After 10+ revisions, what can there still be left to fix?!?!

by | Sep 23, 2018 | Writing Process, Writing Updates

After 10+ revisions, what can there still be left to fix?!?!  That’s easily the count of the number of times I or someone else has been over some of these books, but as I’m in “Project Paperback,” I’m still finding things that need to be fixed or changed.  Here’s a quick list of what they are:

  • Graphics and pictures:  Well, as the post graphic suggests, section breaks and chapter flourishes need to be updated.  The thicker, chunkier version is actually at lower resolution, and that looks bad on the page when printed.
  • Ellipses, Ellipses, Ellipses:  Hopefully, this is something I’ve gotten better at over time, but looking at The Fallen, specifically – dude, these were way, way, way, way overuses.  For example:  “I … think that you … should, perhaps … consider … pausing less … in your speech.”  Okay, in truth, there might need to be two commas there – maximum, but NO ellipses (…)!  It makes the reading clunky, and it’s worth the time to take it out.
  • “What … what are you … you removing?”:  Yeah, here’s another one.  At one point, I was writing stutters such as a the “what … what” in the heading.  This is useful every now and again, but overdone, it’s horrible.  Again, in The Fallen, that’s being removed.
  • Small grammaticals and standardizations:   Thankfully, I’m not running across things like misspelled words, but because the grammar checkers over time have gotten better at picking things apart, I am seeing places where I slipped and used “it’s” as opposed to “its” which would have been more appropriate.  Also, styles have changed such that “run-on-words” need dashes.  I’m also happy to say that I’m finding punctuation slips and mistakes that can be corrected, as well.

So, part of “Project Paperback” helps uplift some of the older books to my newer style of writing, much as was done with Trials of the Teldear long ago when I took my “just-out-of-college” work and updated the story and the storytelling.  My hope is that you will get more enjoyment out of the work when you read it for all of these changes, and just slapping a messed up book into paper format doesn’t do it justice.

Thanks for being along for the journey and see you in the future!

JTL