DYI Editing

Many aspects of writing are DYI - do it yourself. And others aren’t.

Three big ones that come to mind are editing, proofreading, and cover design.

Let’s start today with editing. As always, more about my own experience and less about giving you advice.

As I mentioned previously, I’d never used a professional editor before First. Mainly because I couldn’t afford it, but also because I wrote my first three books for friends and family and to self-publish. Could they have used an editor? Of course. And if I decide to re-publish them I will look into doing just that.

With First I want to have a bigger audience. My sister, who writes about being a military spouse and the support system therein, connected me with a friend of hers who is an editor. I put the manuscript in as good of shape as possible and sent it over. Within a couple of weeks I received a summary document, comments within the doc, and an hour-long phone conversation to talk through everything.

The editing process gave me confirmation on things that had been uncertain for me and direction on what I needed to add and modify. To be clear, these were things I could have figured out myself, maybe, but I was too close to the story and too personally invested. It was my creation and when you consider you’ve created you consciously and unconsciously protect it when sometimes you need another perspective.

The lesson I learned is that an outside perspective is essential. And it wasn’t as expensive as I thought. Granted, it wasn’t cheap but to me it was money well spent. Would I have figured it all out own my own? No. And that’s a firm no, not a “maybe I would have someday.” And to be even clearer, my spouse and family aren’t good editors, either. For me, another set of experienced eyes was necessary in order to improve my book and I’m glad I did it.

Word Count

Another question that comes up from time to time is this: how many words should I write every day?

Seems to me that question is more along the lines of how much you have to produce in order to be considered a good writer. It’s an attempt to quantify the unquantifiable, to measure the unmeasurable.

I fall into the camp of those who say it doesn’t matter and I write as much as I want or don’t want. My problem is not with setting a target for each day, but with how people will berate themselves if they miss it. If a person sets 2,000 words as their daily target, what happens when they can only get out 850? Trust me, it happens. Or what about sickness? Or vacation? Or the other interruptions of life?

For my part, at the end of a writing session I usually check to see how many words I produced. It’s a curiosity thing. Some days I feel like the keyboard must be about to catch fire because I’m typing so fast, and it’s interesting to me to see how many words I ended up with. On days where the words come out slower, I also find it interesting to check the count. Many times I actually produced more than I thought.

We can all do the math. If you write 2,000 words a day and the goal for a novel is 75,000 words, you’ll have a book in 37 1/2 days of writing. Will you hit that target in the bullseye every single day? Nope. Some days you’ll have more, some less.

It works for me to not have a daily goal. Maybe you want that, and that’s fine. All I can suggest is to go easy on yourself when things don’t go as planned.

Education

I graduated with an accounting degree a few years past (let’s not count) and my favorite class was creative writing.

In my final semester I only needed to complete three classes to graduate, which meant I needed three more credit hours to maintain status as a full-time student or I’d have to start repaying those student loans. Having dabbled for years in writing short stories, I determined to take a creative writing class. I hadn’t darkened the doors of the English department since my freshman year.

It was a drastically different experience than anything I took in the business college. There students sat in rows for lectures, really didn’t talk to each other, and everything felt like a competition. In contrast, the writing class was in a small room with shelves and books, part library, part classroom, with a large table in the middle where all 15 or so of us sat around the perimeter and all took part in discussions.

We studied classic short stories and talked about them. We wrote our own stories and read them out loud to the group. We partnered up with others to critique and offer suggestions on writing. It was all very interactive and different. I remember getting an A in the class and I also recall how surprised everyone was, including the instructor, that someone from the business school could write. It was fun and I’m glad I had the chance to take it.

Did I have to take that class in order to write? Of course not. Writing carries no educational requirements. In fact, I’d bet most of the successful writers in history didn’t have a degree in writing. Did the class help? Yes, I have great memories of it although I couldn’t tell you anything specific I learned. It was more of an education in how to interact with other writers and learning that people do things differently, which is just fine. By that, I mean that people respond differently to the same prompts, like being given a topic and having to write a five-page story about it. Learning there are no guardrails in writing was probably the best education I got on my way to that accounting degree.

What You Know

Have you ever heard the phrase, “write what you know?”

It’s another piece of writing advice that bubbles up from time to time. Maybe it applies better to nonfiction, but I don’t see its relevance so much in the world of fiction. Taken to the absurdist position, if we only write what we know then our stories are less fiction and more personal experience.

