Welcome to this week's #TuesdayTip. Last week (TuesdayTips 190) I announced my newest book, The Aftermath, which I am self-publishing - a first for me. I promised to take you with me on this new and exciting journey.
I'm not an expert - far from it - but I have learned a lot over the past few months. If you have any suggestions or thoughts though, please feel free to comment here or on social media.
First of all, much of what I have learned came from the brilliant resources available through the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi). Joining them was well worth the relatively modest subscription fee (which is tax deductible in the UK) (https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/). Many of the indie authors I've spoken to over the years swear by them.

"A person who represents himself has a fool for a client."
This common admonishment, attributed to either Abraham Lincoln or Henry Kett, also stands true for those editing their own work. The human brain is a wonderfully complex machine, but it is also a trickster and sometimes too clever by half. Oftentimes, you read what you think should be there, not what actually is. And sometimes an outside perspective tells you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.
Of course, we all edit our work to some degree. I review the previous day's work before starting typing, and perhaps pick up typos or inconsistencies. My completed draft will go through several rounds of red-pen, but eventually, it is time to relinquish my manuscript to other eyes.
My first stage is to give it to my beta readers. I am lucky enough to have close relatives who are eagle-eyed and have good instincts, and this valuable first read-through is extremely useful. I have not only corrected typos and inconsistencies, I have also changed parts of the story based on what they suggest.

But ultimately, a pair of impartial, professional eyes is needed.
For The Aftermath, I was lucky enough to have some early input from an industry professional. Their advice, though hard to hear initially, convinced me to do a major rewrite and it was much better for it.
However, by the time I had completed this job, circumstances had changed and I had decided to self-publish.
With a traditional publisher, much of the editing is organised by the publisher at their expense (authors should never be asked to contribute to this). As a self-published author, it is up to me to find these editors and pay them for their services. Unfortunately, you have to speculate to accumulate, so you need a budget. The hope, of course, is that without the publisher taking their chunk of the royalties, this is paid for by the hopefully increased take-home from sales.

The first thing I did was pay for a manuscript critique. I had taken on board the suggestions of the industry professional, but since then, nobody had looked at the book. For a critique, a specialist in the genre you are writing for reads through the story and checks that it works, makes suggestions for improvements and acts as an impartial, critical friend. You can find lists of these professionals in Alli's trusted professionals directories, or go through professional organisations such as the Crime Writers' Association. Costs vary, but are often done based on length. Expect to pay a few hundred pounds. This essentially fulfils the role of your agent or editor in the traditional publishing process.

I was fortunate in that my story was essentially sound, and the suggestions made weren't too arduous.

Next is the copy edit. Often combined with proof reading, this is where the editor goes through the manuscript with a fine-toothed comb. Spelling, punctuation and grammar are checked/corrected, small inconsistencies highlighted (such as dates), small errors noted (eg attributing dialogue to the wrong character) and minor questions (eg wouldn't it be better if the character did this first). For a traditional publisher, this is almost invariably out-sourced to freelancers, which is great because you can often hire these people directly. Again, the fee is based on length and will cost more than the critique. Perhaps as much as a thousand pounds or so for a long novel, several hundred for something shorter.

I can't stress enough how valuable and necessary this is. Thanks to my beta-readers, my manuscripts are usually in pretty good condition. Yet the editors that my publisher have assigned me over the years invariably improve the story immeasurably. Just because I am self-publishing doesn't mean I can skip these steps. The last thing I want is for a reader to be able to tell the difference between my traditionally-published Warren Jones novels and my independent efforts.

Join me next week for a discussion about covers.
Best wishes,
Paul
​
If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.

I recently ran my latest work in progress past my beta readers. As always, they helpfully picked up typos, made insightful suggestions and spotted errors. One in particular was picked up by all of them. "Who on earth is Amelia?" they asked.
Quite right too. Amelia hasn't existed as a character in the book for weeks, ever since I decided she was more of a Doreen (*). I had duly gone through the manuscript and changed all instances of Amelia to Doreen - except for this one occasion, which I had managed to miss.
(*) names have been changed to protect innocent characters.

So today, I decided the TuesdayTip would look at the perils of and pitfalls of changing a character's name .
First of all, why change a character's name?
There are a lot of reasons why an author may change a character's moniker midway through writing.
First there are the global changes.

• Amelia now being known as Doreen, because the name suits her better, is one example.
• Replacing the placeholder name with a final name. I've already written about how using an underscore for a placeholder name can make it easy to find and replace Diligent_Mother with Billie and Deadbeat_dad with Laurence TuesdayTips#31.

