I finished my second draft of the sequel to Whisper Wood a while back, and subsequently sent it on its merry way to my beta readers with a slap on the back and a packed lunch. After a couple of polite nudges, it came slinking back, looking a little older and a little wiser.
One of my readers is exactly that – someone with a monstrous reading appetite who reads lots of stuff. He can spot a narrative that flows and good characters a mile off and anything that doesn’t work, he’ll see right away. The other one is very different, in that he reads hardly any fiction. He is however, a history teacher, amateur historian and published author and he really knows his stuff. I needed him to get this one under his microscope because there’s a lot of historic war material in it and if there’s one thing he’s clued up on, it’s war history.
Thinking I’d meticulously researched already, I was surprised to see some lengthy mark-ups on my returned proof. It turned out that though I had thankfully got a lot of things right, there were a couple of things I was a bit off the mark on. Problem was, they weren’t just the blast radius of a S Mine and the name of the first British tank. They involved some re-thinking and re-writing in a couple of places, which though not massive, were important, because I wanted to be accurate but not lose the narrative flow.
That’s why it’s important to have an editor and a second pair of eyes. I thought about which beta readers to ask for this book, because I wanted to be challenged on the authenticity of my war narratives. For the third book in what has now become a multi-genre novella trilogy, I’ll be asking at least one different reader again. Why? Because it’s important to get the right person for the job!
So, once you’ve got your readers lined up and are at the stage where you’ve knocked your book into shape and are looking for an editor of that second pair of eyes, just give me a call. Actually don’t. It may be night time here, or I might be in the supermarket. Just check out more about my editing services.
Simon Lee Author 