Editing Etiquette

It's Wednesday, and that means editing info day!!

Today I'm going to talk about story consistency. If you've read my previous editing posts, you'll know that there are different levels of editing, from just basic spelling/grammar up to line editing/heavy copyediting. A good heavy copyeditor is going to watch for holes or gaps in your story line as well as covering the basics. As I will always say, editors are human, and although we may miss a thing or two here and there, we are detached enough from the story to point out problems in the plot, the characters, the settings and more.

If you're serious about writing and publishing your work, I suggest keeping a notebook with details about your characters, their background and their relationships. You can set it up like an outline (remember learning how to do those in high school English? Yeah, most people don't-unless you're an English nerd like me), or you can just make a list. You have to do whatever you feel comfortable with and whatever is going to help you keep your story as consistent as possible. For example:

Molly Brown-blonde hair, 25, green eyes, Betty's daughter, Greg's daughter
Betty Brown-blonde hair, 47, blue eyes, Greg's ex-wife, married for 20 years

....and so on. If you do this, when you're 17 chapters in and you can't remember if Betty and Greg were married for 15 years or 20 years, you can just flip to your notebook. This saves loads of time trying to scan through the early chapters trying to find the information within the story.

If you have a perfect memory, great. That's awesome and kudos. But if you're like me, and life invades your brain when you least want/need it to, you have to keep track on paper so everything is straight. I might not have a great memory, but when I read a book and there is a gap in time that's unaccounted for or if someone's hair color, dialect or personality changes (incongruent to the story), it can be distracting. Sometimes, it can be distracting enough to change your opinion of the book overall.  Something so small can really change how people feel about you as an author and about your story. These people can then, in turn, leave you bad reviews and tell people they know about how you couldn't keep your facts straight. You definitely want to avoid that!

Some editors will also map out the story when they're working on a project. This is something I've been trying to train myself to do. I keep trying to tweak my process so I can be as efficient and thorough as possible.

So today's lesson: Keep your facts straight!!

Thanks for stopping by, and tune in because tomorrow is the 7th installment of the Book Store Series. I've been working hard, and it's been quite the long couple of weeks trying to work out all the kinks and dealing with life in between. See you tomorrow!