First Things First

FIRST THINGS FIRST Creative writing, despite the tagline on the quilt of The Guide to Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction, is not a step-by-step process. But what about after you’ve finished writing? Time and again I’ve mentioned that should you ask 100 working authors about their writing process you’ll get no less than 100 completely different answers, however at the same time I have a tendency to give one piece of advice in terms of writing habits and methods: Write as quick as you can. You really can’t edit while you write. When you’re “in the zone” and the creative vitality is pouring through you, don’t stop. I at all times flip off as many of the automated capabilities of Word or other word processing programs as I can. Never let your laptop observe your spelling and grammar as you go, and auto formatting and styles are an absolute no-no. Don’t worry even about the usual manuscript format (but). Just write. Let it out. Explore concepts as you go, misspell stuff, run right previou s those typos, add in little notes to your self like [go back and research this] or [discover an applicable gun] and stuff like that. Just keep going. Once you’ve actually finished the story, guide, or whatever, you’ll have plenty of time to revise, edit, and format to your coronary heart’s content material. So let’s name that Step One: Actually Writing the Thing. Step Two: Go Back and Revise. You still have a largely unformatted file, arrange nonetheless you needâ€"no matter’s comfortable for you to read, that works best together with your laptop (a small laptop computer or netbook display vs. a widescreen HD desktop, for example), for your eyesight (the older I get the higher the magnification . . .), and so forth. This revision course of is where you analysis stuff, discover the best type of gun, lock in the hair and eye color of your characters, double examine your worldbuilding guidelines, tweak those rules, and so forth. This is the place raw or “tough” text beco mes a first draft. Still, you don’t need to worry about format. Now, set it apart for a number of days at least. Clear your head. Go do one thing else completely. When you're feeling you’re ready, go back for Step Three: Your Edit. This is where you clean issues up as best you'll be able to. Fix those final typos and do your greatest to get this factor as clean as you can also make it with the understanding that nobody can edit his or her own writing. And this is the point at which you then reformat the textual content into the usual manuscript format, maintaining in thoughts, always, the caveat that LESS IS MORE. Don’t get inventive in your formatting. Even when you intend to self-publish this, do not format it as an e-book yet. Don’t fiddle with the web page dimension or dump it into a POD service’s template. Keeping it easy means keeping it editable. Which leads us to Step Four: Get Help. Especially should you’re intending to self-publish, you should rent knowledgeabl e editor. That implies that self-publishing isn’t essentially free. I know, sorry, however the indie book universe is a crowded area now and readers are now not prepared to simply accept a lack of high quality in change for ninety-nine-cent short tales. I guess you’ll discover a typo on this blog publish. This weblog is stuffed with them, generally. Know why? Because I don’t ship my weblog posts to an editor. I’ve been working as a writer and editor since 1986, and no, people, I can not edit myself. I make each mistake in my very own writing that frustrates me as an editor in other authors’ work. You cannot edit your self, period. That commonplace manuscript format, with no embedded types, no difficult formatting, no bizarre web page sizes, no text or picture packing containers, no something but textual content, will help your editor do what you want that editor to do, and that’s have a look at the writing, and only the writing. Let your editor allow you to with every li ttle thing from story construction to sentence construction, character to punctuation, but not your formatting, please. Thank you. Thanks to our modern pc age, formatting textual content is simple and quick, so there’s no cause to do it too early. Only try this formatting for e-books or POD after you feel you have last, edited text. That’s Step Five: Format. Okay, now knock your self out, no less than throughout the confines of your chosen e-book reseller or POD service’s formatting tips. I would suggest you hire a typesetter on your POD books, but that’s a subject for one more day. How your textual content evolves right into a guide truly is a step-by-step process and part of being a professional is correctly valuing the efforts and strategy of the opposite professionals you work with. One more repeatedly offered bit of recommendation: Conserve your creativity in your story and none in any way on your formatting. â€"Philip Athans About Philip Athans Love it. Just finished your guide and it is full of margin scribbles, underlining, concepts, and arrows pointing to different things. I get a lot of hack from different writers for the non-edited-ness of my own weblog, but was pleased to write down (and quote you) in an upcoming post to feel higher about my weblog writing. Thanks for this and the e-book. It’s wonderful and I am writing more this summer time than I actually have in the final 3 years. Hope to satisfy you one day! Thanks Abigailâ€"likewise!