Don't cut corners

Most people are quite happy to throw their spare cash wantonly on whatever whim they feel like, be it clothes, beers, cigarettes, eating out, entertainment ... yet for some reason, when it comes to self-publishing, suddenly people "can't afford" editing, proofreading, decent cover design, formatting ... can't afford to pay to advertise, can't afford to do pretty much anything, in other words.

From reading many writers forums you'd be forgiven for believing that all self-published writers are poverty-stricken, bridge dwellers who have to make daily decisions between which they need most, coffee or cigarettes.

Of course some might be one step away from the dole queue, but most aren't. Most have exactly the same amount of disposable income as anyone else, but when it comes to putting money into their books there seems to be an unnatural aversion to it.

Why?

Perhaps because it is possible to self-publish for free, many writers think that spending money on it is money wasted. Perhaps they don't feel their work is deserving of it. Or perhaps, like I did when I started out, they feel that they don't need to. They think they're good enough to carry it all by themselves.

A few days ago I got this review -

Not a bad story, shame about lack of a definitive ending to allow the sequals.

Does need a bit of proofing with a few words missing (but you can tell what is implied) and a few plurals missing their S.

Don't get me started on the comment - there's no more a cliffhanger in that book than there is in Star Wars, and I've never seen anyone complain about that. Nor that the review was posted by an indie author who managed to spell the world "sequel" wrong, but whatever. What's important is that if you cut corners in the beginning it will come back to haunt you.

I'm an English teacher by profession. I'm halfway through a MSc in Linguistics. I felt I could catch anything, felt I didn't need anyone to help me.

Wrong.

Tube Riders, the book in question, has since had a paid professional edit and I'm quite confident there are none of the errors the reviewer talks about. However, since I was stupid enough to go the Amazon KDP Select free promos route for a while (against my better judgement and something that, for novels at least, I now regret) there are some 8000 copies of Tube Riders out there in various states of repair.

Freebie hunters are notorious for not reading the books they horde, but at any point such a review could jump up and bite me. And while genuine readers rarely mention actually textual errors, indie author "reviewers", the bane of new writers everywhere, take an almost sadistic pride in pointing out the errors of their fellow writers.

It doesn't matter that Tube Riders is now in good shape. That review is up there and there's nothing I can do about it. I'm not about to start adding "newly corrected version" at the top of my book listings page because there's nothing that screams "amateur!" louder.

However, if I'd been wise enough not to trust myself in the first place and got a paid edit of Tube Riders done before I first published it, I wouldn't be in this position.

So, think about it before you put your masterpiece out into the world for public criticism. You don't have to pay a fortune - the edit for Tube Riders cost me about $200 - but getting a professional pair of eyes to look over it can make all the difference. I might never know how many readers have been turned off by reading such reviews about Tube Riders, but I do know is that it would have been easy to avoid getting those reviews in the first place.

Don't cut corners.

Chris Ward
July 5th 2013

Some things I think about when I revise

I'm currently two thirds of the way through the first revision of my next novel, Tube Riders: Exile. The first revision is generally the hardest, because that's where you come up against all the plot holes and stuff. While revising, I mostly concentrate on getting the writing tight as well as a smooth rhythm and the correct tone. However, while I do it I make a list of all the things I need to go back and look at later.

Of course, for those of you who've read Tube Riders, you'll know that it is a masterpiece of dystopian fiction :-). However, it had issues. Here are some of the issues I've made a note of during my revision of Exile, just so you can see that in first draft form my books are a long way from the wonderfully polished articles that are available for sale.

(of course all names have been edited out to avoid spoilers)

Change the (character)'s weapon?

(name)/other characters regard (character) as “it” but from (character)'s POV they become “he”.

Check heaven/god/hell etc for capital usage

Where did (name)'s contact lenses go?

Where did (name)/(name)'s guns go between watching the (character) and coming out of the tunnel?

French police titles

God damn or goddamn

Try to edit out ‘for a moment/second’

(name)'s burn is on the right

(name)'s eyes are blue

Try to edit out ‘just a few metres’

(name) is a British (thing) so why does he need a French translation?

Check rapid/rabid

Some interesting stuff in there. Some of it is really basic typo stuff, like rapid/rabid. It's very easy to get words like these mixed up, which is where proofreaders come in. Another I always check for is scarring/scaring, and one my proofreader found was lopped/loped. Make a long list of these as you find them and find/replace to get rid of them.

Things like "French police titles" are a worldbuilding detail. Most of Exile is set in France, so I want it to be as authentic as possible. I have been there a number of times, but I know nothing about the French police (thank God) or military.

