Editing skills

 It is an interesting experience going back over stories written as long ago as 2014. I realise now that an editor would have been useful then, but I did not have the confidence to approach one. 

Didn't know enough to say if I wanted copy-editing, proof-reading, structural edit or one of the other many "edits" that are offered today. 
I would have learned faster; but in a sense I've done it the hard way - always my path! I've learned by reading, reading about writing and writing, which is never a bad thing and talking to other writers via the internet. also by looking at tv and published stories with a more critical eye. 

Reading about it and never doing it is not going to work. Now I think I've got it; or I've got it as far as I am going to take it. At my age, I'm not going to have forty years to hone my skills further!

Today I am beginning what I hope will be the final edit/run through of my latest work in progress - a further installment in the Matho story. TRIUMPHANT QUEEN  may well be the title, unless I come up with something better. Now as I go through the printed pages with my coloured pens, I spot things much more easily than I used to. Re-arranging sentence so they sound better, collapsing two sentences into one more pithy arrangement; spotting fullstops
and commas lurking in the wrong place and changing singe quotes to double quotes. I've come down on the side of double quotes lately; I just think they look nicer on the page. 

How long will this take me? I'm not sure, especially as I am looking at an earlier story at the same time. Variety is the spice of life, so they say; let's hope that doing two stories at once will prevent the bordeom that comes with doing only one.

Psychic Distance.

Dunvegan, Skye

I found a new writing term today. Psychic Distance. I discovered it in Emma Darwin's blog - This Itch of Writing.  I've been been re-writing Dark Pool into  VIKING SUMMER over the last couple of months, and since reading her blog I now know I've been playing around with psychic distance for one of my characters!

I got to 25 in my first edit and decided my heroine wasn't coming through clearly enough. Things happened to her, but there was no sign of how she felt about it all. Big mistake! (The original story was written  over twelve years ago when I hadn't been very long published!)

After thinking for a while I decided to concentrate on my heroine. After all, it was her story, and not Finlay of Alba's tale, though he was quite important. Making her my POV figure, using first person for her and third person for anyone else, would focus attention on her and get me closer to her. I sighed, because it meant a lot of work.  I was working on chapter 25 when I made this decision, and then had to go back to the beginning and re-draft each of her scenes, but it certainly got me thinking as if I were in her shoes. Her sometimes snippety voice started coming through and I liked that. (Perhaps I have a snippety voice too?) As Ms Darwin's blog says

"The closer-in we are to that character's consciousness, the more the scene and how it's narrated is coloured and shaped by that character's personality."

So the second draft concentrated on altering my heroines scenes. I also discovered something else I had to change. There was a dramatic incident, very important to the tale, and I had reported  it from two character perspectives and thus reduced the impact of said incident. 

I decided the incident should be with my heroine; I incorporated some of the description of the second character's discovery into her scene,  and omitted the rest. That made it much more her discovery and gave it more impact. Odd how these things leap out and demand to be changed. 

Technically then, I am on a third draft now and closing in rapidly on the magic words - the End.

Taking Note

I'm a notetaker when I listen to talks, especially when the subject is writing. The trouble is I rarely go back and read the notes I've taken. Take the batch I found yesterday, torn out of a notebook and stuffed inside another, smaller notebook;  notes, unloved,  from a meeting I attended in 2014 and have totally forgotten.

The heading is "Marketing = Product - Price - Promotion - Place."
Half-hearted notes below this state that I must know to whom I am selling my product; well the answer to that is easy - anyone who reads, and will buy. Do I have an average client in my head? Of course not. I haven't a clue what kind of people read historical romances. 

Price, the notes say, reflect the quality of the  product in people's minds. Price them cheaply and people won't think they're worth buying. I didn't take note of the obvious corollary - that expensive books  must be "good quality" because I don't think that is necessarily true. I love reading and buying books, but I won't pay above a certain price for them - usually. I did pay £18 for a Dunnett hardback some years ago, but that was most definitely a "one-off." My notes say 77p/99$ is the lowest price on Amazon

Which leads to Place - where to sell?  I know the answer to this one - and in my own confused way, I have been tracking down web sites where readers are searching for romantic historical fiction. So far I've limited my efforts to Twitter and Facebook. No paid ads and no use of Instagram or anyof the other, younger sites. At least I know I shouldn't promote my books where the taste is for thrillers or crime. 

