Preflight Checklist: Final Polish Before Winging that MS Out the Door

What do I do before I ship a manuscript? You mean besides panic over the fact that I'll never catch everything? That the MS will never be perfect, even after (if ever) it's published? Yeah. That happens first.

Then a round of deep breathing later, I run through a series of checks - ones I know are issues for me.

1. When I find a phrase or a gesture I like, I run with it. Everywhere. For everyone. I get to flip my hair out of my face. You get to flip your hair out of your face. EVERYBODY gets to flip hair. So there's a search for repeated gestures, phrases, and words. Most of this gets caught during critique. If not, it gets caught during dev edits. if not, the copy edits. But, if not, the buck stops with me. So, yeah. There's a final read for that nonsense. I do my damnedest to repeat the same physical character gesture no more than three or four times within the same book. Try.

2. Continuity. Continuity. Continuity. It's my own personal pet peeve, meaning I'll cut everyone else all kinds of slack on continuity errors, but my own make me insane. True story: A certain novel made it through several crit rounds, dev edits, copy edits and was sent to me in galley for final approval. Lo and behold. Continuity issue. My heroine was having a conversation with a hero who was unconscious and in surgery at the time. Oops. The house didn't charge me for fixing that - they could have. Second true story: there's a short story out there in the world that is rotten with continuity issues. It was picked up on an emergency basis and on a super short deadline when someone had a hole in an anthology. The editorial pass was super quick and the turn around so fast that I missed all kinds of problems. You can subsequently drive entire solar systems through the gaps in that story. To my eternal relief, I got a do over on it. It's MUCH better. Cleaned up and out there in the world for free as part of Tales from the SFR Brigade antho. No. I am not going to tell you where to find the tragically broken version. You're on your own there.


This proves the adage you likely heard from your father the way I did from mine: If a job is worth doing, it's worth doing right.

In the case of final passes on books, it means TIME. You have to have enough time scheduled to give yourself the time and space for a careful read through your book after it has settled sufficiently into the crevices of your brain. You want to be able to read the story without being caught up in its brilliance, but also without being stumped by every little typo you spy. Or finding out that no one caught the fact that the hero seems to have three hands in the love scene (and he's not an alien who's supposed to have extra appendages). You'll have to fine-tooth comb the text for your particular issues - we all have them. And they're all different. So I can tell you that I have to search my MS files for --! which is how you comment out code in SQL. Old habit. But in a story, when I want to mark something for future clarification, it gets commented out. Jeffe has to search for her brackets, I search for dash, dash, bang. You'll have your own tic(s).

Each book is its own entity with its own gotchas and pitfalls. My final tune up list varies depending on the project. But finally, there does come a point where I have to stop fiddling and release the thing either to fly or crash and burn. I make the appropriate sacrifices to appease the Book Gods (or demons, depending on your day). I hit send. And promptly find three typos in the first two pages.

Buffing the Rough Cut

Okay. Well, Blogspot seems to have a mad hate on for the image I'd planned to tuck into this post. So you'll just have to imagine a typewritten page hemorraghing red ink. K?

As has been previously established, drafting is not my forte. Revision is. Sadly, one cannot revise what one has not yet - you know - drafted. Welcome to my purgatory.

Once I have a POS (Yes, I could have titled this 'polishing the turd'. I didn't. You're welcome.) draft in hand, I patch holes. My drafts are usually a jigsaw puzzle of scenes without transitions betwixt them. Mostly, the scenes are in order. Though, it's not unheard of for the bits to get shuffled in service to the story and conflict. The point for this pass through the MS is to connect all the dots so the story reads from beginning to end.

Stage 1 Check List:

1. Does story flow from beginnng to end
2. Is there a story arc
3. Can conflict be intensified
4. Does it make sense

From there, I move on to Stage 2 polishing - making it sound right to me. You know how in high school, when some smart mouth jerk insulted you and you thought of the perfect come back? At three AM the next morning? That's revising for me. For whatever reason, a wire crossed in the brain, it's easy for me to see how to fix something AFTER I've written it. I may wail and cry and gnash my teeth that it's too hard, but I always know what the story needs. Eventually, I get over myself and I fix what needs repair. This is often dialog between characters and may speak directly to character arcs. This stage requires a clear head and a willingness to listen. Somethings haven't changed since high school. The perfect solutions usually pop into my head at 3am. My family is not keen on my revision process.

Stage 2 Check List:

1. Are character arcs as strong as they could be
2. Do the characters sound like themselves
3. Would anyone REALLY say what I had that character say
4. What would be more fun, more conflict, more unintentionally revealing in any given bit of text I'm obsessing over

Stage 3 is for continuity, repeated words, phrases and gestures. Hi. My name is Marcella, and I am not a detail person. Until it comes to one of my stories. Continuity mistakes in my work make me cringe. Hates it. Hates it with white hot passion. So I've developed the 'picking out continuity issues' muscle. I'd like to pretend it's foolproof. But that was before a novel got to copy-edits with a hero holding a conversation while he was unconscious in surgery. Oops. Or before a short story went out with a massive (to me) science error in it. So clearly, one can never obsess over continuity too much. How do you find it?

Stage 3 Check List:

1. Beta readers/critique group
2. Read the work aloud in the company of a solid crit group - no really - reading aloud is where your repeated words will hit you over the head if your crit group doesn't
3. Reading aloud, mark your characters' physical gestures - how often does he rub a hand down his face, how often does she roll her eyes - fix that. There are more physical manifestations of emotional state than are dreamt of in my tiny drafting vocabulary. Try out a few.
4. Take a break.  A day. A week. Longer if deadlines permit, but let the work sit. Encourage the words to dribble out of head. Then reread. Not aloud. Just read. Watch the typos and the repeated words jump out at you. Fix.

