I’m sitting here on this cloudy Tuesday afternoon waiting
for my proof copy of A Life Well Loved to
make its way to my front door, anxious to proofread it in print form so I can
tell the world it’s ready to read and, hopefully, enjoy. I had mentioned in an
earlier post that it’s important to proofread your work before you put it up for
sale. I would venture to say that’s an obvious statement, wouldn’t you agree? I
think that’s why I didn’t touch on it all that much when I did include it in
that earlier note. I have learned a lot through the writing of this second
novel, not just about my family on which it is based, but the process of
writing.
As I would complete a chapter, I would do a spellcheck, then
read it for content, typos and such, print it off, and give it to my husband
who is my in-house editor. I’m very fortunate in that he is very good at
grammar, although not so much punctuation. But he is great at catching when I
might get too wordy or maybe need a stronger word or phrase, and I am okay with
his suggestions. If I don’t agree with his notes, we talk about it so he knows
why I chose my particular wording. We will even throw ideas back and forth,
sometimes keeping the wording as I originally wrote it, and sometimes going
with his changes.
Once my book is done, I go through and read it again on my
screen. I’m still looking for possible typos or grammar errors. You always want to use spellcheck, but keep
in mind it isn’t going to catch vary versus very, doing versus going, missing
words, transposed words, and so on, so you should never rely only on your
software catching all errors. You also need to watch for discrepancies. Maybe
in chapter 2 you mention a character is 10 years old, but in chapter 15 that
same character is written as 13. In one paragraph, I typed my mom’s real name
rather than her character’s name. I also wrote “Ms. Caswall” in a sentence. Why
is that wrong, you ask? This was a conversation taking place in the 1880s. I’m
pretty sure no one was using that term in those days. 
You also need to make sure things like the mention of a song
are accurate to the time period you are writing about, even if it’s present
time. My grandfather was a singer in a barbershop quartet when he was a young
man. So for part of my story, I write that he also sang to my grandmother when
courting her. A song he sang often, even with me when I was a little girl, was Let Me Call You Sweetheart. It seemed a natural choice for a song he
would have sung to his bride during their courtship. I researched the song and
discovered it was not published until 1909. That is the year they were married,
so he couldn’t have sung it to her before they married. I had to research songs
that were popular before that time.
Anyone reading the story might not notice such a detail or even care,
but I did care.
Of course, any writer has the option of creating stories and
characters in any fashion they like. Otherwise, beaming people from planets to
starships or having a vampire go to high school and fall in love with a human
would be impossible. That’s what writing is all about. But even so, accuracy is
still important. I think it wouldn’t have gone over too well if Edward thought
Bella was groovy and far out in a 2012 classroom, even if he was 109 years old.
Another thing to look for is repetitive words and
phrases. That’s not to say you can’t use
a word or phrase more than once because obviously that can’t be avoided. To
give you a couple of examples: I once read a book by a well-established and
popular author who let the reader know several times throughout the book that
the characters had been married for 17 years.
Mentioning it later in the story as a reminder would have been fine, but
every other chapter or thereabouts was absolutely not necessary. In another novel, the story was great, but
the main character was constantly grabbing things. The word grabbed was used 64
times. So the main thing I remember about this character is that she was a
grabber. It was very distracting from the story. When I was re-reading my
novel, I found I did that in one particular paragraph where the character “loved”
doing this and that. I think that word showed up about half a dozen times in
one paragraph. I didn’t realize it as I was writing it, and I didn’t catch it
when I read the chapter back for typos. Thankfully, I did catch it when reading
the entire novel. I simply rephrased some of the sentences so I didn’t have to
use that word over and over again.
It is very rare that I have read a novel that didn’t have at
least a few errors. Even with more than one person proofreading, there are
still minor things that will be missed. That’s okay. It doesn’t hurt the story
or the quality of the work. When you see a lot of errors, though, that shows
the author didn’t take the time to proofread the work. Plus it’s also critical
to have someone else read your work, too.
If you can’t afford an editor or proofreader, then ask a family member
or friend if they will help. It’s also a good idea to have a grammar reference
handy, such as a Gregg Reference Manual. I’m pretty good with grammar rules,
but I still use my reference from time to time.
