I finished my first novel and was so thrilled to hold it in my hand. Then someone pointed out what was one of the first book mistakes.
In this time of self publishing, these first book mistakes are common. Traditional publishers pounce on these and have the author rewrite, edit, rewrite to get most of these out. Indie authors need to do this on their own.
An Easy Mistake
As I edit “Exploring the Ozark Hills”, I see the same easy mistake I made in “Broken Promises. It’s easy to fix, once you notice it.
Open a reading book and look at the margins. In a regular print book the left and right margins are even all the way down the page. This is called justified.
When you write, the default setting is for left justified so the left margin is even. The right margin is ragged. This is fine for eBooks, but not print books.
The fix is to select all and click on justified. However, the fix doesn’t stop here as some lines will be stretched out and look funny. A bit of word editing fixes this.
Widow Lines
When I write, I don’t create chapters. There may be chapter headings, but the entire manuscript is one long document.
After the draft is finished, edited, rewritten and edited again, I break it into chapters to format it to be printed. In addition, I set the manuscript size, margins, gutter, page numbers etc. I will use in the final book.
Looking over this draft, I check the ends of chapters for widow lines. These are the single or two lines left at the top of the final chapter page. They are a waste of a page and annoying to the reader.
The fix is simple, but time consuming. I look back through the chapter for paragraphs ending in one or two words. Some rewriting can shorten the paragraph that much and reduce the chapter by a line. No more widow lines.
Serious Mistake
How good is your grammar and spelling? Nothing turns a reader off faster than several of these mistakes on a page.
There are lots of fixes for these. Spell check and grammar check are places to start, but they don’t spot all of them. That takes critical reading of the draft by you or someone who has better skills than you do or both.
First Book Mistakes Gone
Writing a novel is the easy part. It can be fun. But taking the time to find those problems and fixing them is worth it. The result is a first or second or fifth book you can be proud to claim authorship of.
