Support for Indie Authors discussion

I'm about to start editing my second novel, and I just thought it would be fun to source some of your preferred methods, checklists, and red flags regarding editing? How do you approach editing? Does anyone, for instance, use physical notes as well as their manuscript / notes function, on the pc? Just thought it might help to add to my to-do list.

I approach editing first by checking what spell check in MS Word says. Next, I run everything through the Grammarly database and clean it up. And then, I read it back to myself and make more corrections, based on my own eyes and skills. I keep a collection of documents that mostly have come from Grammar Girl, which I highly respect, that I refer to from time-to-time, and I do a lot of fact-checking while editing on the net. Finally, I read it again, preferably out loud. You can't believe the amount of mistakes you catch when you do that. Hope this helps.

I use the same approach as Morris.

All before I send it to a professional paid editor.

While on first-draft, if I run into questions or facts that I need to check earlier in the story, or things that I know I need to change or answer, I make a note of them (in the Scrivener document notepad). Lots of comments and references in this scratch pad to sort out later, rather than going back while in the midst of drafting. Also any notes of things to happen in the future, things to do in my upcoming scenes. While I am writing, if there are things that I need to fill in or fact check later, I mark a // which I will search for after the draft is complete to go back and fix later.

Then, as others have said, read through, spell check, grammarly check, I also do text to speech to have it read back to me by the computer. Then to betas. Then to editor.

I start with spell/grammar check on MS Word. Then I have a proof copy sent to me because I do better editing on a print copy than on the computer. Plus I can take it with me wherever I go and work on it when I have a spare minute. I also read it aloud to myself or my niece and nephew which helps me hear the mistakes. At the same time I send a word document of it to my aunt who is a retired schoolteacher and she takes time to edit it as well. She sends me her notes. I take her notes and mine to make the corrections on the computer. The main thing is to reread it several times because something different always pops out.

I find listening to a non-sexy computer voice read it to me helps.
Non-sexy computer voice does not fix words in her mind, and will say all of the 'the the's.

It does help me quite a bit.

I have my Office word set to warn when something is wrong, so when I write I always try to fix the red lines (or at least check for accuracy). I've learned not to follow Office blindly.

For me, edits are mostly to rephrase sentences that sound awkward, words that are unnecessarily repeated. I pay attention to names, to make sure I haven't messed them up. I also flesh out the story while paying attention to redundant sentences.

Of course, I always have my notes handy in case I need to check up on something.

Once I'm done with the first pass, I redo it again and again until I'm satisfied. Then it goes to betas.

I use the comments feature in Word sometimes. Like if there is something I want to check later, or make sure it matches up with something that happens later, I just make a comment. I also use [brackets] a lot for word choice or awkward sentences or things like that. If I don't know how to fix something right away, I put brackets around it. Then, I'll just spend one whole editing session running a search for those brackets and fixing them.

I read through a few times on my laptop to make most minor fixes, check to make sure my chapters are numbered correctly (gets me every time!) then print out the manuscript and go over it with a red pen.

It is difficult for me to see just scrolling on the computer screen, and there are a ton of fixes that I find are needed when going through the print copy. I fix all those then print out again. Usually after going over the the third print copy, I have fixed all of the issues (I hope). My poor little printer! I use the "draft" setting of course to save on ink, but still go through a lot.

I am really picky about how things sound and I reword or rewrite anything that does not read perfectly to me. Many times I will change simple phrases like "asked Mary" to "Mary asked" simply because of how it sounds when read with the surrounding words. Sometimes I will cross out entire paragraphs and put "rewrite" next to them so they will flow better. The thing I am most paranoid about is that I will use the wrong name somewhere (a bad thing in any circumstance lol). It is embarrassing that I could miss such a major thing on my other editing attempts.

Also as far as apostrophes go, I vow to never use another last name that ends in "s" or a vowel again. Just kidding...but geez!

Haven't got as far as editing mine, but for editing other people's:

Read through the Word document, marking up all the errors/spelling and grammar with comments.

Keep a separate Word document going of more general issues - especially if it's wholly or partly a developmental edit.

