Organize all your footnotes, endnotes, links and any other references.
Keep your overly descriptive section names to find what you need to modify easily.
Part XXXI
Editing Stage Four - Line Edit
I put myself in the place of the listener when editing my writing. The last thing that I want to do is be preached at and told who to be or what to think when listening to an artist. However, I do want to be inspired. There's a fine line.
- Macklemore
286
Get Reading
After grappling with the big picture stuff, it's time for a readthrough. For me, this is where I'm getting closer to what a copy editor does. In the first three phases, I'm not as stressed about spelling and grammar; I only check for the mistakes Grammarly highlights and look for major structural problems or missing sections. I'm not doing a deep read, but more of a scan. These phases should be very quick.
For this entire book, my first pass through Grammarly took less than two hours. I certainly couldn't read this book that fast. The first passes are focused on the forest, rather than the trees. Focus on big picture issues and problems that need to be corrected across your entire manuscript.
Now that those passes are completed, we can start going in deep. It's time to check out those trees.
287
Zoom in on the Trees
It's time to dig in to the readthrough phase. I like to put a few days between my big picture edit and my first readthrough. Giving my mind a few days to reset allows me to edit with some fresh eyes. Wait at least forty-eight hours between phases.
You don't want to mingle your editing mindsets or get distracted by remembering different versions of a section. A clean palate makes editing a lot easier.
In the readthrough, I dig deep into my book and look for the tiniest of grammatical and spelling mistakes. You might even catch some big picture mistakes that slipped through. Add any of those to your big picture to-do list and make sure to circle back and check them in a followup scan.
This process should be similar to your writing speed. If you are writing twenty thousand words per day, you should be able to read through at the same speed. It should take longer than any of the previous editing stages because we are getting very close to the final draft.
It may take multiple readthroughs to get your draft finalized. I try to do as much of my editing in Scrivener, even at this stage. I want my Scrivener file to be my master proof.
Editors tend to charge for each pass through. Even professional editors must read a book two or three times to catch every mistake, so you're going to see new mistakes each time you read through your book no matter what. Mistakes are inevitable, and even if you pay a top-of-the-line editor to go through your book, some mistakes will make it into your final draft. There are many grey areas with grammar and you can find two experts who disagree on certain points. No matter how many editors you hire, there will always be someone who disagrees with some of your decisions.
Rules of grammar are always in flux. The rules I learned in the United States in the nineties are not the same rules kids learn in school now. They are also not the same rules that my older sister learned in the eighties. Slang changes and rules get broken. Don't aim for flawless grammar, just aim for almost perfect.
The goal with editing is not to please everyone, because this is an impossible goal, but instead to avoid getting a "kiss of death" review.
288
Get Close
The readthrough is not about making big changes. It's not about changing the motivation of a character or moving the location of certain scenes. It's more about looking for small things, making sure that things are spelled right, that characters speak to each other in a consistent way.
We’re really in the detail work now, in close and looking for little mistakes. That's why this is a slower process. The first process is very rough, like big construction, so you can approach it quite roughly, but now we want to be more detailed, want to make sure we catch every single mistake and go through it in great detail.
There are other tools that you can use during this process. You may prefer to wait until this point to bring Grammarly into the picture, and that's okay. You can also use a tool called Hemingway, which is far lower priced. Hemingway simply checks for run-on sentences or times when you get boring. It's a little more specific and does one of the things Grammarly does, but it does it very well. Any sentence that is too long or boring, Hemingway will highlight in bright colors until you shorten it.
When you complete this readthrough, you will notice things you want to change. Sometimes during the readthrough, I then want to transition into a rewrite, and people call it different names. I want to try to be consistent again, but for me in the readthrough, sometimes I’ll notice things I want to change in the next phase: my first rewrite.
289
Action Steps
Look for tiny grammatical and spelling mistakes.
Set aside the same amount of time to edit as you did to write.
Save any big picture changes as stick notes.
Use Grammarly, Hemingway and any other software tools to help you with this phase.
Part XXXII
Editing Stage Five - The First Rewrite
The research is the easiest. The outline is the most fun. The first draft is the hardest, because every word of the outline has to be fleshed out. The rewrite is very satisfying.
