Two things that need to take place before you can call your manuscript “POLISHED”.

1.) Proof Read and Edit: (P.R.A.E.)

Probably the most obvious of things to do before you can call your manuscript polished is Proof Reading and Editing or as I like to call it P.R.A.E. So you finally finished your master piece! You poured your heart, soul, blood, tears, sweat, and countless sleepless nights to achieve the feat but there it is! What a sense of relief, accomplishment, and pride and now you want to share it with the world. Let’s fire up those Beta readers and get this show on the road! Whoa easy now, down boy, or girl which ever you happen to be. Beta readers are an essential part of the polishing process, but you are jumping the gun! Before we approach those wonderful beta readers we save them some eye sores by editing our own work first. Sure you wrote the story but have you sat down and READ it? If you answered no you need to take a step back, take a deep breath, and put on your reading cap.

So proof reading is when you sit and go through your manuscript to fix the obvious mistakes that jump out at you. Trust me if you catch them on the first read through, everyone else would have too!  You read through, make all the corrections as you go. Then when you are done you do it again only this time read the manuscript aloud because more often than not the ear will catch what the eye tends to miss. Now me personally I do these two steps until I can read through the entire manuscript without feeling like I have to change anything. Then and only then do I take it to the next level, because I have done all that I can do at this point in time to make it perfect!

2.) Bring on the Beta Readers: 

I cannot stress enough the importance of Beta readers. There are three types of beta readers that a writer should utilize in my opinion to get a wide range of feedback.

A.) The Stranger – This type of Beta reader is not for everyone. You will get the most straight forward feedback from this variety because there is no familiarity between you and the reader. These are the Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or pen pal type friends f you’ve never actually met! As a result they will be less inclined to, “Sugar Coat” what actually needs to be said about your writing in their opinion. This is mostly because they have absolutely nothing to lose for being brutally honest about your work. Opinions are just that OPINIONS and you can pick and choose what you want to consider. That being said I feel the need to mention that if you do go this route (and I do – often) Select three to four Beta Readers. If the same complaints or, “OPINIONS” keep resurfacing from your different readers you may want to revisit the issue they are talking about. Chances are there is some relevance there.

B.) The Acquaintance – This type of beta reader is what I like to refer to as middle of the road. They know of you and you of them but you are not exactly friends. These are your co-workers, your gym mates, church peers, your neighbors, your school mates, and your co soccer moms or dads (or whatever kind of sport parent you are if you’re a parent at all!) They will be a little nicer when they get into what about your work needs to be fixed. So they will more than likely tell you what is wrong without complete disregard to your feelings because let’s face it chances are they are going to run into you again at some point more than likely.

C.) The Friend or Family Member – This type of beta reader is someone in your inner circle and the most common go to when it comes to beta readers. These readers will be supportive and very conscious of how their comments make you feel, because lets face it, they love you or at the very least care about you.  As a general rule we try not to hurt those we love or care about. Ah but don’t lose heart, these types of beta readers are most definitely going to lean more on the grammar side of the corrections your manuscript needs to see. This is why I start with these types of beta readers. They help me to catch the basic errors I sometimes tend to miss like misspellings, comma misuse, and vocabulary used out of context.

I use all these types of beta readers when polishing my work to a shine and each stage of the beta reading process has its advantages. The bottom line is when you have so many eyes looking at you work you run less of a chance for errors. If there are any errors, and most times there will be, they will be few and far between. It doesn’t hurt to do the same thing for your synopsis and query letter.

Thanks for checking out my blog please feel free to comment and like. I post at least twice a week, all things literary. If there is a topic you would like to see more on let me know in the comments and I will research the topic and post the findings in a discussion here.