Lou Paduano | Urban Fantasy Novels | Sci-Fi Crime Series

Heading Toward The End

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I’ve officially started final edits on book 6 of the DSA. This will close out the inaugural season for the series, marking this as the end for me until after alpha readers comment on the books. I’m almost DONE.

And I am FREAKING OUT.

Closing out a project…

There is this sense of trepidation whenever I reach the end of a project. I’ve spent months fine-tuning and tweaking language, plot points, dialogue and more. Months asking questions about the work, nit-picking details and mysteries to see if they do enough to push the story forward.

Yet the fear remains.

It does so for a number of reasons:

The phoning it in factor. This is a real concern. At the end of a grueling project, months of time spent hammering together the perfect draft, the worry is there that maybe I didn’t put in enough time. Maybe another week, another pass, another draft would make it pop more.

Was that last self-edit just me spinning my wheels or did it strengthen the narrative? Could another one tighten the language, ratchet up the tension, or is it merely terror at sending it to other people?

Is this absolutely ready for other eyes?

Is it good enough to hand to friends and family. Has every question, every doubt, every concern been addressed and redressed within the narrative? Reaching the end never actually means the end, but it needs to be pretty damn close in order to feel comfortable asking someone else to give their two cents. If the first feedback received mentions the fact someone’s name changed halfway through the book (IT HAPPENS) can I handle it maturely?

The answer is no…

Little discrepancies, small plot holes are the bane of my existence and one of the reasons I pour through my drafts as many times as I do. I could let someone else find these errors, could totally allow others to pick up my slack so I can move onto the next draft, the next project, the next world, but I wouldn’t feel right with that.

This is my baby and it has to be perfect.

Accepting the end.

Acceptance is a tough concept for me as an author. Letting the books take wing and fly is like asking a newborn to feed and change themselves. Daddy ain’t gonna let that happen. So what have I done to accept the end, to allow a project to reach the finale?

Slowing down for reflection. When I started this final book in the DSA Season One, I built in an extra week of edits. This isn’t because the manuscript needed it. Broken Loyalties is one of the tightest drafts in the series so far. (You’re going to love it. It’s so much fun. Well, maybe not for the cast, but as a reader you’ll dig it.)

No, the extra time was for me to reflect on the journey. To tie off all concerns, to really dig into the narrative as a whole and make sure everything lines up just right. Not just for this season but for those to follow. It’s clocked in at almost 250,000 words so it’s a journey.

This method allows the pressure of producing this work to more gradually fall from my shoulders. To better see how things started and why it is where it is at the end. Every choice, every stray notion, everything comes into play here and by giving that extra time – taking those moments to pause and consider it helps to better understand why this is the end, here and now.

Savor the win

It may be called the end, but it never is. Alpha readers will take the DSA and offer feedback, which results in new questions to be asked. New perspectives to address through the narrative. Then it heads to my editor to be torn apart and rebuilt better than ever.

More readthroughs. More notes taken creating more changes to implement or argue.

This isn’t the end, merely the first round in a marathon for the next six months. Still, savor the win and accept the end as it stands at this moment. For this part of the journey.

Then get back to work.

Signs to Step Away from a Draft

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Let’s be honest, there are times when it feels like a story will NEVER come together. In some cases a narrative refuses to click into place, that final puzzle piece has somehow managed to fall off the table, slide under the carpet, never to be seen again.

When this happens there are few positive reactions to share with friends and family. But is the problem truly with the narrative or the amount of time spent putting it together?

Self-Editing Round 124… 125… 126…

It’s an endless battle, beating your doubts and your draft into submission. You want the best story possible, action-packed, descriptive, punchy dialogue – the works. Yet edit after edit goes by and you can’t help but feel it’s not quite there yet.

What do you do?

