Book Editing Blueprint: A Step-by-Step Plan To Making Your Novels Publishable
The Looks and Gazes Quickstart Guide
How to reach Stacy Juba
Intro:
Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome to The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm your host, Rhonda Douglas. And this is the podcast for writers who want to create and sustain a writing life they love.
Because let's face it, the writing life has its ups and downs, and we want to not just write, but also to be able to enjoy the process so that we'll spend more time with our butt-in-chair getting those words on the page.
This podcast is for writers who love books and everything that goes into the making of them. For writers who want to learn and grow in their craft and improve their writing skills. Writers who want to finish their books and get them out into the world so their ideal readers can enjoy them. Writers who want to spend more time in that flow state.
Writers who want to connect with other writers to celebrate and be in community, in this crazy roller coaster ride, we call the writing life. We are resilient writers. We're writing for the rest of our lives and we're having a good time doing it. So welcome, Writer. I'm so glad you're here. Let's jump right into today's show.
Rhonda:
Well, hey there, writer. Welcome back to another episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. And today we are going to talk all things editing. So I'm really excited today. I've got Stacy Juba with me. She's the founder of Shortcuts for Writers. Her goal is to take the writing, editing, and time management tips she learned in the trenches and simplify them for her clients and students. So she's been writing for a long time. She started with her first novel with Avon Books and she's written sweet and sassy chicklick novels, mysteries about determined women sleuths and entertaining books for young adults and children. She's been on numerous bestseller lists and she's also a freelance developmental editor, online course creator and an award-winning journalist who's published more than 3000 articles in newspapers and magazines. Her signature course is the Book Editing Blueprint: A Step-by-Step Plan To Making Your Novels Publishable. And it empowers fiction writers to think like an editor so they can save time and money. So we're gonna dive into all things editing today. But first Stacy, welcome. So glad to have you here.
Stacy:
Thank you for having me.
Rhonda:
And can you just tell us a little bit about your writing journey? Like when did you start writing and how did your journey evolve to where you are today?
Stacy:
I've been writing basically since.third grade, as I always loved to read. And then I just started writing my own stories. I was very introverted. And in fifth grade, I was writing my own mystery series and I had a teacher that was really influential on my writing journey. And he saw that this was a way that I expressed myself and he kind of made a big deal out of it. And I'm kind of-
Rhonda:
So amazing those teachers, eh? Like when you have that one teacher just can change everything. I'm so glad you have that. That's awesome.
Stacy:
Yeah, definitely. So then I just kept writing in high school. I was submitting short stories to publishers and then I entered a novel I'd written face-off into the Avon Flair Young Adult Novel Competition, which is for teenage writers and the winner got a publishing contract. And I found out my freshman year in college that I had won.
So, yeah, so that was exciting. And that book was published. It did well, but after that, I experienced a more typical up and downs where, yeah, in that book I had the benefit of working with an editor who really guided me through the rewrites, but then for my next manuscript I was on my own again trying to weave in what I learned about writing and editing, but it still took a lot of trial and error and I was submitting to publishers and agents for several years before I got an agent.
And then I published my… I got publishing contracts for my next couple of books with a mystery publisher. And then sort of with the advent of Kindle and self-publishing, I branched out into self-publishing. And that's where I am today.
Rhonda:
Wow, I didn't realize that you wrote mystery novels. I love mystery novels. I read them like voraciously. So are you published under your own name with your mystery novels?
Stacy:
Yes, I have two mystery novels, 25 years ago today in Sink or Swim. And then...Then I still love reading mystery novels, but then I kind of surprised, mis- surprised myself where I just got this idea for a chiclet novel, my storybook valley romantic comedy. And I was like, I got the idea when I was at a fairy tale theme park with my family, reluctant Cinderella. So then I, um, I started writing those. So I'd always, I grew up reading mysteries, love reading mysteries, and I never intended to, to write a chiclet novel. But it's funny like how you just get the urge to write something, to pull the right something.
Rhonda:
You know, once you get the nudge, especially if it's like, you know, you feel so excited, you get just very excited about the idea, it's irresistible. Like you just can't. Next thing you know, you're a thousand words in.
