The Impotence of Editing

Novel Spaces is in its 10th year! Over the coming months we'll be featuring some of the most popular posts from our archives. This one was first published April 26, 2012.  Enjoy!

By William Doonan

After reading Jewel's excellent post, I wanted to add my two cents about editing. 

With the possible exception of marketing, the most onerous task a writer faces is editing.  I can pull a character out of a hat.  Here’s one now – Ned.  Setting – abandoned donut shop north of Muncie.  Plot – middle-aged taxidermist despairs of finding love in a post-apocalyptic world.  Theme – unending gloom.  Title – Mounted. 

Tell me you’re not dying to know what happens.  I can write it.  The only problem is that when I’m done, it will be riddled with errors.  And when I go back to edit it, it will look just fine to me.

The reason is simple.  As readers, we are trained to ignore the connective tissue of written language.  Punctuation becomes invisible, pacing is ignored, anomalies are forgiven, and dialog tags fade into the background.  And because all writers are readers, we fall into a trap.  We overlook the same things.  And when we make mistakes in the connective tissue of our own story, we don’t notice.

I’ll use a short story to illustrate my point.

Mounted – Chapter 1

Ned’s hands shook as he glued the beak onto the stuffed bat.  “Damn, he shouted, throwing his tweezers onto the ground, realizing he had glued the beak onto the back of the bat’s head by mistake.  “Damn post-apocalyptic word!”

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Good, isn’t it?  But there are problems.  There is no close-quote after the first Damn.  There’s no such thing as a post-apocalyptic word (unless there is), and bats don’t have beaks.

Mounted – Chapter 2

Oriole shivered, her ragged hoodie no match for the evening chill.  If only her sisters had left Muncie before the troubles.  If Robin and Grackle were here, surely one of them would know how to stat a fire. 

Hugging her poncho tight, Oriole stepped gingerly around the piles of brand-new disposable lighters that littered the road like gemstones, shimmering in the sunrise. 

Up ahead, she saw something flicker in an abandoned donut shop.  It could be a campfire.  She approached carefully.  “It could be another gang of surfers,” she groaned, remembering her last encounter.

__________________

I know, right – you’re hooked.  So hooked you might be willing to overlook the slovenly writing.  You can’t stat a fire.  And the pacing is off.  First it’s evening, then three lines later it’s sunrise.  Is she wearing a hoodie or a poncho?  Surfers don’t form gangs.  And you can’t groan something.  Really, you can’t.  And even if you could, you shouldn’t.

Mounted – Chapter 3

Ned was gluing the last tail feather when he heard the door chime.  He turned away from the peacock as the girl entered.  She was the first human he’d seen since….since the troubles began.  “Damn Buffet Rule,” he gurgled, staring at her.  She was gorgeous.  Mid-twenties, maybe five foot two, mixed Scottish and Mexican heritage, judging by the poncho she wore and the pan of haggis she carried. 

Oriole came forward and knelt by the fire.  She rubbed her hands together

Ned carried the peacock to the display case, and set it next the owls and ducks and penguins, the product of his labor these long years.  Then he approached her.  He extended a hand but she cringed, spotting a distinctive feather that clung to his sleeve. 

“Is that spotted owl?”

Ned beamed.  “Do you do taxidermy too?”

Oriole shrieked as her eyes darted around the room.  “You…you kill them.”

“Well, yes,” he said.  “Otherwise they fuss when you try to stuff them.”

She shook her head sadly. 

What’s wrong?

“Im an ornithologist.”

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Problems?  Actually, this part is pretty good if you can ignore the missing quotation marks, and the fact that you can’t gurgle words. Would the door chime still work?  The word I’m needs an apostrophe. 

Mounted – Conclusion

“I’m not currently in need of eye care,” Ned told her, eyeing her lustfully. 

“Not ophthalmology,” Oriole said, “ornithology – I study birds, I love birds.  I come from a long line of bird lovers.  I could never love a man who, who, who…”

“Shh.” Ned put a finger on her lips.  “You sound like that owl I strangled last week.  Look, we might have our differences, but we can make it.   At least we’ll have each other.  We can forget about the zombies for awhile?”

