reviews stay on the site forever.  You simply can't hide bad editing.

Like the musician playing in the basement or the kid sitting in the car revving the engine, if you want some validation you have to put it in gear, play with someone.  If you don't then you become a legend in your own mind.  When I played drums in a big band  I was always trying to recruit good players to come out to one of our practices, sit in and have some fun.  I'd meet a few people (dare I call them musicians?) with great equipment who said they can play this and that, and go on how good they are, blah, blah, blah, and make their own CDs to listen to themselves even more.  These people wouldn't dare expose themselves to others, test their talent, and get into the dynamics with another musician.  Music is very challenging and skill levels are always tested in many aspects, but not in a basement.  They are deluding themselves.

As a writer, if you intend to take yourself seriously, you have to expose your work to others.  Self-editing is a dumb idea, as is getting critiqued by non-qualified relatives who won't dare hurt your feelings.

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Amazon or Kindle?

Since my books are eBooks they appear on Kindle eBooks, as Amazon has eBooks and hard copies.

Old Flames eBook Giveaway Information Update

Hello Everyone,

Now that many of you have the promotional copy of Old Flames, please post a review/comment on the Amazon Kindle or Smashword site. I mean, that was the whole idea.

There is a sequel to Old Flames, named Gerry's War  now available with many of the same characters and some dangerous new ones.  If your interested on more information, join the Facebook group for updates and maybe another eBook giveaway. Take a look at the short stories on this website as well. The author's other books on Smashwords.

 

 

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