The notes about "blue eyes" and "burns" are consistency details. As a general rule I don't go into a great deal of death over character detail. Some writers do, but I find it incredibly boring and for the most part irrelevant. Same with clothing. However, when you do use it, you have to make sure it's the same throughout. If a character has a birthmark on the right side of their face, it better not be on the left five chapters later. Unless it's a fake one, of course ...

There are a couple of notes on overused phrases. For me these are usually time/distance - "For a moment", "a few metres away", etc. If you repeat them too often they become boring so I always try to edit some of them out.

The note about a French translation is a character inconsistency. For example, when you have French characters, there has to be a reason why they can speak in English. Of course they can learn, but why did they learn? You don't have to write it all out in detail, but it should be obvious or implied by the plot.

"God damn vs goddamn" and the note on capitalization of "heaven/hell" etc, is a style thing. I see both used, and the reason I've highlighted these notes are because they need to be consistent, one way or the other. You can vary them if used in speech by two or more different characters, but not if they're used in the general narrative. Pick one, stick to it.

The notes about guns and contact lenses are simple plot holes. In one chapter a character is holding a gun, then two chapters later the gun has disappeared. Where did it go? These are all things you need to pick up and fix. My books are full of things like this because I don't write a detailed outline, just a few notes on each chapter. However, within two or three revisions they're usually fixed.

Anyway, that's just a little insight into my writing process. And on that note, I'd better get back to it ...

Chris Ward

May 14th 2013

An example of paragraph revision

For today’s “class” I thought I would give you a little example of the kind of things I do when I revise. Generally, when I write a first draft, while I do write a complete story I often don’t worry so much about how I write something as just getting the story down. When I come to revise it’s rare that I don’t change at least one or two words in every paragraph.

Tonight I was doing some first draft revising of Exile and made quite a few changes to one particular paragraph and thought I’d give you a few pointers as to why. (I also picked this paragraph because it doesn’t have any spoilers!).

Here’s the original paragraph –

He had never more strongly felt the urge to turn and walk away than he did now. The Tube Riders had been forced on the run by the DCA and the Huntsmen but none of it had been a personal choice, they had done only what they needed to do to survive. What he wanted to do now was forget everything, find his brother and keep running, keep heading south, heading away from all this. Europe was a big place, one that by all accounts was at peace, so if they could avoid the French army long enough they would surely find somewhere to shelter them, away from the Huntsmen’s reach.
(111 words)

And here’s what I did to it –

The urge to turn and walk away was as strong as it had ever been. The Tube Riders had been forced to go on the run by the Department of Civil Affairs, and they had done only what they needed to do to survive. What he wanted to do now was forget everything, find his brother and keep running, keep heading south. Europe was a big place, and one that Lionel had told him was at peace, so if they could avoid the French army long enough they would surely find somewhere to hide, away from the Huntsmen’s reach.
(99 words)

For a start it’s a little shorter. This wasn’t an intention, but that I’ve dropped the equivalent of a sentence while making it more concise will help it to flow better.

Now, to focus on some specific lines –

He had never more strongly felt the urge to turn and walk away than he did now.

become
The urge to turn and walk away was as strong as it had ever been.

mainly because I thought “more strongly” was clunky and ugly, plus I wanted “the urge to turn and walk away” to come at the beginning as the subject. While this is a passive structure, I don’t really care at this point. Chances are in the second revision it’ll end up as “Paul felt the urge to turn and walk away”, but one thing at a time. For now it’ll do.

The Tube Riders had been forced on the run by the DCA and the Huntsmen but none of it had been a personal choice, they had done only what they needed to do to survive.

became

The Tube Riders had been forced to go on the run by the Department of Civil Affairs, and they had done only what they needed to do to survive.

For a number of reasons. I changed “on the run” to “go on the run” to make it clearer, but this again may revert in the next draft. I haven’t decided yet. I changed the DCA from the abbreviation because I wanted it to have more impact than just the three letters, while I cut “and the Huntsmen” because it was inaccurate – in book one the Huntsmen are sent after the Tube Riders after they go on the run, they aren’t a cause. And I cut “but none of it …” because it was kind of obvious anyway and unnecessary here.

In the last section,

What he wanted to do now was forget everything, find his brother and keep running, keep heading south, heading away from all this. Europe was a big place, one that by all accounts was at peace, so if they could avoid the French army long enough they would surely find somewhere to shelter them, away from the Huntsmen’s reach.

