In this vlog, I discuss my first line edit experience with The Cogsmith’s Daughter (Desertera #1), including: a brief overview of the process, the kinds of comments I received, and how I feel about the experience in retrospect.
For those who dislike vlogs or who are hearing impaired, here is a summary of this video.
My line editor took approximately two weeks with my manuscript. When she was finished, she called me to discuss her notes and comments, her mindset being that A) if she just sent over the worksheet, I’d make my own assumptions about her comments and B) it would yield a more productive conversation than email. I really appreciated the phone call, and it was incredibly helpful for me to discuss everything with her. After we talked, she sent me her notes page as well as the comments within the manuscript. I spent about a month doing my revisions based on her comments, then she spent another two weeks doing more revisions, then I spent 10-12 days with my final revisions. She did one final search for a few grammar rules, then passed it along to the proofreader.
Thus far, line editing has been my favorite part of the editing process. It is not as extensive (nor does it feel as artistically painful) as content editing, and it is really fun as a writer to see your work go from just a story to a beautiful, fluid story. I learned so much from this experience, and I already know my writing craft has improved because of it.
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How have your editing experiences been? What advice would you give to authors preparing for their first round of edits?
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Thank you, Arpita! I hope you find the videos useful. 🙂
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I did, You are so confident in front of the camera! Its great 🙂
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Haha! I’m glad it comes across that way, because I’m new to vlogging and still feel incredibly awkward talking to my computer. Nice to know it doesn’t watch that way!
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As I keep repeating after every such blog post – you keep clearing things up for me, Kate! I am so glad I found your blog!
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Thanks, Amrita! I’m glad to know my blog continues to help! 🙂
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I write a fair amount of dialogue in my fiction (first book, SINK RATE, is due to hit Amazon next month) and really did not understand the proper way of blending it with the (3rd person) narrative. I spent some time studying an on line tutorial for dialogue punctuation and edited the manuscript heavily before it went out to the publisher’s own editor. It saved us both a lot of correction effort. Unfortunately my feeble non-English major brain still can’t get the commas right. At least it gave my very patient editor something to do and then some.
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Dialog can definitely be tricky. I had a lot of trouble with tags during my first draft, but my editors have been clever and patient teachers. Thanks for sharing!
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