Oriole pulled back.  “There are zombies?”

“Probably not,” Ned said as he kissed her.  “I mean, I haven’t seen any but you never know.” 

“This is so wrong,” she said, kissing him back hungrily.  “I could never love a man like you.”

“We’ll make it work,” he said, gingery removing her poncho and her hoodie, and setting her haggis aside. 

“Tell me how this is going to end.”  She tore at his clothes, spilling the contents of his pockets.  Ear pins, wing screws, and spools of tail wire tangled with beak nuts of assorted sizes.  “Tell me how this is going to end.”

Ned took her in his arms, remembering the title of his story.

__________________

Problems?    How can he talk while kissing her?  Seriously, there’s way too much kissing dialog here.  Also, there’s no such thing as a beak nut. 

OK, so how can we avoid an editing nightmare?  Here are four ideas:

1)      Go to the TOOLS bar in Microsoft Word, and turn on the GRAMMAR AND STYLE checker.  It will drive you crazy.  But it will save you grief.

2)      Unless you’re willing to pay an editor, you’ll need some editing software.  I like PerfectIt from Intelligent Editing.  It will find mistakes you missed.  At $49, it’s a bargain, and you can download a preview for free.

3)      Read your story out loud.  Read it slowly as if you were recording an audiobook.  Also, try to sound like Morgan Freeman.  Reading out loud keeps you honest.  You won’t be able to ignore your mistakes.  

4)      Find a writing partner you can trust, someone who’s willing to look you in the eye and laugh uncontrollably at your story if that’s what’s called for.  If they can’t do that, find someone else.

Indefinite Timelines

Four years into my journey through independent publishing, I’ve learned some valuable lessons.  Among them: 1) selling books is really hard; 2) a diversified platform consisting of webpages, blogs, twitter, blogging, Facebook, and more blogging might help some; 3) it’s always a good idea to use sunscreen; and 4) seriously, selling books is really hard.

Having worked with small and smaller publishers, and having published my own books, I’m a huge fan of independent publishing.  But I won’t lie - if one of the biggies waves a sack of euros in my face, I’ll sell out fast.  Until that happens, however, I’m going to extol the virtues of going it alone.  

Here’s why: I’m the boss.  I can publish when I want to publish.  No more waiting - I can design covers or pay someone to do that.  I can do my own layouts on InDesign, and I can upload my projects to LightingSource or CreateSpace myself.  And as long as I’m willing to ignore my children, I can do this pretty quickly.

But the biggest advantage to going it alone is that it allows for an infinite timeline.  My books are never going to go out of print, and I’m never going to stop talking about them.  I published my first mystery novel Grave Passage five years ago.  And I’m still pushing it and still getting reviews.

Furthermore, I control the promos.  The promos generate reviews and the reviews generate sales.  Without question, the single most effective marketing strategy I have come across is the Kindle KDP select promotional option that allows you to give away your book free for five days every few months.  I’ve had a lot of success with this, so I’m going to give it another try today.

One year ago this month I published my archaeological mystery - The Mummies of Blogspace9.  It’s one of my favorite things that I’ve done.  So I’m giving away free copies today.  So if you haven’t picked up a copy yet, please consider downloading copies for the whole family.  Don’t delay; supplies are limited!  Click this BUTTON.  Go ahead, click it.  You can click on any letter.  Just click.  You can even click on this word.

“None of us knew what was at stake. And that’s the thing about archaeology - you never know what you’ll find when you start digging into an ancient pyramid. Maybe some burials, mummies even. But surely not a five hundred year-old secret worth killing for. 

Had I known at the onset that seven weeks later most of my friends would be dead, I would have left Peru in a heartbeat. But of course I didn’t know that. 

I didn’t know that a demonically-possessed Spanish Grand Inquisitor would haunt the crap out of us, or that a pair of undead conquistador knights would help us find the secret to putting down walking mummies. 

And surely, I wouldn’t have just sat around had I known that something was watching from inside that pyramid, some malevolent force that could animate the dead. 

But it’s all true, as you’ll come to realize.

