Writers Tricks of the Trade Vol. 6 Issue 1

PRESS “CONTROL” THEN CLICK “BUY” TO PURCHASE ANY BOOK LAST MINUTE TWEAKS FRED RAYWORTH We’ve all heard that tired quote from the NRA’s dear old friend Charlton Heston about “cold dead hands” and some could say the same thing about a manuscript. When it comes to your “precious” (okay, another quote, and don’t make me say which movie), it seems like you can never stop until it’s literally (oh, what a cliché), pried out of your very much alive hands. I’ve recently gone through that. WILL THE EDITING EVER END? I don’t think I’m revealing any huge trade secrets when I tell you that although my manuscript from Treasure Of The Umbrunna has gone through not only my own personal multiple edits, tweaks and read-throughs, including those with the Henderson Writer’s Group, it’s gone through three (or is it four?) complete edits by my publisher, once I succeeded in actually obtaining said publisher. Whew, I just broke a rule with a very long sentence! What I can say is through all of that, there hasn’t been a single major change in either story line or plot. I was able to keep true to my polka-dot sewer (my muse) and use my usual—no—my only method of writing. I knew where I wanted to start and where I wanted to end. The rest (the middle) was a total surprise. FRED RAYWORTH A MAN OF MANY TALENTS VISIT FRED’S OWN BLOG HTTP://FREDRAYWORTH.COM CONTRATULATIONS, FRED ON YOUR NEW BOOK! BY THIS POINT I’M NO NEWBIE I must say that by this point in the game, when I wrote Treasure, I was no babe in the woods, cliché intended. I already had ten novels under my belt, even if they were all unpublished. The only one which might have plotting issues would be the first one, The Cave and even that one might be more of a problem with writing functionality rather than plotting. It all boils down to fixing the numerous writing mistakes, tweaking minor things. Lots of them. SO MUCH EDITING CAN CREATE MORE MISTAKES With so much editing, even if the edits are relatively minor, which in my case, they were, making those edits can also create more errors. When all is said and done, a final run-through is essential! BUY My first edit was for structure and continuity, not so much for grammar. I made several tweaks and in the process, created some grammatical errors (mostly too many noun-verb combinations starting sentences). The second edit was for grammar and I made lots of corrections but in the process also created some other errors. The third edit was to fix the noun-verb combinations I created fixing the other issues. Along the way, the editor found more grammatical tweaks like show not tell and phrasing she thought would work better. WRITERS’ TRICKS OF THE TRADE PAGE 3 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2016

Writers Tricks of the Trade Vol. 6 Issue 1 | Page 11