Stacy:
Exactly. You have to write what you need to write.
Rhonda:
You totally do. You have to respond. That's the book for you. Yeah, totally.
So you are now an editor and I know a few people who've worked with you and just rave about your editing. Like you are the jam when it comes to editing. You are the person. And can you tell me like from working with clients, what are the biggest issues that you see at the first draft stage? So just, if we're just thinking about the developmental edit, what are the main issues you see if someone says, hey, I finished this novel. Can you give me a developmental edit or a manuscript evaluation? What are the biggest things that, like the most common mistakes, if you will, that you see in those manuscripts when they come to you?
Stacy:
There's usually quite a few writers, or new writers are often very surprised at how much work lies ahead of them. But once you kind of clue them into what needs to be done. They're usually very enthusiastic and excited to make the book even stronger. So some of the things I see are like not getting a handle on the protagonist or the narrator's voice where we're not really in their head throughout the whole manuscript. It's more like a general author telling the story rather really getting into that character's point of view. So it's helping them figure out like what, like whether the character has a serious voice, a humorous voice, just always being in their head.
Like sometimes writers will lose track of the viewpoint character in a dialogue scene, for example, like it'll just be pages of dialogue and we're not getting that viewpoint character's reaction to what's going on or so then we don't really understand like why this character is saying or doing things because we just feel like we don't know them that well.
There's also a lot of telling rather than showing. Like sometimes pages and pages of just, were in the character's head for the whole chapter and nothing actually happened. It's just a lot of bad story.
Rhonda:
I feel like I've read a lot of short stories with someone standing, doing the dishes, staring out the kitchen window, thinking about things.
Stacy:
Yes. And I always tell them, I mean, it's good. Exactly. That's what we need to get in. That sometimes that's what's missing from scenes where we're not in the character's head, fine balance. We don't want to, it's not a scene of nothing happens if we're just in that character's thinking and reflecting for pages and pages. That's not a scene. There's nothing, there's no event that's happening. So you want to kind of condense that parcel out of that backstory and those thoughts into smaller chunks. So it's a balance of, you know, the narrative and the dialogue and the action.Overusing certain words. For example, look, smile, walk, words like that. They'll just be on every page. And sometimes writers are shocked to find out like, hey, I did a, you know, I use the find function and you use look 350 times.
Rhonda:
And it's all like, I feel like we all have like these ticks, right? Like my, I always joke that my, my people are always raising their eyebrows. Like, like it's the thing they do. Oh, he raised his eyebrows. You know, like they're perpetually surprised. My people. So we all have these little ticks and, and, um, but sometimes we can't see them, you know, like you need somebody else to look at it to say, you've used this 320 or 350 times. Yeah, totally. Yeah.
So, okay. So that's the developmental edit, right? Which is more about show, don't tell, the interior, the character really understanding the character, feeling like we're in, you know, we're with that character and we're having an emotional experience as we read. And then from there, someone goes and they do revisions and then they come back and they're like, oh, I'm really happy with this now but it needs a line edit or a copy edit. So the first question I have for you is the line edit and the copy edit, same thing, right? Or no?
Stacy:
Those are two different things. Now, I will say that every editor does things differently. So you might have editors that combine services. So for example, like I do developmental editing and line editing, but...if a manuscript needs a ton of development to editing, there's only so much line editing I can do. Exactly. I can do the right thing. So in those cases, I'll do some line editing just as an example, like how to, like some characters, some writers might, all the characters might sound the same or they might talk to you, use contractions, things like that. So I might do some line editing or the dialogue might just be sort of all about the weather and small talk. So I'll do some line editing just as examples of what to aim for. But I see.
Rhonda:
So copy editing, spelling punctuation, typos, grammar.
Stacy:
Yeah, that is that comes like at the end.
Rhonda:
So way later. Yeah.
Stacy:
So I would say line editing is more just like style and flow. And, you know, those really pumping up the word choice and.
Rhonda:
Making your verbs pop and.
