Drafting, Revising, Editing and Proofing: Best Practices for Battling Gremlins
As a recovering trial lawyer turned author who wants to be, as Mary Poppins might say, “practically perfect in every way” with the final manuscripts for my books, I must confess that despite all the steps I take–which I plan to discuss in this post–Gremlins are tough adversaries. On the one hand, they encourage me to try to achieve perfection by questioning my work and if that weren’t enough of a burden, when I think I’m finished, they fill the work with mistakes.
With regard to perfection, I’ve learned that authors can become their own worst enemies when trying to produce the perfect work product. They can work a project to death, and in doing so, find themselves going in circles. They can lose sight of the whole for fear of the few.
In my first book, I revised a particular paragraph so many times near the end of the project that when I finished with it and was completely satisfied, I realized I was back to the same language where I started. I went in a circle, trying to achieve what I thought was perfection.
For a trial lawyer, the question often is: When is the brief for the court good enough? Usually, clients will answer that question for the lawyer after they receive the lawyer’s bill. They will tell the lawyer it was plenty good enough before the lawyer spent another thirty billable hours on it trying to make it perfect.
The lesson of knowing when to stop re-writing comes hard for lawyers, but it is one to keep in mind for authors too, because authors do not bill by the hour and are not restrained by how many hours they put into a project. Their plight is more dangerous, because there is no time limit (or if there is, they use every day up to the deadline). The point is, the writing project can go on for much longer than needed. At some point, the author needs to find the courage to say “good is good enough.”
And yet, the fear of Gremlins is a constant worry.
How Gremlins Attack An Author’s Work
There are two types of Gremlins who plague the development and completion of manuscripts: (1) the second-guessing Gremlins–the ones in an author’s head who say “keep working; this is terrible; you can do much, much better”–and (2) the destructive Gremlins–the ones who attack an author’s manuscript and mess with the spelling (both the misspelled words and the correctly spelled wrong words), grammar, style, punctuation, and more.
The first kind of Gremlins make an author strive for perfection, but they are less evil than they think they are, because–and this is worth emphasizing–their insistence on perfection is helpful up to a point. The second kind of Gremlins spill garbage on an author’s work and are evil to the very end of the project.
Why are the second-guessing Gremlins helpful up to a point?
Authors who are satisfied with their manuscripts after one or two drafts need a swarm of scary looking creatures squealing at them to keep working. Writing is hard work, and we authors can rationalize that the work is “pretty damn good” when we are tired and want to move on. But while it’s true that parts of what authors produce in the first few drafts will be “pretty good,” other parts will be “pretty bad” and “need to be shredded.”
My advice is to listen to the second-guessing Gremlins in the early stages of the project but as time passes, listen to them less and less. Second-guessing is one way of describing the revision process, where the work will get better. But as the work does get better, second-guessing can paralyze a project. If an author has trouble turning off the voices of the second-guessing Gremlins, the author might find themselves revising the same paragraph countless times until they end up back where they started.
While the second-guessing Gremlins have value up to a point, the destructive Gremlins are sneaky and evil to the end. When authors get to the stage of proofing their work, these Gremlins hide, or become invisible, and when authors bless their work for publication, these Gremlins cackle, jump out from the shadows and resurface on the pages where once they weren’t.
The Gremlins who attack an author’s spelling, grammar, punctuation, and word choice are relentless. Someone should invent a bug spray authors can apply to their manuscripts to rid these pests from the page. I have a few examples below of how these creatures operate.
In my upcoming novel, Deadly Declarations, I completed many drafts on my own, I then requested feedback from beta readers and made more revisions, I made several passes with a professional editor, I worked with a copyeditor, I did final proofreading myself, and I hired a proofreader to do a very final proofread, and still, after we kicked many Gremlins to the curb and corrected what they’d destroyed, they went behind our backs and engineered these mistakes in the printed advance reader copies:
-on page 256, someone named Sarah Stevenson took the place of Sally Stevenson. I have no idea where Sarah came from or how the Gremlins were able to sneak her into the advanced reader copy.
-on page 27, the word “forget” had been “forgot” and should have stayed that way. But Gremlins are magical. They made me forget how I forgot to fix this.
-on page 93, the last line of dialogue in the chapter was missing a close quote. This was a mistake hiding in plain sight, the work of a crafty Gremlin.
-on page 119, the word “cases” should have been “case.” One too many Gremlins had fun with that one.
-on page 163, when the trial started in the morning, the protagonist said to the witness:
“Good afternoon, Mr. Blaine.” He replied, “Afternoon to you, sir.” This proves Gremlins can time travel.
-on page 145, “I can help” should have been “I will help.” This had to be the work of a subtle Gremlin.
