#Writing and #Editing Tips

Members of Hornsea Writers hold a wealth of information on their individual websites. Last week we turned a spotlight on Stuart Aken and his Resources page which, among other goodies, holds a constantly updated Competitions List.

This week we highlight a wealth of blogposts - 32 in all - from Linda Acaster. Thankfully, she's created an Index Page for easy navigation. Within it can be found:

• 16 posts on Writing Prompts, including discussions on each aspect;
•   3 posts on Research: Is it always necessary? Using a "bible", and using character sheets for continuity purposes;
•   8 posts on what to look for during different types of Edits, including Structural, Content, Line edits and the use of beta readers;
•   5 posts on writers' mis-uses which can seriously annoy a reader - Don't Mess With The Reader - including Openings, Sense of Place, Categories of Characters, Seeding Information, and Plagiarism.

As well as her Historical, Fantasy and Horror novels, Linda Acaster also has Reading A Writer's Mind: Exploring Short Fiction - First Thought To Finished Story  which, as might be guessed, does what it says on its cover. Jump to HERE for the buy links and to read an excerpt.

Has Your Festive Reading Been Up To Scratch?

How many books did you receive this Christmas? Please say you were gifted some, even if you gifted them to yourself. It’s a time for trying out new authors, new genres.

Alas, the outcome doesn’t always live up to the promise on the covers. Linda Acaster was left not just feeling short-changed, but annoyed enough to write a series of posts pointing out deficiencies in some of those she read.

Why? Because most were from mainstream publishers.

Ohhh, don’t rile a reader who’s also a writer. Catch her first post, on Openings, HERE, and don’t make the same mistakes with your own novel.

Reading and Writing Historicals

What are you reading?

Lately, Linda Acaster has been reading "faction". This is the art of fictionalising recorded facts about real people, usually now dead, to give an insight into their life and times, written in such a way as to challenge the reader to discern the fact from the fiction. 

It's not a sub-genre of the historical novel that she's normally drawn to. As she maintains in her blogpost, no matter the amount of research undertaken, no writer is going to get all the details correct.

But does it matter? And why the sudden interest? Check out her blogpost to see if you agree.

Editing After Submission: a Taste of The Work

We all edit our own work, striving for that impossible dream: perfection. For the self-published, it’s a rather unfortunate fact that the author’s edit is the only one performed. This is a shame and causes the publication of many good books that are seriously flawed. Freelance editors can be expensive, but any writer worthy of the name will employ such an experienced examiner to ensure the work is as good as it can be: we owe that much to our readers.

For those who are published, whether by mainstream or independent publishing houses, our own edit is only the start of the finishing process. We submit what we hope is the best piece we can produce, knowing as we send it off there will be faults, suggested improvements, and some culling of our darlings. A writer is usually too close to the creation to view it in a truly objective light.

Last week, I completed the final work on my latest novel. War Over Dust, book 2 of the Generation Mars series, is due to be launched on 2^nd September at Fantasticon, a fantasy/scifi/gaming convention held in the UK City of Culture 2017, Hull.

I’d spent much of the winter actually creating the book. Then began my own edit. This, in itself, is a fairly thorough process, involving a line by line check for errors, a read through aloud from a printed version (the eye misses too much when reading from the screen), comments from a beta reader, and feeding each chapter through an online editing suite. I use https://prowritingaid.com/; others are available. That whole procedure takes a few weeks. Only then do I send the piece off to the publisher.

Dan Grubb, owner of FantasticBooks Publishing, employs a team of dedicated editors (rumour suggests he has them chained to desks in the dank basement of his rural headquarters; so isolated is the place that their moans and groans of distress go unheard by anyone who might feel inclined to rescue them!).

By return email, I received the first suggestions in the form of a couple of dozen minor alterations, which I passed back the next day. There followed an emailed document, 8 pages long, detailing suggested content changes (this sounds a lot, but many of the comprehensive comments required only a sentence or two to fix). Also, in the same email, was the full MS marked with Word Tracking comments, deletions, additions, queries and suggestions; the line edit.

I spent around four days, working between ten and twelve hours each day, addressing these. Again, it sounds as though a lot of errors were discovered, but, in practice, most were stylistic or typos, with a few easily addressed queries, some minor alterations, and a few inconsistencies that required the odd change in a number of chapters (often no more than a word or two). This is work that requires intense concentration coupled to an ability to expunge the previous version of the book from your memory in order to approach the task with an open mind.