Stacy:
Yeah. A lot of times it's cutting out things that don't advance the story. Okay. For example, recently editing a book where this was, I've read it a few times and there was a lot in this draft, everything's there, like all the, the author did a great job with the viewer, everything is there, but in some of the chapters very sort of hidden behind a lot of excess words that don't need to be there because it's kind of redundant. It's saying things we've already established in earlier chapters. So in this case, I'm doing a lot of cutting and then replacing it with maybe like a paragraph that I just feel like kind of advances the story better and just keeps things moving with the pacing. So, so line editing can be adding, it could be tweaking, it could be cutting. Copy editing.
I do run a couple of grammar scans and spell checks before I start working on a main script just to clean it up. Cause most writers actually don't run a spell check before they submit to an editor, which I highly recommend.
Rhonda:
I find that fascinating. I've had that. People have sent me even for a developmental edit and they haven't just run a spell check. And so it kind of gets a little bit in the way, right? Where like...it's this like level of irritation that begins to creep in by the time you're on page 50, right? And there's errors everywhere so that they're distracting you from what's actually going on.
Stacy:
Exactly, it's harder to, like it doesn't have to be perfect. Then obviously that's like one of the last parts of the editing process, but you should at least run a spell check. If you have something like pro writing, or Grammarly where you can run a grammar check, that's helpful too, because it can be distracting to the developmental editor, if you're just having all these missing words and incomplete sentences and things like that. So if you are paying, editors charge differently, but if you were paying someone by the hour, that's, if you haven't even run a spell check and there's lots of errors to kind of wade through to figure out what the author's trying to say, that's gonna increase the price and increase the time.
But I do run a spell and like providing a grammar scan, a Grammarly scan before I start just to clean it up so it can... So they get it extracted. Yeah. It's that they don't catch everything. They definitely don't catch everything by any means, but they, you know, it helps. It definitely helps. And then, so then it would be developmental editing. Sometimes it's a couple of rounds of that and with a mix of developmental online editing. If it's an author that really has a good handle on grammar and punctuation.
Sometimes they might not need to hire a copy editor. Like if they submit like a really clean manuscript to me, it might be like the third time I've seen it or something and it's really clean and we're just kind of doing those final things to it, those final edits on it as long as they proofread it carefully and you know they have friends and relatives that are good but you know they may not need to hire someone but a lot of authors will need to hire someone so.
If I'm done with the line editing and development editing, and then it's, okay, the next step for the author, I don't do just straight copy editing. I've seen some authors that just really have trouble with it and every sentence would need commas and punctuation. So that's not something I do because I find myself getting, I get too distracted by the story. I just can't hone in. My strength is just the story and the lines and yeah, I get bored with like the commas and grammar, but there's some copy that they're excellent at that and they love doing that.
So many authors, I will kind of give them my opinion. Yeah, I think this is in good shape as long as you proofread it carefully, you know, you're going to make sure you have someone read it. But a lot of them will say, yeah, you definitely need to hire a copy editor and you know, this is why. And I'll give them some examples of why I've changed a few things. Just for example, like if they're always punctuating dialogue incorrectly, I'll say, this is how you punctuate it. But I'm not gonna punctuate it through the whole book because that's not what I'm desire to do.
Rhonda:
And it would just cost more than you're expecting to pay.
Stacy:
Yeah, and usually when they're working with me, they're gonna have so many rewrites and that more edits to make so that it's just not even at that stage where they would probably have to be right that anyway. So I just try to educate them and explain this is something that a lot of people have trouble with. And that's fine. It's just that you need to make sure it looks professional when you submit it or publish it. So you're going to have to hire someone to help you with that and you can work on it. You're studying, just these things like the commas and the dialogue punctuation or whatever you trouble with, but it's really hard to, you know, to go from here where you don't, where you just have so much trouble with it to go from here where you can create a publishable book with no mistakes. That's a lot. Yeah. So it's best to hire someone for that.
Rhonda:
Yeah. Thanks for saying that. And also the reminder that editors can be different. So you know, the developmental edit, the focused on the story, the character, the narrative arc, and then the line edit, typically, you know, with the level of language and clarifying and, you know, making sure everything is really tight. And then the copy editing, grammar, typos, punctuation.
