How to Produce a Novel

You complete the first draft, take a deep breath, make sure your work is saved, perhaps have a little cry. Then what?

Then you Produce a novel from you manuscript.

IQ140 is not about “Writing.” It’s about:

  • A comprehensive editing paradigm to make your work marketable.
  • A unique protocol for finding and vetting Beta readers and digesting their priceless feedback.
  • Designing an alluring cover, scripting an inviting content blurb, and tailoring an author bio.
  • Publishing your book using Amazon’s KDP platform in Print and eBook formats.

We provide a list of our favorite Writing” books, though there are many more available at the library, your favorite bookseller, and online.

 

This is a long page stewarding you through the steps in transforming your manuscript into a novel.

Two sections, “Word Frequency Counter” and “Beta Readers” refer you to other information-dense pages.

The contents of this website, along with a few bonus features, is available at Amazon.com.

At $8.99, it’s an easy impulse buy!

The Hardest Journey: Walk Away!

Don’t read or even scan any part of your manuscript. Find something else to do for 30 days.  If something pops into your mind about the draft, write it down and save it for the next step.

You likely have multiple ideas going on in your head, so start another manuscript. One full month!

You can’t edit the manuscript because you know it too well. You will read what you intended to write, not what hit the page, perhaps catching obvious errors but missing others. Experience proves that in a month your intimacy with the words will subside into familiarity and that’s when you can edit.

This is a time when Alpha readers—friends and relatives—may be allowed to read some or all of your work. Advise them that the manuscript is NOT edited and that you’re more curious about their impression of the story line, characters, etc., not grammar or punctuation. 

A Slow, Deliberate Read

Okay, you made it 4 weeks. Close enough. While not essential, you’ll catch more errors if the manuscript is printed.

Find distraction free time to read the manuscript slowly and deliberately. Your personal Issues regarding “distraction free time” are beyond the scope of this discussion, but concentration is essential.

Read with pencil in hand. If working on a digital device or computer, preserve the original file and mark up corrections on a new copy. See “File Backup,” a sub-menu of How to Produce a Novel, above, for a comprehensive methodology to avoid data loss.

Don’t just move your focus across the words; read them. Anything more extensive than a typo or punctuation, mark for later perusal with a circle or brackets. Don’t rewrite poorly written dialog or paragraphs, yet. Mark them with a note to reconsider later.

If you find a paragraph, exchange of dialog, or exposition that doesn’t belong—perhaps you meant to delete it and didn’t—mark it for deletion and continue on. Same for repetitive dialog. But don’t do those corrections, yet.

Only after going through the manuscript and making the simple corrections do you go back to rewriting dialog and making deletions you’re sure are needed. Address typos, punctuation, and grammatical corrections in the new copy of the working file.

Editing with the Word Frequency Counter

Follow the directions specified in “Word Frequency Counter,” a sub-menu of How to Produce a Novel, above.

Once again, preserve the previous manuscript file and edit a fresh copy of the file.

Work down the list one word at a time. Using FIND in your word processor, move through the manuscript looking at each occurrence of that word. Many will be correct as they are, but don’t let any slip by.

You may trip over other issues. This is the time to fix them, just don’t lose your place in the manuscript or the word on which you were working.

Rinse, Lather, Repeat

 Not as brutal as last time, take a week off to let your palate clear. Take a nap.

Then do another slow, deliberate reading. You may be tempted to get creative. Don’t. Unless you stumble upon something that just doesn’t look right or find a grievous plot error, don’t begin a new round of writing unless you’re prepared to start over again.

Read Out Loud!

Want to approach perfection in word choices, pacing, and balance? Read your manuscript out loud. If you trip over your own words, you know that others will stumble as they read.

You’re engaging another sense, your hearing, and processing your words through another part of your brain. You may find words or phrases that you don’t like, or immediately find better means of expressing your thoughts when you unconsciously say something that isn’t on the page.

While I’d suggest full chapters, nothing is lost by doing this chore when and where the opportunity arises in small or long bursts.

Beta Readers

Follow the suggestions in Beta Readers, again a sub-menu of How to Produce a Novel.

Not everything presented there will be doable in your situation. By offering the best course of action, you should be able to pick your way through to get at least one qualified and cooperative Beta reader, which is more than most writers get. However, if you manage two or three, their opinions will be amplified.

Taking their feedback seriously, adjust the manuscript as you see fit.

Seek Professional Help

That might have been a suggestion from family and friends when you told them you were writing a book… but this time, it’s not that kind of help.

Seek the services of an editor.

If you’ve fastidiously followed the steps discussed so far on this page for resting, reading, editing, resting, securing independent Beta readers, and incorporating their observations into the final draft, you’ll have a relatively clean document, relative to 90+% of manuscripts most editors see. However, editorial analysis of the writing will improve the work.

Which begs the question, is it your intention to seek representation by an agent or consideration by a publisher? If so, get an editor. That level of “shine” is necessary to get their attention if you’re to have any chance of acceptance.

If self-publishing is your objective, then it’s a matter of budget. If you can afford it, have an editor do a full once-over to polish the writing. Our editing services, a low-cost assessment, is designed for the self-published author on a budget.