So, there you have it. The writing of a book is more than simply allowing that inner artist to express your thoughts. It requires a degree of discipline and the help of eagle-eyed analysts to transform that basic word count into something that can be enjoyed by booklovers whilst giving those readers the respect they deserve.

The cover is now also complete and the book was with the typesetters when I last enquired as to progress.

I’ll do a full reveal of that excellent cover in the not too distant future. For now, the picture at the head of this post is a taster.

You can follow the editing process in more detail by visiting my website here and searching for ‘Progress on the WIP: SciFi in the Making.

First Draft Completed. What Next?

Martian surface, courtesy NASA

How do you respond to your completion of a first draft of your novel? And what do you do next? Stuart Aken has been working on the second book in his Generation Mars series since 9^th January and completed the first draft on 20^th March with 112,061 words. He was, unsurprisingly, delighted to have reached this milestone in the creation of the story.

But, of course, this isn’t so much the end of the process as the beginning of the conversion of the raw story into a readable, publishable book. In his post on his website, he details the next stages and describes the path he expects to tread on the way to that final version of his story. With much research still to do, some considerable re-reading and a programme of known changes to make, it looks as though he’ll be busy with this project for some time to come.

The first book in the series, Blood Red Dust, has earned some high praise from reviewers, so he has a lot to live up to in this follow-up book!

So, what’s your working method and how do you approach the journey from that first draft to the finished product?

"Stepping" into Editing a Novel

 

It must be spring. Four members of Hornsea Writers are in various stages of finishing a novel. You'll be hearing about each of them in the coming weeks.

Linda Acaster has just added "The End" to Pilgrims of the Pool, the third novel in the Torc of Moonlight trilogy. But has she?

As she states on her own blog it's the draft that's finished, not the novel. A whole new side to the creative work now begins - the editing. 

If you think that entails a quick flick through with a blue pencil and an eagle-eye for spelling mistakes, you are seriously underestimating the process. On her blog Linda begins a series discussing what is involved; the opener lists the steps.

Don't Abrogate Your Own #Editing

Linda Acaster was recently handed a published paperback with the comment, 'You aren't going to like this.'

She didn't.

Abrogate your own editing skills at your peril. Read the full post on her site HERE.

Writing Prompts

Image courtesy FreeDigitalPhotos.net

January is the month for turning over a new leaf, and for many that means either doing something about that long-cherished dream to write, or improving held skills. To help, two members of Hornsea Writers are each running a series of blogposts. Drop by for some out-of-norm inspiration:

Linda Acaster is offering the Wednesday Writing Prompt in which she discusses an aspect of idea generation and initial thought processes. The series starts HERE but jump to her blog and search "Writing Prompt" for the full list.

Stuart Aken is well into his series Ruled by Intellect or Emotion? where he discusses how to choose between words to gain a particular effect. The series starts HERE but jump to his blog and search "Tips on Word Choice" for the full list.

They may help push your own boundaries that little bit further.

Using Writers' Retreats

NaNoWriMo - (Inter) National Novel Writing Month - is in full swing. 

In parallel, Linda Acaster is running two mini-series of blogposts. Mid-week are handy editing questions to use when interrogating a work-in-progress. 

Saturdays have seen two posts on writers' residencies and retreats - both funded and on a shoe-string - with personal input from Alan Wilkinson, a 20 year professional, and JS Collyer, a debut novelist.

Drop by for the full info:                 
Editing questions
Writers' retreats

Fantastic Book Editing: A Target Achieved

In spring this year, Fantastic Books Publishing will publish the first volume of Stuart Aken's fantasy trilogy, A Seared Sky: Joinings. With that in mind, he's spent much of this month doing the final edit of the second volume, A Seared Sky: Partings. The target was to get that ready for publication by the end of the month and he reached that on Sunday. Now he has the rather more demanding job of undertaking the initial edit of volume 3, A Seared Sky: Convergence. He actually wrote that book last year, using NaNoWriMo as a final motivator to reach completion, which he achieved.

He likes to give himself a reasonable space between creating a story and making the first edit, as it allows him to approach the work with fresh eyes. This editing session will be a slower, more measured process and he's expecting to work on one chapter each day. There are 52, at present, and 194,000 words, so this will take a little time. But he enjoys editing almost as much as he enjoys the creative process, so not an onerous task.

Watch this space for the announcement of the launch of A Seared Sky: Joinings.