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WorldCrafters Guild

Workshop:How To Proofread Your Own Work 

 

Date: Thu, 3 Jul 1997 17:50:58 -0500 From: Jacqueline Lichtenberg Subject: WORK:Proof Reading

-- [ From: Jacqueline Lichtenberg * EMC.Ver #3.0 ] --

Folks:

Margaret Carter is doing a book on how to proof read your own writing and asked me for a quote on the subject. My mind went as blank as this screen. I had just finished doing one of my columns, the one for October, and did the first "proof" of it, and I was exhausted.

OK, the column -- you may have noted the numerous typos and gliches in that column. It's a quick-and-dirty mostly first draft piece of work. They don't pay me enough to do more than write it. So WinWord 7's little red underlines (the continuous spellcheck as you write feature) are about 80% of the proofing it gets.

After I draft it, correcting red underlines as I go, I generally go back and re-read it quickly looking for:

A)wordy constructions (in my drafting habit there is always about 10% of the words that don't say anything).

B)Grammar errors due to changing my mind in the midst of saying things (or phone calls that interrupt).

C)Continuity of the thought-stream. That's a biggie. I'm not good at keeping to the TOPIC even if I know what it is and most of the time I don't. It's often on this first read-through that I find out what the column is about and then go back and delete anything that's not about that.

D)malapropisms. I don't do that very often but when I do it's a corker.

E)MOST IMPORTANT for this column that gets printed in NARROW COLUMNS is paragraph length. Length of paragraph is more important for this column than paragraph construction so that what should, grammatically, be one paragraph sometimes becomes three in order to avoid a 5 inch block of print.

F)TRANSITIONS -- the segue between topics is important and has to track. Many of mind track only in my own mind.

After that first quick once-over, I let it sit at least overnight. Then I read it again all at once, preferably without stopping (should the phone not ring) and see if it still makes any sense. Where it doesn't seem to make sense, I try to fix it. Very often, the next day it doesn't make sense and I've no idea what I was trying to say, so I have to invent something.

Then I email the column to TMA and hope it'll pass muster. Sometimes it doesn't and I get these little phone calls from the person who sets up the column on their computer asking questions I don't know the answer to.

The proofing process for FICTION is about the same up to the next day's read -through. After that it gets more elaborate because fiction is so complex to write.

With fiction, a day's work ends with that first read-through to clean up the surface word-usage so you have a fighting chance the next day of figuring out what you intended to say.

Then, the next day after I've maybe read through some of what I did the previous day, I go on drafting the next chapter.

Some weeks later, at after writing THE END with a gusty sigh, the whole project has to sit for a few days, weeks maybe. Getting your eyes and mind OFF the project is the most essential part of proofing.

Then you start at the beginning and work through to the end on a fine-tuning rewrite.

Now, preparing to do that rewrite, you have to START by reading THE END, then THE BEGINNING and hooking them together into the single-piece I've been trying to get you to construct in the original outline.

So on PROOF READING you start at the END so that you can be sure your beginning actually leads to your ending.

For Proofing you must get the entire OUTLINE of the piece firmly in your head before you start -- sometimes when you're just learning to do this you need to take what you've written and reduce it to an outline instead of assuming that the outline you started to write from is actually what you wrote.

Once you see what you wrote in outline form, just the skeleton, you can check to see if the parts hitch together at the joints properly, if beginning leads logically to middle, which presages logically the ending.

So during the "let it sit" stage of writing a long piece of fiction, you get it firmly planted in your head what you want the finished piece to look like .

Once that's clean and crystal clear in your mind, you're ready to dive into the final draft.

As you winnow through the mess you've written (and yes, I've shifted from I to you for no knowable reason other than that I identify with all of you) you now know what to keep and what to discard ruthlessly. You know what's important, and what is BTW and needs deleting.

