A Polishing Till It Shines Checklist from Mia Marlowe

Today I have the pleasure of welcoming author Mia Marlowe to talk to us about polishing your manuscript. For all of you doing NaNoWriMo, this checklist of things to look for after you've finished your draft is going to be especially indispensable.

And if that wasn't enough, Mia is giving away an ARC of SINS OF THE HIGHLANDER to a lucky commenter! (open internationally) So be sure to leave your email address in the comments.


Now, over to Mia...

    Polishing Till it Shines

The manuscript is finished. Now what? Time to revise andpolish. And let me encourage you to be brutal. This is your last chance to makethe story as good as it possibly can be before you start submitting it. Youonly get one chance to impress an agent or editor. Make it count.

Start with the beginning. Does your opening sentence raise aquestion in the reader's mind, something to hook them into reading on? If not,work on it until it does.

Is your first chapter bogged down with back-story? Slash itnow. Hit the ground running and don't look back. You need to know what's comebefore. Your readers only need the barest hint. Don’t include more backstorythan is necessary for readers to understand well enough to continue. Keepingyour reader slightly off balance, wondering why something is happening or why acharacter is reacting in an unusual manner is a good way to keep the pagesturning. And that is your goal.

I often tell my husband he married a hooker. No, this isn’t TrueConfessions! ;-) I'm talking about writing hooks. These are tiny tantalizingbits of information that create a path for your readers. If you work it right,you can literally pull your reader forward through your story.  This is what keeps readers up nights.

Check your prose. Are you using passive voice? Hope not.Lots of helping verbs? Weak. Circle every word ending in "ly" and cutthem till there's no more than one or two per page. Use descriptive verbs andnouns instead of adjectives and adverbs.

Read your story aloud. You'll hear the echoes of over-usedwords your eyes may miss. Any sentence you have to take a breath to finish istoo long. Cut it in half.

Look at your pages. How much white space is there? Are you tooheavy on narrative and too light on dialogue? Do you need the tags on yourdialogue or can you tell who's talking based on their speech patterns? Do allyour characters sound alike?

Can you smell your scenes? Have you engaged all the senses orare you relying merely on visual? Your reader wants to walk in the heroine'sshoes. Give her enough to know where she is and how to feel about it.

Are you sticking with one point of view per scene or are youpopping in and out of your character's heads so much you'll give your readerswhiplash?

Do your characters have similar sounding names? Tolkien mayhave gotten away with Eowen and Eomer, but most readers prefer not to have towork that hard. Do your character's names start with the same letter? For thesake of clarity, change one of them now.

Use the spell checker. I mistrust the grammar checker, butthe spell check is my friend.

  

When your story is polished till you're sick of it, turn it overto someone whose judgment you trust--generally not a relative or someone whowants to continue to sleep with you. Don't be defensive. Prepare yourself forrequests for revisions. If you don't develop the hide of a rhinoceros, yourstay in Writerland will be painful and brief. Accept their comments andconsider them carefully. You didn't come down the mountain with the storycarved in stone. Revise if you find you agree with them.

Once you're satisfied your manuscript sparkles, do yourhomework. Don't send it to an editor or agent who doesn't handle your brand ofromance. Choose your targets carefully. Why set yourself up for a 'no?'

Print it up. Say a prayer. Submit and start working on thenext one. Don't even think about contacting them for a response before threemonths. Good luck and Happy Writing!

What special trick do you use tomake sure your final manuscript is the best version of the story of yourheart?

Mia Marlowe writes historical romance for Kensingtonand Sourcebooks. A classically trained soprano, she calls her adventurous,sensual stories a cross between Grand Opera and Gilbert & Sullivan…withsex!  Her Touch of a Thief(May 2011) received a rare starred review fromPublishers Weekly and January 2012 will see the release of her firstcollaborative novel with New York Times bestseller Connie Mason,Sins of theHighlander. Check out her blog at MiaMarlowe.com for RedPencil Thursday. Mia does an online critique of the first 500 words for anintrepid volunteer each week. She loves to connect with other writers andreaders and hopes you’ll join her on Facebookand Twitter.