I made a few more changes, to make it like this –

What he wanted to do now was forget everything, find his brother and keep running, keep heading south. Europe was a big place, and one that Lionel had told him was at peace, so if they could avoid the French army long enough they would surely find somewhere to hide, away from the Huntsmen’s reach.
I cut “heading away from all this”, because I felt it was repetitive, and didn’t add anything new to the previous clause. I changed “by all accounts” to “Lionel had told him” because I felt that “by all accounts” was clichéd and vague. (Lionel, btw, is a relatively minor character in part 2).

So there you have it. The second paragraph is far from perfect but it's a big improvement on the first. This is just an example of the kind of things I think about when I revise. My books usually get two to three revisions before I start thinking about sending them to other people. Some paragraphs will survive intact, others are completely overhauled, and some are cut completely.

I hope you find this information useful. As always, any comments are welcome.

Chris Ward

May 4th 2013

Eight basic formatting tips

I’m not going to go into hardcore details about page numbering and headers/footers, etc, because basically I’m no good at that kind of technical stuff. Recently I’ve seen a few manuscripts and looked at some books on Amazon and a few things have jumped out. These are also things I found out the hard way. As always, this blog is written from personal experience so that you won’t have to suffer the same pitfalls that I did.

1. Justify your text. It’s not a school report. Make it look like a book.

2. Never underline titles or chapter headings. It’s just not necessary, and again, there’s that school report thing. Be careful about using bold either - although I use it very occasionally for things like the Table of Contents header. Don’t use it in-text unless it’s for something specific like a letter that the character is reading.

3. Only use one space between sentences. This is mostly for paperbacks because when you upload to Amazon it defaults to one space anyway, but in paperbacks those spaces will suddenly appear huge when the text justifies. Trust me, I know.

4. Don’t use tab or spacebar to make indents. They might look fine in Word but some programs will screw around with them when you upload. Again, I’m speaking from personal experience. Set an indent of 1.5 or 2 spaces, no more. Don't go any bigger because while it’ll look fine in Word, if you view it on something small like an iPhone your indents will be halfway across the page.

5. Make sure there are no extra spaces at the end of the last sentence in a paragraph. Turn on your Word “show symbols” button to check. One space might be enough to carry over to the next line and then you’ve got what looks like a scene break in the middle of your narrative. Remember, it might look okay in Word but there are dozens of different e-readers out there in many different sizes and your book will look different on all of them.

6. Use a hash symbol / star / “and” symbol to indicate scene breaks. You don’t have to do this - this is my personal choice, but it’s cover in case of number 5 happening. Scene breaks are therefore easily identifiable. However …

7. … don’t put a hash symbol / star / “and” symbol at the end of a chapter. I originally did this in Tube Riders and I had random pages with just the hash tag at the top because it had carried over on to a new page. It’s not going to kill anyone but it looks kind of stupid.

8. Keep your fonts small for titles and chapter headings. Having 36-size font for your title might look awesome in Word but it’ll look rubbish on a little e-reader when it doesn’t fit on one page. You need no more than 14-size for titles, while keep your text at 10 - 12. Remember, you can adjust the size on an e-reader so keep the sizes on your original document close together so that people with poor eyesight don’t have your title spanning fourteen different pages.

Remember, simple is best. If you can afford a fancy formatter to make it look awesome, that’s great, but trying to make it look fancy yourself with lots of interesting fonts and huge-sized titles is just asking for trouble. Been there, done that, learned the hard way. Now I’m passing on my failings to you so you can avoid them.

If you want more information, go to Smashwords and check out the free style guide. A lot of writers whine about Smashwords for whatever reason but that guide really helped me pull my socks up, and even if you're not going to use the site itself there is a lot of useful information there about how to get your formatting right.

Chris Ward

29th April 2013

Knowing what words to cut

Very quick one for you today. I was working on my new horror novel this morning and I wrote this sentence -

"He took the frozen ready-meal from the freezer and put it into the microwave."

One word is utterly redundant in this sentence. Can you spot it?

Easy, eh.

Of course it's frozen.

Why?

Because if it's in a freezer what other possible state could it be in? Of course I cut it. Noob writers or those that haven't been edited (or edited by someone worth paying, there are plenty of those sharks about) are easy to spot because they write things like -

"He nodded his head."

Think of one other thing you nod. Go on, go.

Nothing?

Exactly. It could be worse - you could have written something as ridiculous as he "he looked at the clock to tell the time".

I'm not saying that there aren't other reasons to look at a clock - it might be an antique, or it might contain a bomb. In those cases you would specify why he looked at the clock, but if it's for the obvious reason of knowing the time, you're wasting words and your reader's energy (and time, ho hum) by including it.

Watch out for these.

Chris Ward
18th April 2013