6000 words today, all toward Indie Author Confidential Volume 4.
Got feedback from my second fact checker today. He is one (of two) people checking the biological/animal details in the story. This is a fantasy novel, but I want to make sure that I'm at least not getting anything overtly wrong.
The fact checker is a biologist who worked with the animal in question for several years.
The feedback:
- The biological details were pretty accurate. In fact, he said I went out of my way in some cases to get details right—as a biologist there were some sections that surprised him.
- I did a pretty good job describing the animal’s social and cultural behavior.
- I took the right approach as far as the five senses go but there were some things I didn't consider that could have made it more realistic. He offered good examples.
- He shared some studies with me that he's seen, along with his thoughts on the findings and how I could incorporate them (organically) into the story, mostly as a signal to someone who has a biology background that I at least did my research.
- There were some additional behaviors that I should have considered. We worked those out.
- He gave some great material for Book 2.
Again, just like with the last fact checker, I benefited most from hearing his line of thinking BEHIND his comments.
We also chatted briefly on colorblindness and what that would look like specifically for this animal. Something that occurred to me that I didn't think of during the writing process was to use a colorblind simulator, specifically one that is red-blind. I can run images through it and get an approximation of what something might look like. One of my images that the hero sees late in the novel is an intense orange evening sky. I found an image on Google Images and ran that through the simulator. Seen correctly, the animal wouldn’t see “orange”—but rather a muted green, almost pear-colored, a little browner. In my draft I chose olive green, which was not accurate. With the fact checker’s help, I muted the color descriptions down to the color scale that would be biologically accurate. I double checked elsewhere in my manuscript for my color descriptions (which were few because of this very reason), and I will give instructions to my editor to double-check me in this area as well.
It's very minor, but little things like this add up. Ultimately though, readers will decide whether it worked.
Yay, fact checkers! I have a second person who has a different biology background who will be giving me biology feedback early next week, so I can get some an additional perspective. I always prefer to recruit fact checkers in pairs—helps to see two perspectives in case they have conflicting views. Conflicting views are actually quite valuable.
Another person was supposed to give me feedback on my hero’s sister from a female perspective, but she ended up being unable to do the job for a couple reasons. That’s why I recruit fact checkers in pairs, and also why I have alternates. I notified the next person in line and they’re good to go with everything they need.
Anyhoo, the novel went off to my editor tonight so she can get started. I'll weave in the last two fact checkers’ comments into the editor’s edits, just before it goes to the second editor, who will focus on line edits.
I’M WORKING WITH A DEVELOPER AGAIN
Also, I’m working with a developer again on my new editing analytics project, which I am launching with this novel. He's building me a solution for a common editing problem that Word/Grammarly/ProWritingAid can't catch. We’re using VBA macros for Word and a little bit of coding ingenuity. This fix will drastically reduce the amount of errors in my future manuscripts, and save my editor a decent amount of time. I'll share when I have more, but it'll take him about a week. We discussed the requirements today, and he has what he needs now. It won’t be a perfect tool by any means, but it will go a long way toward cleaner manuscripts for my editor.
I also spent a good part of today creating a PowerPoint presentation summarizing the editing analytics pilot and how it will work. I sent this PowerPoint to my editor so she has a heads up. It's kind of an off-the-wall idea, but if it works, we’ll both benefit from it.
Anyhoo, if nothing I said about “editing analytics” made sense, read my post two nights ago. I'm still peeved at YouTube for not letting my post through. I'll be doing a special livestream on this topic soon.
I can't do it justice in a blog post, but the gist is that I am mining my editor’s edits for insights using data and analytics to help me identify certain errors, programming those errors into a special engine, and then using that engine to catch the errors in the next book BEFORE I send it to my editor. It will eliminate repeat mistakes, save my editor time, reduce my editing costs over time, and result in a cleaner manuscript for my readers. If the pilot works, it'll be a huge strategic win for 2021.
OTHER NEWS
In other news, I'm still making progress toward Indie Author Confidential, Vol. 4. I did some real damage today with 6000 words. It's around 60% complete. I need to be around 80%. I should get there in a couple of days.
Once I hit my target for Indie Author Confidential, I'll switch over to my Writing Tips book, where I have about 10-12 chapters to hit. Then it's time to start writing Book 2 in my new series.
I’ll probably start Book 2 sometime either this weekend or early next week…….right along with law school classes………