Remember to leave a comment and your email if you want to be entered to win the ARC!

Thanks, Mia, for stopping by!

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“...a sexy, sizzling tale that is sure to have readers begging for more!" –Jo Davis, author of I SPY A DARK OBSESSION CRASH INTO YOU is now available for pre-order! Read an excerpt here.

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The Ten Stages of Revision Emotions

So this year I've been diligently working on the draft of the second book in my series, MELT INTO YOU. This one is tentatively scheduled to release sometime next summer, but the manuscript is due to my editor at the end of this month.

Well, I finished the draft a couple of weeks ago and sent it to Sara to get her feedback and to make sure I hadn't suffered from the dreaded second book syndrome. *shudders* Luckily, Sara liked the book and only had a few changes she suggested.

A few. But one was a biggie. She suggested I cut the murder mystery subplot and replace it with something different. Not a huge change in word count, but a very significant change with regards to the story's plot. Hence began my journey through the Stages of Revision Emotions.

The Ten Stages of Revision Emotions

Stage 1: Shock (You want me to change what?) or a "Dammit, that makes sense"

Okay, so in the list of revisions, there is usually one, maybe two, shockers. Your favorite scene needs to be cut or something you thought was vital gets the ax. But most of the time with Sara, her suggestions resonate with me in that "Damn, why didn't I see that?" way. Or she picks out things that were niggling at me but that I couldn't quite put my finger on. That's the gift of having someone with an editorial eye. They can see things you can't because you're too close to it.

Stage 2: Blind Confidence - "I can totally fix this."

This is when you get excited. Things don't look so hard or too bad. You just need to change A B and C and you're golden. La dee da, I'm the kickass writer girl.

Stage 3: The "Oh, Crap"

You actually sit down to make those seemingly innocuous changes and WHAM! you've just blasted your manuscript to swiss cheese. Plot holes are bleeding on your pages, threads with loose ends are flapping in the breeze, your characters have been flattened to road kill.

Stage 4: Sticking Your Fingers in Your Ears and Humming

You've hit the denial phase. This can't be done. If I make this change, I'll have to rewrite the whole book from scratch. My agent/editor must be crazy to think I could change this. It's impossible. I'm just going to leave it the way it is and turn it in. I am the writer, so I get the ultimate call on revisions anyway, right?

Stage 5: Despair

This book is a giant pile of stinking baby dung. I will never be able to fix it. I'm going to fade into oblivion and never be published again. How did I think this was a good story?

Stage 6: The Muse Taps Your Shoulder

"Who the hell are you? Oh yeah, I remember you, creative genius. Where the f*#% have you been you stingy, rat bastard?"

Stage 7: The Idea - *cue angels singing*

You're lying there in bed, taking a shower, talking yourself out of eating the entire cake because you're a talentless hack. And then it hits. The Idea. The way that will fix your book and achieve what your agent/editor wanted from this revision. You suddenly see the seemingly obvious fix and realize how dead on that revision advice was.

Stage 8: Mania

This is where you realize you have two weeks to make this brilliant change and you have oh, ten, twenty, thirty thousand words or whatever to write. You eat, sleep, and breathe your manuscript. The ideas flow and you're excited about this story again. Thrilled to see it turn into something way better than what you originally had. It's a high. People may want to put you in a white jacket.

Stage 9: Peace

You finish that bad boy and turn it in. Then you eat that whole cake anyway, but this time, it's because you've earned it. :)

Stage 10: Ah, hell.

You get another set of revisions back and the process starts all over again. :)

These stages also apply to getting feedback from crit partners and beta readers. The key, for me, is recognizing that I will get there. That when it seems I just am not good enough to fix it, an idea will come. But it won't necessarily happen day one after I get my revision notes. My mind needs time to process and stew before tackling things.

So how about you? Have you been through any of these stages? Any other stages you would add?

Deal Breakers: Do You Know What Yours Are?