Then there are specific changes to a scene or event.

• For example you may decide that actually, it was Mahendra who witnessed the stabbing, not Shirley. So you will need to rewrite not only that scene, but all other references to that scene later in the book.
• Another example is the need to 'balance' a scene. My DCI Warren Jones novels often have a briefing scene, where all the series' regular characters are discussing their progress so far and what is going to happen next. It's not uncommon to read back through a draft and realise that some characters are uncharacteristically quiet or others seem to be doing all the talking. Not only does this mean certain characters are too domineering or risk disappearing, it might not quite fit the team dynamics that have developed over the books. So, unlike in real-life, I have the power to take words out of one character's mouth, and place them in another's.

What are the pitfalls?
There are a few things to look out for when changing the name.
Treat Find and Replace with great care. The temptation is to just change all instances of Sam to Alex in one go. There is a certain satisfaction to seeing Word report 'All done. We made 231 replacements.'.
But social media is full of hilarious mishaps from blindly trusting Word to do this.
For example changing Tom to Alex can mean a character's sAlexach suddenly rumbles…
Remember - verify all changes one at a time using Find Next. It won't take long.
Then there are possessive apostrophes.
Typically we add apostrophe s ('s) to the end of a name to denote the possessive.
Eg Warren's car. Or Warren's house.
But, in UK English, names ending with a letter S don't have 's added to the end, rather just an apostrophe.
For example, the possessive of Jones is Jones' not Jones's.
So it would be Warren Jones' car. Or Warren Jones' house.
In the US, they just add 's to everything. (Tip: If you are with a publisher, check their style guide to see what they prefer. See Tip#73 for more information Style Guides.)
One way to dodge this issue entirely is to only substitute names with a replacement with the same ending as the original eg Sam to Alex - neither ends in an S. Jones to Davies - both end in an S. This way, your original apostrophe usage will remain correct.
Finally, don't forget those pesky pronouns. When substituting a character, don't forget to take into account if the gender or preferred pronoun for the new character differs from that of the original. It is very easy to forget this. For example if I give one of Moray Ruskin's lines of dialogue (He/Him) to Karen Hardwick (She/Her), then I need to keep my 'she said/he said' etc consistent through the scene, otherwise it is jarring and confusing for the reader.
Can you think of any other issues that may arise from changing a character's name? Have you any amusing examples? As always, feel free to comment here or on social media.
Until next time,
Paul
If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.

Editing - you either love it, loathe it or just see it as part of the process.
I've looked before at the issues surrounding editing before (eg #Tips48 for an outline of the basic process; #Tips72 for help chopping the wordcount), but for these posts, I want to share a few of the tips and tricks I've picked up over the years.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a couple of posts about how to use descriptive section titles to help you navigate your document, either in Word (or similar) (#Tips124) or Scrivener (#Tips125). Today I thought I'd share some of the information I include in my descriptive titles.

The purpose of a descriptive section title is to help you quickly navigate to a specific part of your manuscript so that you can edit it, without having to search. Whether you work in Word, and your manuscript is a single document, or in Scrivener, and your project is made of dozens of smaller documents, it can be a real chore finding the bit of your project that you want to add to, delete from or modify.
I therefore add a brief description (just a couple of lines) that tells me what happens in that section. By using styles I can use the navigation pane in Word to jump directly to that section. When the book is finished, it's easy to delete all these section titles. Or, I can simply redact them so they don't spoil the upcoming scene for my beta readers. (See Tips 124 and 125 for how to do this).

My descriptive titles contain a number of pieces of key information.
First, I give each section a unique identifier; typically something like S1001, S1002 etc. These numbers aren't sequential in my document (as I write out of sequence), but you may choose to assign one that is more reflective of the section's position in the story, or perhaps group related scenes together. If I want to add another document that sits between S1001 and S1002, I usually append a letter eg S1001a.
The purpose is to give a very quick way to jump to a section. Eg, when editing a paper draft, I might make a note to 'change the name of the garage in S2003b'. All I have to do is search for 'S2003b'.
I then write a line or two that says what is going to happen in that scene. Eg S1001: Warren called to crime scene, or S3002: Warren discovers name of killer (no reveal yet). This will appear at the beginning of the scene, and since I have applied a heading style, can be clicked in the navigation pane. In Scrivener, I also make sure to use this in the document title, so that it appears in the Binder.

