As I work on my book I've been reading quite a few of the 99c e-books available on kindle from self-published authors. Many of them seem to do their own formatting and I'm looking for things that I want to make sure I don't do, as well as things I will want to do.
The piece I'm working on now I'll almost certainly release as e-book first and print on demand book later. Not the way it's normally done I know. It's how it's been in my head since inception though so I'm doing it that way this time.
Things I see in e-books that make me crazy are the easy things, the things that give self-publishers a bad name: spelling errors, bad grammar, and typos. Using homonyms instead of the words you mean. "your" instead of "you're" and the variations of "their/their/they're" seem to be persistent hobgoblins to some writers.These things shouldn't make it that far. It takes me right out of the story when they do. They're one of the dangers of not having an editor of some sort. Another thing I see, and this one caused me to stop reading the book, are accidental anachronisms. In a fantasy non-earth setting where magic works, if the protagonist repeatedly exclaims, "Jesus he's fast!" I'm going to not finish reading the book. I need to not do that.
One formatting issues I've seen only once but the story is good and I keep reading it in spite of it annoying me is how the author formats what characters are thinking.
"The eagle is flying far too high to see us I'm sure." Bill said as he stared up at the spot circling in the distant sky. He and Timmy lay under a fallen piece of plywood in what had been their home before the events of the night before. "At least I hope he can't see us. If he tells dad what happened he'll kill us!"
That last bit, the character's thoughts are put in quotes and italics. I've never seen it done that way before and I hope, I sincerely hope, I never see it done that way again. I certainly won't do it!
So, I continue to read amateur writer's stuff and look for things I want to avoid. Some of this is so I can continue reading. I like reading. No, I love reading and to be able to also say I'm doing research makes it sound less like I'm stalling doing the writing part.
Truth be told I'm at a weird point in the story where I don't think I'm really editing it any more. I think I need to do a re-write on big chunks of it. No. That's not true. I know I need to write big chunks that are entirely new to finish the story. I didn't end it. I just stopped writing. I can't call it a re-write and I can't call it an edit. I need to finish it.
9 comments:
Quotes around an italics thought isn't that uncommon as there's a debate about whether or not it should have quotes or not, or if it should be italics or not. I've asked many times and always gotten different answers. The author could have just been covering all the bases and making sure the reader knew it was a thought without having to say "David thought..." It might distract me a bit but if everything else is right, I'll forgive it.
As for finishing it, in my first finished novel(novella?) I had a really difficult time figuring out how to write the last chapter. I'd started in one direction and I found myself avoiding writing it any further. I just was stalling out. Then I realized I needed to skip the road trip (literally, it was a trip to visit her parents) and just get to the bit after that. Once I did that it was a sprint to the finish line. Good luck in getting your story finished.
I thought it was finished when I stopped writing. I had three alpha readers tell me, "It just stopped." So, I have to believe that I did it wrong since that was every alpha reader I had.
Melissa Walsh on G+ reminded me of another horrible thing, bad cover art! Cheaply thrown together cover art is also a huge horrible mistake too often made in the self-pub world and honestly, I've no idea how I'm going to address that one.
I think King writes the italics thingy way...:) I like it but I know I have heard others that don't. Some things become a preference I guess.
I think King writes the italics thingy way...:) I like it but I know I have heard others that don't. Some things become a preference I guess.
The thoughts in the book I'm talking about are in quotes & italics and they're their own paragraph.
Instead of writing:
"The safe is time delayed. I can't open it until the time is up." Sandy said to the man on the other side of the counter. I hope he doesn't know I have a courier key to open it on my belt keyring. I KNEW I shouldn't put it there.
The author would break the person's thought into a new paragraph, put it in quotes and italics with no attribution. I figured out, as I read, that all thoughts belonged to the previous paragraph's speaker.
There was white-space, perhaps a blank line BR between each paragraph. That's nice on the web, but I find it a waste of space on an e-reader. That could be personal preference though.
I read so many dos and don'ts that counter each other that I couldn't get my head straight. Then I read a wonderful line that bluntly declared that I'm not perfect, nothing I do is perfect and that my faults and errors make me genuine.
OK, let's not get overboard with errors but find something that works and stick to it. At least through one whole book. That alone could be a task majoris. I think having the intention of creating something perfect takes the work far beyond the "slapping up a selling book party" we barf at.
There is, though, that point when we eventually have to decide whether the work will be published.
On the thoughts, I write them in normal font style. If it's not obvious that it is the characters thoughts, I add 'she/he thought' to clarify. And it's only the POV character's thought that are presented to the reader in my work.
I try to steer free from italics, bold or caps. I don't like them. :)
OK, I can't stop myself here. The paragraph;
"The eagle is flying...
Is the paragraph verbatim?
I made it up as an example in the style of the author I was commenting on. I didn't want to use a quote from the book itself as I didn't want them to... you know, I didn't want to hate on them.
Post a Comment