So, guest bloggers will continue tomorrow (haven't they been so fab?), but I thought I'd pop in today and say hi. I'm excited to report that I've finished this round of major rewrites/revisions for Agent Sara! *dances around in a circle* Now it's in her hands. Hopefully she likes the changes--if not, then back to the trenches I go. But for now, I'll hope for the best. :D

Now, what I thought I'd talk about today is this whole idea of rewrites. I know all of us understand that our work will need editing and revision once an agent or publisher takes us on. No matter how perfect we think we've gotten it, there is only so much we can do without a professional, unbiased eye.

That's good news and bad news.

The good news is that as long as your story has strong writing, a great concept, and marketability (piece of cake, right?) then an agent or publisher won't let a few things that need reworking stand in the way of taking you on.

The bad news? You're going to be faced with the issue of what you are and are not willing to change in your book. How emotionally attached are you to your words, characters, concept, etc.?

Before Sara offered me representation, she emailed me a long list of editorial notes about pretty major things she would like me to change. She did this to make sure that before she offered to rep me, that we had the same vision. I really appreciated this heads up because it put the ball in my court--were these things I was willing to change?

I read through the feedback and let it sink in overnight. My initial reaction? I was daunted by the amount of work that would be involved with those changes. It made me wonder if I was capable of changing all those things while still making the rest of the story work. So basically a little wave of maybe-I'm-not-good-enough panic.

Then, as it settled in, I realized--wow, these things will make the book so much stronger and deeper. I would love to be able to reach that level with this story. So, obviously, I agreed to the changes and then went through a whirlwind three weeks of fixing all of it (hopefully successfully.) In the end, I had to cut about 20k words, and no--that's not because I like words and had overwritten--no, I was right at my word count, so I had to cut those 20k and then replace them with completely new stuff. That writing new stuff was fun, but definitely the most difficult part because changing one thing in one part of the book has a domino effect on everything else.

But anyway, here's what it got me to thinking about (and discussing with Sierra Godfrey)--do you have deal breakers? Changes that, if asked, you wouldn't be willing to do. And if you have those things, would you be able to possibly turn down an agent/publisher because your visions didn't align?

For instance, what if Sara had asked me to nix my happy ending and go in the erotica direction instead of erotic romance?  That is something I wouldn't want to compromise because I'm at heart, a romantic. I want to write books with happy endings. It's who I am. And as you know, once you start publishing in one genre, it's not always easy to jump into something else--so you better like what you're writing from the start.

Thankfully, Sara's and my vision aligned and none of the changes she asked for changed the essence of what I wanted my story to be and in fact, made me like my story better. But it's definitely something to keep in mind when you're on the search for an agent/publisher.

Now, it's important not to have a laundry list of deal breakers. After all, this business is about collaborative effort. We aren't the be all end all as the author. However, I also think it's vital to know what you are just not willing to compromise.

So, I'm curious, do you have any deal breakers? Would you consider turning down an offer if someone asked you to change something that just didn't feel right for you or your career?

**Today's Theme Song**
"If I Can't Have You" - Kelly Clarkson

(player in sidebar, take a listen)

Sifting Through Opposing Feedback

Photo by engineroomblog (click pic for link)

First, thanks so much for all of your nice comments and congratulations yesterday.  You guys are the bestest!

Now, because I had the opportunity to review the judges' comments and revise my submission before sending it along to the editor, I spent the entire afternoon yesterday obsessing over two paragraphs.  Last night, I finally hit the point of mostly happy with it and went ahead and sent it in.  If I looked at it any longer, I know I would have ended up changing too much.  The entry got me to the finals, so I'm trying to go with the ain't-broke-don't-fix-it (well, don't fix it too much) mentality--a philosophy that is hard for me to embrace at times. So I have officially let it go and am giving it over to the Fates at this point.

But as I was going through the judges' comments and emailing back and forth with my crit group to get their input, my head started to swim.  It's amazing how subjective this whole writing thing is.  One reader will point out how much they love something, then another one will say I totally blew that part.  

