After
reading through your manuscript to make sure there are no glaring grammatical
errors, your plot and sub-plots are plausible, facts are correct, and your
characters have maintained their appearances.
In other words, your protagonist’s hair didn’t change colour between
pages 10 and 43, you decide to read through it just one more time. This is when you might fall into the trap of
tinkering with sentences that don’t sound quite right and/or paragraphs that could
use some improvement.
I put my
hand up. I have been guilty of such
behaviour. So now when I see a bout of
it coming on I know it’s time to send it off to be read by a fresh pair of
eyes. These eyes belong to my
professional assessor. And invariably,
she sees things that I didn’t notice because I have become too close to this
story. Of course, sending to an assessor can be confronting
and brings us to the question.
Are you
ready to be criticised?
Jill, interesting subject on "tinkering" with a manuscript. I edited and re-edited for years before mine was published and I'm still thinking of things I should have or could have said different. I suppose every author feels that way at one time or another and having an assessor who is not that close to the story sounds like a great idea. No one really likes criticisim but an unbiased reader can be a big help in pointing out breaks in flow and such that you might be too close to easily see.
ReplyDeleteCrazy Fox, you're right. I think we all tinker and re-tinker because there are so many ways to say something.
ReplyDelete