DEAR CRABBIT: what if I can't afford professional editing?

From a blog comment:

Dear Crabbit,
It would be great if you did a post on the best things we can do if we can't afford a full-editing service, Nicola. I'm on a strict family income and spending on my writing just can't take centre stage. I can save and build some money to use, and would love to know the best way to spend it to get the best advice for my work. I can see how important outside proof reading and editing can be, so I want to get it right with my limited resources!

What does a proof-reader do?

What does a proof-reader do? You might think it's obvious: finds typos. And that's true. But it is also more complicated and more technical than that. After all, while some typos are clearly typos, others are stylistic traits and others are not typos at all but do require consistency.

Let me list some of the things my expert proof-reader found in Dear Agent (coming on Aug 10th!):

• Places where I'd got a very slightly different wording in the contents from the actual wording in the heading, because I'd changed my mind about the heading but not the contents list.
• I'd used the word blind-folded with a hyphen twice and without twice - the examples were far apart and to notice I'd have to remember to write down every single word that could have two forms as I came to them, so that I could check each one. There are LOADS of words that can be hyphenated or not, equally correctly, but you should do it the same each time.
• I use British spellings (eg realised not realized) but sometimes my computer auto-Americanises - my proof-reader had to notice.
• There were some things the meaning of which she wanted to check, because she wasn't sure it would be clear to everyone - this is a crucial task for a proof-reader and requires intelligence.
• She noticed a couple of bolds or italics which she questioned.
• She noticed that I seemed to have contradicted myself at one point. I hadn't, but I agreed it wasn't clear, so I adjusted.
• I'd capitalised something in one place but not another.

Other things a proof-reader must notice:

• I might have used curly quotes in one place and straight ones in another.
• Spelling and punctuation errors, of course.
• Wrong layout or line-spacing.*
• Inconsistent font/size in headings.
• Places where headings appear at the bottom of a page, or other uglinesses of layout.

[*Edited to add: layout requirements are different between ebooks and print books. The proof-reader would be told which he or she is doing, but would usually be required to be proofing according to print requirements, which means layout is for a page view and must avoid widows and orphans. Then it would be the job of the formatter to alter to suit the ebook format.

For example, too much white space is a nightmare in some ebook formats. And, as Dan points out in the comments below, widows and orphans are irrelevant because each reader/device can be set up differently. When we read ebooks, we have to accept that sometimes a heading, for example, will appear at the bottom of the "page", ie screen.

I told my proof-reader to ignore widows and orphans and line spacing. I then put in my instructions for the formatter, and I always give her discretion about line spacing, within reason. The formatter is not only a highly expert ebook formatter, using full html, but she was also a trained type-setter. So, I have all bases covered! And there will doubtless still be something that slips through!)]

It's a skilled task. It requires patience, knowledge of correct and varied uses, and a very meticulous way of working. 

The fact that my proof-reader for Dear Agent was my sister probably adds to the pressure! 

State of flux - where we are now

I draw your attention to this excellent overview of the changing situation in publishing vs self-publishing. Libby Fischer Hellmann has used both avenues, and therefore knows of what she speaks. She compares how things were eighteen months ago with how things are now, listing changing pros and cons of each route to publication.

My message has always been, "Whatever you do, do it with eyes wide open" and that blog post will really help clarify things, I believe. It also has links to other useful posts.

I think she speaks great sense and I like her calm analysis.

To remind you of my own position:

• As you know, I have been published many times (around 90) by trade publishers - publishers whose role is to take all the financial risk (apart from my considerable time) of production and distribution and invest in the editing, copy-editing, proof-reading and marketing of my books.
• However, a) most trade publishers now invest far less in all of those roles for most authors, including me b) published authors are expected to do more and more for less and less return and c) some books are eminently suitable for self-published, at least by clued-up authors.
• Therefore, as you know, I am also doing some self-publishing, under Crabbit Publishing. I have so far published Tweet Right, am about to republish Mondays are Red (details very soon!) and then will publish my in-progress ebook on how to write a great synopsis.
• However, I still want to be published by trade publishers for some of my work. I think I am very well-placed to know which is the better form for each book of mine.
• And I want to continue to share that knowledge with you and help you make the right decisions, too. Through Pen2Publication,  I am also currently helping a client who intends to self-publish a novel.

So, there you have it.

Oh and one more thing: I don't care about my sales as much as perhaps I should. I care many times more about putting out books I can be proud of. Commercially, I care very much that my books sell enough to keep a decent publisher happy - because otherwise I won't stay published - but riches? You can stick them.

Luckily.

WEEDING OR EDITING

This is adapted from a much earlier post, but that one has been lost in the tangle of brambles and ivy, and I thought it could do with an airing. Especially since I'm in the middle of a novel revision and editing is uppermost in my mind.

I guess that the possible methods for self-editing are similar to the possible methods for weeding your garden.

1. Go from one end to the other, picking out all the weeds carefully.
2. Wander about, picking out weeds as you see them.
3. Decide that weeds are just plants with more determination and that, since everything is equal in God's eyes, they should be allowed to remain. (Please don't take this view of the weeds in your book. Not if you want to be published and read.)

Then I decided that this analogy is rubbish and that, as with all analogies, it is aesthetically pleasing and yet practically pointless.