When I threw out options to my crit partners, each had different opinions of which version I should go with (and gave completely valid rationales behind why there opinion was such.)  I'd read one of their suggestions, and be like, yes that makes so much sense.  But then I'd read another's opposing opinion and her reasoning, and be like, damn, that makes total sense too.  Gah!  

So it makes me wonder, how do you know which advice to take and which to toss? Ultimately, I went with what had the best "feel" to me when I read it out loud, but believe me, I agonized over every freaking word.

So how about you?   When you get opposing opinions that all make sense, how do you determine your course?  

 

**Today's Theme Song**

"Brain Stew" - Green Day

(player in sidebar--go ahead, take a listen)

Contest!!!! And The Techie Post About Critting

Photo credit: Inky Girl

Before I get to today's post, I want to announce a new contest.  In honor of my focus on critting this week, I am offering a critique giveway!

Two winners will receive either a detailed critique of their first ten pages OR a query critique from me (winner's choice).  These crits will be private and not published on this site.  Now, I don't claim to be a professional editor, but I am a very detailed critter and give honest feedback, which I hope will be very helpful to whoever wins.

Alright, so here are the rules...

• You must leave a comment on TODAY's post
• You must be a follower (If you are not currently, you can join now.)
• If you are already a follower, you get one extra entry (+1)
• If you tweet about the contest (just hit the retweet button at the bottom of the post) or post it on your blog, you get an extra entry (+1)
• No non-fiction (except memoir) or poetry please.
• Comments will be cut off at midnight (central time) Friday night Jan. 15.
• Winner will be announced on Monday's blog!

Good luck to everyone!  I look forward to reading the winners' work!

Now for today's post...

I do not pretend to be technically savvy.  I occasionally have a moment where I feel I've conquered some html thing that I thought I wouldn't figure out (like my fancy label section in the sidebar).  However, I thought it may be helpful to review how my critique group uses Microsoft Word to crit.  I know many of you probably already use these features, but for those of you who don't, I hope this proves useful.

In Microsoft Word (2007 version is what I'm using), there are these handy dandy review features.  So when you open your document, click on the tab at the top that says "Review".

This will bring up the options to "Track Changes".  Select this option.  It will now track any changes you make to the document in a different color.

Now when you make changes in the document, it will look like this (click on picture for bigger view):

Now for those things that you can't just correct inline, you have the comments feature.  To the left of the Track Changes button is a button labeled New Comment (see first picture above).  Make sure your cursor is at the point in the document where you want to make a comment.  Then press the New Comment icon.  A little bubble will appear out to the side where you can type your comment.  You can also highlight whole words, sentences, or passages, then hit comment and it will attach the comment to whatever you highlighted.

And remember this feature is great for pat on the back comments as well as critical ones.

So these are the basic features I use.  In addition to the review features, I also use the normal highlight capability to denote echoes.  I don't bother making a comment each time I see a repeated word, I just highlight each one to bring it to the person's attention.  An automatic comment will also appear in the sidebar since you are tracking changes. To highlight the word, just highlight the word with your cursor, then a little box will pop up, select the yellow (or whichever color you choose) option. (Click on pic to see bigger)

A few other time savers are coming up with abbreviations your crit buddies all know to put in the comment section:

SDT = Show don't tell

HD = Hidden dialogue (or buried dialogue)

awk = awkward

??? = What in the heck are you trying to say here?

And smiley faces and LOL's always work well too.

Alright, I'm sure that was as clear as mud.  I definitely don't need to quit fiction for technical writing.  :)  If any of you have questions about any of the above, feel free to ask them in the comments and I'll try to not confuse you further.

Now, for the purposes of the contest, please leave in your comment the number of entries you qualify for (if you're tweeting it, posting it, a follower, etc.).  If you do not want to enter, but want to leave a comment, just let me know "no entry".  Thanks and good luck!

**Today's Theme Song**

"Get the Party Started" - Pink

(player in sidebar, take a listen)

At Your Mercy (again)

Based on the feedback I received from the first time, I revised and reposted my query letter over at Public Query Slushpile. Click over and leave on comment on what you think!

Thanks!