And, you know, sometimes I feel like writers, we, you know, obviously everyone's trying to save money. So we're all like, oh, I'm gonna do one, but not the other.And I'm never sure. And I guess it varies from writer to writer. Like if you're trying to save money, which one would you suggest people skip, Stacy? Cause I feel like the developmental edit is the most important. Like you need somebody else's eyes on your story and you can use software to, you know, auto crit, grammarly, pro writing aid to help you self edit. But what do you think?
Stacy:
Just don't think you can skip any of it. Definitely, I've had some clients who've actually just did copy editing and published the book. And then they had negative reviews about the developmental aspects. And then they actually came back to me and said, I published this book, but I've just had a lot of negative reviews. And I thought I was supposed to hire a copy editor to clean up all the grammar and everything. But I guess.
There's something else wrong with the book. And then I, so then they hired me to do a developmental edit in line and then they just, our eyes are open and they're like, wow, I, but the other didn't do this at all. And I think that's one reason why I didn't go into copy editing because I, if somebody submitted a manuscript to me for just for copy editing, I couldn't ignore all of that. I'm not going to ignore it all, but that their strengths can just be their greater grammar and they were hired to do a copy edit.
But if that was submitted to me, I just wouldn't be able to do it. You have to, as I was reading it, I pointed out all these other things. But at the same token, at the same time, you could do higher development editor and line editor and you have the manuscript look great as far as being well-written. But if it has a lot of errors in it,
Right. Readers are going to point that out too. And a lot of times I'll see in comments of books, you know, this book even have an editor, this book have a proofreader. A lot of readers don't even, some readers don't even realize the different aspects of editing. They just associate editing with proofreading and copy editing.
Rhonda:
So just when it's laid out, right? It's finished. It's been copy edited, ready to go. You could almost hit the publish button, but you want somebody to have eyes on it to make sure that nothing went wonky and you didn't miss anything. So it's that final quality check. Yeah, never skip that ever, ever, ever, ever. Yeah.
Stacy:
And a lot of reviewers will point that out. Like this book even have an editor that did this book have a proofreader because they're just seeing all these glaring errors and those errors on every page. So, I mean, if you're not good with grammar yourself and you can't improve reading, you can't afford to invest in that part of the editing process. I mean, definitely I would get like the pro-writing and the grammarally, but they don't catch everything. I mean, even if I run those scans on my clients' manuscripts and there's still a ton of errors that I'm just gonna leave alone because I'm not copy editing. So in that case, I mean, if you have like a friend or a relative who's really good with grammar and punctuation, you could ask them.
I will say I've seen a lot of manuscript where it's just a weakness of the author. Every line, every paragraph is gonna have something. And if it's to that extent, you're probably just gonna have to hire somebody because that's asking a lot of friend or relative to correct everything on like a 400 page manuscript. So it really depends on how much help you need, if you're kind of in between and... You know, there's some aspects you understand and you do okay with, but then there's, you know, maybe there's just certain situations, certain things that you're still having trouble with. And then you might be able to get by with having, you know, someone else who's just a friend, look it over.
But you just have to know your strengths and weaknesses. And I think that's something that the developmental editor should point out to you.
Rhonda:
Right. Oh, that's really, yeah. Yeah. Just kind of say this is an area of struggle, you're gonna want additional support.
Stacy:
Right. And as you know, and I've been honest with people like, you have to hire a copywriter. Maybe even a group leader, or maybe somebody who does both. Right. They're not gonna really get by with just having a friend do it, they definitely need it. And other times they'll say, yeah, this is in pretty good shape, but there are some mistakes, you know, you definitely, you can hire a copywriter, or if you.. You know, just make sure you are someone that's really good with grammar and proficiency and improving looks over. So I think your earlier editors just need to kind of give you a heads up about. How much work you might need with that.
