8 Fiddly Things You Can Do To Your Manuscript To Make Your Editor's Day

 

by Alison Janssen

 

Yes, plot, character, pace, and resolution are very important in a manuscript. Big ideas and beautiful sentences and each and every word choice should be executed in your narrative with purpose. Your editor will engage you on all these levels, asking pesky questions and poking at plot holes, and after some hard work on revisions, your manuscript will be better.

But today I'm not talking about big picture character motivations or the problems of a deus ex machina ending.

Today is devoted to the fiddlies. These are small mechanics-level things you can address before sending in a manuscript file, and I promise they will make your editor smile.

 

1. Word consistency. This will depend on a house style guide, but there's no reason to wait for a contract before making your word usage consistent. Decide if you're the kind of author who uses okay or OK. Figure out your preference between dammit and damn it, (janet!) and then stick to one usage. Are you a til, till, or 'til, kinda writer? Pick one and stay true. You may need to change your preference once you see a house style guide, but at that point it'll be a simple Find/Replace for you in the revision stage, and your editor will love you.
2. Emdashes. Double hyphens are not emdashes. (Though I will admit I use double hyphens on this blog, but that's only becase this is a blog and not a manuscript file -- and I can't figure out how to make an emdash in the Typepad world.) Some word processing programs auto-change double hyphens to emdashes, but they never catch all of them. Do a Find/Replace for this, and your editor will love you. Bonus points if you consistently use spaces around the emdash, or no spaces, but not a combo of both.
3. Apostrophes.  Word does this annoying thing where if you type the word 'em, it treats the punctuation before the word as a single quote, rather than the apostrophe it should be. Annoying! If you're using Word, consider this solution (or figure out a Macros-based one of your own), and your editor will love you.
4. Single spaces after sentences. I know, some of you hate this. But it's just the way things are now, I'm sorry. If you really can't train yourself to type with one space after a sentence, do a Find/Replace once you're all finished, with two spaces in the Find box and one space in the Replace. Voila! Your editor loves you.
5. Page breaks. Please, please, please, PLEASE don't hit Enter/Return a bunch of times to get to a new page (like at the end of a chapter). Familiarize yourself with "Insert Page Break," and your editor will love you. In fact, experiment with Invisibles -- if you set your view to include invisibles, Word will show you all the formatting marks as well as the text. It's a wonderful way to spot extra line breaks, extra spaces between words, etc.
6. Tabs. Along the same lines, please don't use Tab anymore. This tip may be slightly controversial and may not apply to every editor/house, but especially in cases where you're publishing the ebook format first, don't use tabs. You want to set your paragraph indentation using the menu instead. As with tip 5, if you can't train yourself to do this, then just use Find/Replace after you're finished writing. In the Find box, put the Tab symbol. In the replace box, nothing. Then Select All, and set the paragraph indentation. Your editor? In love with you.
7. Timeline. Unless your story takes places all in one day, Keifer-style, then it will help you to have a timeline. Not just a vague one in your head, but a written timeline you can share with your editor. Nothing fancy, but a list of the events that occur on each day, and an accounting of any days that pass by off-page. You will be astounded how many times you think it's Thursday when it's actually Tuesday, and your editor will love you for it.
8. Character bible. If you're writing a series, be sure to keep track of character details in one place. It needn't be a huge and unwieldy Trapper Keeper full of overlong character histories and artist's renderings, but hey, that couldn't hurt. Mostly you'll want to keep track of hometowns, eye color, phobias, any pertinent but small details that you may mention in Book 2, and bring up again in Book 7. Having a source to check details against will prevent you from accidentally renaming your main character's girlfriend's sister's godchild, and it will prevent your editor from needing to dig back through all your books to prove it. This, naturally, will make your editor love you.

 

 

 

Comments

[Sarah W]

Thank you for one more (out of, what, a thousand) extremely helpful post!

[Sarah W]

Obviously, I could use a little grammar help, too . . .

Let me rephrase:

Your posts are always extremely helpful and I'm happy to add this one to the list.

There. Editing before commenting - very important.

[Vanessa K. Eccles]

Thanks for the post! I did not know the thing about not using tabs. I will be refering to this list again.

