Even if you take time away from your manuscript, make sure to take notes while your brain (and beta readers) tell you changes to make during your next pass of edits!
If you are interested in being a beta reader for Tiz, my novella, be sure to contact me on my social media handles.
“Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&ref=nb_sb_noss_1
Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse
Get ahold of Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing services. She does free sample edits to see if you and she would be the right fit. www.littlesyllables.com
Instagram: @authordevindavis
Twitter: @authordevind
The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage.
[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the show Writing in the Tiny House. The entire point of this podcast is to help the tormented artist by sharing what I know about writing, publishing, and stress management, so that you can have the tools to produce the content that you have been eager to write. If you have the steps in place, you can produce a short story in as few as three months or a novel in as few as 18. And hopefully through the ideas in this podcast, you will have the wisdom to adjust that timeline if you need to. I am Devin Davis, the guy who lives and writes in a tiny house in Northern Utah. Thank you for tuning in, and please enjoy today's episode of Writing in the Tiny House.
Well, hello and happy [00:01:00] Wednesday. It is another episode of writing in the tiny house. And thank you so much for joining me. So like I, well, like I have mentioned in the past couple episodes, my work in progress ti is in a place where it needs beta readers. And if you are in a position where you want to be involved, please let me know by contacting me through my social stuff.
So all of that is listed in the show notes. Don't be bashful with beta reading. It's reading in a casual way, just like you would any other novel and then giving feedback. I don't want you to flex your muscles when it comes to editing. We're not to that stage yet. I just want feedback on content, but guys, today is a little bit about what to do in the interim between drafts and beta reading.
We are at a point with ti where I have a group of people reading my book [00:02:00] and giving feedback, and they are giving feedback at different rates at different times during the week. And there aren't very many of them, but here's something to understand friends, beta readers are. Wonderful volunteers who are incredibly valuable to the process of writing.
However, they are going to require an amount of reminding your book is not nearly as important to them. As it is to you. And if you are in a spot where you are ready for beta readers and you start to get your program together, it's important to spell out to everybody who wants to read your book when you want them to have it finished.
And. That you are going to be following up with them throughout the process. It's important to let them know that so that when you pop in halfway through just to see how it's going and they haven't started [00:03:00] yet, they won't be mad and it won't be unexpected. I mean, like I said, these people are not getting paid.
They are doing it out of the kindness of their heart. And so it's important to be grateful at the same time, there is an amount of patience with all of this and when you get feedback and that's what this whole episode is for. Well, two things. When you get feedback, you need to have a way to organize all of that.
And what are you going to do with yourself during this time? This beta reading program has been going on for about two weeks. And I have said in previous episodes that it is important between drafts to let your draft cool off. That means that you don't get to futz around with it. You don't get to tease it apart.
You don't get to pick apart that if different things that are not working or don't seem to be working. And you get to leave it alone. You get to step away and let it cool off. That's what some people call it. At [00:04:00] least when you. Put that time in between you and your current draft, it allows your mind to refresh.
And so when you do finally go back and you start to read it, it's going to be with fresh eyes and it's going to be with a fresh mindset so that you can actually do better editing work. during. Your beta reading program. it is important to have that space, that time built into what you are doing.
So if you remember a few weeks ago, when I finished my first draft and got it. Readable. I let it rest for a few days. I didn't let it rest for as long as I'm about to let it rest. I mean, this has been almost two weeks. I did just a few days. And then I went through and did a first passive edit. Then I gave it to my friend my developmental editor crystal, and she went through and read it and took notes.
And while she was involved with that, I let my [00:05:00] manuscript rest. so that when she had notes to give me, I was in a good place to go through and put in those notes and make those changes. Now that we are at an even better place with the manuscript, I get to let it rest again. So not only am I giving my attention to.
Gathering information and compiling it into a meaningful, easy to understand layout. I mean, it's a Novea, it's not a full blown novel. And if I were doing a novel, I would have a different system to take notes with. All of the information that I'll be getting from my beta readers. And I likely wouldn't have given the entire document to them all at once.