Rhonda:
Right. Yeah, I'm really glad you said that because I think that, you know, when you hire an editor, you want straightforward feedback. You don't want someone protecting your feelings by not giving you all of the feedback, including, oh, this is gonna need several more rounds of revision and or you're gonna need to hire a copy editor or whatever. So yeah, absolutely. And it really like, you just get in your own way.
Like you publish the book and the next thing you know, you've got all these one-star reviews on Amazon because people are so irritated with things that you could have cleaned up. You know, so people shoot themselves in the foot sometimes by trying to save a buck, you know, trying to, oh, let me skip this stage so that I don't have to spend the money. But I think there are, you know, there are other options.
So you have a program on book editing. Can you tell me a little bit about that and like what your approach with that is? Because, you know, if you don't have a background in editing and you don't have a background in, particularly I think developmental editing, story editing, but also at the level of the line language. You have to learn this stuff, right? Like you have to learn this stuff. It's fine not to know it. Of course, we're not born knowing it, but you have to learn it. So can you tell me a little bit about your editing program?
Stacy:
So I have a course called the Book Editing Blueprint: A Step-by-Step Plan To Making Your Novels Publishable. And that's my most comprehensive editing and writing course where it's self paced. So you can, it's not like a membership or community or anything. It's just a self paced course where I guide you into learning how to assess your book like an editor. So it goes into like the bigger picture things like the point of view, how to do third person versus first person, like the pitfalls that a lot of writers will run into plotting, dialogue, pacing. And as you're going through the course, there's a workbook with pages where you can, a lot of it is geared towards just having you assess your own manuscript, like, okay, well, you're gonna, these are all the pitfalls for-
Rhonda:
Oh, so I'm assessing as I go. I'm like, learning as I go. You're assessing as you go. I'm assessing my book.
Stacy:
Yeah, you're not actually editing as you go through. You're just kind of assessing. You're basically, in essence, you're making your own first editorial letter. So for each area, like dialogue, for example, there'll be some quizzes and like worksheets where you can practice, you know, and sometimes it's easier to see things on copy someone else wrote, but for the most part you're evaluating your manuscript because I think for a lot of writers, it's sort of like flying a plane without radar. You know, you have this book and you got it done and now you don't know what to do next. You don't even know where to start. You know the policy.
Rhonda:
That's so common to finish the draft and then overwhelm paralysis. You like your brain kind of knows that there's a lot wrong and it just shuts down. It's like, I don't know. So step by step, I love that.
Stacy:
Step by step, yeah. And then we get into line editing. Those are, those modules online editing. And again, it like takes you through the most common things that both come in line editing that authors need and you evaluate your manuscript. And sometimes like I'll have them like just do a few pages, you know, line edit to kind of get a feel for what your patterns are. Because if you're overusing a word or you're having like writing passively, like there was, there is on a few pages, it's you're probably doing it through the whole book. So just to kind of alert them to what their patterns are, what their crutch words are. And again, they're taking notes.
And then by the end of the course, there's also like a copy editing section where I talk about the tools like pro writing and grammarly and the importance of the spell check. And I talk about the, they think it's like the 10 most common grammar and punctuation errors that I see so that they can kind of evaluate their book for that. And it talks about the importance of knowing how much copy editing help you might need like we talked about before how some authors might be really good at it and they may not have to hire a copy editor or proofreader as long as they really proofread carefully. Now there's definitely will have to hire one so.
And then there's a section on proofreading tips and then the different kind of editors and then at the end of the course there's, I think it's 26 pages like a 26 page step by step self editing checklist that you can use for every book you write, you just pull it out and it guides you. It's like a recap of each of these areas from the big picture things to the smaller things. So really if you go through that, that was just guide you through editing your book. You know, you just pick, start with one thing and do one thing at a time.
And it doesn't replace hiring an editor. It's just, it's meant to help you cut down on rounds of editing because I think it's just a shock to so many writers that like the cost of editing, I think Reidsy says that the average cost of editing, I felt developmental editing for a book is like $1,400 and that could be just for one round. And then so many authors need multiple rounds. Like I've worked with writers who ideally would have needed seven or eight rounds because they were just starting from square one, but you know, obviously they can't afford that. So that's why I created this.
