Now, ideally, you're going to catch these things during editing... but are you going to trust your brain? The soggy organ that screwed up the translation in the first place?
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| Because sometimes you really can't trust yourself |
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How To Double Check Your Map
Now, first and foremost, you need to edit your manuscript. It's the part of the job that all writers hate (except for that weirdo Geoff... we don't talk about him), but we have to do it. Once you've finished your draft, and left it in a drawer to percolate for a bit, you take it out and read it over, fixing as many obvious gaps as possible. Then you read it over and do the same a second time. Generally I stop self-editing after the third pass... but even I'm aware that I don't catch all my errors in just three little sweeps.
Shoutout to Alice The Author, who inspired this week's topic. Got check out her YouTube channel, and subscribe if you haven't yet!
And speaking of Alice (who self-identifies with this week's issue), she recommends two major strategies for catching as many missing bits of omitted story as possible after you've gone through and filled in all the holes you could catch on your own. First, hand your manuscript off to someone else (these people are typically referred to as beta readers). Make sure this person will give you honest feedback, and that you make sure they know you want to hear where any problems are, or where things don't make sense, or feel underdeveloped. They don't necessarily have to have any specific skill set or life experience, but people who are familiar with stories and their construction are always a plus. This is how you get feedback like, "This character seems like he's being a jerk for no reason... and this insult that he threw out made very little sense." Feedback which reveals you forgot to put in the background to explain a character's difficult home life and uncertain financial situation, along with personal insecurities that would put those story beats into perspective.
The second method is actually a lot harder for most people, because it can make you feel kind of silly. However, reading your manuscript out-loud makes it way more obvious when you've got a problem. I can personally attest to this, as there are some errors I didn't catch in my vignettes until I went to record them for the audio drama. For instance, in Paying Your Dues, which opens the supplement 100 Body Mods and Augmentations For A Sci Fi Game, I used two different names for the head of the newly-formed dockers' union. I fixed that in the audio, but it took me until that point to catch it!
Now, if you're somebody who feels a bit silly, I recommend using the Rubber Ducky Method. I wrote about this in another post, but the short version is that you put a small plushie, or a rubber duck, down on your desk and read to them as if you're explaining the story to someone else. This gives you a ritual and a purpose, and you can't just stop, because the point of the exercise is that you're trying to present your story to an outside perspective.
Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet. Every writer is different, and we're all going to find things that work for us, or don't work for us. As such, it's best to use a layered strategy when it comes to your editing, giving yourself maximum potential coverage from mistakes getting through. Because some errors might get through your first two rounds of self-editing. Some more of them might get caught by your beta readers, with each one bringing a different perspective. Still more of them will get caught by a read-aloud session. Hopefully the few that remain will get caught by your actual editor, and then your manuscript will be clean and perfect by the time it gets into your readers' hands.
It probably won't be... but at the very least you'll probably have all the context, transitions, and lore you want to be there if you're diligent in making sure no one lets you leave anything out.
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That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!
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