There are, in fact, only three things you need to think about when weeding your garden:

1. You need to know the difference between a weed and a plant.
2. And you just have to get rid of the damned weeds. Doesn't matter how - just do it.
3. No matter how carefully you do it, you'll find more weeds at the end, because the removal of one weed often reveals another lurking beneath.

I decided that this is not complete rubbish after all and is a pretty good analogy for editing your own work, because:

1. You need to know what possible errors you're looking for - the difference between a good sentence / plot structure and a crappy one, just as you need to know what's a weed and what's not.
2. And you just need to get rid of the errors.
3. And when you've got rid of one lot, another lot is revealed.
4. So you get rid of them.
5. And so on.
6. Until your piece of work is weed-free.

Would you like any help with the identification of weeds? I am here for you, as ever. There are two categories of weeds in your literary garden.

CATEGORY ONE WEEDS are the choking bindweedy ones, which threaten to take over your roses and throttle the life-blood from them. (There are actually many of these in my real garden and at least one in my WIP.) These must be removed early on, by the roots, otherwise your roses cannot grow and your garden, frankly, is fit only for slugs and other vermin. It is, in the words of Rab C Nesbit, pish. Examples are:

• Poor characterisation - either in your MCs or your supporting acts. Do your characters always behave as they should? Does the reader like / respect/ identify with / feel for the MC? (We don't need to do all those things, but we have to care.)
• Pace problems - I wrote about that here.
• Tension issues - where is the tension? Is it in the right place? Is it satisfied at the right time?
• Voice slippages - see here.
• Major POV slippages - here you are.
• Story structure / shape / arc problems - over here.
• Saggy middle - hmm. I went searching for posts about saggy middles but kept finding myself mentioning them but never tackling them. This is rather the case in real life, too. I will have to tackle the saggy middle. Soon.
• Crappy ending - here.
• Story starting in the wrong place - gosh, I'm good to you.
• And a lot more - which is not very helpful of me but I have a book to write.

To be honest, you really shouldn't have let most of these anywhere near your garden in the first place. If you are a beginner writer, your book may be littered with these horrors, but a more experienced writer will avoid almost all of them before they appear.

CATEGORY TWO WEEDS are smaller things, which all writers will find in their first drafts and which we will apply the weeding gloves to with a commendable ruthlessness. Our editors and copy-editors and proof-readers will pick up any that we didn't spot but we want to leave as little as possible for these people. It's our book, not theirs. (Also, publishers nowadays don't like to use editors etc more than they need to. Grrr.) Category Two weeds are like those dainty things that try to pretend they're real flowers. Sometimes my husband thinks they are and he leaves them. Sometimes he takes out the pretty flowers instead. He is like a novice writer when it comes to weeding, which in his case it usually doesn't, actually. Examples are:

• Places where tweaks should be made to clarify characterisation / motivation / credibility.
• Clunky sentences - sentences where you have clustered a collection of clauses in an ugly order, for example, making it hard for the reader to read.
• Minor POV or voice slippage.
• Places where thre's too much telling when showing would have been better. Extraneous adverbs.
• Continuity issues - eg saying that the MC leapt onto the horse's bare back and then later mentioning the stirrups. I have done this. Oh and then there was the one [which made it through all the copy-editors and all the way into the printed book] where a girl flings open the door of a room which ten minutes before I'd said was locked on the other side...
• Typos, spelling errors, punctuation etc etc. And yes, there will be some in this post. I'll find them eventually. But probably not all of them, because this is a blog post and I can change it later. So shut up, please.
• Anything that doesn't sound absofrigginglutely perfect when you read it aloud, imagining that your audience consists of fidgety people who are assuming you've got nothing interesting to tell them and they're desperate to leave.

When you've done all that, there's only one more thing to do. Do it again. And possibly again. 

One of the problems is that the weed you removed may have hidden roots. You will have noticed the same in books: if you change one thing, you'll find you have created knock-on effects which now have to be dealt with. So, you do have to remove weeds and plot problems by the root and make sure you've not forgotten any tendrils. I suggest keeping a notebook as you revise and jotting down things you've changed, so that you can check that you've found all the consequences. However, this is a bit methody for me and I prefer the madness approach and the constant re-reading.

And when you're quite sure that no weed is peeping up between the soil of your well-raked flower-border, then you can let an agent or publisher see it. By which time, a previously invisible seed will have begun to sprout, and what you thought was perfection won't be. That's because perfection is unattainable in writing as in gardening, and you have to get over it.

Have I answered your questions? Probably not. See, I don't really have a method. I just do it. And do it again. I honestly think once you can identify the weeds, pulling them out is not that difficult. You can choose whatever weeding method works for you: just get rid of the little buggers.

Oh, and by the way, spell-check and grammar-check are the equivalent of weed-killer: they don't let anything grow. They kill indiscriminately and remove control from the gardener. They may have their place for some people but they are not enough for anyone. Real writers use their hands.

Here's one I made earlier, with not a weed in sight. (Obviously a lot earlier, since this is September and those are not Septemberish seedlings.)

IF IN DOUBT, LEAVE IT OUT

If a word or phrase doesn't add something important to your book, cut it. If it's there because you think it's pretty, rather than helping the story and the reader, cut it.

If in doubt, leave it out. Your book will be better.

In order to do this properly, you must read every word aloud.

Please.

Thank you.

That is all.