My name is Leon Samples.  I am twenty-eight years old, and I am damned.” 

The Mummies of Blogspace9 is a taut, high-stakes thriller about a team of archaeologists who inadvertently dig up more than they bargained for. Demons of antiquity are not easily amused, nor are those who’ve sold their souls to protect them. 

Headhunting and Short-Story Writing: Two Nearly-Lost Arts

As an anthropologist who spends a great deal of time thinking about culture, I’m always on the lookout for professions that appear to be vanishing from our world.  Alchemists are few and far between.  Shamans are having a hard time making a living.  Conjurers, shape-shifters, taxidermists, and jesters have all been hit hard by recent economic downturns. 

But nobody is currently experiencing more economic and social woe than the headhunter and the short-story writer.  Vilified, feared, and loved by none, the short-story writer lurks at the edge of polite society, practicing dark unsavory arts, choosing words carefully, willfully ignoring the lack of audience.  The tribal headhunter, though somewhat more respected and appreciated, must also become something of an outcast in order to thrive.  The market for shrunken heads, about as robust as the market for short stories, gives constant reminder that these labors are no longer appreciated.

So I decided to write a short story about headhunters.  I began with Robert James Waller’s masterful tome “The Bridges of Madison County.”  Weighing in at a whopping 38,000 words, this book was a massive hit, inspiring a movie and scores of action figures.  I enjoyed the book, but found it lacking.  Waller had the perfect set-up for headhunting, and every time I turned the page, I thought it was coming.  But it never did.   I had to do something about that.

My short-story “The Cannibals of Madison County” is a cannibal-laden homage to Waller’s vision.  And being a short story, it has no home in the modern world unless one can be crafted. 

I put the story up as a Kindle short story, because let’s face it, there’s nowhere else to publish these days except Highlights for Children, and they’re cagey when it comes to headhunting.  I intend this as an experiment.  The story is only 18 pages long, and you can download it free today.  If you get a moment, you could help out by reading the story and then, if you like it, give a short review.  If I can get 15 good reviews, I can blast the story on all the sharing pages and get thousands of readers.

In any case, this has been a fun project, and I plan to keep you posted as to the results.  Thanks for reading.

Get your free copy today by clicking HERE

The Cannibals of Madison County

2014 - January - the days are already passing me by and I haven't gotten much writing done.  In some ways, 2013 was a frustrating year as far as writing goes.  I didn't get as much done as I had hoped, but then I never really do.

A bright note - nice reviews are coming in for my mysteries Grave Passage and Mediterranean Grave.  There are a few clunkers in there, but for the most part, they're positive.

I had planned to be finished with Aleutian Grave by now, but I'm not quite happy with it yet so I have to think on it longer.  I am pleased to have broken ground on my novella 'The Cannibals of Madison County' which I've been thinking about for a long time.  I'll leave you with chapter one:

It Starts Like This

There are stories about people, and there are stories about eating.  But there aren’t a lot of stories about eating people.  And there should be.  This is one of those stories.

I was staring out my office window when the call came in.  It’s a big window, glass, and through it I could just make out the ridge where Leland Sutter first discovered silver back in 1859.  They had moved me up to the second floor of the Sacramento Tribune building about a year ago when they made me regional editor.  It was a job I had wanted for a long time.  

The call was from a llama farmer up in Madison County by the name of Josh Dugan.  Said he had a story he wanted to share, a story about something that happened back in 2009 that the world needed to know about.  I asked him if it involved llamas and he assured me it didn’t.  We made plans to meet for lunch.

I kept staring out the window even after he hung up.  Madison County, California, I hadn’t thought about that place in months.  Nothing ever happens up there.  Nestled between the Yolo River and Roseville Peak, bordered on the north by Lake Galt, Madison was hit bad by the housing bust.  Most folks took off.  Only a few hardscrabble ranchers stayed on, along with those who had no place else to go.  

Josh Dugan looked to be about thirty years old, fit, tan.  He looked like a man who worked with his hands.  With him was his sister Britney.  She was a little younger.  Attractive girl, but then I’ve always had a thing for redheads.

