The Ups and Downs of Manuscripts

It’s hard to write a full manuscript. Translating your thoughts and story to a blank page is an immense undertaking, and if you’ve ever gotten that far, great job. Something I found helpful through the practice of writing and the self-deprecating pitfalls of feeling like a poser or a talentless hack was…

The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.

Terry Pratchett

To put it less gracefully, but in a way that made me chuckle…

First drafts are shit. But you can improve shit. You can’t improve nothing. Just write!

Some dude on Reddit

The fun part isn’t the grueling process of clearing out your brain of information, the build-up of research and story that brought you from page 0 to page 400. That was sheer determination, pal. The fun part comes with editing. Turning the audacious amount of narrative you put down into something that resembles a book. Now you owe it to yourself to make it good, to make it work, to make it the best it can be before you publish. You owe it to your readers to make it polished, even if you opt for self-publishing. This requires effort and learning every new trick possible.

I wanted to talk about my pitfalls. The order of operations that I messed up as a first time author. Keep in mind that these are my rookie mistakes as learned from a first-timer’s experience. I’m not coming from a 10 books under my belt novelist’s experience. But I promised I’d publish at least one book in my lifetime, and I care about doing it right. So here’s how you…don’t do it wrong.

Order of Operations

I finished writing 440 odd pages of stuff and read it through until I was sick of it. I did a couple of full book edits and found things to fix every time. But I really needed fresh eyes to find the flaws, so I hired an editor. For about $2000. I didn’t know what questions to ask. Here’s what worked and what didn’t.

• I didn’t know to ask what kind of editing they would take on. What I wanted was a developmental edit: a double-check on the world building, what information was confusing or missing, character consistency, plot holes, themes that didn’t come through well enough, etc. What I got was a fully red-lined grammar, spelling, sentence structure, and redundancy check.
• It helped in that my sentence structure improved after reviewing that many pages of edits. The changes I made going forward had better clarity and consistency.
• What it didn’t help: the developmental flow, story, progression, pacing, all that developmental stuff that I didn’t know to ask for.

Takeaway: Make sure you find an editor who does what you need for the stage your manuscript is at. Think about what stage that is, and what you would most benefit from.

Before you even get to this step and sink money into your project, find beta readers. As I continued editing, I was still missing the bigger picture of my manuscript. It still didn’t feel right but I was too close to the words on the page to identify the problem. I finally found some beta readers. I swap chapters with another writer, and the second reader is a friend who edits chapter by chapter for fun. I got super lucky with the third beta reader who was willing to go through the manuscript as a whole, twice, and is currently picking it apart with larger criticisms.

• Chapter swaps with other writers take a lot of time to go through. It would’ve been easier to start them at an earlier time, since I’d hoped to be publishing in 2023, and I’m only now at the beta reading stage. It might even be worth chapter swapping while you’re writing, though I’d recommend not giving them entirely ‘green’ chapters. You don’t want your reader getting hung up on your grammatical mistakes when you want them focusing on development.
• A full manuscript reader is a boon that can’t be understated. You might have to pay for this unless you end up with a knowledgeable and well-meaning friend who reads your genre. In my case, my friend is half friend/half professional colleague, so they’re in exactly the right place to be critical and not spare my feelings. If you have that chance, don’t waste it. But it takes time to read a full manuscript, so plan ahead for that. If you’re paying, then you have more leeway to push them to a deadline. If they’re doing it for free, then good luck. I hope your friend is dependable.
• Chapter by chapter vs manuscript beta reading: Naturally, if someone’s reading a chapter a week between writing their own stuff, going to work, picking up the kids, doing laundry, etc. they forget what they read for you last week. A manuscript reader is more likely to catch the full beginning-middle-end structure of your book and put all the pieces together. They’re simply reading at their own speed as they would any other book – they’re just additionally taking notes. Granted, it’ll be harder to find a manuscript reader because of the time commitment.

Takeaway: Do beta early. At least before you sink money into a full editing pass with a pro. As it stands, I have a ‘fully edited manuscript’ that has cost me more than it’ll ever earn, and I still need to rip it in half and gut parts of it, rewrite perspectives, and more to cut it into a size that a publisher might actually pick up.

The Current Situation

I’m worried a fantasy publisher won’t take my book because it’s so long. I’m worried no one will like it even if it ends up on shelves (or e-shelves). At the same time, I only promised myself I’d do it to the best of my ability, and if I satisfy that, I’ll be pleased. But that’s no reason not to give myself every chance to succeed. After all, who wouldn’t be more pleased if readers actually like what they wrote?

I was aiming to publish in 2023 and it looks like I’m going to do a massive rewrite because my blessed beta readers found huge overarching problems that I didn’t know how to fix. I’m taking a hit to my pride. I thought I was a reasonable writer, and I still think I’ve got areas I’m strong in. But there’s nothing like the gut punch of sensible criticism that you know you should listen to.

I should have a long break from working on the LARP game I’m an admin for over the winter, so I’m setting up a task list. Might as well include it in the post so anyone who’s curious and actually reads these things can see why it’s taking me so long.

• Find a narrative break point somewhere in the ~440 pages to split into two novels. Prep the incision point to make sense as a part one and part two.
• Make an overarching hyper-simplified map of story events in some way and mark where the high and low points of tension/action are. It should help me to map the flow.
• List the theme of each chapter to illuminate what the reader is expected to learn or understand in each.
• Define the character relationships and re-read relevant parts to determine whether the defined struggle is clearly represented by narrative events.
• Find all occurrences of POV that aren’t the main character and rewrite them so they are either from the main’s POV, are cut out, or are 3rd person omniscient (THIS ONE WILL HURT, FAM). Everything relates back to how it impacts Maret, but this is not currently good enough.
• Cut the meandering. It will be hard to find. It will be painful to erase. But if it doesn’t support the intent or theme of the book, it is wasting the reader’s time.
• Make the timeline more obvious, especially any flashbacks. A year date at the start of a chapter isn’t enough because it’s too easy to miss.
• Explain the Shadow and the magic system just a bit earlier. Adds context to the world and lets me dive deeper earlier into why the Shadow is scary in the first place.
• Find some more novels to read and see how they present the movement of time and buildup and release of tension.