Writing

The Editing Process: Getting Your Manuscript Ready For Proofreading.

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 13 Comments

Todd Barselow, senior editor at Imajin Books, has just sent me his first pass at editing DESCENT and had this to say:

“My life would be so much easier if all the manuscripts that crossed my desk were as clean as yours.”

Wasn’t I surprised to find such a great comment and to find I didn’t have too much work to do revising the manuscript. As you know, the ARC for DESCENT went out last week, so I was pleased not too much would change.

How did I get to this point?

Yesterday, before my first coffee,  I opened my email and found the edited version of DESCENT waiting in my inbox. I have to admit I was nervous, so I finished my coffee, ate breakfast, walked the dog and when I could procrastinate no further, I opened the attachment.

The editing process went like this:

  • Imajin Books gave us a deadline of early May to complete the edits and send DESCENT to the proofreader.
  • Todd and I must both read the manuscript three times (minimum).
  • Todd reads once and sends DESCENT back to me labelled V1.
  • I accept/reject any proposed changes – it’s a good idea to learn how to use the review section in MSWord as this seems to be the industry standard for editing right now.
  • I send the manuscript back to Todd as V2, and we repeat the process two more times.

This may seem like a lot work, but I think it’s worth the effort if it means a better manuscript.

I would have sworn my manuscript was error free. But alas, it was not so. What did Todd suggest? What errors did he find? I’ve summarized a few items below, so you’ll get an overview.

  • Be consistent with the Oxford comma. I don’t use them, and somehow a few slipped into the manuscript.
  • Replace a period with a question mark. This happened in two places even though I know how to use a question mark.
  • Add an exclamation mark. I didn’t use any, and Todd suggested two be added in the climax scene to increase tension.
  • Too, to, two: Jokes on me. I used ‘to’, instead of ‘two’ in chapter two.
  • Be consistent with hyphens and follow Chicago Manual Of Style.  These are hard errors to catch, but he found a few.
  • Tiny words… ‘as’ instead of ‘if’, missing ‘of’, and reach missing the ‘ed’
  • Dialogue.  When addressing people, use a comma after Hi. “Hi, Donny.” is the correct form in dialogue.

That should give you an idea of how detailed the edit is. For the sake of not boring you, I didn’t include everything.

To get the manuscript to a place where Todd praised it, I followed the process as outlined in the For Writers section of my webpage.

I think you’re getting my point…It’s a large, okay huge, shall we say ginormous amount of work to polish a completed manuscript.

Gotta say thanks to the talented Todd Barselow for his eagle eye and for making my novel better!

If you haven’t read my blog before, I’ve signed on with Imajin Books and will blog about my publishing adventure. I’ll share what I learn and hope it helps someone out there get their novel published.

Thanks for reading…

Advance Reader Copy (ARC)

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 17 Comments

I’m sure everyone knows all about the ARC, but being a newbie, I learned a few things this week.

I learned the ARC is used to garner endorsements that go on both the outside and inside cover of the novel and are used for marketing.

I learned that the ARC gets sent before the final editing and proofreading of the manuscript is complete. Does that make me nervous? You bet, but I guess it’s standard in the industry, so I’ll go with it.

I learned that networking long before you finish your first novel is critical to the publishing journey.

Imajin Books requested I get endorsements from 5 to 7 authors in my genre. Mystery, in case you’re wondering. So I set out to do just that.

How does one find established authors willing to spend their time reading an about-to-be-published-for-the-first-time author’s novel? That’s where networking comes in.

I’ve attended writing conferences, workshops and  awards dinners. Each of these gave me a way to meet other authors. I started a blog. Got active on twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc.

When I first joined the Crime Writers of Canada, I sent every CWC author a LinkedIn message asking them to connect with me. Hundreds did. I was amazed. I kept a spreadsheet of the authors I’d sent a message to, which ones accepted my invitation and included a check mark when I sent a thank you. Since then, I’ve kept up communication with authors, sending them a message when I’d read their book and posted a review.

Who to ask? I chose authors that I had some connection with. Either I’d met them in person, or I’d connected with them on the internet. I looked for authors where our writing had something in common.

