Friendit

Hey guys! Ready to jump into today’s topic? I am :-D

All right. So Monday, we talked about getting your manuscript finished, to the point that it’s considered “final” – or so you thought. There’s another step, before you can really say that your manuscript is done, that you’ve finished what you can do, and that it’s time to send it to a publisher.

Step Two:

The Frienditor

I’m guessing that you have no idea what that means, so let me explain. A frienditor is a friend who’s willing to look at your manuscript and give you some pointers about it, so you’ll be able to go through your manuscript yet another time. Yes, frienditor is a mashup of the words friend and editor.

But! There are a few things you need to look for in a frienditor, which is what I want to talk about today.

Preferably, a writer

This is a helpful attribute in a frienditor, because they’ll have a really good idea of what you’re going through and what sort of advice you’re looking for when it comes to your manuscript. Writers know what it’s like to write, and we know a heck of a lot about story. So, look for a frienditor who writes, even one who’s a poet. They’ll really be able to help point you in the right direction, and get your story where it needs to go. They might even find a plot error or two, that you may have missed.

Preferably, a reader

If your frienditor isn’t a reader, they’re not going to be able to help you, at all. They won’t know what makes a good story, or what to look for by way of errors within a story. So make sure you find someone who reads a lot. In fact, if you can’t find anyone else, just find a reader who reads in the genre in which you write. They’ll have a very good idea of what exists within the genre, and they might even have some good ideas for you to make the story better.

Preferably, an editor

I know these are harder to find, but it is possible. If you have a friend who’s an editor, or who is really good at editing but doesn’t do it for a living, ask them for help! We’re not all that rare, honestly, but we’re not always very loud about liking to edit. It’s culturally weird, to like editing. Trust me. I’m an editor.

Anyway, find a frienditor who’s an editor, who knows what it’s like to find errors in any given work, and who’s good at it. This can honestly be the best type of frienditor to find, when push comes to shove. Harder to find, yes, but well worth the hunt. 

And honestly, if you can find one person in each of those categories, it's even better if you send your manuscript to three people. You'll get more pointers, which only helps. 

Definitely, someone you trust

If you don’t trust your frienditor, you’re in trouble. You need to be working with someone you trust, someone who’s not going to go off the deep end, and someone whose advice you can trust. Don’t go with someone who will just tell you that it’s good or that it’s bad, but someone who will give you real, honest advice. Without that, there’s no point to this step at all.

Once your frienditor has read your manuscript and given you their notes, take the time to go through the work one more time and adjust for their comments.

Now, you just might be ready. Next time, we’ll go through our checklist.

[love]

{Rani D.}

Step 1

Happy Monday, everybody! Thanks so much to those of you who came out for the event at Page 1 Books on Saturday—we all had a great time, and I can’t wait to hang out with more of you at our next event.

As you know (or, I hope you do), it’s June! That means it’s time for a new series, and I have just the thing in mind.

I started this blog, initially, to talk to you guys about writing, publishing, reading, and everything to do with this wonderful world of words. That being the case, the best thing I could think to talk about this month is getting from Point A to Point B: getting from manuscript to publisher, step by step.

So, what’s step 1?

Finalizing your manuscript

This is often the hardest part for a lot of writers, I’ve found. I’ve spoken with many a writer who was finished writing the book, but didn’t know how to finish the manuscript. Well, I’m here to tell you how to get it done.

First off, finish writing the book

Obviously, yeah? If you want your manuscript to be done, you’ll first have to finish your book, and not just in your head. That means getting it on the page, all the way to the end. But I also mean that you should do an edit, run through it and find your plot holes (I can nearly guarantee you have at least one), and fix everything you can find. Do your basic edits. Get the book to where you think it’s not terrible, but probably still needs some work that you’re not sure how to do. That, my friends, is finishing the book.

Second, self-edit

If you don’t know how to do this, I suggest editing someone else’s work, as practice. Try to read it for errors, to find things that could be worked on and improved. And then go back to your own work, and look at it as though someone else wrote it. To do this, you might need to have a bunch of time to let it sit, to forget a lot of what you’ve done so far. Yeah, it’s okay to not remember what you’ve written. It happens when you’ve written more than five books, let me tell you.

Anyway, make sure you do a decent self-edit. Run through your manuscript at least three times, yourself, before you even consider calling it final. But then, it’s really not final at all, because we have one more step.

Third, proofread

No, I don’t mean running the spellchecker. I mean run through it with a fine-toothed comb and find any errors you can. Don’t worry, you will miss some.

The point of this is to make sure it’s not a mess for the next step, the theme of our next post. See, next we’re going to send it to someone else to read, and we really want it to not be the mess to end all messes, when it finally gets to that stage.

So, write it, edit it, edit it again, and proof it.

If you haven’t done that yet, your manuscript isn’t finalized—although, technically, I’d say that it still isn’t. You’ll see. Don’t worry. :)

[love]

{Rani Divine}

Back it up

For the finale in our series, I want to talk about something a little more obvious than the last two. It’s something that you all know is important, but yet something that I feel should be reiterated, in any case. It’s one of those things that we all struggle to work on, both because it can be boring and because it can be the most fascinating part of the story-writing process.

Why do we need…

Backstory?

For our purposes, today, I’m talking both about character’s backgrounds and the background of your story in general. What’s been going on around your story? What’s your character been through up to this point? Things of that nature, which some say can really drive a story forward, and really make something of them.

From the point of view of a reader…

I like when I can tell how much thought and effort a writer has put into their story. It makes the story that much more worthwhile, to me. It’s more interesting, because I can see how attached they were to this world, to their characters, to go to the point that they even thought through the tiniest details in the whole of the story, even to note the type of grass growing in the backyard, and why that was important to the man who built this house in the way back when’s. I want to see that you’re having fun with it, and that you’re understanding your story as much as I’m understanding it. Make me see it like you see it, feel it like you feel it, and follow it like you follow it. Your readers will thank you. Promise.

From the point of view of a writer…

If you’ve read Telekinetic, then you might know that I really enjoy adding a short prologue of information on the background of the story. I really like to know all that stuff, to have it all as a reference while I’m writing, because it helps me make sure that I’m not accidentally creating a character who could not thrive in this world, or creating a world that would literally kill my character. It’s something that you have to think about, and probably before you actually start your writing. I’d recommend sitting down and getting at least a few notes down onto a page, and then you can start the actual story. Otherwise, you’ll just end up getting confused and making a mess. Trust me, I’ve been there.

From the point of view of an editor…

Similarly to both the above, I really just want to know that you know your stuff. If I can tell that you’re a little iffy on your backstory, even for a single character, it makes me wary about your skill as a whole. I want to see that you know what you’re doing, that you know your characters and your world, and that you don’t need someone else to come in and help you make sense of it all. I don’t want to have to explain your story to you—that’s probably the best way of putting it. Please, don’t make me have to do that.

You need a backstory, and you need to know it. Simple as that. Without one, your story will suffer, as will your editor.

;-)

[love]

{Rani Divine}