But there is more information that you can add. I find it useful to include the date that the action is taking place. This means that I keep track of timings more easily, and is really helpful if I move scenes around in a story. If I move a scene two days earlier, for example, I can easily spot unchanged dates within the text when editing - eg a phone call now takes place on a Monday, rather than a Wednesday, so I need to change the line "The victim's brother phoned six days after the murder" to "The victim's brother phoned four days after the murder".

In Scrivener, you can include a custom metadata tag. All my documents have the custom metadata fields 'Story_date' and 'Day_Number'. By including (<$custom:Story_Date>) Day (<$custom:Day_Number>) in the descriptive section title, when I compile the output document it will include the date and the day number. Custom metadata is easily changed within the Outliner if you move things around.
Thus a typical section title might look like.
S1003: Warren visits murder scene (Tu 05/11/22) Day (3).
In Scrivener it would look like S1003: Warren visits murder scene (<$custom:Story_Date>) Day (<$custom:Day_Number>), changing to the above when compiled.

One last suggestion. If you switch between Word and Scrivener - for example, you write your document originally in Scrivener, compile and export it to Word, then do edits in Word before importing it back into Scrivener for major changes - your individual documents will be merged into one long document.
You can avoid this by adding an abnormal character in front of the title. Eg ~¬S1003: Warren Visits Murder Scene. When you import your Word document back into Scrivener, choose Import and Split and tell it to split the document using the abnormal character (I add a couple of abnormal characters, so I can do this repeatedly). Hey presto, you get all your subdocuments back!

Do you use descriptive section titles? Do you include additional information to help you navigate your document easily?
Feel free to comment below or on social media.
Until next time.
Paul

In last week's blog #Tips124, I discussed how to use the style function to navigate your document in Word (or similar word processing packages).
This week, I want to extend that to the specialist writing package Scrivener (visit #Tips80 for my first impressions of using Scrivener).
Now the first thing that regular users of Scrivener are going to say, is "You don't need to use styles to navigate Scrivener, that's the whole point of it!" That's correct, so let me clarify. I am going to look at how to retain styles when exporting to MS Word. Then you can easily navigate your manuscript in Word when you are working with an editor who doesn't use Scrivener.

For ease of use when writing in Scrivener I start a new page for each new scene. This allows me to then easily move scenes around. (I add chapter and section breaks last, once I am satisfied the story is in a logical order.)
In the image below, you can see that I have added some descriptive text for the first scene in bold red text.

Editing - you either love it, loathe it or just see it as part of the process.
I've looked at the issues surrounding editing before (eg #Tips48 for an outline of the basic process; #Tips72 for help chopping the wordcount), but for these posts, I want to share a few of the tips and tricks I've picked up over the years.
Today's #TuesdayTip looks at how the use of styles can help you navigate your manuscript, and keep track of where you are. I will be focusing on MS Word, but the principles are broadly applicable to other word processing packages. I will be writing another blog post extending this to Scrivener and how you can import it into Word.
First of all, what are styles?
Styles are, in their simplest form, a way to apply pre-determined formatting to a piece of text with a single click of the mouse. Imagine you have a piece of text. Word applies a default set of formats to it when you open a blank document. You can then choose a different font, the font size, and modifications such as whether or not the text is BOLD, Underlined, italicised, or a different colour. Delve a little deeper into the paragraph settings and you can decide how the text is aligned, spaced, or add bullet points etc.
This is all well and good, but it may take you several clicks to get the text just the way you want it. And it can be time-consuming if you have to do that each time you start a new document. And what if you have several different types of text within a single document, for example a title, or you prefer to format quoted text differently from the main text?
This is where styles come in useful. Word has a series of different styles built-in, that you can select from the style gallery. All you need to do is select the text you want, and apply a style by clicking on it in the style gallery.

So how does a style help you navigate a manuscript?
Well styles have a hierarchy and this affects whether they appear in the left hand Navigation Pane. You can think of this as rather like a bookmark that can help you navigate the document by jumping to a section.
In the image below, you can see that I have written two chunks of text, with two titles separating them. The Navigation Pane is currently empty, with just some text from MS explaining what the pane is for.

In the next image, I have highlighted the two titles and applied the style Heading 1. Not only do they now look different, they are also listed in the Navigation Pane. If I want to jump around my document, I can easily do so by clicking the link in the navigation pane.

This is a great way to insert chapter breaks. You can easily jump from chapter to chapter by clicking on the relevant chapter in the Navigation Pane.
But this only scratches the surface of what styles can do.
I use them to navigate between scenes. When I start to write a new scene, I like to put a title with a couple of lines of descriptive text. This reminds me what happens in that scene. By applying a style to that text, I can navigate my document by going directly to that scene; useful if I have no idea which chapter something actually occurs in.
Top Tip: Choose a different style than the one that you applied to your chapter heading.

