Checking for spaces

From The Blood Red Pencil

For those writers who will be sending manuscripts electronically at any time during the submission or publication process, there is one more little housekeeping chore to be done: eliminate extra spaces and other formatting errors inadvertently added to the manuscript.

On your Microsoft Word toolbar there is an icon that looks like the editing symbol for new paragraphs. If you click on that icon, your text will indicate spaces in your work as dots. You may have a perfectly formatted manuscript, but if you are an old-style typist like me, you’ll probably find a lot of extra spaces at the end of paragraphs and sometimes at the end of sentences within paragraphs.

Since many manuscripts are now submitted electronically, and publishers/editors often require print-ready formatting from the authors at some point in the process, it’s wise to add this step to your self-editing procedures.

If your publisher wants one space after a period instead of two (common when using fonts other than Courier New), first use the Find/Replace function to search out two spaces and replace with one.

After that, check every page of the manuscript and eliminate extra spaces, being careful not to delete periods. Click on the icon again to hide the formatting symbols.

Note that page breaks, hidden text, paragraph, and indent or tab characters will also be visible and may be added, corrected, or deleted in this final editing step.

Love

6 sure-fire ways to make an editor love you (from http://blog.writersdigest.com/norules)

• Ask questions about the business.
• Ask what you can do to make your book or project or idea more successful.
• Ask about the publisher's strengths and weaknesses, and where your help can really make a difference.
• Share your action plan for marketing and promotion, and ask the publisher for specific things where they can meaningfully and realistically help you (usually things you know they've done to assist other authors).
• Ask for examples or models of what other authors have done that have led to success.
• Communicate, communicate, communicate. (Do not hide out, do not point fingers, do not blame.)

Advice

Be passionate. Be persistent.

Advice for the Non-Published

If you're still unpublished: (From http://blog.writersdigest.com/norules)

• Begin to establish your online presence (site, blog, social networks) and develop relationships with your target readership as well as opinion makers who recommend books. Make a dream list of online venues where you'd want your book reviewed or mentioned; start cultivating relationships with those sites or people.
• Identify groups or organizations that would be most interested in your book, and start a database of e-mail addresses and snail mail addresses. For instance, let's say your book is going to appeal to surfers. Develop a contact list of every surf shop and club.
• As you write and revise your work, think of ancillary materials or products that complement the work. Think of competitions or giveaways or fun diversions that would be interesting to someone who enjoys the book. In the future of publishing—which will not be restricted to paper—ancillary materials and experiences can add value, appeal, and something special to your work.

Laying out your novel

REVISION TIP #3 From http://halseanderson.livejournal.com/

Many people struggle to find a way to look at the larger picture of their novel. They can line edit a page or take a chapter to their writer's group, but managing the unwieldy novel is hard.

Here is what I do.

1. Get the largest piece of paper you can find. I go to an art supply store and buy an enormous artist's pad for this task.

2. You need to carve out three hours of concentration time. Turn off the internet and phone. Loan your dog and children and partner to nice people who will return them fed and watered after the the three hours. Chain off the driveway so delivery trucks and friendly people who don't understand what you mean when you say "I'm working" can't drop in.

3. On one of your massive sheets of paper, list every chapter in your book. Describe the action in the chapter in one sentence.

4. Now prepare a separate action list. (This one will take up a couple of sheets of paper. (Did I mention that you 'll need to clear off the kitchen table for this? And maybe the floor?) This list will break down each chapter into the scenes. Keep it brief! F. Ex.: "MC (main character) drops homework in fish tank. Fish die. MC hides them in flower vase. Mother sees them and flips out."

5. (This is the fun part) With a colored pen or pencil, go through the detailed chapter list and make notes about the emotional arc of your MC and the important secondary characters. Also, make sure that changes in mood are properly motivated, and that conflicts are set up. You might use different colors to represent different plot elements.

6. The threads of your novel are laid out in front of you. Step back and study it. Do your characters have reasonable emotional responses to the actions in the chapters? Do the building levels of conflict appear in the right order? (I often move scenes around at this stage.) Which scenes and/or chapters can you completely remove from the story without affecting anything else? What characters can you eliminate? Do you have any characters that can be combined because they serve the same purpose in the story. (I do this a lot.)

