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Why did the editor miss errors in your book? – Lisa Poisso

Fellow fiction editor Lisa Poisso addresses the topic of errors in an edited manuscript. What is normal? How can you decrease the number of postediting mistakes? Read on …

How to use MS Word Track Changes with your edited manuscript

 

Your edited manuscript is back! It’s time to incorporate the edits. Track Changes can seem intimidating to work with the first time, but once you get comfortable with it, you’ll wonder how you ever managed notes, edits, and revisions without it.

Here are some tips for getting started processing your editing manuscript—but before you begin, remember that you really can’t go wrong if you save early and often. Save the document with a new working name right away so that you’ll always have the document in the form it was returned in from your editor. Keep saving regularly as you go so that if you make a big mistake (easy to do in the era of global search and replace), you can step back to a recent version.

After you receive your edited manuscript


Mouse finger_320The first thing you should do with a newly edited manuscript is read it with the markup turned off so you can clearly see how the editing text reads. You’ll probably find it more convenient to jot notes by hand about things you want to address later rather than distracting yourself by fixing things here and there at this stage. (Jot down a unique snippet of identifying text so you can easily find the right place in the manuscript later.)

To turn off the Track Changes markup, on the Review tab in Microsoft Word, find the drop-down box just to the right of the Track Changes box. Set that box to Final (in Word 2013, choose No Markup or Simple Markup). I recommend that you keep comments showing; if you’ve turned on the tracked changes in the text but you’re not seeing comment balloons in the margins, click the Show Markup dropdown next to the big Tracking button and check Comments to enable them.

When you’re ready to process the edits


Once you’ve read through the manuscript with the markup turned off and made notes of anything that needs more attention after your first read-through, you’re ready to peek behind the curtain and start accepting, rejecting, and revising the edits. Accepting an edit makes it part of your manuscript, while rejecting one deletes it.

To make the edits show up on your screen, set the drop-down box at the top of the Track Changes area on the Review tab to Final: Show Markup (or, in Word 2013, All Markup).

Does it seem like you see more comments this time around? You’re not crazy. Comments linked to material that was deleted only show when the deleted material is displayed, which only happens when the markup is on. Now that the markup is on, you’ll see every last explanation and comment that exists.

Continued at Why did the editor miss errors in your book? – Lisa Poisso

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SUNDAY REBLOG: 7 Ways to Help You Be Precise in Your Writing | Live Write Thrive via @CSLakin

After a week off to recover from bronchitis, I am back to share a great post from Live Write Thrive guest author Dawn Field. This post gives you some tips on how to evoke the feelings you want in your writing without using too many words. Read it, and see what I mean.

Today’s guest post is by Dawn Field: The best books suck you into an alternative world in a single sentence. Ideally, it happens in the opening sentence. Some take a paragraph—others longer. …

Source: 7 Ways to Help You Be Precise in Your Writing | Live Write Thrive

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SUNDAY REBLOG: The Self-Publishing Checklist: Editorial, Production, Distribution via @JaneFriedman

I’ve picked this post from Jane Friedman as this Sunday’s reblog because I’ve already found it personally helpful and have passed it onto one of my authors, who is working on his second self-published title. There is a lot to learn as a self-published author, and this handy checklist can help.

This customizable checklist guides your self-publishing project to completion, to ensure you don’t miss any important steps.

Source: The Self-Publishing Checklist: Editorial, Production, Distribution

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Character Motivation: Sunday Reblog

Should your characters change during your story? The state of your the actors in your plot can drive your story or make it stagnant. This excerpt from an older post at WritersDigest.com is worth another look. Read on.

 

characters

 

4 Ways to Motivate Characters and Plot

Some of your characters will change during the course of your story—let’s call them changers. Others—stayers—will not change significantly in personality or outlook, but their motivations may nonetheless change as the story progresses from situation to situation. Both changers and stayers can have progressive motivations.

Confused? Don’t be; it’s simpler than it may seem. Characters come in four basic types:

By Nancy Kress

  1. Characters who never change, neither in personality nor motivation. They are what they are, and they want what they want.
  2. Characters whose basic personality remains the same; they don’t grow or change during the story. But what they want changes as the story progresses (“progressive motivation”).
  3. Characters who change throughout the story, although their motivation does not.
  4. Characters who change throughout the story as their motivation also progresses.

When you know the key motivation(s) behind your character and plot, you can write scenes that not only make sense to you and your readers, but also add depth to your story. Because character and plot are intertwined, we’ll refer to the above four as character/plot patterns. Let’s further explore each one.

 

Continued at 4 Ways to Motivate Characters and Plot | WritersDigest.com

 

What are your favorite ways to balance your characters and their motivation to keep your story moving forward? Do you prefer them to be static or dynamic?

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SUNDAY REBLOG: Writing Mechanics: Scene Structure as a Mini Novel | Live Write Thrive

Is your scene structure moving your story forward? This week’s reblog comes from C. S. Lakin’s Live Write Thrive. It is the final installment in a series of 12 Fatal Flaws of Fiction Writing.

This month we wrap up our yearlong look at the 12 Fatal Flaws of Fiction Writing. Editor Rachel Starr Thomson opens up our look at Fatal Flaw #12: Flawed Writing Mechanics. We’ll be looking a…

Source: Writing Mechanics: Scene Structure as a Mini Novel | Live Write Thrive

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