“We’d been going through some of our mother’s things,” Josh began.  “Cleaning out the big house now that she’s gone.  And we came across some diaries.”

“And the letters,” Britney added.  “Letters he sent her.”

“Who?”  I asked.  “Who are we talking about?”

They both stared at the floor.  Then they told me their terms.  They’d leave the diaries and the letters for me to read, and if I decided there was nothing interesting there, I’d simply return them and never discuss what they contained with anyone.  But if there was a story to be told, then I was to be the one to write it.  

“Our mother was quite a woman,” Josh added.  “Our father loved her very much, but this is a story of a more powerful love, the kind that comes only every few lifetimes, and I think it needs to be told.”

I assured them I’d think it over.  

I didn’t sleep that night.  I stayed at the office reading.  Come first light I was back at that office window looking up towards Madison County, toward that pass where John Stanford drove the golden spike that completed the first transcontinental railroad.  That’s where Jessica Weimar fell in love with Edward Rollins.  

www.williamdoonan.com

Who is Nikolai Gorodish?

Here I am, wrapping up the second draft of my novel, and I can’t resolve a key detail.  It all started last year as I began penning book four of my Henry Grave mystery series.  I had the plot worked out.  The arc was arced.  The characters were down, and the murder was resolved.  Only one problem remained.  I had given the cruise ship a clever name, and it was my plan to end the story by revealing who the ship was named after.  But I can’t for the life of me figure it out.  

Here’s a sneak preview - the first two paragraphs of Aleutian Grave:

I met Brice Laird about twenty years ago, shortly after he killed his first wife, not after he killed his second wife as he remembers it.  So when I heard about the murdered girl on the cruise ship, and I saw Brice’s name on the passenger list, I put two and two together and figured I had already solved the case.   As it turns out, I was wrong.

A twenty-four year-old cabaret dancer by the name of Rose LaFontaine was stabbed to death onboard the arctic cruise ship Nikolai Gorodish.  292 passengers midway through their Bering Sea voyage had all been notified.  Security was tightened, counseling provided, free liquor poured, and one top-notch investigator brought in – me.

So who can help me out here?  I need a snappy spine-tingling, toe-curling, humorous, poignant, clever, or otherwise interesting answer to this question: who is Nikolai Gorodish?

Any and all help will be appreciated.  I’m hoping to wrap the book over the winter break.  Thanks for reading!

12 million people take a cruise each year.

Most have fun.

Some die.

Henry Grave investigates.

10 New Tools No Writer Should Be Without

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of knocking out that first draft.  The storyline is tight, the characters fresh, and the plot compelling.  But there’s also nothing quite like the first proofread, when you confront your own sallow, grammar-free, meandering prose.

Rewriting is half the battle, more than one writer has noted.  But recently I’ve discovered ten new apps that make rewriting much easier:

1) Dwindle – this is one of my favorites.  Dwindle scrubs through your pages looking for redundancy, excessive verbosity, and all manner of unnecessary words.  For example, here’s an excerpt from my new mystery Lady Agatha & The Nine Cumberbunds:

“Agatha approached the cruller like a bear would, if a bear had a cruller.  She circled it twice, then moved in.  The cruller didn’t stand a chance.  Within seconds it was diminished by a third, then another third, then a couple of sixths until it was nothing but crumbs and memories.  Agatha devoured the former and cherished the latter.”

Here’s what the sentence looked like after Dwindle was through with it:  “She ate a cruller.”  It’s much cleaner.

2) BORK – this app is great for anyone writing legal mysteries, or anything involving courtrooms, lawyers, judges, etc.  BORK ensures that your legal prose stays honest.  Here’s a report they sent me after I submitted my first few dozen chapters:

By chapter eleven, Judge Tingle has already sentenced six people to death; four for carjacking, one for besmirchin’ Lady Agatha’s good name, and one for the aquarium massacre.  But because the only victims of the massacre were six clams and an octopus, it seems unlikely that the death sentence would be applied.