7. By the end of this process, your papers will be covered with notes, stickies and lots of colored arrows.

8. Sit down with the giant map of your novel and apply the changes to your manuscript. I like to do this on a hard copy first, then type in the changes.

9. Don't forget to unchain the driveway and let your loved ones back in.

Book Proposal--the section on competition

From Chip MacGregor.com
What you want to do is to find a handful of titles (normally about three to seven) that are similar to your proposed book.

In your proposal, you want to list the title, author, publisher, and release date. You need to give some indication of what the sales were (that will take a bit of research). You want to explain very briefly how that book is similar to your own. And, in many cases, you want to offer a short explanation of how your proposed book is different.

Some traps to avoid:

Don't pick a book that has sold more than 250,000 copies. Ifyou've writing a juvie book and compare it to Harry Potter, you're going to look stupid ("Rowling sold a bazillion copies, so I can too!"). Anything that has sold that many copies isn't a competitor, it's a conqueror. Ignore it and use something else.

Don't pick a book that has sold twelve copies. That suggests to the editor that "nobody cares about this topic." Hey, the writing of books is endless. If there has never been a successful book on the United States Parrot Importation Act, there's probably a reason.

Don't ignore the obvious successes. If you're doing a military historical novel on the Battle of Gettysburg, it would be pretty dumb to leave off Michael Shaara's Killer Angels. That sends the message to the editor that you don't really know your field.

Don't make snarky comments about each book. I often see that, and it's annoying to have some unpublished wannabe send me something that says, "THIS book was successful, but it's not nearly as good as mine" and "THIS book sold 100,000 copies, but the author made mistakes in his chronology." A comparative analysis section isn't a review of everything on the market -- it's simply a vehicle for helping the editor know how to position your particular title.

Don't guess if you use one of the publisher's own books. In other words, if you're going to send something to Little, Brown, and you want to use Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian as a comparable title, make sure you have all your facts correct. Because you'll look like a bonehead if you state the book came out in 2oo2, the author's name was "Kosovo," and sales were about 50,000. (All of those facts are wrong.)

Do use a publisher's own titles. If you have a Jane Austen-like novel that you're trying to sell to Harvest House, by all means reference their Debra White Smith titles. (She wrote modern updates of the Austen novels, and they did well for Harvest House.) It will immediately help them understand the audience for your project.

Again, the goal here is to help a publisher get a frame of reference for your book. It's a way of stating, "My book is similar to these five titles, that have all seen success in the marketplace. There is clearly interest in this type of book, and your house has done well with this genre in the past." You're basically making the editor's job easy for him or her. It won't be the deciding factor in whether or not they publish your book (for that I suggest you come up with a good story and some great writing), but it helps move your proposal along. One less reason for them to say no.

Checking for redundancy

1. Don’t say the same thing two or more different ways (unless you have a conscious and valid reason for doing so).

2. Don’t tell us what a character is going to say before she says it.

3. Don’t tell us what a character said after he says it.

4. Don’t use ten words to tell us something you can effectively say in three words.

From The Blood-Red Pencil

Setting up your manuscript

From Blood-Red Pencil http://bloodredpencil.blogspot.com
GENERICS

•Use letter-sized white paper – 20 lb.
•1″ margins all around.
•These days, most use Times New Roman, 12-point font, but there is nothing wrong with using Courier. Avoid sans serif fonts; those are fonts without feet, such as Arial.


COVER PAGE

•In the upper left hand corner, you’ll put the following information: full name, address, phone number, and e-mail address, and word count.
•Space down to nearly 1/3 to 1/2 of the page and center the title of your book, then the word “by,” and then your name. Here’s a PDF example of a cover page -http://shonbacon.com/sample-cover.pdf
•If you have an agent, his/her contact information will go in the bottom right hand corner of the cover page.