Reading it aloud is an excellent way of spotting awkward sentences - they don't sound as awkward in your head as they do in actual speech.

The more sets of eyes, the better - one novel I did, I was the third set of eyes and I was still picking up an average of two errors per 125 words. The more times you read something, the less chance you have of picking up the remaining errors, because your eyes read what they think they're seeing, rather than what they are seeing.

First, it depends on what editing stage you are at. Ensuring consistency, looking for plot holes, and eliminating redundancy is one thing, line editing is another, and finally there is proofreading. Yes, we do use physical notes, because scrawling things helps me, in particular, remember them. This is good because I can rarely read my own handwriting later.

We don't use the comment features in Word much because we find them cumbersome, We prefer end notes and highlighting to ID points we want to discuss later. We use highlights extensively for wording we aren't thrilled with, and end notes more for plot points.

But for us, the main thing is reading the story aloud to each other and making edits as we go. For us, this takes care of most everything. We use Word's spellcheck, but we don't use Grammerly, as it is incapable of dealing with our style. As noted above, others do find it useful, if you're willing to write within its limitations. We aren't but of automated grammar checkers it seems to be the best available.

We did find an editor we like, but so far we have used her only one small short piece for due to cost. Her opinions are valuable however, and she does represent a substantial time savings.

I do suggest being careful in selecting an editor if you go that route, as one that does not understand your work and your style can waste your time, your money, and do considerable harm to your manuscript. I worked with professional editors for 20 years and in my experience, they were generally less reliable than writers and had to be led with a short leash to keep them in line. If you're paying an editor, make sure you can work smoothly with them and they know who's the boss.

For final proofing, what we've found works best is ordering 2 draft copies from Createspace and marking them up by hand. We find more typos that way than on a computer screen (bad) or a Kindle (better but not great). Reading a physical book also aids retention which makes other lingering problems, like gaps and logic leaps, more apparent.

Different methods work better for different people, of course, but for us, it's mainly reading aloud and then reading from print.

Those who are printing the entire manuscript in order to proof - take a look at the cost to order a Createspace proof instead. It ended up a cheaper solution for me.

C.B. wrote: "I find listening to a non-sexy computer voice read it to me helps.
Non-sexy computer voice does not fix words in her mind, and will say all of the 'the the's.

It does help me quite a bit."

I can't recommend this method enough. One robotic computer voice reading aloud is worth ten human editors.

C.B. and Christina, would you mind explaining how you make this happen? Sounds handy!

Of course! It is called a text to voice, or text to speech program.

I know Apple computers just have them (I don't know where though, but should be simple enough to find).

I have a free demo version I use for my miscrosoft computer. It tells me to buy it every chapter or so, but it is free. I'll look up the name when I get home later, unless someone else already knows it and can help!

I use Calibre to turn my work-in-progress into an ebook on my Kindle. I can both read and listen to the work, and that helps with typos and awkward sentences. I recently reread a book I finished a year ago and found only two typos (it's versus its) and one mis-spelled word (which I used six times!), so it works pretty well. I also replaced some words with better ones and uploaded the corrections. I'm now pretty confident that the book is in great shape, so I don't have to worry about it.

Haven’t seen anyone mention a stylesheet, which tracks just about everything in your manuscript and helps with consistency -- characters, names, treatment of abbreviations, numbers, italics, etc. Plus, it lets an editor (like me) know the author’s preference for things that aren’t written in stone. Does the author like serial commas? Prefers to have thoughts in italics? If an author hasn’t provided one for me, I will create a comprehensive one as I edit. It helps as he/she makes changes and with subsequent proofing. And by the way, is it style sheet or stylesheet? :)

I have word professional 2003 and acrobat 10 to read it back to me. I edit using the Gregg style manual (my in house style) then send it off to my team for final review. I'm lucky to have a small group I can afford since I run a small publishing house after all. now my translators are a different matter....

C.B. wrote: "Of course! It is called a text to voice, or text to speech program.

I know Apple computers just have them (I don't know where though, but should be simple enough to find).."

All the versions of Acrobat I have [Windows] include a text-to-speech. It's not that great though (mispronounces things) which reduces its utility for me, but it's free. They sell voice packs that supposedly do much better.