- Ken Follett
290
Good to Great
This is a critical part of the process that some authors don't like to talk about. The rewrite is where my books go from good to great. I could have skipped this stage and released 20K a Day into the world. My first beta reader saw the book at this stage and he completed his first book less than ten days later. That's the ultimate confirmation that the book is ready; it already worked on someone.
I don't want to publish a book that's pretty good. When something is out in the world with my name on it, I want it to be mind-bending. I want you to be so impressed with my work that you feel compelled to email me, draw pictures, and record videos. The rewrite is where that happens.
This book was pretty good after the first five editing stages. But now it's something far more. I have absolute faith that anyone can apply the 20K System and make a living as a writer after reading this book. Hopefully, you feel the same way.
291
Editing with an Ax
Now, the first readthrough is complete, and you have read the entire book. We are a little closer to the experience of our final readers, and there will be scenes that you hate and sections that you feel are missing. I can't tell you right now what I'll decide to add to this book during my rewrite phase; I can only tell you that it's going to happen.
Sometimes I end up adding in thirty or forty percent more content. One of my most successful books of all time, Girl Gets Ring, teaches women how to find true love and how to go from single to engaged. It’s a book that still sells incredibly well. It's a direct response book, so it's not on Amazon. We sell it directly from the website.
When I initially sent that book to my publisher, he did a quick scan through and sent me five sentences of notes, and I ended up writing seventy-five percent more content. I changed the order and did a massive rewrite.
We will talk about honored reviewers and beta readers shortly, but you may want to wait for outside opinions before you start rewriting. [Did you notice that even this late in the book I am still opening loops to encourage you to finish the whole book?]
Serve No Master went through two massive rewrites before I released it. The first rewrite was based on my editing and the second was based on a brutal email from a beta reader. The knife of her review carved that book into a beautiful diamond.
292
The Cutting Room Floor
During the rewrite stage, you're going to go through your book, and you're going to write new sections. You are going to change the order of things. You're
going to say, “You know what? I hate this section.” Sometimes you'll delete entire paragraphs or entire chapters, and I've done that before.
Sometimes we introduce a character that we're very excited about, and in the final version of the book, the character is no longer relevant. They become extraneous. Sometimes you see this in movies where a character seems to have walked off the set of the movie in the first twenty minutes, and you think, “Why was that character even there? They've disappeared.”
Sometimes a movie has a character that seems important, and then they spend the rest of the film in their apartment while everyone else is doing stuff. When you notice these things happening in your story, when you notice that you have an extra character or scene that no longer makes sense, something has to change.
I still change the endings in all of my books. Every edit, I change the ending because the book is a living thing. When I get to the end I realize, “Oh, that character I introduced, I need to change him. I don't need him anymore.”
When you write those sections and then change them, all that's OK. That's what you do during the rewrite. Some stories get cut from a book, and you save those pieces to use in the next book in the series. Don't get emotional about removing a section if the book will be better without it.
[To be totally honest with you, I nearly cut the entire dictation section from this book. It would have been so easy to cut out that part and make it a separate book. I have been on the fence about that through multiple edits. Those chapters moved around this book multiple times until I finally decided to keep them and save them for right before the editing section.]
293
It's Not Murder
By rewriting, you’re not killing what you wrote before; we're just making it a little better. We're tightening everything up. This is a very important part of the process, and it is time-intensive. Rewriting by dictation is nearly impossible. I went through every editing phase of this book by hand.
Give yourself time to rewrite properly. Sometimes the rewrite will take longer than the first rough draft.
I wrote all ninety-three thousand words of Serve No Master in four days, but editing it took me four weeks. I have refined my editing process since then. However, the rewrite always takes the longest. If I were to edit that book again, it would take me about one-third the time.
The only way to improve your editing is to do it. We learn through experience, and with each book I write, I continue to improve my process. My goal is to edit as quickly as I write. I want your book to hit the shelves as quickly as possible.
294
Action Steps
Disconnect yourself emotionally from your book. You may need to cut scenes and characters to create a superior finished product.
Set aside most of your editing time for this phase. The rewrite is where you take your book from good to great.
You may have to edit with an axe. Like a sculptor with a chisel, you are cutting free the fantastic book within that marble.
Part XXXIII
Editing Stage Six - Proofread Your Book
Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it.
