EDITING UPDATES
I have completed the first pass of editing of YORIEN'S HAND! Huzzah!
I'm going to share a bit more about this third installment in The Minstrel's Song series on Friday. For now, I thought I'd share a bit about my editing process and what comes next.
1. Rough draft - this can take anywhere from 3 months to 2 years, depending on what all is going on in my life. During this time I write the entire story, usually doing a bit of editing and polishing as I go.
2. Send book to content editor. My content editor is mostly concerned with making sure that the things that happen in the story make sense relative to all the other things that happen in the story, that the characters stay true to their voices and personalities, and that I don't stray too far from the realm of "where the story is headed." He also points out places where I've used the same word too often in one sentence or paragraph (for example, I used the word "that" 5 times in the previous sentence), or scenes/bits of dialogue which do not add to or further the plot and simply need to be cut out.
3. Go through content editor's notes and make appropriate changes. At this stage in the game, I generally do take about 98% of these comments and suggestions seriously. Every now and then I may leave something the way it was, despite a suggestion to change it. I also go through and polish anything that hasn't been commented on. So the entire story gets a nice once-over. This stage can take 2-4 months, depending on the length of the story and how much needs to be re-worked or re-written.
4. Add in any missing pieces I noticed as I went through the content-editing. (Probably takes about 2-6 weeks)
5. Formatting. I used to do this after step 7, but I think I'm going to go ahead and do the formatting earlier this time around. That way I have a second set of eyes (in step 6) in case something is weird about the formatting (a paragraph doesn't get indented properly, or something like that).
6. Send manuscript to my line-editor. My line-editor is mostly concerned with catching typos, missing punctuation, and grammatical errors. But she will also make note of words I use too often throughout the entire story (for example: In Second Son, my characters spent the majority of their time "smiling." Many of those smiles got removed in this round of editing). She also will make notes of anything that strikes her as odd or unclear about the story that perhaps my content-editor did not notice or comment on. So this is where the final polish gets put on.
7. Go through line-editor's notes and make all appropriate changes. This is actually the easiest part of the editing process, as the changes that need to be made might be numerous, they are very small, and not a lot of creative effort is required. This is the "crossing t's and dotting i's" stage of the game. Generally takes me a couple days to 2 weeks total, depending again on the length of the manuscript.
8. Send copies to beta readers and wait for their feedback. Once I receive their feedback, I consider the suggestions or questions and tweak here and there if appropriate.
9. Go through the book one more time checking for anything all these people (or I, in my previous edits) might have missed.
10. Upload to CreateSpace!
Currently, I just finished step 3 of the editing process for Yorien's Hand and got started on step 4 yesterday. I feel, after going through the manuscript, that there are definitely some missing pieces to the story, and maybe a little rearranging which needs to occur... as well as some clean-up to the timing off various bits of the story to make sure events are happening in a logical and consistent manner in relation to each other. (For example: if a battle in Llycaelon is supposed to occur on the same day as a battle in Aom-igh, then I need to make sure that the events leading up to both battles take the same amounts of time so the reader is not left trying to figure out how both series of events started on Monday and ended the following Monday, but in Aom-igh only 5 days have passed, while in Llycaelon it sounds like 4 weeks have passed) if that makes any sense.
More to come on Yorien's Hand this Friday. I am so excited about sharing this story with you, dear Reader! I know it doesn't seem like I'm very far along in the process, but I truly did just complete the most difficult and time-consuming (besides writing the rough draft, of course) part of the process! So to me, even though there are still a lot of steps to be completed, I still feel like I turned a corner and am quite close to the home stretch!