I did not know that Owen. It is good to know.

I am using Natural Reader Free. It works alright, not a lot of problems.

The settings for Mac Text to Speech are in
Preferences
Dictation & Speech
Text to Speech

I believe the default keystroke for TTS is Opt-Esc, but you can set it for what you want. Just highlight the text, hit the keystroke, and it will read it aloud.

S wrote: "Haven’t seen anyone mention a stylesheet, which tracks just about everything in your manuscript and helps with consistency -- characters, names, treatment of abbreviations, numbers, italics, etc. P..."

Good point. We do supply prospective editors with a guide to our style, so we can agree, or decide we are not a fit, right up front. That saves a lot of time and confusion.

Re: your question: I use "stylesheets" for Word and CSS files that control formatting, so I'd use "style sheets" to describe what you're talking about. But I see Wikipedia adheres to "style sheets" for the former. So I'm sticking with "stylesheets". ;-)

P.D. wrote: "Those who are printing the entire manuscript in order to proof - take a look at the cost to order a Createspace proof instead. It ended up a cheaper solution for me."

We found the same thing, given that our books are pretty long. A book is also easier for me to read and carry about than a large stack of paper.

I'm a pen and paper proof reader myself - settling down with it for a page by page check. I'm a newspaper editor by day job, so that's routinely been my way over the years - get it off the screen and into a different context to force you to look at it a different way. Audio can do a similar thing in terms of the flow of the copy, but not for the typos and errant spacing that happens along the way. Useful, though.

I don't tend to use the automated spell check until the last, but then I never use that at work either, pretty much everywhere I've worked has a spell check that is tuned into a style format we didn't use at that particular newspaper, be it US spelling or set to AP style guide or such, so I've long been used to relying on the spell check in my head and only a cursory skim through at the last for the automated version.

Leo wrote: "I'm a pen and paper proof reader myself - settling down with it for a page by page check."

there's nothing like a hardcopy edit, but i feel sorry for the trees.

besides, Owen and Ken, has anyone else tried an edit using the kindle. it's pretty paper-like and has the commenting feature.

Owen wrote: "a Kindle (better but not great). Reading a physical book also aids retention which makes other lingering problems, like gaps and logic leaps, more apparent."

Ken wrote: "an ebook on my Kindle. I can both read and listen to the work"

As I write in multiple environments (IT and physical), I need an offline solution available everywhere. I use LibreOffice writing and as a first round I use the builtin checker and the Linguist plugin to do the prefiltering. I dropped the word processors comment feature for longer texts as it's a bit cumbersome to skim through them. I'm using a 'hack' to insert XXX (three capital X letters) where I have something left to do. With the 'find' function is can scroll through these in a few seconds.

As a second round of prefiltering I use one or two independent, still automatic, systems like Ginger.

Then comes the reading of the text. I prefer doing one reading right after I wrote a chapter an one later, after I got detached from immediate experience.

I also found TTS to be a good way to see/hear the story from a different perspective.

If I find I've using a particular phrase several times, I run a search for it and bring up every instance I've used that phrase. The results can be very scary! I then go and rewrite most of them.

I send my document to my Kindle and read through it there. I find it's a lot easier then trying to read it on my laptop screen.

The next thing I do is edit. Just forget about all the mistakes and make sure everything is consistent and flows correctly.

THEN I proof for grammar and spelling mistakes.

Ann wrote: "If I find I've using a particular phrase several times, I run a search for it and bring up every instance I've used that phrase. The results can be very scary! I then go and rewrite most of them."

I totally get this! I even used some instances of "okay" and "hello" that would never have been said around the time and setting of my historical fiction. Oops! "Find and replace" is a lifesaver.

P.D. wrote: "Those who are printing the entire manuscript in order to proof - take a look at the cost to order a Createspace proof instead. It ended up a cheaper solution for me."

I agree! That is how I get a proof copy. It saves me from having to pay for ink and paper. Their books are well made too.

Ann wrote: "If I find I've using a particular phrase several times, I run a search for it and bring up every instance I've used that phrase. The results can be very scary! I then go and rewrite most of them."