You can see in this next image that not only does my descriptive text appear different in the document to both the chapter and the main text, it is also indented slightly on the Navigation Pane.

Finishing up.
Now obviously, at some point you are going to want to share this document with beta readers, and eventually publish. The last thing you want is to leave those spoilers in.

First of all, removing that descriptive text is easy. If you right click the style in the gallery, you will get a simple context menu. If you choose "Select All", then it will highlight all instances of that style in one go. Hit delete and it is gone.
(Another advantage of "Select All" is that it does a word count for the selected text. So if you are over your word count, you can see how many of those extra words are descriptive text that you will be deleting before publishing.)

But don't jump the gun and delete these useful navigation tools too soon. You may want to use them when doing later edits. Furthermore, deleting them changes the pagination. For example. when I send the manuscript to my beta readers or other editors, they often give me feedback in the form of "There is a typo on the third line of page 26." However, if you have deleted the descriptive text, then the page numbers for the text may have shifted.
So instead, before sending to my beta readers or editors, I leave the descriptive text in place and redact it so the spacing stays the same, but spoilers are hidden and I can still navigate the document.
To do this, simply right click the style again and choose "Modify".
Now you can change the formatting of the style.
I turn the font to black (not automatic) and from the borders option select black for the fill option. It's not pretty, but it hides the spoilers and I can easily reverse it if I choose to do so.

This is just a basic outline of how to use styles. Over the years, I've tweaked my method so it fulfils my own particular needs. I also use my own custom style rather than one of the built-in styles.
I hope this was useful. Do you have any useful tips like this?
If so, please feel free to comment here or on social media. If you are a writer with your own tip to share, then please don't be shy about emailing me on [email protected], I'm always looking for guest bloggers.
Until next time,
Paul

Editing - you either love it, loathe it or just see it as part of the process.
I've looked before at the issues surrounding editing before (eg #Tips48 for an outline of the basic process; #Tips72 for help chopping the wordcount), but for these posts, I want to share a few of the tips and tricks I've picked up over the years.

Whether you use a dedicated writing package or a standard word processor, the chances are that at some point you will have to send your manuscript to your editor in a Word file or a format compatible with Word (.docx). They are then likely to send back the manuscript with suggested revisions, using the review function. This week's post suggests a couple of tips to make this process easier, and to avoid introducing more mistakes into the manuscript (easily done, believe me).

The first thing you need to do is make sure you have turned on "Track Changes".
This can be found in the Review tab on Word. This means that anything you delete or add will be recorded. For example:

You can see here that I have deleted the word "using" and replaced it with "with the" and I have added the word "feature" at the end. I have also increased the font size to sixteen. The red underlined text shows these differences. They are also listed on the right-hand-side. This is a powerful function, and is especially useful during copy edits or feedback from proof readers.
If your proof reader suggests a change, you can either accept the change, choose to leave it as it was, or change it to how you would like it to look.
However, if a sentence has been modified too much, it can become very confusing, and it is easy to add additional errors. Therefore, a useful trick is to toggle the" show mark up" option on or off. 

Switching it back to "No Mark up" will remove all the red text and strike throughs and show you how it will look in the final document. The changes you have made are still there, but it is much easier to check that it looks the way you want it to.

If you are making lots of changes to a paragraph, you can do this before you start editing it. The changes are still recorded, but it feels much more natural - you are simply changing some text to the way that you want it. 

Using the Comment Function.
Whether you are using a word processor or Scrivener, there is the option to highlight text with a comment.
Comments are really useful, and I recommend using them as you are writing. For example, if a sentence isn't behaving itself, rather than waste ages getting it to look exactly how I want it and breaking my flow, I highlight it and write "Ugh" in the comments box. Then I can easily find it again and change the wording at a future date. I might also make notes, such as "does this match exactly what they found at the crime scene?" to remind me to go back and check, or instructions such as "Check capitalisation" if I've used a brand name (my current work in process has the word Screwfix. Is the F capitalised? - I can look that up on the internet when I have a spare moment, rather than breaking my flow).
Comments won't be printed in the final draft, unless you specifically turn that on in the print options. I'm old-school and like to print a draft to mark with red pen. Therefore, I print it with the comments turned on. They appear in a strip along the right-hand-side of the page and remind me of things that need doing. When I print a copy for my beta readers, I turn off the option, so they don't see spoilers or my notes.

