My critique partner commented that I read through my finished work in progress more times than she reads through hers. But that’s my process. She combs through each of her chapters the night she finishes them. I don’t. I wait until my first draft is done. Oh, I do a cursory read for easy mistakes, but I miss a lot during the creative process. Granted, as I'm winging my way through the first draft, I will often start reading from the beginning so I know where I am in the story, or to find a detail that needs to be continued, but I don't count that as "reading through" it. Each pass I make has its own purpose.
Details and continuity
After the first draft, my first read of the whole is for details and continuity. Does it make sense? Are the locations consistent? Is there a time lapse? Does time flow consistently throughout the book? Are descriptions consistent? For that matter, I tend to skip over descriptions in the first draft. After all, I know what they look like! My readers, however, can't see into my brain, so they have no idea what I'm talking about in some places. This first pass is a place for me to fill in the missing details. What someone looks like. What the setting looks like. I do include some of these things, but in a first draft, the details are often only added where I don't "see" things clearly.
Nuts and bolts
The second pass is for structure. Punctuation. Word usage. Overused and filler words. Repeated words in the same paragraph or in close proximity (echoes). I use SmartEdit to help me find my mistakes. Overused phrases. Mistyped homonyms that sneak in (peek vs. peak, discreet vs. discrete, as examples). Sentence fragments. Do they have a place or am I just being lazy? Sentence starters. Have I misspelled someone's name? Or called someone by the wrong name? I'm still kicking myself that I originally used the wrong spelling of my hero's name in the final EPITAPH book (THE GARDEN). Thank heavens for my editor who pointed it out!
Fine tuning
By this time, the book should be editor-ready. At least one would assume so. The problem with correcting mistakes is that you often create new mistakes. My third pass is for fine tuning. Did I "break" anything while I was fixing the nuts and bolts? The answer is usually yes. As an example, in BEING NEIGHBORLY, I inserted a scene late that talks about my main character going on a job interview. She's worried that her current boss will notice she's dressed differently, or that she might be late coming back from her lunch break. Originally, that boss was just "the manager." In the new scene, I gave the man a name. So now I have to check references to "the manager" to see where it makes sense to refer to him by name. It's easy to replace "manager" with "Bruce," but when I did a search, did I remember to take out "the" before manager? (the answer is yes, but only after I forgot on the first one and went back to check twice).
That's three full reads before it goes to the editor, but each pass has a purpose. I'm laser-focused on one particular function. At this point, it should be ready for the editor. When she's finished with it, there's a good chance I'll read it two more times. Once after I've addressed her comments to, again, make sure I haven't broken anything in the process, and finally, I'll have Word read it back to me to "hear" any mistakes that my eyes might have tricked me into believing aren't there.
Is that a lot? Yes. But that's my process. Even then, I might have missed something, but at some point, you have to trust you've done your job. It's not a good feeling when a reader comes back to tell you you need an editor. Especially when you have one. Mistakes happen. I'm banking on five full reads (and, of course, my stellar critique partners) to catch the majority of them.
And speaking of BEING NEIGHBORLY, you can preorder the e-book at a discount! From now through release day (July 12), it is available for just $0.99. On July 13, it will revert to the regular price of $3.99, so grab your copy before the price goes up!
I admire your ability to focus on only one thing at a time.
ReplyDeleteA skill honed for many years at the day job. It does become a problem, however, when I start liking what I'm reading, so often has to be done in smaller chunks ;-)
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