If You're Too Poor to Hire an Editor

If, like me, you're too poor to afford an editor, it's imperative (in my opinion) to have your novel read back to you. You can't just do a couple pass-through reads and hope for the best. Not only will a narration highlight a plethora of mistakes, from plot holes to outright contradictions (which I definitely found), as well as bad pacing, but if you misspelled a word, that'll jump out at you, too. Or forgetting to type a conjunction. 

As I was listening yesterday, I came upon a passage that made absolutely no sense. What the hell? Was I drunk when I wrote it? It turned out, it was a secondary character relaying something that someone else had told her. Once I tacked on, "they said", it was fine. Easy enough fix. And to think I almost deleted the passage entirely.

I will say, though, that if I knew how to change the narrator in Word, I would.* She started out okay, but she's far too enthusiastic in places that don't call for enthusiasm. And she can't pronounce the main character's name right. It's "Layah", as in "LAY-uh", but she insists on pronouncing it, "LIE-uh". I'm not writing a Game of Thrones knockoff. She also doesn't get the purpose of italics ~ that they're meant to highlight a certain word; put more emphasis on it. It completely changes the meaning when the narrator doesn't recognize that. And sadly, she also doesn't understand sarcasm. I know my main character is naive a lot of the time, but come on. Let's just say that if the narrator was a real voice actor, I wouldn't hire her for my audiobook.

*Apparently there is no option to change the narrator's voice. The only choices are male and female.

Be prepared to spend hours listening, if you do (and I urge you to) go with a read-back. Mine has been going on for days, and I'm not anywhere close to the finish. Do break up your listening sessions, though. Toward the end of the first day, I grew so tired of listening, I just let the narration go on without paying close attention, and I'm positive I missed things I should have caught.

The other added bonus of this editing method, one that almost caused me to smash my computer at one point, is that it will definitely show you the BORING PARTS. Trade published authors likely know enough to avoid writing those in the first place. Not me! And it's not always that those passages are unnecessary; just that they can be, and need to be, livened up. Remember, your goal is to keep people reading.

I can't even estimate the number of hours I still have left to go, and once I reach THE END, I'll have to start fixing. Anyone who tells you that publishing a novel is quick and painless is like that guy on the street who talks to himself. It's wise to ignore him.