3 signs you should take a step away from your draft

  1. You start questioning the original intent of the piece. It can happen. And sometimes for the right reasons. But if you are finished with your draft and in the editing phase you tend to know what the theme or the purpose is behind the work. Rethinking concept is a natural sensation. Worry it might not be a strong enough connection with the reader is a completely rational thought. Not at this stage of the game. Here is the time to refine not rethink, tweak not toss out. Which leads me to my next point.
  2. Let’s rewrite the whole story…AGAIN. You know you’ve thought the same thing. You’ve tweaked and prodded the story in a certain direction and now you’re not sure if you’ve been on the wrong track the entire time. So why not start again? DON’T! Your story is there. Something in that massive draft is a problem but the narrative itself will work itself out if you don’t succumb to those doubts at the back of your mind.
  3. What if I can’t find the solution to my problems? It happens. Writers get tunnel vision, only allowing their thoughts to travel down a certain path for a story. It flows in their mind like a river, yet rigid and regimented in accordance with the original draft. An unending problem isn’t cause to cast the work aside or toss it in the junk heap of lost causes. You merely need to open your eyes to alternative paths and thoughts.

Solutions when it comes to unending self-edits

Let someone else read it! Alpha readers are crucial to the editing phase. There are only so many times you can read the same draft, edited or not, before the narrative becomes mundane in your eyes. Where it loses that excitement that drove you to write it in the first place.

Sending it to close family and friends for initial feedback not only allows you to share the hard work you’ve endured for months, but also brings back that critical feedback to drive you forward in your own efforts and point out potential pitfalls to revisit.

Create a post-mortem of questions and concerns. This is tied to my last thought. When I send a new draft to readers, be they close friends or family, I write down every question that’s bothered me during the editing process. Any issue I foresee or that has hindered me from hitting the publishing button in my brain.

It may be plot related, setting oriented, or even something as obscure as formatting. Write it all down to ask.

Save it until after they’ve read it. If the questions force them to read through again, they will do so with more perspective than the first which can only add to their feedback.

Let an outside perspective open new avenues of thought. This can have positive and negative connotations with your readers. Opening up your narrative for them to influence, be it plot, character or structure, can assist in providing new avenues of thought when you self-edit.

It can also steer you down paths you never wanted to travel in the first place.

All are worth exploring, though your readers may be upset if you choose not to follow their path. Remember, this is your story and while they may have worthwhile commentary on the subject it has to fall to you for the final decision.

No surrender, no retreat.

Walking away from your draft in the editing phase is not surrendering. It can’t be. Not after so much labor and love poured over a word processor for months or possibly years. Don’t let that happen.

Take a step back but never retreat from making your book the best it can be.

Thanks for reading.

How to Revitalize Old Content

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Not every draft is a winner. Much as we would all like them to be, sometimes it helps putting a pin in a project and shelving it for a bit for some perspective.

That being said, one should always return to the pile when it comes to time to put together a new project. Revitalizing old content isn’t only about remembering the fun of writing the work to begin with, but also about building up those editing muscles necessary to self-edit every project.

Revitalizing Old Content

It can be as simple as a tweak or a directional shift in the narrative to straighten it out. Other times it can be a complete rewrite. I’ve had the pleasure of both experiences.

The Medusa Coin was a complete rewrite. I had a draft that worked, functionally at least, but nothing sang to me. There were flaws, perspective shifts, absent character moments, and the like. About halfway through reading it prior to the edit I realized it was not up to snuff. At all.

A hard reset…

It’s not fun to do. Not fun to envision when it comes to this project you’ve slaved over for months if not years. However, it is a necessary evil in the business. So how do you start from scratch?

You don’t.

Pull out the pieces that fit. Plot beats that advance the story, character moments that propel the protagonist along their arc, whatever small speck of sanity in the chaos of your draft and put it in one pile.

Throw the rest in another. You won’t be needing them.

Read the work again. Think about what works and why. Keep the best and discard the rest.

When you’re through you have scraps of the story you originally told and hopefully some sense of the connective tissue necessary to rebuild the manuscript. Notecards are a great visual aid for this process. One color per event/sequence or one for each character tends to help loads in these situations.

Fill in the blanks. If you find separate events not meshing well with the overall map being built in your mind, rework them. Pull them apart and put them back together again. Mix up characters in situations.

For The Medusa Coin, the original draft called for Ruiz to be near death at the hands of the Charon. In the updated version it is Loren. Why? Twofold. I needed to show Soriya the consequence of her decisions. Secondly, Ruiz was hurt pretty bad and had a visit with the hospital in Signs of Portents. I definitely wanted to switch it up.