I would've likely split it up into a couple installments so that I could get fresher feedback that is more specific to what they just read. Instead of giving them a really big book and then getting feedback all at once and having them [00:06:00] forget parts, it's just a way to help them help you.
So with a Nove, you don't need to do that. This thing is only 20,000 words. It's only about 125 printed pages or 120, depending on how you format your book, but that's about how long it is. And so there is no harm in just giving the book all at once in this instance. not only am I devoting attention to that, but I am.
Paying attention to what the beta readers have to say. And as they give feedback, it also inspires me to make additional changes, but right now is not the time to make those changes. So here's the deal guys. when we come to swapping ideas and whatever, the wheels will start to turn in your brain and you are going to want to dive right back into your manuscript to make those changes.
Especially if you get good feedback from one of your beta readers, I gave my book to, a young lady [00:07:00] who read it recently. And some of the feedback that she gave was perfect. she said all of the things that she liked, and then she said some things that she wanted a bit more of. And I can add that into the manuscript, but as I was thinking about it, it triggered a little bit of other places where I could add more to some other scenes in the book where I could insert a little bit of this or that just to fill it out and to give a better sense of who is there a better sense of setting and.
That was inspired though. It was not mentioned directly in the feedback that I got recently from one of my beta readers. So this is my advice to you, my dear friends, listening to this episode during these times, when you are letting your manuscript cool off. It is still important to take notes as [00:08:00] far as what your brain is telling you needs to happen with your manuscript.
be sure to have a good place. It can be on your phone. It can be a notebook at home. I have a sticky note on my desktop where I'm keeping a lot of these notes, but have a place To write down that inspiration so that you can have a list of points to make when you go through, another time to make more edits to your draft.
So with developmental edits, you are going to be making several passes of edits until your book is at a good place to send to your editor. And it's important to make those passes. If you think that you're going to be making all of your developmental edits happen in one go, you are going to be surprised or maybe disappointed when it doesn't happen that way.
However, the more that you do it, the more that you practice the [00:09:00] fewer times. Possibly, I mean, most likely fewer times that you were going to have to make passes in order to do some complete developmental edits or. You'll just get better at doing it. So the passes don't take as long and you can be more efficient with your revisions.
I was thinking about a metaphor with all of this, with just this whole part of writing. And the thing is the first draft. if we are going to compare this to a garden or to a farm. Or something where we plant a thing and then it grows. The first draft is largely preparing the soil and planting seeds.
The first draft is rough and it is hard to see some of the beautiful things in your first draft, especially when you read through it after you're done. I mean, there is problems and. It is through the many steps of revision that we coax out from the ground, the [00:10:00] beautiful things that we want and the beautiful things that are already there.
So it's like the seeds and you are growing your flowers or you are growing your vegetables or your pumpkins or whatever else It is the labor and the tending and the weeding and the watering. All of those steps that make those things grow. and all of that comes through revision and through editing and revision, revision revision.
And at the end things just get better. Guys. TIS was in a very good place when I sent it to my beta readers. Now that I'm getting feedback, I'm realizing that I didn't realize before that there are other places to make it fill out and to make it even better, to make it make more sense.
And that's cool because I can see, I can see where it needs to go and then I can put the effort into it to get there. Again, just to sum all of this up while you are taking a break [00:11:00] from your work in progress and letting it cool off, be sure to still take notes. It's important to create some distance between you and your work in progress for an amount of time.
But. It is still important to pay attention and take notes to the things that your brain and other people are going to be telling you about your work in progress. So thank you for tuning in.
And that is it for today. Before we go, I need to say that my current work in progress Tiz the next installment of Tales from Vlaydor is ready for beta readers, people to read the novella and share with me their experience. It's a big, important step before publishing. So if you wish to be a part of this project, reach out to me on my social media handles; on Instagram I'm @authordevindavis, and on Twitter I'm @authordevind. And remember that my short story Brigitte is available on Amazon as an ebook [00:12:00] and on Audible as an audio book. Check those out today.
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