I take the saying more as writing about things you’re familiar with. For example, it would be tough for me to write a story set in Siberia. I’ve never been there, although that’s not a prerequisite, and I haven’t done any research about it other than hearing it’s cold and desolate. Could I write a believable story about Siberia? Probably, but I’d have to know more about it. Writing a story set in the desert Southwest of the United States? No problem, lived there a quarter of a century. It’s what I know.

Imagination is what compels us to write fiction. Maybe the question is more along the lines of writing convincingly. Can I write a story set in Siberia and convince you you’re there? Not today. If I did try it my descriptions would lack the types of details readers need to immerse themselves in the overall story. Can I write a story that makes you feel cold? Sure. Can I write a story where you feel the frosty bite of a brutal, unrelenting Russian winter and how it’s different from a New England blizzard?

Should we only write about what we know? Sounds extremely limiting to me. Should we writing convincingly about our characters, settings, and scenes? Absolutely.

Outlines

Another topic that comes up about writing is outlines. Yes or no?

Once again, no advice here, just my experience.

I’ve read about authors who meticulously outline their entire books. It’s hard for me to imagine that much level of detail before I even begin writing because to me it leaves little to chance in the world of storytelling. I think it was John Irving (I’m too lazy to go find a citation) who said he never started writing a book without having the last sentence written first. Then he would work on the craft of writing as he laid down the story. He’s a true wizard when it comes to crafting sentences that put you under their spell and clearly his approach works. For him.

I’ve tried a couple of methods with the books I’ve written. I start with a general idea of the opening scene and the conclusion. Everything in between is up in the air. I tend to follow the three-act method of storytelling and so I will take my notebook and map out the major events that need to take place in each act. In some cases I’ve mapped out what happens in each chapter. I do this for a couple of reasons.

One is that I want to capture an ebb and flow of action and emotion. Another is to keep myself pointed toward the end goal. A further reason is because I often have major events in mind for the story and I don’t want to forget them. Plus, they need to be paced correctly in the course of the book. It’s a rough outline, I suppose, but I often find myself deviating from it. Sometimes substantially.

For me, a rough outline like that is a guide, not a hard and fast way I have to tell the story. For some, it might be the opposite. The great thing about writing is that there’s no right way and no wrong way. You can experiment and find what works for you.

And if someone tell you you’re doing it wrong? Ignore them.

Ideas

Based on my limited experience, it seems like ideas for stories are not scarce. But non-writers ask the question, including my own mom: where do you get your ideas for stories?

Well, as I mentioned in a previous post, the idea for Next Time popped into my head in the wee morning hours a couple of day after a two-week stay in Ireland. I can’t explain how that happened - the idea popping into my head, I mean. I know how the Ireland trip happened, thank you very much.

The germ for First rolled around in my head for quite a while. I imagined what it would be like to be the first person to travel to another star system and how it would feel to be utterly alone. The trigger that made me write it out was an article I read about space travel. I don’t remember it all and can’t find it now, but the gist was that maybe if we could control the time component we could easily manipulate the other variables involved in travel. Or at least that’s what I got from it.

Going back further, the idea for Sunset and the other two books in the series came more from a philosphical stray thought. It was the time of the anti-hero in culture (think The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, etc.). The idea of a person who performed acts that were morally wrong but remained sympathetic to the audience intrigued me. What could i have a character do that hadn’t been done before and keep the reader from throwing the book against a wall? Murder, cooking meth, stalking serial killers…those had been done.

So I went with kidnapping. We know it exists and there’s a hidden world we rarely glimpse where kidnappings take place but we choose to ignore the stories. What if my main character was a kidnapper? How would he get into such a line of work, if you want to call it that? And how would the reader be able to identify with him and actually want to read his story?

I think I found a good solution and one that drove the very first scene in the book.

World-Building

After much thought, my next move will be to edit Assignment Day.

It’s been almost four months since I touched the book, and as I was thinking about it this past week I realized I need to spend some time in world-building. I have a good framework and did a little bit of world-building early on, but I need to make it more well-defined.

Assignment Day is set in 2080. It’s a world similar to ours in many ways, but in the world of the novel everyone is addicted to virtual reality. What I need to do is make it believable and yet different from other books set in a similar future. I don’t want someone to read it and think it’s the same world as Ready Player One, for example. I need to play up the setting and environment better than what is in the draft.

