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What does a final draft look like?
December 5, 2024Artists often remark that the skill of a good artist is knowing when you are done. The same applies to a book. Regardless of whether it is a novel or a work of non-fiction, knowing when a manuscript is done is part of the skill of both good writing and editing. In both cases it can be tempting to keep tweaking the language – maybe changing the name of a character or updating the statistics, but at some stage you need to say, ‘I am done.’
Equally, at what point is a book ready for editing?
If it is your first book or you are finding it hard to keep on track, having an editor involved from the beginning can be useful. Some editors will offer developmental editing or coaching and they can help you keep on track or make sure your writing accurately reflects what you want to say. There is nothing worse than finishing what you hope is the last draft of your 80,000-word novel only to realise it would have been better written in a different point of view, or one of the key characters is very flat and boring so needs re-writing.
It happens.
Developmental editing means you are spending more time working with your editor so you should develop a strong working relationship with them. They will have a very clear understanding of what you are capable of as a writer and the book you are working on. The extra cost of working with a highly experienced editor should be recouped by reducing the amount of time it takes to write your book and in the quality of your writing (and hopefully increased sales as a result). Any misspellings or incorrect use of grammar are usually picked up in the process so your manuscript will spend less time being copy-edited and proofread.
If you are writing in a language other than your mother tongue, it is worth asking a language teacher to look over your work, or at least someone who is proficient in the language you have written in. They can help explain why some of your word choices may need to be amended. While an editor’s role is to review your language use, their primary focus is on the efficiency of that language to deliver the story or information you are conveying. If they struggle to understand what you are trying to say because your command of that language is not strong it is frustrating and very time consuming for the editor. As a result, you may not get the best edit, or it will cost you a great deal of money in editing. Why not workshop your manuscript first with a writing group or in a language class?
Read your final draft out loud. It may not be a screenplay but when we read aloud our brain is not filling in the gaps that sometimes happens when you read in your head. Reading your work aloud or having someone read it to you (think AI) may help you pick up where you can improve the clarity of your language or where something is missing in your story. Maybe you have written a manual; listening to instructions often picks up a missing step in a process. It helps!
When you have typed what you hope is the last word, put the manuscript away for a few days. Forget about it for a day or two, maybe even a week or more. Then come back with fresh eyes. You may find you are more critical of what you have written and start crafting an even better draft. You may even surprise yourself and think, Hey, this is good!
It is also essential to ask someone else to read it, but preferably not one of your friends. They are usually reluctant to be too critical, you are their friend and that friendship will always take precedence over being your critic. Don’t be shy! You are writing a book – people will read it someday. Reach out to your network. Alternatively, you could ask your local Writer’s Centre, (Writers’ Victoria, Writing NSW, TasWriters, etc.) will help you, they can also connect you with a writers’ group or Beta Readers.
Once you have finished your final draft there are a number of additional steps that need to happen before you can add your book to your bookshelf.
After editing has been completed your manuscript needs to be typeset, usually using InDesign. This is graphic design software and not only lays out the text in a way that is unique to a book and allows for the insertion of design elements such as graphics or photos. The cover is also designed in InDesign as well.
To allow for smooth typesetting it is useful to have an idea of what you want your book to look like. However, your final draft should contain text only, any images to be inserted need to be in a separate file with the insertion point indicated in the manuscript and cross referenced in the name of the image. It is okay to give your typesetter a copy of what you are hoping the final design will look like. As with editing, if you want a professional outcome, typesetting and design are specialised skills, you will need help.
Your final draft may be your third draft, it may even be your twentieth, you will know when you have come to the point when you are just procrastinating.
Hopefully you will know when you are done – it should be the best you think it can be.
Amanda McMahon
Monday Intern
Amanda McMahon Editing
Show, Don’t Tell
November 27, 2024My first thought is that what I’m about to say is a rather universal experience, or at least universal for those of us who cling so tightly to the identity of “writer”. Maybe I’m hoping the experience is universal so I feel less alone in my white-knuckled grip.
I think sometimes I’m haunted by the image of a blank page. I read a really good line in a book, I stare off into the distance like some character in a single-camera mockumentary who’s just heard something ridiculous or foreshadowing, I picture what it would be like to have written something that invokes such feeling. I see myself opening a fresh Word document on my laptop, I feel the potential, I get butterflies thinking of marring the white space with Calibri letters.
I flick my eyes back to the book in my hands and keep reading.
The blinking cursor on the page alerting me of where to begin, telling me to just start, sometimes feels like the ever-present proverbial devil and angel weighing on me, whether they’re clipping my wings or stabilising my feet on the ground depends on the day. The consistent flashing feels a bit like desperation, like the blank space’s need to have words etched across it rivals my unflinching need to do the etching.
I see the white page on days when there’s nothing to watch on any of the 90 streaming services I pay for just in case, when none of those books on my to-read shelf are talking to me. I swear to God there are times I can hear it whispering, having outsourced its convincing to those aforementioned celestial shoulder-dwelling creatures.