I wrote a letter to each author as I would a query letter. I included my writing credentials and the reason I was asking a specific author.  I was nervous, but people are saying yes. I won’t tell you who yet. Part of asking is the condition that if they don’t like the book, I wouldn’t expect an endorsement. So now I have to wait… Writing seems to be a lot of waiting.

The following is included at the front of the ARC, and is followed by the novel. A PDF version goes to each author who has agreed to read Descent.

DESCENT

A Stone Mountain Mystery #1

ADVANCED READING COPY

Uncorrected Galley Proof

Kristina Stanley

DESCENT

A Stone Mountain Mystery #1

Copyright © 2015 by Kristina Stanley. All Rights Reserved.

IF YOU RECEIVED THIS BOOK FREE VIA A WEBSITE DOWNLOAD ON A SHARE OR TORRENT SITE, YOU HAVE AN ILLEGAL COPY AND CAN BE PROSECUTED FOR COPYRIGHT THEFT.

Copyright is a matter we take seriously. Our authors and our publishing team work hard to produce quality books for people who will appreciate them. We often have discounts and sales so that ANYONE CAN AFFORD OUR EBOOKS.

 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. And any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead (or in any other form), business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

http://www.kristinastanley.com

FIRST EDITION Kindle eBook

Imajin Books – http://www.imajinbooks.com

If you haven’t read my blog before, I’ve signed on with Imajin Books and intend to blog about my publishing adventure. I’ll share what I learn and hope it helps someone out there get their novel published.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. I received the first version of the book cover. I’ll share as soon as it’s done 🙂

Acknowledgement Tracking: When Writing Your Novel(s)

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 10 Comments

The closer DESCENT becomes to being published, the more work there seems to be.

When the manuscript is being prepared for print or e-book versions, there are sections on the inside that need writing. It’s all fun writing a novel or two, but do you remember who helped you along the way?

The time is close to when I have to commit to my acknowledgment section, and I’m a little stressed. What if I miss someone? Did I thank the right people?

So many people helped me write, and it took me four years to finish four novels. For some reason, I decided to keep a spreadsheet with who helped me on each novel. This includes beta readers, proofreaders, anyone who helped me with research, and of course family. At the time, I laughed at myself, but now I’m glad I did.

So I have my list, I’ve written the acknowledgement section, and I have one more question.

Do I ask people ahead of time if they are ok with being in print, or do I surprise them?

What’s your opinion?

If you haven’t read my blog before, I’ve signed on with Imajin Books and intend to blog about my publishing adventure. I’ll share what I learn and hope it helps someone out there get their novel published.

Thanks for reading.

Choose Your Spelling: American? British? Canadian?

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 4 Comments

Anyone remember Steve Martin’s joke about language? “The French, they have a different word for everything.”

Let’s apply this to English. American, British and Canadian spelling. Why do we spell the same word with different letters?

If you’re writing a book, you have a decision to make. What version of spelling will you use? The important thing is to be consistent. Pick one and stay with it.

I originally wrote everything in Canadian spelling. After a discussion with Imajin Books, we decided to use American spelling. Why? Because of the broader audience appeal. This is subjective decisions, so you might have other reasons for picking a language base, and that’s okay.

Proofreading for this is difficult. Most of us read books from various countries and are used to seeing the words spelled differently, How do you know if you’re consistent if the words look correct?

The answer: Run the manuscript though more than one spell checker.

Here is my experience with spell checkers.

Scrivener picked up some of the words, but when I ran the Word spell checker it picked up others. If you don’t have more than on spellchecker on your computer, borrow someone else’s.I used three spell checkers. I use a Mac and my husband uses a PC. I sent my manuscript to his computer. Even the Mac versus PC Word versions pick up different words.

I’ve written three novels in the Stone Mountain Mystery series, so my homework… I’ve finished updating DESCENT to American spelling. Now I have to go and update BLAZE and AVALANCHE too.

If you haven’t read my blog before, I’ve signed on with Imajin Books and intend to blog about my publishing adventure. I’ll share what I learn and hope it helps someone out there get their novel published.

Thanks for reading…

How to Write a Description For the Back Cover of Your Novel

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 5 Comments

Writing a Book Description?

Here are some ideas that might help. I’ve shared my book description (blurb) for DESCENT, the first novel in The Stone Mountain Mystery series, below and outlined how we arrived at the final description.