Great idea! I'm sure we all tend to overuse certain words even in the same paragraph or chapter.

Some kind of notes are necessary for your initial content/continuity edits. However "Comments" in MS Word are clunky (designed for business documents). They're hard to find and it's hard to know where you are when you find them.

A good work-around is to use the Navigation Pane and Headings. Open the "View" tab and check "Navigation Pane." This will show all of your Headings (say chapters are Heading 1, it will show your chapters - a handy feature in itself). Set Heading 3 (say) to "Normal" but change the font; that is, if you're writing in TNR, set H3 to Calibri. Now you can add notes, outline ideas, continuity items, anything you want, format them as H3, and they'll pop up in the Nav Pane. They will also be obvious when your read through your document (rather than popping up like zits on prom night when you go to publish).

For long notes, just set the opening words to H3 and leave the rest Normal... otherwise your Nav Pane gets too cluttered. Bonus: it's easy to edit your notes or cut/past into the text body.

(Either that, or SC Word entirely and go to something like Scrivener #realsoon)

Comments are not hard to find in MS Word...

Click your Review tab. Click "next" or "previous" in the comment pane.

Easy enough, yes... and easy track one by one in a small doc (like a business report). But what if you've got more than a few dozen? What if you're writing 140k words and you've got notes stuck all over the place like flies on a KFC dumpster? Cycling through each one gets to be such a pain and (so far) I have never found an index for Comments (is there one?).

When you've introduced Suzywoozy in cha. 3 and Willynilly in cha. 7 and now you're editing cha. 10 and you need to go back and check what they were wearing... Jus' say'n, it works for me.

Yes, one of the reasons I love Scrivener so much. Navigation is a cinch with the binder, tags, saved searches, etc.

You can't create an index of comments within your document, but you can print one! (So, if you like you could print to pdf if you want a separate reference document.)

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/print-...

Note that the print preview will look like it is still going to print the whole document. But it doesn't, just the comments.

One thing you might want to consider (again using Word creatively...) is to use endnotes rather than comments. Then you will automatically get a list at the end of the document, and you can double click on an endnote to navigate back to where it is used in the document.

Note that you can change the "endnote reference" style to make the endnote superscript number "pop" in your text, changing it, for example, to a bold, red, 16 point number.

You can also convert endnotes to footnotes and vice versa, if sometime you want to see them on the same page and sometime all in a list at the end of the document.

I've had good luck sending the PDF to my iPad and using TinyPDF to read and edit it. You can easily mark up parts of the text using whatever markup style you want, even circling words and phrases and adding notes in the margin. You can then bring up the list of markups and walk through them.

Duncan wrote: "I'm about to start editing my second novel, and I just thought it would be fun to source some of your preferred methods, checklists, and red flags regarding editing? How do you approach editing? Do..."

My editing process is broken down into several steps:

1) On the first read-through, I focus only on spelling errors, typos, grammatical errors, and the like.

2) On the second read-through, I look for plot holes and inconsistencies. I keep a notepad handy to jot down these issues as I come to them, but for the time being, I don't actually change anything in my manuscript.

3) On the third read-through, I address the plot issues I discover in step #2. This might include fleshing out chapters, writing entirely new chapters, re-arranging chapters, taking out chapters... anything necessary to flesh out the plot, handle any issues, and maybe even discover a thing or two about my characters.

4) Off to the beta reader! I don't even look at my manuscript while it's in my beta reader's hands. This step requires patience.

5) Once the beta reader provides me with feedback, the fourth read-through is nothing but looking at said feedback and applying it when appropriate (which is almost always).

6) On the fifth read-through, I make another pass for spelling errors, typos, and grammatical errors.

7) On the sixth pass-through, I format.

8) One more check for spelling errors, grammatical snafus, and typos. You can never check for these too often!

I find that, by breaking up the editing process into these specific steps -- where each read-through has one specific purpose -- I'm not nearly as intimidated or frustrated with the process. Also, I try to give myself two weeks between steps, that way when I return to my writing, it's fresher than it would be if I immediately jumped from step 2 to step 3.

P.D. said: You can't create an index of comments within your document, but you can print one!