In some ways, there are worse things to be haunted by than the presence of your yearning dressed up as a cartoon ghost, if that white sheet is actually just a blank page. A constant reminder of your capacity to construct worlds and establish character dynamics and depict humanity feels somewhat freeing, feels like a gentle shove in the direction of doing something just because, just because you can, just because you love it. At the very least, it brings a whole new meaning to ghostwriter.
The irony of writing about how hard I find it to write, to take the words from my head and let them take up space, to put words to paper, is not lost on me. Is writing this the gateway I’ve been searching for, the avenue that is set to break through the dam walls that are preventing me from writing? If I keep writing about not writing, that still counts, right?
Maybe the next step is to change the language. Less “I want to be a writer”, more “I want to write”. Maybe the change really is show, don’t tell, and the answer has been right in front of me the whole time.
Maybe next time I write to you, I’ll have something better to say than to wax poetic about the difficulty level of convincing myself to write.
Maybe I’ll just write.
Sheridan Harris
Editing Intern
Writer Beware
November 19, 2024Recently, Ballarat-based self-publisher, Shawline Publishing, collapsed amid rumours of impropriety. Various news outlets, such as the Sydney Morning Herald, the ABC, and the Ballarat Courier, have written stories about it.
It’s a cautionary tale about this side of the industry – that predators are lurking, just waiting to take advantage of prospective authors.
As writers, we share the same dream: we love writing, we have a passion for telling our stories, and we’d be ecstatic if we could get our book into the world.
Unfortunately, at this stage, inexperienced authors who don’t know much about the industry, who are naturally trusting, expect guidance, and freely invest trust, are vulnerable.
This is the briefest overview of how the industry works:
- Traditional publishing: a publisher signs you to a contract. They oversee production and pay for all of it, but get the bulk of the return. You’d typically get about 7% – 10% (per book), and possibly an advance (usually a small sum in Australia). For many, being published traditionally comes with validation and marquee.
- Self-publishing: you pay for all of it and hire an author-service provider to oversee production for the services you need. While self-publishing was heavily stigmatised once upon a time, many inexperienced and experienced authors alike are now pursuing it as a viable alternative.
- Partnership publishing: like self-publishing, but the publisher claims to go 50/50 with you on expenses and royalties. You think, Well, 50% is much better than 7% – what a great deal! It’s doubtful partnership publishers invest a single cent into expenses.
Busybird’s mother hen, Blaise, used to say if you’re paying even just one dollar for publishing, you’re self-publishing, so you should keep 100% of the royalties, and keep 100% of the rights.
She was right.
There are legitimate stakeholders who may cut into your pie later – like distributors or bookstores – but as far as the publishing component goes, if you’re paying, you should keep EVERYTHING.
If the self-publisher is making any claims on royalties and/or rights, run.
Run as fast as you can.
We’ve heard horror stories about various self-publishers from authors who’ve been burned.
The thing is many of these places will talk a good game. They’ll tell you they love your work, that the market needs a book like yours, and that your book will be successful.
Let’s break this down:
- Do they love your work? Well, maybe. But ask salient questions to ensure they’ve read it. Lots of these people will talk in generalities. We had one author come to us two years ago to ask about publishing. We read several chapters and gave him an honest assessment. Another self-publisher waxed lyrical about it, so he went with them. Take a guess who that was.
- The market needs a book like yours. It might, if they’re reading the market correctly. But that doesn’t guarantee sales. Think about just how many books are published – go look in a bookstore, or at an online retailer. Somebody thought the market needed every one of those books. Now, how many of those books would be blowout successful? A handful?
- Your book will be successful. Nobody can guarantee this. The market’s full of books that people thought would be successful, but which sold moderately, under-performed, or outright bombed, or which might’ve went through numerous rejections (e.g. twelve publishers rejected Harry Potter), only to be successful later. It shows you how fallible these evaluations are.
There’s no formula to this. If there was, big multinational publishers with huge marketing teams would orchestrate success after success after success, but they don’t.
They can’t.
We’re at the whim of so many things we have no control over, such as trends, tastes, and timing. You might write a great book about werewolves, but unfortunately something else with werewolves came out a month earlier, so the market’s satiated. Or you might have a campy spy thriller, but a real war has shifted consumer appetites.
Again, as Blaise would say, treat your writing career as a business. There are shysters just looking to take advantage of you. Ask questions. Any legitimate author-service provider will be happy to answer them. The others? They’ll talk slick, and it might sound great superficially, but there won’t be much substance. As much as we love flattery and praise, this is the time to shelve ego and to think ruthlessly.
You deserve the best. Don’t let somebody take that away from you.
We’re also always happy to answer questions.
My 20-Year Writing Journey
September 17, 2024As cliché as it sounds coming from a publishing intern, I have always loved reading and writing. My dad loves to say that I began to speak ‘too early’, but I just see this as a part of my clearly innate need to get my stories out there. I spent the bulk of kindergarten taking coloured paper from the art table, stapling it together with lined paper, and creating my very own books. I loved reading these out to my family, workshopping my plots and characters in real time.