That little switch opened up small moments for the characters that didn’t exist in the previous draft. Tension builders for Loren scenes and fallout for Soriya’s arc in the novel. One that served as the foundation for a wider arc that could not have happened with the original draft.

Small tweaks. The better path.

Revitalizing old content doesn’t have to be a hard reset. It can be a small change, a shift in perspective, a switch in events and how they play out. Tossing out a draft for not working isn’t the answer – understanding the problems within the narrative and sussing them out is the key.

The project I am currently working on is one of those. The first book in the series deals with a character being sentenced for a crime committed. How those events played out is one of the items that made me shelve the project. So I pulled it out, figured out why I disliked the sequence and am currently drafting a new sequence that fits with the overall narrative as it has evolved in my head.

Will that be the end of my edits? Hell, no. There are six or seven more instances of this in the book that I’ve laid out in pretty pink and purple notecards to solve over the next few weeks.

It’s a good exercise for those fighting with structure, those that find editing to be a chore rather than another skill set to use in the writing process. (myself included…)

Never throw anything out! Everything can be used, everything has merit. Pull it out of the drawer and find it.

Thanks for reading.

The Need For Collaboration

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I almost feel like this is more of a reminder to myself than something to share here on the blog. Collaboration has never been one of my strong suits. It is something I’ve always WANTED. Just not something that has ever come together easily.

Even at a young age I cringed at group projects. To put your faith in someone else to do as good a job as you would if you had full control of the entire thing? Not so easy for me. It wasn’t a choice back then. It is now.

Collaboration is necessary.

It really is. I love to write. That is my thing, my talent, my contribution to the world (or at least to the hard drive of my computer until something gets finished). Writing is where my focus is and where it should be.

Unfortunately, writing is only a piece of the process to putting my work out into the world. There are dozens of other areas necessary to turn a written piece into a published work ready to be shot out into the world.

Can you do it all on your own? Sure. Yeah. You could spend your time on each individual component of the process. Should you? That’s your call as well.

Time is fleeting.

I work during naps and at night with some extra hours on the weekends thrown in so I can actually hit the deadlines I create for myself. When I sit down with a goal in mind, I have to justify the time involved. If I have marketing to do for Signs of Portents I have to weigh the time necessary to do it well versus getting a chapter written for my next project. If it turns out that my time is better put toward writing, then I need to think of a different way to market. Do I use a service like Leadpages or Cart of Books? Or do I ask a friend for an assist?

This website took a long time to build and organize. I put it off until I had certain things in place, including the final version of Signs of Portents. But I also knew I couldn’t do it alone. I had friends that helped guide me in order to leave me time to continue editing my next project. I never did get a chance to give them a shout out so a big round of applause to Paul Sardella and Kelsey Dewey for their help in building  and critiquing the site. And also to Sara Frandina for her pointers along the way.

Building a team.

There are a massive amount of moving parts involved in putting out a book. From editing to cover design to formatting. All need to be addressed and tweaked and double checked. Then checked again by someone with eyes that aren’t completely fried from staring at the screen all day. (Or shaking out of their skull from too many cups of coffee.)

There was a time I thought I could do it all on my own. Get a template. Learn PhotoShop. Design a cover. Write a book description. Edit (even without a strong grasp on that essential tool called GRAMMAR).

That was fear. Fear of putting my work into the world. Fear that someone else added to the mix wouldn’t bring the enthusiasm and the drive necessary to make the book succeed.

Idiot.

If anything every time I’ve shared with someone, received feedback from someone or had a promotional piece created by someone it has rejuvenated my desire to create. They push me to be better and stronger and faster. Relying on someone else, forsaking a small portion of control, enhances the final product and I will be eternally grateful to all those surrounding me in this endeavor.

Write. Write. And then write some more.

“You should be writing.” My wife tells me this all the time. It is what I tell myself when I come to an impasse on making a decision about my time. My goal should be writing. Graphic design is never going to be my passion or my strong suit. Should I learn something about it? Definitely. Should I spend ten hours learning how to crop an image on PhotoShop that will never be used? Probably not.