Simultaneously, you scrutinize word-choices carefully to make sure you use Latin roots where the pacing calls for it, and Saxon roots where the action needs it. You check the paragraphs and sentences for repetitious grammar (two parags in a row that begin with Because, or the form he or she followed by a verb --)

You get rid of all the "really" and "very" words you don't need. You delete adverbs and the accompanying verb and choose a verb that includes the adverb . You exercise your vocabulary and with-strain it within the parameters the publisher requires of you.

Oh, and if you're like me, it's on this last go-round that you INSERT the description. I don't read description so I generally don't bother to write it on first draft. Until you've got it clearly in your head what the overall shape of the piece is going to be you don't know what has to be described or in what TERMS for the correct emotional impact that will reticulate your theme. At least I don't. So INSERT DESCRIPTION and sensory appeal stuff is a final-polish exercise usually.

During this process, very often continuity and motivation gliches will appear and have to be solved by inserting scenes earlier and later.

After going back and forth through a ms a number of times you get so dizzy you don't know what comes before what and very often that introduces what I call "cutting gliches" -- I reviewed a Jane Toombs novel that someone else found cutting gliches in that bothered her. I saw them but they didn't bother me because I recognized them -- knew how they occurred, and was reading the novel Jane intended to write, not the words that were there. Yes, that's chancy, but Jane is such a sure-handed technician that I felt comfortable doing it. I figured the editor had required formula changes and she had to set aside another project that was on deadline in order to hastily patch this one. That happens a lot.

So if you've found scenes missing from your work and end up going back and forth inserting missing material, you finish this pass-through as best you can and then set the thing aside again for a few days.

Then you start the final drafting proof AGAIN from scratch. If you can tell where you added scenes, you're in trouble. The seams should be invisible. You go through this process as many times as it takes to get entirely through the ms without touching a single comma. When you can read it without changing anything, you're done. Or when you've reached the point where the changes you're making don't improve the end product enough to JUSTIFY the time spent on it then you're done (that is if $/hour drops below minimum wage quit even if you're not done.)

It's this final perfecting run-through that often gets omitted when working on contract to deadline -- or if it gets done, there isn't enough time between read-throughs. Sometimes the final read-through is done when you're too tired.

The result is the ms gets sent in with cutting and pasting gliches still showing. Sometimes you're lucky and get a good proof reader who has been given enough TIME to do this job. Other times, your mistakes get into print . Sometimes the proof reader catches things and you fix them, and the fixes don't get into the galleys and you fix it again and they ignore your final fixes.

So THE MOST IMPORTANT proof reading you do IS THE ORIGINAL ROUGH TYPING.

The better your original typing, the higher the final draft quality.

That's another reason I started this workshop on the topic of OUTLINING. By getting the original working outline right before you start drafting, you increase the quality of the product in print by at least 20% maybe more.

The second bottom line on this topic of proof reading your own work is that however hard you try, you can't do it. Only eyes that have never seen it can proof it.

The trick of "using" a proof reader is to hand over a ms that you have processed as I've outlined above -- that you've done your best to get rid of all your habitual problems and the careless problems that happen once every five manuscripts. Your proofer's eyes will be SPOILED by that first reading , so there can be only a few little things to find that have to get fixed by you before shipping it off to the publisher.

Then all you have to deal with are the typos that get introduced during typesetting or transforming from your word processor to theirs. Today most publishers want material ON DISK in Microsoft Word, WinWord or Word Perfect. The day is coming soon when they won't accept printouts at all.

So, that's what I have to say on proofing your own work. Never stint on the EFFORT proofing takes even if you have to stint on the TIME.

Master touch typing and use all your word processor's spell checking capacity but don't rely on it. DO NOT USE the grammar check. Learn grammar . So far they haven't got a grammar checker that won't ever change something from right to wrong. And if you write fiction, a lot of your characters will use "colorful" speech. It's a waste of precious time to fiddle with a grammar checker. (besides, none of them speak Simelan!!)

Live Long and Prosper,