Nick Bryan

editing

Dealing With Beta Readers – An Early Report

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It’s been a few months since I last looked at my full-length fantasy novel about Faustian deals – I put it aside for a spell, both to let beta readers have a crack at it and to focus on getting the Hobson & Choi book launch in order.

But the first H&C book is all fired into the atmosphere, the Book Two work now with other people, and most of my beta readers reported, so time to start in that direction again. Yesterday afternoon, for the first time in a while, I opened up the novel Scrivener file, looked at various beta reader notes and thought about it.

So, how does it feel returning to a novel post-beta? Have I got any advice for other writers in similar situations? Let’s find out!

Time For Staggered Hatred

Everyone tells you a piece of writing will only be improved by leaving it for a while and coming back. I put this book aside for about a month (Christmas, basically) between first and second drafts, and now an epic gap of three months (almost exactly) between finishing the third draft and re-opening just now.

The good news: I do not hate it. I’d grown weary of this piece back in May, whereas now I’m ready to tear back into the words. Though does that just mean I hate it in a different way? Discuss.

Either way, hard to go wrong with taking a break, even though it’s massively counter-intuitive with the desire to get work out there right the fuck now and inflict your genius upon the world. (I recommend multiple projects as a way of controlling this urge.)

Feedback And The Fleshy Cord

And I also have beta feedback this time, so that makes even more difference than just ignoring the book for  a few months.

Both leaving time and getting feedback are ways to weaken the crusty mental umbilical between yourself and your writing. You probably can’t sever that completely, but you can take a few hacks, break it down to stringy tendrils.

Sometimes adding the feedback of non-you folk will be disappointing. I’ll hold my pasty-white hands up and admit I thought the book was a bit more Ready To Rock than it turned out to be. At first, this got me down a bit. Not a crushing lot, but a noticeable bit.

Unfortunately, as every other writing blogger/tutor/street preacher has already told you, receiving feedback is a vital part of the whole process and if you can’t do it, you’ll probably (metaphorically) die.

Still, there is a plus side: you know how you spend half your life trying to hear/read other people’s ideas without stealing them? You will often now receive other people’s thoughts specifically about your book which you can plagiarise to your heart’s content. It’s so freeing, I’m not sure I need to learn to fly anymore.

Not to mention, although it’s nice to get praise, the experience of having other humans engaging with your book and taking it seriously is pretty great regardless. So focus on that and plough on.

Planning With The Uni-Brain

The one slight problem with beta readers (assuming you have more than one, and that’s a good idea if possible) is that they tend to have different views on your work. Until the blessed day we’re all replaced by robots thinking with the same networked Uni-Brain, you need to parse your beta-reader feedback and decide which way to go.

Whereas when your betas all suggest the same thing, it’s probably a glaring problem, likely also something a hypothetical future publisher/agent will notice. Best address those points, or at least have your reason/excuse ready.

In short, I spent two hours yesterday afternoon staring at the feedback and trying to come up with a unified plan of improvement. Much as I desperately want to just hack my way in, I gotta do the planning, and I may even do a bit more before I write/edit a single word. Partly because, if I’m being honest (sigh), it was partly lack of planning which caused many of the problems in the first place.

Seriously, when it comes to the next utterly new book, I’m going to make such detailed advance notes, it will turn the writing process itself into a completely joyless exercise in joining the dots. This I solemnly vow.

But I think that’s it for now. You’ve got to admire the amount of words I just got out of sitting in a cafe and thinking for a bit. Join me at some point in the future for news on how the editing actually went!

Receiving my first set of edits – A Psychological Journey

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So, the ongoing plunge towards Hobson & Choi self-publication continues. I sent my manuscript of Book One off to an editor, because if my trip to London Book Fair taught me one thing, it’s that you gotta let someone else loose on it.
After all, I’m competing with an array of authors who have editors, I’m bothering to get a decent cover done, so I might as well make sure the insides are up to scratch.

With that goal in mind, I got my book back from the editor about a week ago, and have just blasted through the whole lot of edits once, making changes accordingly. It’s a strange experience, getting edited for the first time, and even after chatting to other people beforehand, it’s still… interesting.

Denial

A lot of writers say that when they first get professional feedback on their work from a professional editor or agent (or perhaps other professionals such as doctors, lawyers and accountants), they hear the bad parts and their first response is to admit: “Yes… yes, I knew all along, I was just hoping I was wrong.”

Are they telling the truth, or do they want to sound like they know what they’re doing?

I don’t know about others, but I can tell you that I totally knew everything all along, and the feedback from my editor served only to echo my own genius back at me.

Ahem.

Acceptance

To be honest, as edits go, I probably had a fairly easy ride. Lots of good feedback about my actual story, characters, pace, etc, but quite a lot of language stuff. To be precise: I sometimes over-narrate, which is something I’m aware of, but apparently need to chop more thoroughly.

Long story short, a fair chunk of over-elaborate narration to be cut, got a few new additions to compensate. The main problem, to be honest, is that a lot of fun observations or witty jokes tend to be buried in internal narration, and in removing that to avoid over-telling things, I also lose some good turns of phrase.

All comes back to that whole Killing Your Darlings thing again, doesn’t it? I love these words, and some can be salvaged with a move to dialogue, but many will simply need to die.

Bargaining

I struggled with it for a bit, to be honest. Even wondered whether me and the editor were well matched – all the time aware that I was probably just being precious. Part of me feels that the very close third person narrative, including inner thoughts and fun character theorising, is a big part of the style, and by chopping it back, I lose a bit of the fun.

On the other hand… it does read better now. A lot smoother. I’ve saved a decent percentage of the jokes I really liked, and the ones that are still in narration are a lot less buried in blocks of text. We’ll see how it goes, I suppose.

So, long story short, Hobson & Choi Book One is getting alarmingly close to happening now – hopefully late July or early August. I may even get my new title and cover up here on the blog in the nearish future, and won’t that be fun?