-on page 267, the pronouns “he,” “him” and “his” appeared in a sequence of sentences in such a way to make it hard to distinguish one “him” from another. The Gremlins–a bunch of men in disguises–must have enjoyed the confusion.
-on page 305, the “who, “whom,” and “to whom” Gremlins got into the act with their grammatical confusion. We settled on “to whom” to shut them down.
-and finally, on pages 279 and 280, the word “overhead” should have been “overheard.” This mistake inserted by the destructive Gremlins was the hardest to detect. Half the word appeared at the bottom of page 279, and the other half–the part that read “head” instead of “heard”–appeared at the top of page 180. The mistake illustrates the length Gremlins will go to make an author look bad.
Were it not for some eagle-eyed advance readers who were not on the payroll but who were kind enough to let me know about these mistakes when their role was limited to reading and writing an online review of the book, the Gremlins would have had their way.
How did the Gremlins do it?
There is no explanation for how Gremlins do their work. As I said, they are sneaky.
Then what’s to be done about Gremlins?
The only thing authors can do is establish and follow their own best practices, and when all is said and done, hope for the best. Here are a few of my best practices.
Drafting, Revising, Editing, and Proofing
The first draft is the place to be creative. It’s where I spill the guts of my story onto the page. The Gremlins have no power over me at this stage because I know the manuscript will need a lot more work.
After the first draft, I listen to the second-guessing Gremlins as I dive back into the manuscript. I continue to flesh out the story, but I also think about the advice of my editor, Nora Gaskin, whose mantra is: Add, Subtract, Reorder, Clarify. You can read Nora’s blog post about this at the Charlotte Readers Podcast Community Blog HERE.
Knowing that at some point in my process Nora will apply her rules to my manuscript, I work hard to do as much as I can in these four categories before she sees the manuscript. In my first three books Nora edited, she pushed me to reorder and clarify quite a bit. In my upcoming novel, Deadly Declarations, I had the order in pretty good shape by the time she saw it, and because of some steps I added to my process, things weren’t quite as muddy as with the first three books when it was her turn.
One of the steps I added for Deadly Declarations that was missing from my first three books was the use of beta readers before my editor saw the manuscript. Authors sometimes make the mistake of sending their manuscripts to beta readers too soon. I tried to hold back, going through at least three or four drafts before inviting my first beta reader to take a look.
I was fortunate to have a variety of beta readers give me honest feedback. They had different skill sets. One was my publicist. One was a lawyer. Two were readers who were skilled with attention to detail. And two were accomplished mystery writers, one of whom was kind enough to make several passes at the manuscript before my editor saw it.
The feedback from the beta readers was extremely helpful. I was able to cut more than 25,000 words out of the manuscript and add back 5,000 words, making the story much tighter and clearer. And yet, there was still plenty of work to do. Before I did that work, I set the manuscript aside and let it rest. When I came back to it, I saw things I needed to fix.
After more fixes, I sent the manuscript to my editor to let Nora do her work. As I said, we didn’t do much reordering, but she made good points about adding and subtracting, and we got into the details with clarifications. I didn’t accept all of her suggestions, but I considered and worked on most of them. Like sharpening a knife or tightening a bolt, the manuscript got closer and closer to what it needed to be.
After working with my editor, I read and corrected again before sending the manuscript to a copyeditor. I accepted most of her suggestions, let it rest again, and did another pass before sending the manuscript to my proofer. While the proofer did her work on the manuscript, I printed it out and proofed it again too. After all we’d done, we found sentences to improve and grammar and spelling to fix.
The next phase was the book design, and unlike my first three books, we created advance reader copies (ARCs) for trade reviewers and for advance readers who would review the book after it releases. When I received the printed proof of the ARC, we found a few mistakes and fixed them before printing the ARCS for the advance readers.
The mistakes in Deadly Declarations identified above came to our attention after we printed the final ARCs for the advance readers, forcing the need to make corrections to the manuscript before we enabled distribution with Ingram a few weeks later. The last mistake identified above–the word “overhead” that should have been “overheard”–came to our attention after we thought we had identified all the problems and enabled distribution with Ingram, reinforcing my belief that Gremlins are dastardly menaces and worthy adversaries.
What to Do with Gremlins Who Continue to Pester?
My experience with Gremlins causes me to feel more empathy toward authors and their publishers who end up with a few misspelled words in their books. What at first may look like carelessness is probably the result of some very talented Gremlins instead.
And yet, when mistakes appear in a novel, they can pull the reader out of the story.
The good news is that even after a book is available for preorder, the author or publisher can make corrections.
The other good news is that even after a book is published, authors and publishers can make corrections. Corrections at this stage won’t stop the Gremlins from irritating readers who buy early, but the Gremlins won’t win out.
In the meantime, we authors must come to terms with the fact that perfection is not a realistic goal. Good is often good enough.