PaperBox Books

A quick tip on finding those typos and repeated words – and maybe awkward sentences – that you and your critique group missed.

We all groan when we see that typo that everyone missed (I’ve seen them in published books). The best way I’ve found to help minimize – or eradicate – them is to listen. Not read out loud but listen.

Reading out loud can be a great way to hear the dialogue but I find that I tend to read what should be there rather than what is there.

Have someone read to you – if you can find a careful reader who is also patient with your need to stop and change stuff.

Use an online text to speech program. You can Google text to speech and you’ll find tons of free downloads. I use NaturalReader and find the mechanical voices helpful. It stops me from getting lost in the story and forces me to listen.

With NaturalReader, I copy blocks of text in and open the document separately. That allows me to pause when I hear something that doesn’t sound right and make the change in the document. When I’m done, I just copy the corrected text in and listen one more time.

Important to know.

This is my last step in revision. Doing it too early means you’ll correct text that will change and you are spending energy for no purpose.

Happy writing

Perry

2 Comments | In: Writing Help, Writing Tips | tags: revision, Tools. | #

Happy Thanksgiving Canada. Happy Columbus Day America

We’ve been receiving a number of submissions lately that deal with difficult subjects like child abuse and sexual orientation. These subjects can make for a story with depth and meaning – if handled well.

Unfortunately, the subjects are not often handled that well. The top two issues seem common: preaching and jamming on the delicate subject for no story value.

Preaching – no one likes to read a sermon about why they should feel a certain way. Preaching is not just paragraphs of exposition. You are preaching when your characters have a fight and their dialogue is a simple iteration of a stance.

Jamming the subject in means you don’t have a real story reason to have the subject. For example, your story is a mystery and your character doesn’t know he or she is gay. This plot line would be great if the character’s sexual orientation was critical to the solution of the mystery. It’s not useful if you just use the story to tell the reader they should be more compassionate or understanding.

How do you make sure you aren’t putting your soapbox into your story? The most simple approach is to ask yourself ‘is this critical to the story?’. If you can’t easily point to why it is, do one of two things: take it out of your story or change your story so that it does become critical.

Keep trying to bring difficult topics to the page.

Perry

No Comments | In: Submissions, Writing Tips | tags: revision, writing advice. | #

I was on my Goodreads group this morning and I found all kinds of posts asking for help. One post was specific to one sentence the author was trying to revise. She got responses right away and three great ones (okay one was mine but it was great, really).

I guess the point is, look for help everywhere. You never know where you’ll find that gem of advice that takes you to the next level.

Happy writing

Perry

No Comments | In: Awesome Links, Writing Tips | tags: revision, writing advice, Writing Tips. | #

How do you decide which blogs to follow? What topics do you find useful or entertaining?

Here’s a list of some of the blogs I follow.

A Newbie’s guide to publishing

Ask The publishing guru

Just a Kid with a Keyboard

Magical Words

and of course Sue’s Blog As it comes

They are a mixture of advice, personal journey and informative. When you pick a blog to follow what is it that you look for?

Perry

No Comments | In: Awesome Links, Opinions | tags: revision, writers, Writing Tips. | #

I think the answer to the question is, yes they are. Sometimes they are just worth gaining an interesting new perspective, and sometimes they are the first step in getting to the next level. What’s the best free opinion? One you agree to hear.

So, we’ve sent out two tweets offering a free first read and opinion for writers out in our followers, and the followers of our followers, and – with luck – the followers of our follower’s followers. Okay that got me wondering if follower is really a word.

So, the first call gave us three great stories. They weren’t perfect but wow, there was talent there. We were able to get back to people really quickly. Today we sent out the second call – okay Sue did the work – and we’re hoping to get  few more submissions before the offer ends.

The benefits are huge for us, and I hope the authors. PaperBox Books benefits from the opportunity to talk to new authors and the author gets a bit of free critique from a publisher. What is cool for me is that I also get a chance to look for the same blemishes and tics in my own work. Something I become better at as I go through critiquing.

If you are thinking about sending in something, please know we’re here to help, not to destroy. We are writers, too. We know how hard it is to hear that something isn’t working, but we also know it sometimes takes a fresh eye to find out what needs work, and what kind of work it needs. And, even better for the fragile writer’s ego – what is working. We give the good and the bad.

Happy writing.

Perry

No Comments | In: Opinions, Submissions | tags: How to Submit, opinion, revision, Twitter, Writing Tips. | #

I’ve recently started posting on The Hub. It’s one of the online writer communities I belong to. It’s rather a neat format with information on almost any subject imaginable by posters such as myself – almost like a personal-experience wikipedia.

I added a post regarding revision and thought I would cross post it here.

To see my post, please go to http://hubpages.com/hub/First-Steps-in-Revision.

It tells a bit about my own personal editing/ revision process.

Cheers,

Sue

No Comments | In: Awesome Links | tags: editing, revision, The Hub. | #