We all know how important it is to have a clean and accurate manuscript prior to publication. Whether it's typos, extra spaces, extra words, or any other unwanted or missing item, they must be discovered and corrected.
Besides acquiring beta readers, a trusted editor, and a professional proofreader there are a number of other techniques that we can do to prepare our story for publication:
Print off your entire manuscript in a different font and size.
This allows your eyes to see a slightly different version of the same story you've been looking at for months, if not years.
Place the manuscript you just printed in a three-ring binder. This allows you to make notes as you read it to yourself. Use a colored marker.
Read the entire manuscript out loud to a friend. I read The Tale of Willaby Creek to my husband and found my mouth wanted to stop working after about six chapters! While I read the story to my hubby, he took notes. He actually made a suggestion that I used in one of the last drafts.
Download you manuscript to an older model Kindle. Using the text to speech feature, listen to your entire story while making notes on the printed copy in your three-ring binder. (The reason I say an older model Kindle is that the Kindle Fire and newer models don't offer the feature.) There were two significant mistakes I discovered using this technique.
Leave plenty of time for the proofreading process. It doesn't matter if you're a debut author, or a veteran with a long list of novels to your credit, we all make mistakes. Just make sure you allow enough time to discover them. In the future I'm going to allow a minimum of one month to complete the steps I mentioned above.
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| I borrowed a writer friend's old Kindle. |