[Stoich91]

You know what? Editors around the world love you for this post. Should certainly be in the BIG BOOK OF PUBLISHING RULES that nobody every writes, by golly, but it should be written someday! Thanks for the tips! :D

[Beth MacKinney]

Might I add that in the eventuality that your manuscript gets published, the typesetter will love you too. I cannot tell you how many search/finds I've had to do to fix issues like these. Yikes.

[T.J.]

This was an awesome post. Really informative. Now to get an editor. That's easy, right? ;-)

[Kate Marillat]

Thanks for this, bookmarking this post so I can come back when I'm ready to submit the manuscript and go through your check list.

[Kristin Laughtin]

Came here from Janet Reid's blog. Thanks for this post! It will be very useful when I do my paranoid look-overs of my manuscripts.

[Karyn]

Thanks--not only for the tips, but for the technical "how to's" in implementing them! (I came here from Janet Reid's blog too.) I didn't know that about the single space between sentences. Or the Page Breaks. I will get to work on it. And hopefully, an editor will love me. :)

[Scooter Carlyle]

I knew it was a good idea to be consistent, but I hadn't considered most of what you wrote above. Thank you!

[Jill Kemerer]

Thank you for this excellent list! I appreciate detailed advice!

[Alison Janssen]

Holy cow you guys, thanks! I'm so glad this post was helpful, and I'll try to do more like this in the future. :)

[Michelle A. Kobayashi]

Thank you for a great post. I've recently (2 years ago) started writing, and it's reassurring to see that things I've done are recommended. It's even better to see thing I haven't thought of, and as others have said, I'm very grateful for the added "how-to" so I can easily make the edits.

My MS is done, and I'm polishing for submission. Thanks for adding to my personal spit-shine!

@MichelleKobs

[Li]

One of the most helpful posts I've ever read. In particular, telling us HOW to fix things. I feel like I should pay you :) (Janet sent me too.)

[Trisha]

This is a great list, and I do believe I'm nicely on track. Yay!

I don't like the double space after a full stop anyway. Never have. ;)

[Layla]

What is the rule for spaces before or after ellipsis?

i.e.

word space...space word

or

word...space word

or

word...word

[Alison Janssen]

Hey Layla!

Great question, I can't believe I neglected the ellipsis on my list. I guess that just shows my natural bias for emdashes ...

In any case, the spacing around an ellipsis is dictated by house style, so I'd advise treating them like emdashes here. Choose which YOU prefer, either an ellipsis hugged close-up with words, or the words an ellipsis dancing like tweens at an 8th grade prom, with space between them.

So long as you treat the punctuation consistently in your manuscript, once you have an editor, she can tell you house style, and you can F/R accordingly.

One trick about the ellipsis: Word does autocorrect three periods into an ellipsis, but Word does NOT turn period-space-period-space-period into an ellipsis. So don't type them with spaces between (or if that's how your fingers function, write a Macro that will autoreplace to ellipsis for you).

[Terri Talley Venters]

Thank you for sharing.Perfect timing, I'm working on another round of edits from my editor and I noticed she inserted page breaks in the first few chapters. I did the rest of the ms.

[Mike Dennis]

Great post, Alison. These were things that I learned one at a time over the years, and I wish I'd seen them all in one spot.

[OldMiser]

Item 7: taht --> that

Item 8: unweildy --> unwieldy

[Heidi W]

Extremely helpful post! I was not aware of many of these.

I write historical fiction and usually have about fifty words per manuscript that are foreign or time period specific. Would it help an editor to compile a list of these with definitions?

[John "Ol' Chumbucket" Baur]

As an editor I've given up reminding reporters about these, especially the em dashes and double spaces. One of the first things I do upon opening a document is find/replace all the double spaces for singles. The double hyphens I weed out as I go. But it sure makes it hard to trust the writer. If he or she can't get the little things right, why should I trust them on the big things?

[Kevin Borchers]

I've never used TypePad, so I'm not sure how much control it allows one over the ultimate formatting, but an em-dash in HTML is (ampersand-pound sign-8-2-1-2-semi-colon)

[Julie Musil]

Holy cow, these are great. Thanks so much!

[Angela Ackerman]

Thank goodness I do all of these, although I never realized an editor might want to use my time line as well. Haha, I'll have to clean it up a bit rather than go the shorthand route that probably only I'd understand.

Angela