3) NyPL – by far the best sex-scene manager I have used.   Writing complex romantic interludes requires both imagination and attention to detail.  And it’s easy to screw up.  NyPL keeps your naughty parts honest.  Here’s what they had to say about one of my early chapters:

A structural error has been identified in the third orgy, on page 23.  Given the relative positions of Agatha, Enrique, Princess Tina, and the UPS driver on the boathouse futon, the only toes available for Lady Agatha to nibble on would have been her own.  Please revise.

4) ImbiBr – this one is a must for those who write hardboiled detectives or any characters who drink a little too much from time to time.  ImbiBr ensures that your characters are drinking realistic amounts of alcohol.  And this is important.  I’ve seen a lot of writers get in trouble here, myself included.  Here’s what they said about chapter nine:

Within a seven-hour period, following the deaths of Enrique and the octopus, Lady Agatha drinks eleven vodka martinis, four liters of gin, and a Budweiser.  If Lady Agatha weighs 190 pounds, as chapter eight suggests, she has already consumed too much alcohol for life to be sustained. 

I’m glad they caught that. 

5) PetScrub – too often, mystery prose becomes laden with references to pets.  Nobody enjoys reading this, so PetScrub catches these irritating passages before your reader does.  For example, here’s a passage from chapter twelve:

Princess Tina smiled as Captain Woofers McPuddle bounced up onto her lap, his long whiskers caressing her cheek as his giant velveteen paws grasped for purchase.

            “Who’s my favorite beasty?” Tina asked rhetorically as Woofers settled in for some well-deserved cuddling.

Here’s what PetScrub came back with:  Please remove this entire offensive passage.

6) Ghast – this app is a must for any horror writer, or for anyone who wants to incorporate a bit of the supernatural in their work.  Ghast will alert you right away if your scary prose falls flat.

Here’s what Ghast had to say about chapter fifteen:  The chance of both Enrique and the octopus being turned into zombies is slim.  Also, Enrique only has one leg, and the octopus is an octopus, so why would Lady Agatha flee to the boathouse?  It’s not scary.  Consider revising this whole section.  Although a zombie octopus is a novel concept, it is not a good one.

7) BakStory – too often we get caught up in the moment, so BakStory fills in the gaps when a character has not been effectively introduced.  Here’s a passage from chapter nineteen that I thought was very good:

            “Take me,” Lady Agatha purred as she let her kimono fall to the kitchen floor.

            “Yes, ma’am,” said the UPS driver as he scanned her with his hand-held unit.  “Special delivery guaranteed!”

BackStory took issue with the passage, reworking the entire second line: 

“Take me,” Lady Agatha purred as she let her kimono fall to the kitchen floor.

            “Yes, ma’am,” said the UPS driver, who originally hailed from Oswego, the son of Belgian immigrants fed up with substandard public housing, as he scanned her with his hand-held unit.  “Special delivery guaranteed!”

8) GunDork – this all-important app will scrub through all your firearm passages to make sure you aren’t committing any logistical or second amendment errors. 

Here’s what they told me about a scene in chapter twenty: Since Lady Agatha is naked in the kitchen, it seems unlikely that she would be able to produce a derringer “from her folds” as well as a crossbow from “parts unknown.”  It is also unlikely that she would then “fire wildly, again and again, and yet again, hither and nither, as the octopus neared.”  First – neither a derringer nor a crossbow can be fired again and again and again without reloading.  Second – nither isn’t a word.  And third – crossbows aren’t firearms.  For help with crossbow-related scenes, please consult BoltMaestro.

9) RoofingTile – this actually has nothing to do with writing, but it’s a great app for comparing roofing tiles if you find yourself in the market.

10) PUUUKR – no writer should be without this kissing app.  PUUUKR takes even the messiest make-out scenes and cleans them up.  Here’s a section from chapter thirty, just after the second aquarium massacre.  Princess Tina is overcome with emotion.

            “I don’t care,” she sobbed.  “I love you.”

            Enrique shuffled near.  “It could never work,” he gurgled.  “I’m a zombie.”

            “Shhhh.” Princess Tina pressed Enrique’s finger to his lips, snapping it off in the process.  Then she kissed him deeply, fervently, hungrily, and mightily.  Her lips thrilled him as they moved from ear to ear, her tongue darting from his chin to his eyebrow.