Take advantage of people a whole lot smarter than you for things that aren’t in your wheelhouse. Collaboration is the key. Without my editor and formatter, Kristen Hamilton at Kristen Corrects, and my cover designer Kit Foster at Kit Foster Design my book would not have left the basement. Without services like Fiverr and Canva I would still be spending days on PhotoShop instead of working on my third book this year.

Know your limitations. Know your goals. Then build the team you need to succeed.

Then get back to writing. I need a new book to read.

Thanks for reading.

Beta-Readers – A Critical Step in the Process

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There are many different paths to take when writing, many different ways to create, to build. Just as there are an infinite number of ways to publish your work – traditionally, independently, exclusively with one retailer, only digitally, etc. Certain parts of the process are critical no matter how you go about bringing your voice into the world. Instances that should not be skipped, including the use of beta readers.

What are beta readers?

Beta reader tests your manuscript (by reading it), and tells you about the ‘bugs’ so you can improve its readability, its usefulness and even its saleability. – Belinda Pollard

Sounds pretty important, right? It really is. For as much as you believe in your book, as much blood, sweat and probably more blood (damn paper cuts) has been poured into creating this fantastic manuscript you’re going to miss things. Hopefully, it won’t be major structural issues. (Wait, they start in Cincinnati on Monday at eight in the morning and end up in Los Angeles just six hours later? Someone didn’t do so well at word problems…) But if there are, it is better to catch them now before that first proof comes back or, God forbid, that first negative review on Amazon.

beta readers

Reaching out to Beta Readers

Where in the process does this fit? That is your choice. For me, I prefer to ask a small circle of readers before I send the manuscript to my editor. I prefer a fully polished book to come back from my editor, something that I can read over a few more times, make minor tweaks and then submit for publication.

The most efficient time for reader feedback is prior to editing so you can pivot and readjust where necessary to make the work stronger. It also helps so your editor isn’t looking at the manuscript in its rawest form. There have been other eyeballs on the piece to call you out on any areas you phoned in or didn’t quite nail.

When I reach out to beta readers I present the work as I would to an agent (albeit a little more casually). I introduce the product and am upfront about the timeline involved. If I only have a month for feedback and need to make a pass through the work at the end then I can only give three weeks to my readers. They need to know that right away. No surprises here. I also ask them to respond as to whether or not they have the time (or inclination) to read the book at this point. That gives me a clear headcount and I am completely aware of how many e-mails I should be receiving by the deadline given.

Ask questions.

During my initial approach with my small circle of readers I also prepare a list of questions. I typically put this together while self-editing the project. These start with all encompassing queries about the piece as a whole. Did Soriya’s arc work for you? Was there sufficient change from start to finish? Did it make sense?

Then it turns more specific. Was there enough tension in the conversation between Mentor and Soriya in chapter nine? Did I lose you at all in chapter seven when the villain turned out to be a fox? Does it make sense for Peter Parker to perform a dance number in the middle of Spider-Man 3? (The answer to that last one is NO. NEVER. Sam Raimi needed a few more beta readers…)

Asking questions lets your beta readers know there are specific areas you are concerned about. Maybe you don’t know everything there is to know about the bureaucracy of a police department so you ask your group (hopefully with someone knowledgeable in this area) to look over the scenes relating to this topic closely to point out any omissions or inaccuracies that are too glaring and pull a reader from the story. (What do you mean Loren can’t shoot another cop in the middle of the station and get away with it? Balls!)

The Best Beta Readers

The very best people to ask to read your painstakingly created masterpiece are those that can add something to the work. A close friend that loves science fiction might be more in tune with the tropes of the genre to let you know when something doesn’t work in your space opera. Another fan of thrillers might pick up on your killer by chapter four instead of when they stand revealed in chapter sixty-four. That might be a problem.

You want different voices. And you want voices that aren’t only there to give you encouragement, though some would be nice. Writing is a very lonely gig so some warm, cuddly love for your words is always appreciated but not at the expense of the final product.

Beta readers need to push the manuscript and the writer to be better.

Looking for a few good readers.

If you are interested in becoming a beta reader on my next project, feel free to shoot me an e-mail. I am always looking for feedback.

Where to find Beta Readers? – Check out Goodreads for their Beta Reader Group.

Thanks for reading.

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