THE STORY

•Double space throughout.
•Use a ragged right margin – in order words, do not full justify your manuscript.
•In the header, on the left hand side, you will place your last name and book title (or partial book title) and on the right hand side, the page number.
•Though you will be tempted to do this, do not place copyright information on your novel; do not let fear of theft make you do it!
•Place chapter headings about 3 double-spaces down the page, centered and place two to three double-spaces between the chapter heading and the start of the chapter.
•Indent every paragraph – and this seems nonsensical, but I’ve read manuscripts that have not been indented, I’ve read manuscripts where writers literally hit the space bar five times, and I’ve read manuscripts where the author uses the TAB button, which usually moves the cursor a half-inch in. Personally, I hit the TAB. It’s easier for me, and I don’t have to remember to go 1,2,3,4,5 every time I make a paragraph. Besides, this is the age of computers; why manually do anything when you can configure the word processing program to do it for you?

Self-Editing One Step at a Time: Fine-Tuning Sentence Structure

From The Blood-Red Pencil

During this part of the self-editing process you will look at the structure of your individual sentences and then compare that structure to the surrounding paragraphs and pages. The purpose of this exercise is to:

1. Look for sentences which are too long.

Bad: The day I walked down the hill from my apartment to the town center was the day I began my adventure in Tourettes-sur-Loup, a village in the South of France which is famous for its spring festival of violets and perches on the edge of a cliff as though hanging on for its very life.

Better: The day I walked down the hill from my apartment to the town center was the day I began my adventure in the South of France. I was in Tourettes-sur-Loup, a village famous for its spring festival of violets. It perches on the edge of a cliff as though hanging on for its very life.

2. Find awkward sentences that might require a second reading to be clear. This may require correctly punctuating the sentence, or the sentence may need to be rewritten.

Bad: I rounded the corner and bumped into the old woman on my bicycle.

What I meant to say: I rounded the corner on my bicycle and bumped into the old woman.

3. Spot series of sentences with the same or similar structure within a paragraph or on the same page.

Look at the subjects of the sentences in each paragraph. Then check out the subject/verb/object set. Vary sentence structure wherever appropriate.

One good sentence containing a series of three might be very effective. Seven or eight sentences containing a series of three, all on the same page, might be noticed by the reader and be a distraction that pulls him out of the story.

Example: I walked into the coffee shop, ordered a cappuccino, and carried it to my car. I sat for a moment, sipped my coffee, and watched a man cross the parking lot. I started the engine, rolled down my window, and turned on the radio.

4. Look at fragments and determine if complete sentences would be better.

Fragments are often used in dialogue or for emphasis in narrative (especially when writing in first person). Too many fragments in narrative, however, may signal to an agent or editor that a writer does not know a fragment from a complete sentence. Use fragments with care.

Example: Marilyn knew her boyfriend would call and beg her to forgive him. She wasn't going to do it. Not this time.

5. Make good use of short sentences in action or high tension scenes. Again, you'll want to vary the sentence structure, and even throw in a complex sentence for variety. But if you're aware that short sentences increase tension, you can use them to good advantage.

Example: Marilyn had just turned off the shower and pulled the towel off the rack when she thought she heard a noise. She froze and listened. Nothing. She quickly dried herself and slipped on her robe. Then another sound--a soft squeak. She reached toward the doorknob, but jerked her hand back. Someone was in her bedroom. She could hear him breathing.

6. Use the same form or format for each element in a series.

Bad: I was weeding the garden, pruning the roses, and mulched the tomatoes.

Better: I was weeding the garden, pruning the roses, and mulching the tomatoes.

Paying attention to sentence structure and how the sentences on a page relate to one another helps establish your professional attention to detail. It really is worth the time it takes to do a thorough job.

--------------------

Patricia Stoltey is a mystery author, blogger, and critique group facilitator. Active in promoting Colorado authors, she also helps local unpublished writers learn the critical skills of manuscript revision and self-editing. For information about Patricia’s Sylvia and Willie mystery series, visit her website and her blog. You can also find her on Facebook (Patricia Stoltey) and Twitter (@PStoltey).

Dialogue Tag Tips

* If you must use tags, use "said" as much as possible and be sparing with your adverbs. Make their words do the declaring and, if you need sad, craft sad words.

* Use character tags sparingly. If you can identify the speaker with out a tag, do so.

See the full PicLit at PicLits.com