Later on, I was graced with the wonders of the digital world. I could use our family computer to type out words faster than I could think of them, and then polish it up with a Word template suited to whatever I wanted. I think I just about ran our house clean out of printer ink!
I created my own magazines, book series, comic strips, and diaries. My primary school friends were subjected to consistent emails about my current stories – but luckily for me, they would just ask for constant updates back.
Looking back now, I can see that my writing during this time was very heavily inspired by my life. Although I thought that I’d mastered the art of fiction, I now know that I was incredibly far from it. I used to base every character off a friend – with their real name and everything! – and have the plot revolve around whatever I was dealing with at the time. This was anything from school and friendships to the incessant need for a treehouse in our backyard. The latter ended up becoming a five-part series, featuring a man with my dad’s name growing a giant head of broccoli for his daughter to live inside – not much room for interpretation there!
Although I can’t ignore the fact that my writing still revolves around my life and experiences, my adolescence and university course have taught me that this doesn’t strictly have to be expressed as children’s fiction. I’ve moved on from slightly tweaking my diary entries and slapping them into a Word doc as a chapter book, and have even grown to understand the importance of subtlety.
However, this shift in my writing has also led me to find that creative writing isn’t the only end goal. I would often spend twice as long poring over my written words to tweak it to perfection before I realised that this part of the process was actually just as important – and not some sort of perfectionism-induced procrastination! Half of a story’s impact is lost if it doesn’t read right, and I could easily spend days going over my own work to find that flow.
Entering my twenties and working through my communications degree is what brought me to Busybird. I felt incredibly stressed during the application and interview process, but quickly found that it was pointless after I was asked who was singing the song playing over the speakers. As an 80s music fanatic myself, I was more than happy to gush about my love for George Michael, especially after finding out that these quizzes would be a frequent part of the internship.
However, I have since found out that my 80s movie knowledge isn’t quite as up to scratch – cue my forced viewing of Electric Dreams!
I’ve loved getting to see where my degree (and passions) could actually take me, not just as an outline on a unit syllabus. I’ve found it so interesting to see what real people write about, and I’ve felt reassured to have had so many memoirs come across my desk.
Above all, I love the community here. Les and Kev are great with balancing teaching with non-work-related conversations, so I feel less like a uni student and more like a real part of the team. I get to meet so many new faces every week, especially at the open mic nights. I’ve heard lots of life stories presented in so many different ways, and I can already see that this alone has impacted my content and approach to writing. I (finally!) feel myself coming out of my school-induced writer’s block, where not everything needs to hit certain criteria for a grade. The beauty of writing is the fact that it is an art form, not just a vessel for communication.
Though I am still in my very early adulthood, I feel that Busybird has been the best welcome into the industry. Not only do I have a new set of dot points to add to my résumé, but I also have a stash of memories and pointers to put keep under my belt. I know that my kindergarten self (though stuck trying to write a coherent sentence on paper) would be very happy.
Abby Harvey
Editing intern
Interview Anxiety
September 5, 2024
I wore earrings for the first time in months. I put on my Shakespeare pin, in case I needed to prove my dedication to writing. I scheduled therapy directly before. I edited my resume into a farrago of unpleasant coffee jobs and small debating awards, determined to use passion and youth to my advantage. I parked in a side street, lest I steal a more deserving car’s space.
A tempest of nerves rattled my skull. I always trembled, at least a little. In orchestra we called it ‘shaky bow’: the moment your thumb slipped, your lip quivered, and the conductor’s reprimanding eye found yours.
I’d sold my violin years ago, but the day I walked into Busybird I had the worst shaky bow of my life. I marched into the office on semi-steady feet, overstimulated, ready to face the worst.
I was immediately attacked by a golden labrador.
Oscar’s willingness to give love to a stranger threw me. The vibrant orange and pale blue, the faded prayer flags and unmistakable whiff of coffee, it all set me at ease. I’d forgotten, somehow, that writers understood anxiety more than anyone else. As Oscar nuzzled my hand, I realised this was not a test. It was ‘hello’.
I used what little knowledge I had, admitted when I was lost (what the hell was Ingramspark?), and left the same way I came. I’m still haunted by the typo I missed in the copyediting exercise, but I was never berated for the misstep. I saw, for the first time, a life in publishing which was not predicated on torturous exertion.
When my mum asked me how ‘Busybee’ went, I grinned with all my teeth and told her it was fine.
I am grateful for open mic nights, opportunities to typeset, know-how which would’ve otherwise eluded me. Les remains appalled at my incomplete knowledge of music history, Kev continues to teach me the value of design, and the other interns have made me feel less alone in the industry.
At her Melbourne signing for Yellowface, Rebecca Kuang said, ‘We all have to link elbows and make room for each other.’ The publishing industry specifically pushes us to compete, none of us are immune to ambition, but the idealist in me has convinced the cynic we can make space for revelry in writing.
Of course, I still get shaky bow. It means I care deeply about my craft.
It is not a weakness to pat the fiendish dog.
Scout Manuel
Wednesday Intern