What does that mean? It means if I take the time to really line out how the world in 2080 works in my book, then when I work on editing it I can add in bits and pieces as I go along. Not everything will make it from my world-building notes into the book, but the background is useful, regardless. There’s a difference between intentional ambiguity so people can interpret something how they want versus ambiguity because I was lazy and left the reader unclear on the characters and the world of the story.

That’s my plan starting Monday. I estimate most, if not all, of next week will be spent in this exercise. I will also go back to my character sketches and revise them based on what I come up with during the world-building. And then once all that is complete, I can edit my draft with confidence and clear direction.

Considerations

If you’ve been following along at home, you know my goal is to publish two books in 2023.

Since I won’t be going through an agent to a major publisher (detailed elsewhere on this blog), it looks like I’ll be figuring out some or a lot of this on my own. Other options include going through an independent publisher or self-publishing.

I did the self-publishing route previously, albeit in a very limited fashion with publishing on Amazon. When I first published Sunset, it was limited to Kindle-only at that time. Some of the subsequent programs, like Kindle Unlimited and publish-on-demand, didn’t exist yet. I did all the formatting myself, entering everything into Amazon’s site, and not much marketing on my part. When the print-on-demand option became avaialble, I formatted the books for that option as well as creating the spine and back cover. Interestingly enough, you don’t need a back cover for an ebook.

For two of the books I used pictures I’d taken. The cover for Sunset was taken from the parking lot of the mobile home park where my grandparents used to live. It’s of a New Mexico sunset, of all things, and I cropped it so it seemed appropriate. For Sundown I found a stock photo of a nighttime forest and the sky above, which I thought looked good for a cover. I don’t remember where I found it, but hey, it was free. The final cover for Sunburst was taken when I was in New Mexcio for the Bataan Memorial Death March, which is a full marathon through the high desert. The race begins and ends at the small town installation of White Sands Missile Range, and runners can camp out the night before. The picture is of sunlight filtering through the spires of the Organ Mountains.

I bring all this up because designing covers was one of the things I had to do on my own at the time. I’m sure professionals would have made my book covers look a lot better. Things like that are considerations for publishing books this year. Do I pay someone to create a cover? Probably a good idea. Do I pay for a copy editor and proofreading? Again, probably a good idea. Do I pay someone to format the interiors of the books? That would be worth the money, for sure.

If I go with an independent publisher, some of this would likely be included in the package if it’s a hybrid deal. With self-publishing, they’d all be on me and my pocketbook. Which way to go?

New Year

That brings us almost up to date. I ended 2022 on a good note by completing my third book in 18 months, and started 2023 with the list of goals I outlined in a previous post.

I haven’t written much beyond this blog since finishing Next Time. You might recall i mentioned the possibility of writing a short story and having that in my arsenal for a bonus to people when I start a mailing list. I did that last week, penning a tale of the team from First on an outing early in their time together where they make a discovery that almost tears the team apart before they really even know each other. It’s a nice little tale, I think, and adds some background to the main story of the book.

Writing that last sentence made me stop and think for a moment. I hadn’t considered this question until now, but is that short story something that would actually belong in the book?

I think the answer is no. I wrote it with the intent that it would be a standalone story, interesting to people who read the book but probably not much of an audience beyond that. I can point to where it would fit timeline-wise in the novel, but I don’t think it would be wise to try and shoehorn it into the book itself.

With that said, I’ve spent most of my time building up an inventory of blog posts and talking to an independent publisher. It’s about time to figure out what’s next: editing Assignment Day or writing First Step?

Seriously?

I did pretty well with jet lag from our long trip, but I did wake up the first couple of nights around 3:30 a.m. and then went back to sleep. I think it was the second time that happened that an idea for a new book popped into my brain. This tends to happen at odd times like this when my brain is still on vacation but I’m not.

The concept of the story itself was almost ludicrous, at least as far as making the book work. Let me explain: I tend to write SF, although it’s usually character-driven and not a space opera or hard SF, or thrillers like I did in my first three books. I used to write more short stories, but those were all over the place on the genre map and mainly attempts to be literary. Whatever that means.

This new story, though, due to the premise and the main relationship between the narrator and a woman who time-travels, would have to involve a heavy dose of romance.

Seriously?

I knew I had a great concept and could make it work. However, the sequel to First was waiting for me to start. This new idea grabbed me, held me upside down, and shook me until all the change in my pockets fell out. I knew I needed to write this story next and the other would have to wait.