Stage 4 - Release
Here's where I admit I'll never catch everything. This is why there are editors - professional, objective eyes paid to point out where a story doesn't communicate as clearly as it could. So that's the point that I bundle up that MS and ship it. And subsequently and immediately find a slew of typos, repeated words and other mistakes that I missed before shipping.

Check Twice, Send Once

Carpenters know of what they speak when they say "measure twice, cut once." What does that saying have to do with manuscript submissions? Well, in much the same way a carpenter cannot regrow a cut board, writers cannot undo submission flubs.

Before Christmas I posted my Top 5 WiP to WoS list, consider today's list the rest of my Top 10 things to "check twice" before clicking "send" on a submission:

1. Beloved Words/Phrases -- As Jeffe mentioned on Sunday, many writers have a certain unhealthy adoration for a handful of words and/or phrases. While the words vary by author, the need to exorcise the excess from the ms is a must. Words and phrases I overuse? "Just," "As" (the precursor to a run-on sentence), and anything having to do with the eyes (my family frequently has entire conversations with looks alone. Apparently, this is not normal and does not translate well into a book -- damnitall).
2. Redundant Openings & Closings -- While the plot and story are moving along smartly chapter by chapter, I have a strange habit of opening and closing chapters in similar ways. That's, erm, tedious for the reader. Example: Bert opens all the even-numbered chapters by observing something and ends all the odd-chapters bleeding on the floor. Thus the tempo is bleed then watch, bleed then watch... bleed then blech. 
3. Appropriate Consequences for Actions -- Too often I'm a helicopter-parent to my protagonist. I don't hold her appropriately accountable for her mess. Betray the king? No prob. Short stay in the dungeons then back to being openly accepted at court. Get stepped on by the dragon? Best chiropractic visit ever. Yeah. No. Bitch needs to suffer...and that suffering needs to last for more than a scene. What's the point of sending her through the conflict if it doesn't reshape her?
4. MIA Words -- My worst, WORST habit is leaving out words. Random ones. A definite article here, a verb there. Gods help me, but I can't see where I've missed them. It doesn't matter how long I let the ms rest. My brain auto-fills. For this reason, my final-reader is someone who hasn't been tortured by the evolution of the ms. She's a close-reader, not skimmer. She's also a complete tyrant. I adore her.
5. Format -- At first blush, format issues are silly. In the era of digital everything, there is no good excuse for not having your word-processing program default to an industry-approved format. Note: I said "good excuse." However, when I write, I compose on a dark background with light text. It's easier on my eyes. Also, all of my chapter headings are jump-tags from a table of contents. All of my chapters are titled with a short summary of what happens in the chapter. Erm. Yeah. Might not want to send the ms like that. 

There you are, dear reader, my "Check Twice" list. Have you ever sent a ms then seconds later slapped your forehead and shouted, "Aw, crap!"  What was the mistake you wish you'd caught?

T-shirt found on Cafe Press: http://www.cafepress.com/mf/63803387/measure-twice-cut-once_tshirt

How I Clean Up My MSS Before Sending

A photo from our freezing fog the other day. (Another picture here.) I love the pattern of frosted vine and shadow. Layers upon layers.

Last week, my editor, the fabulous Deb Nemeth, and I finished up the copy edits on Ruby, the third book in my Facets of Passion series. (Amusingly, I tried to link to the series on Amazon, instead of just book 2, which I ended up doing. When I searched, Amazon asked me if I meant "Faucets of Passion." I'm totally writing that next!

At any rate, all the editing for Ruby went really fast, which was particularly great because we did them over the winter holidays, to meet a sale date four months earlier than expected. However, they also went faster because I've gotten smarter.

This is the fourth publication I've done with Deb. I know by now what she looks for and I've - gasp! - started fixing them before she asks me to. I actually created a checklist for my final polish before I send something back to her, to remind myself of my common errors.

So, that's why I suggested this week's topic of what kinds of final checks we all make before sending a manuscript. I'm really interested to hear what everyone else does. (And may add to my own list.)

Here's mine:

• Search for [ ]

While I'm writing along, if I can't think of a word, want to check the brand name, need to check the previous book, etc. - basically anything that would halt the writing flow - I put it in square brackets as a placeholder. Sometimes I forget about them. My CPs usually catch them, but they shouldn't have to.

• Search for “now” 
• Search for “just” 

"Now" and "just" are my usual verbal tics. I use them ALL THE TIME. It drives me crazy. I don't even know I'm doing it. Most of them can just (see???) be deleted. Sometimes I have to restructure. I leave some in, but not fifty-million.

• Replace towards with toward 

This is a Carina Press house rule. For some reason I'm addicted to towards, which is apparently more British. I fix them as a last step.

• Search for endearment of the day 

Another of my tics. I have a name-thing. Most of my stories play with names and what people call each other. I don't know why I have this - I don't plan it out at all. But it ends up being fundamental to the characters and their interaction and sometimes their transformation. But I overdo it and Deb is forever asking me to reel it back. 

• Search for actions as dialogue tags. 

Another Carina house rule, but that's probably good for me to learn. An example would be: "No," he picked up the chicken and threw it at her, "I won't cook you dinner!" I tend to construct this way. It would change to: "No!" He picked up the chicken and threw it at her. "I won't cook you dinner."

 (I feel like I should caveat that the above example is not an actual line from Ruby, or from anything else I would ever write. Chickens are not for hurting.)

• Search for overused dialogue tags. 

Deb always reminds me that "said" and "asked" are just fine and are nearly invisible to the reader. I have to go through and remove a certain percentage of my livelier tags and tone it down a bit.

 So, there's my dirty editing laundry! What does everyone else do??