Confident Reads (10)- Loren DeShon Talks Editing and His Personal Experience

Hello everyone! Confident Reads is a feature I have here each week and is a way to open communication between readers and indie authors.  This  is to help readers feel confident in the books they spend their money on, and for authors to feel confident in the book they publish. 

This week I've invited Loren DeShon to talk about editing and his experiences.  I know that we've had some discussions about editing already, but I feel like it's something that can't be expressed enough, getting your book edited well could very well be the key to success.  Loren is a first time author, but his experience shows us that publishing a book does not happen overnight.  And I'm with him in that you don't want to publish your book until it's the very best it can possibly be.  I am aware that not everyone agrees with this, but I can say that most bloggers/reviewers do agree because we've read those poorly edited books. Do the best you can do and your book will sell better because of it.  But enough from me, here's Loren with his personal experience.

Candace has asked me to discuss my experiences with self-publishing my book, Redemption on the River, with regard to editing.   I am happy to do so, but keep in mind that any recommendations I make are coming from someone who has published one novel and is not, in fact, Stephen King.

In my opinion, in order to achieve a quality, polished manuscript that is ready to publish, you need to bring on board three team members in the form of beta readers, an editor, and proofreaders.

Beta readers are highly valuable, and the first rule is to provide them with a good, readable manuscript.  For some authors that may be the first draft, but for me it was the fourth.  I start with a general outline and then begin to get ideas, the characters open their eyes and start getting their own ideas, then unanticipated paths appear that must be explored, and before long I produce a rambling, messy, 220,000 word (gulp!) first draft that I wouldn’t show to my dog.  

Clean up that first draft and write a second.  Fill the plot holes, cut out the ideas that didn’t work, pare the dialog, and tighten everything up.  Give your beta readers—who are likely friends and family and who are certainly doing you a favor—something that is actually readable.  My fourth draft was the first I was willing to show the world, and by then it had shrunk to 196,000 words.

There are those who say that beta readers are enough of a third party review for some authors.  I find that very difficult to believe.  In my experience betas are very valuable for getting feedback on a macro level—does the overall story work, is it believable, did you like/dislike the characters, did you see the plot twists coming, etc—but they are not very useful at all on the micro level—grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc.

Furthermore, the feedback from beta readers runs from nothing more than “I liked it” to pages-long handwritten reports.  I finally developed a written list of questions for debriefing my betas, and that tended to draw answers out of the shy ones and keep the loquacious ones on track.  I also found that verbal discussions, on the phone or in person, greatly increased the amount and value of the feedback I received.

Finally, with regard to beta readers, their most important quality is honesty.  Their inputs are valueless if they blow sunshine up your skirt rather than giving you their unvarnished opinions.  I told each of my betas that I wanted nothing but the brutal truth.  I got it from most of them—my own mom told me she hated my protagonist (ouch!)—and my book is far better for it. 

Do you need a professional editor?  In my opinion absolutely, but only if you want to produce the best book you possibly can.  An author is too close to their own work to see the problems—from the developmental to line editing level—that an experienced, dispassionate, professional editor will.  You can’t see the forest for the trees, which is exactly the kind of tired cliché that a good editor will strike out with her red pen.  Hire the best you can afford.

When is it time for the editor?  Only the author can answer that, and for me it was obvious when the time came.  I had finished my tenth draft, and I absolutely knew that the story should be better and could be better, but I just couldn’t see how to make it better.  Read that again:  Should be better could be better but don’t know how to do it.  Time for an editor.  

I extensively researched editors, narrowed it down to four whom I contacted and, based on our correspondence, picked the one who felt like the best fit for me and my book.  

I waited six months to get to the top of her to-do list, mailed off a check and the 155,000 word tenth draft, and received in return a manuscript covered in red ink along with a 76 page analysis.  I agreed with 85% of her observations and suggestions, spent a month contemplating them, then incorporated them into the eleventh draft, which came in at 146,000 words.

I find that statistic alone rather telling.  The tenth draft was as perfect as I could make it, but after my receiving her professional inputs the 11th draft was both 9,000 words shorter and significantly improved.  That’s the value of an editor.

Proofreaders.  Gotta have ‘em.  Got too.  See what I mean?

If you’re on a strict budget it might be possible to get away with using dedicated, qualified amateurs to proof, but they won’t catch everything the pros will.  Even then not everything will get caught.  We’re all human, and I’m not sure it’s even possible to produce a novel-length book that is perfect in the first printing.

In my own case the eleventh draft became the twelfth, and once it was complete I knew it was the last.  I number my drafts like software, and I started intense self-proofing, which resulted in drafts 12.1, 12.2, 12.3, etc.  Each iteration represented a minimum of three complete, first-page-to-last word-by-word reviews by me, and sometimes four or five. Somewhat cross-eyed by that point, I sent off version 12.7 for professional proofreading.

They sent back approximately 40 corrections.  I incorporated them, went through it again twice myself, and sent them version 12.8.  They returned approximately 60 additional corrections.  I incorporated them into version 12.9, and contacted them for a third proofreading.  The head editor refused my business.

“Publish it,” she said.  “We strive for perfection, but a few things will always slip through.  You’re ready.”

I did publish Redemption on the River, and a few things did in fact slip through.  A reversed quotation mark, a semi-colon that should be a comma, and a “then” which should be “than”, plus a few other things.  I’m keeping track of them, and when the time comes I will correct both the digital and paperback versions.

In the meantime, I have the satisfaction of knowing I put out the best product I possibly could.

Loren DeShon is the author of the historical fiction novel, Redemption on the River.  You can find him on his blog, and his book on goodreads.

And you can watch for my review as I plan on reading this one the first chance I get!  (I may have read a few pages already and am eager to read more!)

For the comments, what are your thoughts?  And I'm wondering, if you read a book and find the editing has been poorly done, do you tell the author? (In a kind and thoughtful way, of course.) Or do you just let it be and figure it's not your business?