As part of my process, which is perhaps overly paper-intensive, I’m printing out a copy right now, at a line and a half spacing so there’s plenty of room to write on it. I’ll go through that with my colored paper tags, marking the places where there are things to be fixed or done or included, including notes ranging in magnitude from “this needs to be foreshadowed in previous chapter” to “check street name.” I’ll read through the manuscript, tinkering at the paragraph and sentence level while answering each of those tabs so I can remove it from the manuscript.
When they’re all answered, I’ll print out another copy and read that aloud with pen in hand. That may happen more than once.
I’ve polished the prologue and first chapter a couple of times, so I’m running that past one writing group, and will be looking for first readers when I get to the read-aloud stage – if people are interested, please drop me a line in the comments.
Is this the only way to write a novel? A thousand times no! But it’s worked for me, and if there’s any part of it that’s useful to you, seize it freely. The single wisest thing I heard at Clarion West, from Syne Mitchell, was, “Try different things and find out what works for you. Then do that. Lots.”
How I Went From Writing 2000 Words a Day to 10000 Words a Day. When I started writing The Spirit War (Eli novel #4), I had a bit of a problem. I had a brand new baby and my life (like every new mother…
4 Responses
By paper tags, do you mean sticky notes? That’s an awesome idea, I believe I’ll steal it.
Re: reading aloud, if you have a Kindle you could send the ms to your Kindle (there’s a way to do this, I can look up the info if you like) and then use the text-to-speech to make the Kindle read it out loud to you. Just an idea to save your voice.
I’ve also heard people say that reading it on an e-reader helps them find typographical problems because the different line length makes it harder for errors to escape in peripheral vision.
That’s a great idea about sending it to the Kindle, I’ve done that with some review pdfs I’ve gotten in the past.
The thing about reading aloud is that you catch stuff that you wouldn’t notice otherwise – repeated words, for example, stick out like a sore thumb in this process. It’s worth a raspy voice for a couple of days. 🙂
I’ve just found you through Twitter and finding your posts SO helpful. Thanks!
You’re quite welcome!