Rhonda:
So this cuts down on your editing costs. You're basically saving money, you know, by doing some of the work yourself that an editor would otherwise have to spend hours and hours doing and then bill you for, so yeah.
Stacy:
Right, because you don't really, you don't, if you're paying $1,000 for edit, you want that to, it sounds, if you've never done this before, it sounds strange, like why do I want to submit my best work to an editor? Because isn't that what they're supposed to do? Isn't that why I'm hiring them? But I think so many writers just underestimate how hard it is to get a book. Not to be discouraging, but just in their eyes.
We didn't go to school to learn how to write a book. That's something they probably didn't teach you in high school. Maybe they, if you're lucky, maybe you have to write a short story or something, but even now, you know creative fiction writing isn't something you see a lot in schools anymore. And so you can't expect to write a perfect book in one draft and then an editor isn't a ghost writer. So as an editor, there's a difference between doing some line editing and just writing.
Rhonda:
Be writing the whole book for you. They're not going to do that. They're going to say, here's your issue and now go fix that. Yeah. So what's great is, you know, if you, the thing is if you learn how to do it once, it's one of those skills that once you see it, you can't unsee it. Once you have that skill, you have it for life. So learning it as a skill is just so freaking valuable. It's really everything, yeah.
So you have a resource that I love because I mean, we were joking, but really my people do always raise their eyebrows. So, it's called The Looks and Gazes Quickstart Guide. Can you just talk a little bit about it? It's a free resource, right?
Stacy:
Free resource, yep. So I have, so while I have the Book Editing Blueprints is my sort of biggest course, I have some smaller courses also about the craft of writing and organizing and the kind of thing. And I've always been big into systems, like as a writer myself, like how can I make things easier and more streamlined? And one area I used to have trouble with a lot, which just, you know, how you're writing and you just get like especially like in a scene where you're trying to convey a character's emotion and you just get stuck.
You're like, I don't know. Or when you're editing, you go through it and like, oh, the anger isn't coming across or the conflict. It's just not, what can I do? And so I created this Energize Your Writing Toolkit course and it was based on sort of a system I use myself where it's like a catalog of different like emotions, body language, nonverbal communication that can convey different emotions like anger, annoyance, boredom, happiness, excitement. And then I have like blank lines, like on the left is where it has all of these different prompts you can use or just to jump throughout your brain also. And then on the right, there's blank lines where you can kind of add your own so that way, if you're stuck in a scene or if you're editing and you're going through this editing round to kind of improve the body language and cut down on all those looks and... Eyebrow raises. Eyebrow raising and smiling. It just kind of... So you're not... So it just gives you something to start with. So the looks and gazes guide, it's based off of the Energize Your Writing Toolkit and it includes the looks and gazes section of the toolkit.
So it's over a hundred ways to kind of pump up your characters' looks and gazes so that you're not just writing, she gaze at him, he looked at her. I just see that so many times. She looked down, she looked up. They looked at each other. And again, until someone points it out to you or until you learn to kind of put that word, you know, put some of these words in the search box and see how often you use it. That can just be a real eye-opener.
Rhonda:
Yeah, I'm gonna do that in my very next writing session. I'm just telling you that right now. Yeah, so they did. She looked at me and said, I'm ready to tie a bow. That's my whole manuscript right there. All four hundred things of it, you know? She walked over to her. Yeah, but I think also that's, you know, the thing to realize is, I can say that now and it doesn't bother me in the slightest that that's what's going on. Because I think that the process of drafting, we just can't catch up. You just cannot catch all of this. So all of you out there trying to write the perfect draft in the first go, that is not how books work, right?
It might be how like television and the movies show you, right? Like little women, you've got Joe and she's typing and writing and the pages pile up and then she publishes it. No, this is not how it goes. So I think understanding the full book completion process is so important and this is a really helpful guide. So I'll put a link to it in the show notes. And I'm so glad we had this chat today. Thanks so much for being with me, Stacy. And I'm glad we got to get into the nitty gritty of editing today. Thanks so much.
Stacy:
Thank you.
Outro:
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