Step One: Decide what you want to tell the reader. You want to give away enough to intrigue the reader but not so much that you take away from the suspense. I was tempted to put too much information in the description and pulled back a bit.

The goal of DESCENT’s description is to give the potential reader the idea that:

  • Kalin Thompson is the protagonist
  • The story takes place in a remote mountain resort
  • The crime is a murder
  • The victim is a talented ski racer
  • Ongoing conflict between Kalin’s boyfriend and her boss will be a struggle for Kalin

Once you know what you want to say,  write, rewrite and rewrite again.

Step Two: Decide who your audience is. For me, I want an international audience. How does that affect the description? I’d used RCMP in the description? You’ll see below that RCMP is now cops. RCMP is a very Canadian acronym. My bad for assuming it was a world-wide term 🙂

Step Three: Get feedback from anyone you trust. Then write, rewrite and rewrite again.

Final Product: The idea behind the two paragraph description below is if we need a short version, we can use the first paragraph only. The first paragraph is designed to end with a hook just in case that’s all we use. I hadn’t thought of that in my first try at a description.

The back of the book description for DESCENT is:

When Kalin Thompson is promoted to Director of Security at Stone Mountain Resort, she soon becomes entangled in the high-profile murder investigation of an up-and-coming Olympic skier. There are more suspects with motives than there are gates on a super-G course, and danger mounts with every turn.

Kalin’s boss orders her to investigate the murder. Her boyfriend wants her to stay safe and let the cops do their job. Torn between loyalty to friends and professional duty, Kalin must look within her isolated community to unearth the killer’s identity.

Now as with other changes, I have to wade across the internet and change everywhere I’ve put a blurb out for DESCENT.

If you haven’t read my blog before, I’ve signed on with Imajin Books and intend to blog about my publishing adventure. I’ll share what I learn and hope it helps someone out there get their novel published.

Thanks for reading…

 

Book Names and Branding

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 5 Comments

Ready to Publish?

If you haven’t read my blog before, I’ve just signed on with Imajin Books and intend to blog about my publishing adventure. I’ll share what I learn and hope it helps someone out there get their novel published. At the end of my last blog, Ready to Publish?, I gave myself two action items:

Step one : Re-launch website and give it a cleaner look.

Done: Or sort of done. I’ll keep working on this as I get feedback. What changes did I make to the site?

  • I changed my home page to a static page instead of my blog. I did this so when I have book covers designed, I’ll have a landing page to post the covers.
  • I chose a new format that I found pleasing to the eye and what I think is a more professional image.
  • I updated the image at the top of the page to mountains to start branding my novels.
  • I used a free template by WordPress. This comes with restrictions, but for now I can live with them. Until I start making some income with my books, I’ll be careful how I allocate funds.

Step two: Decide if working titles for DESCENT and BURNT are the final titles.

This is where branding comes in. That’s a big question when you’re about to publish one of your books. I write a mystery series, and so my branding has to consider the current and future books in the series. I want to engage and excite readers, and branding can help do this.

A Stone Mountain Mystery is the tag line for all the novels because the series takes place in a fictitious resort located in the depths of the Purcell Mountain range.

The first three working titles in the series are DESCENT, BURNT and AVALANCHE.

After collaborating  with Imajin Books, we’ve decided to rename the second novel in the series.

BURNT will become BLAZE.

The thoughts behind the decision to change the name are:

  • BLAZE has a sense of impending doom.
  • All three titles are one-word action oriented nouns.
  • BLAZE now links to the mountain theme of DESCENT and AVALANCHE as blaze is more reminiscent of a forest fire than BURNT.
  • One can think of BLAZE as blazing the ski trail which again links the novels.

I’ve spend four years building my online platform and writing about my books. This one word change means I have to visit all of my sites and update the name accordingly. I’m pretty sure this is the first of many changes. But who said writing was easy?

Now I’m off to find all references to BURNT and change it to BLAZE..

Thanks for reading . . .

Ready to Publish?

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 13 Comments

The life of a mystery writer is full of twists and turns. Some good. Some not. But here’s a twist that lands in the good category. I’ve signed a two-book publishing contract with Imajin Books for DESCENT and BURNT.