Your editors might also include comments for you to consider. For example, querying if a character has been described in this way previously, or suggesting a change to the pace. In Word, there is an option to reply to a comment. I have started doing this, so my editor can easily find what changes I have or haven't made. I may even justify why I have decided not to make that change and ask for their thoughts.
When you have finished with a comment, it is tempting to delete that comment to tidy the document. In newer versions of Word, there is now the option to mark a comment as "resolved". The comment is still there, but it is faded out. The advantage of this, is that you can reopen the comment if necessary. It also stops you from duplicating effort. In the Screwfix example above, resolving the comment, rather than deleting it, reminds me that I have actually looked it up, and that the F in Screwfix isn't capitalised.

Show/Hide Nonprinting Characters
Finally, this is something that I have found very useful.
If you look at the home tab in your writing software, you will see this symbol. 

It looks like a backwards "P".
If you turn it on, a whole array of "invisible" characters become visible. These include a dot where there is a space, the backwards P denotes a carriage return (when you end a paragraph and start a new one), and dotted lines, showing page or section breaks. You can see in the previous screenshots that I have it turned on. Not everyone likes this, as it makes the page messy. But over the years, I've learned to write with this turned on permanently. The advantage is that you can easily see if you have included a double space, or if the text at the bottom of a page is followed by a page break, or if it has just rolled over onto the next page.

I hope you find these tips useful. As always, feel free to comment here or on social media. If you have something that you would like to share in a future #TuesdayTip, feel free to email me on [email protected].
Until next time,
Paul

Editing - you either love it, loathe it or just see it as part of the process.
I've looked at the issues surrounding editing before (eg #Tips48 for an outline of the basic process; #Tips72 for help chopping the wordcount), but for these posts, I want to share a few of the tips and tricks I've picked up over the years.
Mastering the structural edit.
If, like me, you write out of sequence, with only the most basic of plans to guide you, the structural edit is crucial. Even if you start writing on page one and continue until you type 'The End', adhering to a rigid outline, it is the first major revision that your editor is likely to send you.
In a nutshell, it may involve cutting or adding material to make the story flow better, changing its pace, removing unnecessary detail/adding more for clarification, or fixing any inconsistencies or contradictions. You may also find that you want to move chunks of text around.

And this is where it can be easy to make mistakes or lose track of what you are doing.

The first step is to save your file as a new document and work on that draft, so if the worst happens you can start again. It's also wise to do so every time you make a major revision. Unless you are writing on a Amstrad CPC464 with a limited supply of floppy disks, file sizes are so small these days that you can afford the space on your hard drive/cloud storage to save multiple copies of your work. I typically have over a dozen drafts by the time a manuscript is ready to be submitted.
This is how I work when writing in MS Word or another word processor package, but I also do so when using Scrivener.
If you do lose track of where you are, then Word has a nifty compare document feature that will highlight all the differences between two versions of the same document.
But that's fiddly and time consuming. Instead, make it easy for yourself.

Let's assume that you have decided your story might flow better if you move some paragraphs from chapter twenty to chapter ten. Simply cutting and pasting to the new location might require a bit of smoothing around the edges, and tweaking so it fits into its new location. The hole those paragraphs leave behind might also need some editing so there isn't a sudden gap.
​You will also want to pay particular attention to these two locations during the next round of edits to check for any errors. For example, the scene might originally have had three characters speaking, but one of those characters isn't present in the new location. You'll need to reassign dialogue, or bring in/remove the character from the original locations.
So to help keep track of these changes, use the following simple method.
(If you were expecting an explanation involving the actual 'track changes' function, stay tuned for a future blog post.) 

• Before you move your target text, highlight the previous paragraph and the paragraph after and change the font colour so it stands out.
• Then highlight the specific paragraphs that you are going to cut, and change the colour of these words to a different colour.
• Then cut this text and paste it to its new location.
• Leave these new font colours in place until the final draft.

You can now easily see where the text has moved to, and where it has come from.

If you are unsure about whether or not to move the text, and just want to see how it reads in its new location, then change the font colours as above, but instead of cutting it, copy it to the new location. You can even use the strike-through formatting option (horizontal line through the text) on the text in its original location, to remind you that it has been moved. If you decide that the text doesn't work in its new location, you can just delete the copied text and remove the strikethrough to restore everything.

​Have you any editing hacks you'd like to share?
As always, comment her or on social media, or email me if you want to contribute your own #TuesdayTip.
Until next time,
Paul