Nice, right?  Here’s what PUUUKR had to say: Good Christ, this is disgusting.  What? Is she eating him?  Isn’t he the zombie?  Also, where’s the finger that broke off?  Is it still in there somewhere?  Barf.

These are just ten new writing tools out there designed to make our writing lives easier.  If you’d like to learn more, please visit www.williamdoonan.com.

And please have a look at my new serialized novel Continent Incontinent.

two powerful families

three dreams of territorial expansion

four failing bladders

Chapter One is out now at www.williamdoonan.wordpress.com

    

A Modest Marketing Success

In June, my family and I set off for a nine-week European vacation.  The highlight for me was visiting Svalbard, an island north of mainland Norway.  I have always wanted to see polar bears in the wild, and they apparently have polar bears up in Svalbard.  Ultimately we didn’t see any (though I did see a jellyfish), but we had a lot of fun.

And because I was worried about doing nothing in terms of book marketing for nine weeks, I did a giveaway of one of my Kindle books just before we left.  I wrote about this on June 9, but I wanted to follow up, because I think I was onto something here. 

My three Henry Grave mysteries had been just sitting there for months.  You know what I mean – they sell some copies here and there, and then they flatline, and then they sell a few more.  And my last promo was kind of a disaster.  But Grave Passage had one thing going for it.  It had eighteen good reviews.  Reviews are the key to getting picked up by the freebie websites.  And the freebie websites are essential to giving away books.  And yes, that is the goal here – giving away free books, because that's what makes money.

Without access to the freebie websites, the best you can do is promote your Kindle promo on your platform, but that probably isn’t going to get you far because there are only so many people paying attention to your blog and your website, and many of them have hopefully already read your book.  And the freebie sites – check out ebookbooster.com for 45 of them - don’t cost anything.  But you do need reviews or they won’t touch you.

In three days, I gave away just over 14,000 copies of Grave Passage.  Since then, I’ve gone from 18 reviews to 55.  Not only that, but I’m getting more reviews for the other two books Mediterranean Grave and Grave Indulgence.  All three books are listed for $2.99 each, and I’ve sold hundreds of all three.  Here’s my latest paystub from Amazon.

Payment made to:	WILLIAM DOONAN
Our Supplier No.:	XXXXXX
Supplier site name:	XXX_USD
Paid to bank:	Hidden for security
Paid to account:	Hidden for security
Payment number:	XXXXXX
Payment date:	30-AUG-2013
Payment currency:	USD
Payment amount:	636.01

That’s a not shabby $636.01 for one month of Kindle sales.  For sure, I'd like to do better.  But I've had a lot of months where I didn't come close.  And that’s not even counting the paper books, which are selling too.  Why?  Hopefully word of mouth gets around to folks who don’t have Kindles, so they buy the paper copies.  Kindle might be its own self-governed ecosystem, but it definitely interacts with other publishing ecosystems.

Amazon has also recently launched a new sales component called Matchbook, which I’ve already signed on to.  It allows buyers of your paper books to pick up the Kindle version for 99 cents extra.  It’s free money.

So here’s what I’m taking away from this – the Kindle KDP Select free-giveaway component is by far the best marketing tool I have ever seen.  It costs nothing and has a built-in audience of millions of Kindle owners who want content.  But you’re never going to connect with them unless your title shows up on their radar.  That’s why you need the freebie sites.  They’re free, and they will put your title in e-mails that will reach hundreds of thousands of readers.

And the key to it all (aside from having a great book and a great cover) is reviews.  So maybe the best thing that any writing community can do for it members is to help them get Amazon reviews.  So how about it, let’s start reviewing books with some renewed commitment.  It should be honest and sincere – if you don’t like what you’re reading, then don’t leave a review, just move on to the next book. 

As I make strides this Fall to finish my fourth Henry Grave book, I’m also working on a renewed marketing initiative for The Mummies of Blogspace9 (which may require a new title).  So, to get the ball rolling,  if anyone would like to help with Step 1 – leaving a review on Amazon, I’d be most appreciative.

Buy Mummies now for just 99 cents by clicking this handy link!