- Michael Crichton
295
Reader Experience
Understanding the reader experience is crucial. At some point during your editing process, you'll feel comfortable enough with your book to move into this phase. You may need to cycle through the previous stages a few times before you transition to proofing.
When you feel like your book is nearly ready for release, it's time to proofread. You should read the book in the same way as your customers. If you are selling digital books on Amazon and you don't own a Kindle, you have a serious problem. It can be corrected for under a hundred bucks.
Whenever I talk to an author who doesn't own a Kindle, I am very disappointed. How can you know what the reader experience is like? You have to check what your book looks like on Kindle. You have to see how the formatting looks, how the artistry looks, and look for mistakes that aren't apparent until you load the book into a Kindle.
So many authors skip the proofreading stage because they don't know what it means. Many people think that proofreading and editing are interchangeable words. They are not.
You need to read the book in the same format as your audience. You need to see what they see.
296
Kettle of Fish
I read books on my Kindle every day. The rhythm of a story is always fresh and makes it easy to have that flow in my stories. You must own a Kindle if you want people to read your books on one. You need to experience your book in the same way as your customers. Many books look beautiful printed, but on a Kindle, they look like garbage.
As authors, we put in all this artistry without realizing that it gets destroyed by the Kindle. I know quite a few authors who were surprised to discover that a reader can change the size of the text on a Kindle. I use the second largest size, but plenty of people use the largest size, and I’m sure some prefer the tiniest font size. Each of those people has a different reader experience than I do.
When I look at a Kindle page, there are about one hundred twenty-five words. I read those one hundred twenty-five words and push a button to go to the next page. That's my reader experience. Some people see fifty words on the page, and some people see two hundred or three hundred.
If you don't know that, you'll run into problems. The number of people who don't know that Kindles are black and white blows my mind. Many book covers look cool in color and atrocious in black and white. Some writers don't know that people with Kindles make most of their purchases via the device. I acquire ninety percent of my books via my Kindle; that’s why I know that the cover has to look good in black and white. If you don't have a Kindle, you won't notice these little differences.
297
First Kindle Proof
There are two ways you can proofread your digital book. First, download an app, like Calibre, which will load your book directly onto your Kindle. This is the preferred method for your first proofread and beta readers, which we will cover in the very next chapter.
Reading your book inside a Kindle will catch a lot of mistakes. When reading your book, highlight anything you want to change. As I read through my draft, I save every mistake as a highlight. I highlight the entire sentence around any mistake that I catch.
When I finish the proofread, I can open up the highlights and notes from that book in my device. I have a big list of everything I need to go and correct. Highlighting the entire sentence makes it easy for me to use the "find" feature in my word processor to locate each problem.
Proofreading using the highlight feature is pretty cool. I was very excited when I figured this out. When proofreading on a Kindle, you don't want to run to your computer to correct each mistake. It knocks you out of the zone and takes ages. With highlighting, you can read your book in bed, on your couch, or even sitting by the seaside.
It's always amazing to me how many mistakes I find reading my own book in bed. But that's why we proofread.
298
Final Kindle Proof
The second way to proof your book is to upload it to Amazon and then purchase a copy. Only do this when you feel ready to launch. This step is absolutely critical and I can't stress this enough.
Amazon reformats your book before sending it through their system. Even the proof you transferred directly to your Kindle won't be exactly the same as the version your customers receive.
When checking this final proof, I'm mostly looking for big formatting mistakes. I'm not checking spelling. Amazon arbitrarily sets the "start page" for your book. If you never check, your readers might be missing where you want them to start.
In one of my earlier books, Amazon put the start page after my free gift page. I couldn't understand why nobody was submitting their email addresses. Only when I proofread the book as a customer did I find an
d correct this error.
There are a few other mistakes that I see in books I read on Amazon. So many authors upload maps, diagrams and images to their books incorrectly. There is nothing more annoying than an image file that I can't see inside a book. I have seen this with some really successful authors and independent authors.
You absolutely need to check how your images look inside a Kindle. You can't rely on Amazon to get everything right. As the saying goes, "Trust, but verify."
299
CreateSpace Edit
Before you start sending out paperback copies of your book, please proof it. CreateSpace will send you a copy of your book for under ten bucks, and it’s worth every penny. When you upload a book to CreateSpace, you can order a full proof before making the book available for sale. I love this feature.
20K a Day: How to Launch More Books and Make More Money Page 32