My notes say Promotion depends on whether you are selling ebook or print, but I see many authors promoting both on the same sites. I don't know if it works for them or not. It takes me all my time to promote e-books and let the reader discover there is a print copy - I did one for Queen's Courier and Abduction - when they go to the Amazon site. I hope that comes as a nice surprise.

But then, I'm probably not doing any of this as I should be doing it.

Writing Styles

As a boost to my writing I've been reading authors who write outside the historical fiction zone thinking that  I shouldn't get in a rut. Which is why at the weekend I brought home The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown.

The only other book of his I have read is, inevitably, the Da Vinci Code. I remember it had fast pacing and numerous short chapters. Well, his style has not changed. In 53 pages I have reached chapter 14. The plot set up is fine, but I find I am weary of bad guys who appear to have every attribute - fine physique, brains, confidence - you name it, they've got it, but they use them for world domination. In other words, a typical James Bond villain. Of course, I may be wrong. 53 pages is not an awful lot to judge by when the whole thing is 500 odd pages.

I have nothing to complain of in his actual writing. It flows by with ease and nothing stands out as awkward. I hardly notice it as my eyes travel the page seeking the story. It is very similar to Lee Child's style - straightforward, correct, short sentences.

At the same time I'm reading Ian Rankin's The Black Book on Kindle. Before that it was Peter James, the House on Cold Hill., Adele Parks Stranger in my Home. All very different, all very readable. Will I come out of this splurge a better writer? I doubt it, but it cannot do me any harm, and subconsciously it may do some good. A lifetime of reading has got me this far and I shall continue to read widely. I tried Val MacDermid's Skeleton Road, made no conscious decision to leave it and go onto Rankin, but that is what happened. I shall probably go back to it at some point. She must have something to offer me!

I've written reviews over the last couple of years for the Historical Novel Society and that has introduced me to many different styles, some of which I liked and some I didn't. What has it taught me? In no particular order, that the story line is as important as the style, adverbs are usually not required, that voice can be many things; pacing is important and a good, sensible conclusion is a must. It has taught me that I dislike what I call the the grab and snag style of writing where every verb is racked up to maximum; no one ever "takes" anything, they "grab" or "snag" it. They don't kiss, but "devour" each other, don't walk but "sashay," "tramp" or "traipse" across a room.  Sometimes plain English is good, if not best!

PS - I got myself in the picture this time!

Yawn time

It has rained all day to day, but to cheer myself up I've uploaded a picture from a better weather day. A day at the beach is in order again soon!

I've been working hard on Photoshop but I plan to start on the final edit of Daisy in a day or two, maybe even tomorrow. Then when I go on holiday I can take my laptop and start something new. That will be fun, for there comes a time when it is easy to get a tad bored with the story I've worked on for so long. When did I start? I can't remember clearly, but if you count the first attempt way back in 2009, then a long time ago. If you count only this last attempt, from about March this year, then not so long.

Writing can be hard slog. The beginning is fun because it is mostly research and pottering about making plans and timelines and then discarding them.Then comes the exciting moment when the first line is typed and then follows all the variations because we all know how important that first opening line is. Eventually it is time to move on and get into the meaty part of the story, and that is part exhilaration and part hard grind, but it has to be done and done on a regular basis as in day by day by day. The alternative is to have a long time gap and then forget the last plot point made, or get in a muddle by doing a different version of it. if you stick with the routine and do your daily quota of words (or something like it) then at last you type the last few words, and feel entitled to sit back with a silly grin on your face.

But it isn't over. You can't relax yet. Oh, no, not by a long shot. There's editing, and editing and final edits. That's where the boredom can creep in, because the story is so familiar there are no more surprises. Excuse me while I yawn.....