Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms. She writes weird books in lots of weird genres like fantasy (Blood of Kings and Kinsman Chronicles), science fiction (Replication), and dystopian (The Safe Lands trilogy). Find Jill on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or on her author website. You can also try two of her fantasy novels for free here and here.
To celebrate the release of King’s Blood, I’m having an EPIC SALE on the paperback copies of book one, King’s Folly. You can order autographed copies of King’s Folly from my author store for only $10, shipping included. (NOTE: My online store is wonky. It will not allow me to put free shipping on a book. So I priced the book at $7 and it will add $3 shipping to equal $10. Sorry that’s complicated… But it works!) Click here to visit my author store. Sale ends this Saturday at 6:00 pm, Pacific. If you want the autograph personalized, please add instructions to the notes section of the order.
On Monday, Stephanie talked about what to do when your book is such a mess you don’t know if it’s worth editing. My job is to show you how that might look. When I am gearing up to do a major edit on a novel, I usually do this one of two ways, and it all depends on what shape the manuscript is in.
1. The Manuscript Is In Decent Shape
First of all, whenever I read an editorial review letter from my editor, I get discouraged. After twenty books, I know this about myself and I’m prepared for my reaction. So I’ll read the letter, then mope a little (and I’m usually moping because I’m overwhelmed at the amount of work it is going to take to fix all the problems). A day or two later, I’m over it and am excited to crack my knuckles and get to work to make the book the best it can be.
I think it would be difficult for me to show you how this process works without showing you an actual editorial review letter. So if you click here, you can read the editorial letter Jeff Gerke sent me for my book Captives. The book itself was in pretty good shape, though I did end up changing a lot in my rewrite. So, take a moment to read or skim the editorial letter, then come back here and I’ll tell you how I tackled this edit.
You back? Okay. So, I read this letter and pretty much agreed with everything he said. Here is what I did:
1. I made a To Do list. I wrote down the major problems from his editorial letter and from his comments in the manuscript. It looked something like this:
– Better establish the village.
– Create a ticking time bomb scene as a prologue to establish that danger is coming.
– Get fully into Mason’s skin to establish him as the series hero.
– Expand the story’s focus of Mason researching the Thin Plague.
– Jemma is a lame POV character. Why not create a new POV girl who will have to go into the Harem and become pregnant in the lab?
– Strengthen my main characters. Give them proper backstories and motivations, both inner and outer, and work hard to keep them consistent.
– Cut down the number of Glenrock characters. Kill off more people! 🙁
– Don’t forget to let your characters grieve the loss of their loved ones.
– Plant and payoff. Go back and plant yellow cameras, character traits, slang, etc.
– Work hard on making the technology futuristic and much cooler.
– Double check mature content.
– Consider wedding scene for the end.
2. I prioritized my To Do list, then I took each item one at a time. I didn’t try to make anything perfect. I just focused on big, macro-edit, issues. That looked something like this:
– I went through and brainstormed a plot for Shaylinn, a new character who would replace Jemma’s POV scenes. Jemma was still a character in the book, but I thought with my dystopian plot, it would be stronger (and scarier) to see what happens to one of the girls who is impregnated in the lab. So I plotted out all that would happen to Shaylinn in ways that fit into the scenes Jemma already had. I did have to totally scrap a few Jemma chapters, but overall this worked fairly smoothly.
– I wrote a prologue from Ciddah’s POV. She is a medic in the Safe Lands who gives a report to the Safe Lands Guild. I chose her because she is an important character who would appear later on in the story, which cut down on my overall number of characters.
– I wrote a new begining to the book from Mason’s POV. I worked hard to show as much of their normal village life as I could while simultaneously characterizing as many of my main characters as possible.
-I went through and added comments at the start of every chapter or at intregal places, reminding me of various things so that I wouldn’t miss them when I came through with the micro-edit. Notes like “add yellow cameras here” or “check for Jordan’s slang” or “add technology changes throughout this scene.”
– There were a few more things on my list, but you get the idea.
3. Once the book was all put together again with the right scenes in the right places, I did my micro-edit. And this is where I worked hard to add description, characterization, tweak character voice, add technology, and things like that. And with any book, I always repeat this phase as many times as I can before I reach my due date.
2. The Manuscript Is A Disaster