The other thing that made the decision for me was that sometime back in June I’d hammered out the first chapter of First’s sequel into a document. I had the idea and didn’t want to lose it, so I wrote it out. The problem was that I didn’t know how to resolve the idea I’d come up with. It needed more time for me to ponder.

The decision was made and I began working on Next Time in mid-October and finished it on Christmas Eve.

Carrying On

After the agent search, I felt like I needed to get back to writing for a bit. I needed to step away from the business side of things and do what I really liked. I knew of some independent publishers and hybrid companies that could help me get published, but I wanted time to consider how to carry on.

The Assignment was sitting in my e-drawer and I knew it needed some serious work. I refreshed my memory on where I’d left off and then took the manuscript to the chopping block. I lopped off the last several chapters and then went back to the beginning and totally rewrote the first few chapters to completely change the premise of how the title was introduced to the characters.

I also knew it needed several modifications during the narrative, such as a moment where I killed off an important character. In that example, I felt it didn’t fit the story as well as I’d hoped, and having the mystery of the character’s disappearance would drive the overall story better and give me opportunities for conflict that I’d missed.

I also needed a good climax. I came up with a good idea, but it became Chekov’s gun and I had to make sure I used it. I’m still not sure I did, and that’s a big part of the edits I still have to do on the book when I roll back around to it. I also renamed it Assignment Day to better fit the changes I’d made.

We’d planned a long vacation at the beginning of October, and I finished the draft the day before we left. My plan was to return and begin writing the sequel to First, which I’d been pondering for several months. Instead, things took a different turn.

Results

It should be clear that I did all the research and work and didn’t find an agent.

In total, I researched 165 agents and submitted queries to 34. If you’re counting along at home, for every five agents I researched I submitted to one. That’s a pretty low turnaround rate and looking at it purely numbers-wise, a very small pool of agents I contacted.

I don’t know if that’s normal or not. Maybe I could have queried more, but so many base their representation on identity politics that it was clear we wouldn’t be a good fit. Plus, probably a couple dozen of the agents were closed to queries.

Without receiving comment back from the agents who did reply, I can only assume they didn’t like my book, or at least not enough to give it a further look. Maybe it actually sucks and I wasted a good chunk of time, but I don’t believe that. It just means I don’t have someone who’s going to negotiate a seven-figure deal and movie rights for me.

Do I regret spending all that time? Or wasting it, if you think along those lines? No. I told myself up front that I was going to give it a go. I’d always wonder if I didn’t try. And maybe it sounds trite, but I did learn a lot. More than I wanted, in some cases. I better understand how the traditional publishing industry works and thankfully, there are alternatives.

What next?

Learnings

What did I learn from all my agent queries?

• To be organized, for one thing. I mentioned this in the last post, but I did my best to avoid duplicate research or queries. A little work getting organized up front saved a lot of time during my search.

• They’re time-consuming. Overall I spent 6-7 weeks on this effort. That’s a lot of time away from writing, but I knew it required dedication and I was determined to give it a shot. On the individual query level, researching, putting together the package required, and sending them off - well, each one was also time-consuming, and that adds up.

• About 40% of the agents I queried responded. That doesn’t really bother me as much as it might other people. Some agents mentioned on Twitter how many queries they evaluated, and I think one even had a bar graph showing the volume each month and the backlog. So 40% might seem abysmally low to some people, but not me.

• Along those lines, don’t expect any feedback from the agents who do respond. In every instance, the reply I received was nicely worded and a form reply. I knew going in that agents aren’t there to give feedback to an author on their story or writing.

• It’s hard to find an agent.

Sources

My main sources in researching agents consisted of two main sources and a number of sometimes relevant ones.

The first was Publisher’s Marketplace. Yes, it costs $25 USD per month, but the depth of research is exactly what a person needs to look for an agent. The industry news is mildly interesting, probably more so to people in the actual publishing trade, but i did scan the new deals lists occasionally to see what publishers were buying.

The most useful piece to me was the ability to search for agents within a genre, in this case SF, and instantly see how many sales they’d made in that genre over the past months and years. If somebody hadn’t made a sale in the SF genre in three years then they probably weren’t going to push my book very well. Someone who’d inked SF publishing deals for their clients in the past six months, on the other hand…

Publishers Marketplace contains info about agents, links to their agency websites, and in many cases, a query submission page that was the only way to contact the agent. That might not be proprietary to their website, but I don’t remember seeing that particular submission method anywhere else.