Thanks, P.D.! it's buried in the "Print Settings," who'da guessed? Good idea, I'll use it next time I have to answer a mess of comments.

My editing style is pretty much reading and re-reading. The first two edits are all about cleaning things up, the third I print our a hard copy, the fourth is reading after the new corrections have been added, and the fifth onward is when I hand stuff off for beta readers, then I make the suggested changes and give the story one more read before prepping it to publish.

But with each phase I try to spread the time between re-reads and the next re-read as far apart as possible, and use the time in between to work on other things. The longer I'm able to set the manuscript aside and not look at it, the more I'm able to pick up on issues.

Hi,

I do a pretty clean first draft in scrivener, transfer to word, double check and send for a development edit. When that comes back I add the version with the new comments to scrivener and use the split pane to review and correct my scrivener document, including adding/deleting scenes, changing names, tightening up.

Then I print the whole thing out (sorry!) and go through it looking for sense, spelling, continuity, grammar etc. Then I re-edit scrivener. Then I transfer back to word and run another check. Then I transfer it to kindle and check again. Then it goes to my beta readers, I amend where required and send it off for the copy-edit. Then I panic and go through it again.

Then I WANT TO KILL ALL THE DAMN CHARACTERS MYSELF, even the detective!

That's it really.

Aside from the fact that I miss my own mistakes(I think we all do which is why an author cannot edit their work), I use WordPerfect and let's just say it's not "perfect" when it comes to certain words. I can see when I make spelling mistakes on rare occasions because we all have the squiggly red line below the word to help us. I've found sometimes I use words that the program doesn't know or assumes is correct and it's only later that I find out that it's not correct.

To answer your question, my approach is simple but careful as I know there's going to be certain things that I should look back into and have fixed. For the most part I have my editor take care of the book at least twice.

Justin wrote: "Aside from the fact that I miss my own mistakes(I think we all do which is why an author cannot edit their work), I use WordPerfect and let's just say it's not "perfect" when it comes to certain wo..."

I think this statement could be amended to state that many or some authors cannot edit their own work. I learned how to edit my work in the 1980s when I wrote stories for publication in magazines. The only thing of mine that an editor ever changed for publication was to shorten the title of one of my stories by one word.

Some (or many) authors can edit their own works. Authors can indeed miss mistakes, but so can editors.

Ken wrote: "Justin wrote: "Aside from the fact that I miss my own mistakes(I think we all do which is why an author cannot edit their work), I use WordPerfect and let's just say it's not "perfect" when it come..."

Thanks for the comment Ken. Your right and editors also need work sometimes. There's nothing like sending your work to an editor and they miss your mistakes...kinda defines the whole purpose.

Before sending to an editor, I go through a checklist, some of which includes:

Top ten words to eliminate: http://www.ragan.com/Main/Articles/47...#

Filter Words: http://writeitsideways.com/are-these-...
http://www.publishingcrawl.com/2012/0...

Contractions - contract those words and lower your word count (as appropriate)

Remove "was" and eliminate any passive voice.

I imagine the same is true of other software as well, but in Scrivener you can put these lists of words into the search field and use the "any word" operator instead of "all words" or "exact phrase", and have it highlight all occurrences at once. Makes for quick editing instead of having to search through the document dozens of times.

yep, nothing like reading a book and the same sentence is repeated a few lines later, forgotten by the author. But hey, it happens. It's not the end of the world. :/ We just prefer it wouldn't :P

I love listening to the computer read my story back to me. And I chuckle a lot when she mispronounces something, but it's amazing how many mistakes it picks up. I also format it into an ePub version and upload it into iBooks and read it. I can highlight and make notes where I need to fix something. I also read it a few times on the computer. I also like to edit my proof copy from createspace. My eyes see differently from an electronic device to a paperback. I do sometimes find little mistakes, or a sentence structure I don't like.

It always pronounces characters' names wrong...

Loved your comment. I have a couple writers in my writers group who are considering Scrivener. And one writer who is using it and loves it. I don't think I would have the patience for it.

I am curious how you can highlight and edit an epub in Ibooks. this sounds like something I would like to do.