When I began writing my novels, I loved reading blogs about the writing process, about how to write, about how to publish, and about anything else to do with writing. And I still do. Now it’s time to return the favour. Over the next few months (or years), I’ll blog about the publishing experience. I’ll do my best to share what I learn. To give you an idea of what’s coming, here are my first baby steps in working with a publisher.

Step one: Re-launch my website and give it a cleaner look. This is a work in progress, and the updates will keep coming as I go through the publishing process.

Step two: Decide if working titles for DESCENT and BURNT are the final titles.

Step three: It’s a mystery.

Stay tuned . . .

And as usual, thanks for reading.

Before You Submit: Who or That

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 4 Comments

Do you have a draft of your novel or short story and are thinking of submitting to an agent, publisher or writing contest? My series called Before You Submit might help. This series contains hints and tips I’ve received from professionals in the publishing industry. Each week I’ll share a new tip.

This week I’ll write about the use of who.

I’m loving going through my old notes from an editor. I mean, if can’t laugh at myself and the silly mistakes I made in the early days of writing, what’s the point. Writing should be fun, at least some of the time, maybe even most of the time. Even the hard work of editing can be fun.

Now, to the topic of Who or That, and what I needed to know. Here’s the sentence I wrote:

“I’ll need a list of everyone that had the combination to the safe.”

Yikes. Did you catch the error? The sentence should read:

“I’ll need a list of everyone who had the combination to the safe.”

Funny enough, who is used when referring to people. Every little correction makes the novel a better read. Thank you to the editor who pointed this out to me.

I hope this helps improve your writing.

See Before You Submit:Likeable Characters for the first blog in this series and an introduction the benefits of submitting even if you get a rejection letter.

Thanks for reading…

Before You Submit: The Use of ‘That’

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 4 Comments

Do you have a draft of your novel or short story and are thinking of submitting to an agent, publisher or writing contest? My series called Before You Submit might help. This series contains hints and tips I’ve received from professionals in the publishing industry. Each week I’ll share a new tip.

This week I’ll write about the use of that.

My editor thought ‘that’ should only be used if it was needed to keep the meaning of the sentence clear. Here’s an example of where it’s not needed.

Kendra smelled the odour of sweat coming from the ski boots that were resting askew on the floor.

The easy fix my editor recommended was to remove ‘that were’ from the sentence. The new sentence becomes:

Kendra smelled the odour of sweat coming from the ski boots resting askew on the floor.

I think the editor was reminding me to cut back on words. There are many places on the internet to get find the detailed rules, but I thought a quick example would give you something to check for in your writing.

I hope this helps improve your writing.

See Before You Submit:Likeable Characters for the first blog in this series and an introduction the benefits of submitting even if you get a rejection letter.

 

 

Thanks for reading . . .

 

Before You Submit: Dialogue, Narrative and Repetition

~ Kristina Stanley ~ Leave a comment

Do you have a draft of your novel or short story and are thinking of submitting to an agent, publisher or writing contest? My series called Before You Submit might help. This series contains hints and tips I’ve received from professionals in the publishing industry. Each week I’ll share a new tip.

This week I’ll write about Dialogue, Narrative and Repetition.

Combining dialogue and narrative is where style, or dare I say art, comes into your writing. 

We all know you don’t want to bore the reader with repetition, but sometimes it’s easy to do without even noticing. I tend to repeat something in narrative that I’ve already said in dialogue.

Here’s what the editor didn’t like in one of my manuscripts:

“You have a choice to make,” Sarah said. “You can walk away right now, or  I’ll call the cops and see what they have to say about the drugs.” Sarah stood her ground.

The editor recommended removing ‘Sarah stood her ground.’ Her thought was that it was obvious Sarah was standing her ground. The dialogue indicated this, and there was no need to hit the reader over the head with it.

Her overall point, if you repeat things, make sure you have a reason to. You might repeat for style or for emphasis, but don’t repeat for filler.

To figure out if you have a similar problem, you can analyze your writing, checking for areas of repetition, or you can ask someone else to read your work and check for you. A reader other than myself can often see things I can’t, so I like asking for help on this one.

I hope this helps improve your writing.

See Before You Submit:Likeable Characters for the first blog in this series and an introduction the benefits of submitting even if you get a rejection letter.

Thanks for reading . . .