The second major source for me was Manuscript Wish List, or #MSWL on Twitter. Publishers Marketplace gave me lots of information goodness, but #MSWL gave me the info I needed to know if an agent was right for me.

On the #MSWL site you can also sort by genre and come up with a list of agents. I actually walked the list, over the course of a couple of weeks, and then researched that agent in Publishers Marketplace. Each agent will provide a picture, short bio, and what types of books they’re looking for. Pretty simple. Some contain more info than others, but reading each one is like a mini-interview. This site saved me a ton of time. In short, if it was obvious my worldview and that of the agent were diametrically opposed, I entered their name into my spreadsheet and added a note as to why I wasn’t querying them.

#MSWL isn’t the slickest of web sites, but it’s free and gives an author exactly what they need when looking for editors or agents.

Other sources included Twitter, where I looked up agents to see what they tweeted about. Just like #MSWL, I learned more about some people than I wanted to know. QueryTracker was another site with a database of agents, but I didn’t use it much since I developed a good routine with Publishers Marketplace and #MSWL. Facebook was useful to some degree, but since I wasn’t a member at the time its usefulness was limited for me.

The final source was agency web sites, usually linked to from one of my main sources, but also searchable and easily accessible. In a handful of cases I checked an agency site and found the agent I was researching was no longer with that agency. In those instances I was glad I’d clicked through to the literary agent’s site instead of wasting my time sending off an email that was going to bounce immediately. Other times they would have more up-to-date information, usually saying the agent was closed to queries at that time. I found it a best practice to always check the agency site for more info and status.

Tracking

One of my considerations was how to track the agents I queried so that I didn’t send duplicate queries. And once I started researching agents another consideration became obvious: tracking the agents I’d researched so I didn’t research them again.

In my regular job I deal with spreadsheets. A lot. Just like many people in the business world, I’m proficient at putting them together and manipulating them as needed. This tracking exercise required none of that skill. This was a simple list where I could put relevant info on every agent Iooked at.

Here are the columns I used in my spreadsheet:

• Agent Name

• Literary Agency

• Submission Date (blank if not submitted to that agent)

• Response Date

• Email

• Status (e..g, Closed to Submissions, Retired, etc.)

• Represents (names of author the agent represents, at least the ones I’ve heard of)

• Notes (usually the reason I didn’t think the agent was a good fit for me, but also other notes like “Usually takes 8-12 weeks to respond)

• Web Page

• Query Different Agent at Same Agency if Rejected? (some agents say if they reject it, their entire agency does; others say go ahead, maybe someone else at the agency would be interested)

Not rocket science, by any means. What it did do was keep my research focused and easily trackable. Next time I’ll talk about my sources for research, and you’ll see why it was important to track all of the above and avoid easily wasted time.

Pieces

One thing I learned during my research on finding an agent was that I’d need a number of pieces ready to submit.

The first was a cover letter. I probably obsessed over that part more than anything else on the list. I edited it, did it again, and continued doing it all through the time I submitted queries. It’s tough to write a hook to grab the attention of the person reading your letter, introduce yourself, and give the agent an idea of your book. Did I ever get it right? I don’t know. The end results don’t bear out that it was one of the greatest query letters ever written, but I don’t think it was the worst.

I also needed a synopsis of my book. Talk about more tough work. Distilling my book down to a page or two was an interesting exercise. I think I did just fine on this one. It seemed counter-intuitive to include the twists and the ending in the synopsis, but my research showed this was necessary. Agents want to know you can carry a book through to a satisfying conclusion, and that said conclusion is a logical ending to what came before. If something seems out of whack with the synopsis then they haven’t wasted time reading an entire manuscrip.

The other thing I needed was the first chapter or chapters, first 30 pages, first 50 pages, etc., ready to submit as a sample of my writing. This was the easy part, although it seemed each agent wanted something different. More on that later.

Looking back, it seems like it took a long time to research and prepare what I needed. Maybe it did, since it was late May before I sent off my first query.

Researching

The first thing I needed to do was to figure out how to even look for an agent. Fortunately, we live in a time where that information is readily available.

I fired up the ol’ web browser and typed “how to find a literary agent.” Yes, that simple. The search engine did not skimp on results.

I found articles, videos, articles with videos, videos with links to articles, and on and on. I tried to find common themes in the advice, best practices, if you will. Links to sites with useful resources, some of which were incredibly useful. I found a number of YouTube videos that were incredibly helpful, as was this column by Jane Friedman, who has a ton of goodness on her site. It took a little time, but I started forming a game plan.

