Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, still working on what will become The Murder in Colchester Gaol. A couple of weeks ago, after letting the manuscript sit for nearly a month (to give me some perspective), I sent my docx file to my iPad, opened it in the Kindle app, and started what I thought was going to be a final proofread before launching the e-book and POD paperback at Draft2Digital.
Boy was I wrong! I found typos, sure, and places where the spacing was squirrely (these really stand out with the Kindle format), but I also found umpteen places where I had changed something and then failed to delete the original wording. An example: wary brown eyes that were wary. I’d like to blame Word for this, but it was probably just my arthritic fingers or my failure to check carefully enough after typing in changes.
AI’s idea of what the cover should look like–a big NO from me
There were some fiddly bits, like writing poppy syrup in some places and poppy juice in others. They were all supposed to be poppy syrup, a popular sixteenth-century cure for insomnia and other problems.
Then there was the wordiness. Nothing like using a half dozen words when one would do. There were also a great many unnecessary uses of that, now, only, even and, yes also. To give one example of wordiness/awkward wording, I changed “but to flee into the night would only convince those men to look for us.” to “but to flee into the night would make those men suspicious.” I also changed Alison lifted a hand to his face, needing to touch it to affirm he was real. to Alison needed to touch his face to affirm he was real. Minor stuff, I know, but the new version reads better. Incidentally, when I went in to find that last example for this blog, I discovered that I’d screwed up yet again. What it said until I fixed it was: Alison needed to touch to his face to affirm he was real. Arrghh!
I found way too many cases of passive voice—how did I miss these on the other read-throughs?
most likely final cover
There were information dumps—no horrendous ones, but whole paragraphs needed to be cut because they added nothing to the story.
The worst problems were the places where I either contradicted something I’d written earlier or left a gap in logic. I did trim a lot—maybe too much—in earlier passes, but on this so-called “final” proofing I noticed missing details I simply never thought about when I wrote the original (published under a different title) version. As an example, my protagonists’ sister (the victim) had eloped from their oldest sister’s house, but I never explained why her sisters were unable to discover the name of the man she eloped with or where he lived until months later.
The best solution I’ve found for fixing continuity problems is to create a file titled “Who Knows What When?” I cut and paste excerpts into this so that when this revision is complete I can go through them and make sure the contradictions have all been fixed.
Maybe the next proofread will actually be the final one. Wish me luck.
Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-four books traditionally published and has self published others. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. In 2023 she won the Lea Wait Award for “excellence and achievement” from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. She is currently working on creating new editions of her backlist titles. Her website is www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.
