Getting Your Manuscript Ready

This may seem a moot point; the manuscript must already be ready, as you’ve likely published, or are about to publish, on one or several online platforms. Maybe you even had a limited run of physical books printed up.

The Double-Edged Sword

The advent of self-publication platforms like Amazon is a boon for independent writers. No longer are authors bound to the confines of traditional publishers. More of the royalties go directly into your pockets. You have total control over your creative endeavor, and you can published whenever you want.

But that is also the danger.

Part of the process of going through traditional publishers, or even getting them to give your manuscript a first glance, is making sure that the book has been edited and revised ad nauseum. Typos and grammatical errors have been found and eliminated. Unwieldy writing and clumsy dialogue have been trimmed and tamed. Illogical or murky plot points have been expanded upon or discarded.

With self-publishing, there is no requirement to go through this process. And ask any narrator who is working with independent authors, and they will tell you of the plurality of books that aren’t ready yet, that are rife with typos and grammatical mistakes, that have clumsy dialogue and two-dimensional main characters.

It’s time to take your manuscript down to the river and beat it mercilessly against a rock until you’ve knocked off all of the rough edges and unneeded stuff, shaken out all of the loose bits that don’t need to be there, and polished it to a gleaming luster.

Is it revision #2…or #12?

Your book should not be seeing the light of day until at least the 4th or 5th revision.

The first two revisions you will likely do yourself, and many independent authors will stop there and decide it’s time to publish.

STOP!

This is where you need to have someone else read your book, someone who will be brutally honest with you about the writing, about the characters and plot.

You will always be too close to your writing, and this is why you need outside help.

Whether this is through a writing group or through friends, what’s important is that you have a critical eye on every element of your writing to make sure it holds up.

This can be a very scary process; people may tell you that your writing (or parts of your writing) are bad. They may say that they aren’t a fan of a character you love, or a plot point you spent hours agonizing over, or a line of dialogue you took days with to get the wording just right.

It’s OK to be scared, but it’s not OK to not do this step. You will get better as a writer, and your story will be better for it. It will also make the recording process go much smoother. Good writing can lead to great performances.

Don’t proofread your own work

This is key. You must, must, must have other people read your work before you publish. You will never find all of the typos and grammar mistakes in your own work.

Find someone you trust, someone who is good at this, and ask them to read through the manuscript. They will undoubtedly find mistakes that you missed.

Once you get their feedback, find a second person, and preferably a third, to do the same. You will find more mistakes.

Why this is important:

You want your readers to have the best possible experience with your writing. If it’s rife with, or not even rife but littered with only a few typos, it can take them out of the moment. It comes across as unprofessional. It can result in poor reviews on platforms where your book is distributed, or worse, no reviews at all.

You can never be read too late, but you can be read too early, and you can’t undo that. There is no CTRL-Z in real life.

Why this is important for an audiobook:

1. If you are using this manuscript for the auditions (which you should, see that section) and potential narrators see that there are typos/grammar mistakes/clumsy writing in the audition script, they may just take a pass.

2. Narrating is harder when there are typos; it takes us longer, as we will stumble over words and have to re-record the line. Think of Anchorman’s Ron Burgundy: we read what’s there.

3. If the writing is bad, it can sap our energy from the performance. We will give it the yeoman’s effort, but it becomes harder to give our best performance when it’s obvious the book isn’t ready for prime time.

Any narrator will tell you that there is nothing worse than having to complete a project when the writing is bad. We have to spend hours in an uncomfortable space talking to ourselves, and then possibly more hours listening to the recording during the editing process.

There is also nothing as great as when we are reading and the words evoke a visceral reaction out of us. It’s what many of us live for.

Here are two examples from when I was recording Coliseum Arcanist by Shami Stovall. The emotional reaction is on opposite ends of the spectrum, and I was grateful for both. Warning: the second clip is from the last chapter of the book and contains major spoilers, so if you have any intention of reading/listening to this book, I would not listen to it until after.