I knew I was looking for an agent with a track record of making sales in the SF genre. It wouldn’t make sense to query an agent who specialized in biographies of Civil War figures. Duh. I also wanted someone with demonstrable sales to publishers, not someone brand-new to the game who would use my manuscript to try and develop new networks. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I wanted someone who knew the ins and outs.

Also on my list was that I wanted someone I could work with. We didn’t need to have identical worldviews, but I sure didn’t want to work with someone whose worldview is the complete opposite of mine. As we’ll see in future posts (spoiler alert) that turned out to be one of the toughest requirements.

Once I had an overall plan in place, it was time to start assembling what I would need.

What Next?

At this point we were somewhere around April 2022. I had one book pretty much edited (First) and another with the draft about 67k words complete. On the latter I didn’t like the way the story had turned and knew I needed to do some major rewriting. It languished for the time being while I’d been concentrating on editing First since late January.

What next? With a book ready to go, should I self-publish as I’d done in the past? Independent publishing? Or try to find an agent and get a deal with one of the big publishers?

When it comes to having the desire to do all the things necessary to market my book, I’m like a lot of authors: I don’t want to. I’d rather spend my time writing and let someone else take care of the things I’m not good at.

I know there are some things that are a bit easier these days if I go down the self-publishing route, compared to 10 years ago when I did it myself. Some companies sell packages that include cover art, copy editing, proofreading, formatting, and blasting my book to all the regular sales channels. That’s kind of cool, actually, but still puts the onus on me to publicize and do all the things that keep me from writing more. At the time, I kept that option in my back pocket.

I thought I had a good book with a relatable story that could sell very well. I knew it was a long shot but I decided to take the time to search for an agent. Having someone do all the back-end work for all the things I mentioned earlier really is appealing. If ever I was going to make the attempt, this was the time.

So in the spring of 2022 I set out on a journey that lasted almost two months. To get started, I had some research and work to do. We’ll pick up there next time.

Sketch

I kind of got things out of order a little with how the whole editing thing went. Namely, character sketches.

That was one of the suggestions from my editor, who told me I should spend time writing a background sketch for each and every character in my book.

Face-palm. I knew that and I totally bypassed it during my writing. It was another of those techniques I should have been able to pinpoint as one of the undefined problems with the whole thing. I kept track of certain tidbits, like eye color or references to things like hometown or relatives, but never developed a full backstory. If you read anything on how to write a novel, most every one will tell you to write out sketches for your characters. Just like world-building in SF or fantasy, it’s incredibly important.

I spent several days, probably a week or more, doing exactly that. Probably 95% of what I came up with was never used in the book, but it gave me a glimpse into more well-rounded characters. When I did one of the edits, I was able to use some of what I’d written in a character sketch to make a better character for the reader.

When I wrote the second book over the early part of last year, I did character sketches as I introduced new characters into the book. For my third book I’m doing it like I did with First: writing the entire draft, then doing the sketches before the initial edit, and using those to enhance the book. Not sure which method is better, but in each case I’ve done it where it seems to make sense. Even if I did ignore the conventional wisdom with the first book and had to be reminded.

Editing

After I received the First editing feedback, I made another pass through the manuscript. I added a couple of chapters, bringing my page count to about 125k. It shored up points of the story, like providing background on the main character and his abilities earlier in the story so that the second section made more sense.

One other thing my editor mentioned was dialogue. Again, this is an area where I had that nagging feeling. In some conversations, the dialogue crackled. In others, I felt it wasn’t as crisp. After the original editing pass, I did something different. I don’t remember if I read about it somewhere or how I decided to do it, but I made yet another editing run through the book.

Except this time I read it out loud.

Fortunately, I write in the morning before most of the family is up. That minimized the wife or kids walking by my office and hearing me mumble to myself.

It was extremely valuable, and I highly recommend the practice. Hearing the dialogue out loud allowed me to see how it flowed and where it sounded unnatural. It also served as another proofreading exercise, finding words left out, for example. Overall, it was a great way to make sure the entire story, not just the dialogue, felt right.

I’m sure it’s not perfect, but so much better than it was because I took the time to read it out loud. And unlike hiring an editor, this one comes free and you’ll learn more than you imagine.

Next time I’ll talk about what I did regarding characters based on a suggestion from my editor.