Hello and welcome back to episode four of The Rebel Author Podcast. I am so excited for this interview. When I was transcribing the interview, I found myself taking loads of notes. Kristina is an absolute editing whizz and shows you how to self-edit better.
In the intro, I talk about the two blog posts I’ve been pulling together on audio resources. The first one is a huge list of resources I’ve been bingeing my way through and I recommend for anyone trying to either grow their knowledge of audio creation or trying to produce DIY audiobooks.
Huge Audiobook Creation Resource List
The second one will take you step by step through the creation of my audio booth in my very very tiny office! That post will be published on 28th October 2019, if you’re reading this post after that date, you can use this link.
I also talk about Lindsay Buroker’s return to the world of podcasting. I used to love listening to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Marketing Podcast, but it stopped about six months ago. I’m delighted to tell you she’s back with Jo Lallo and Andrea Pearson, in their new podcast is called Six Figure Authors. Their tagline:
Six Figure Authors is the podcast that helps you take your writing career to the next level.
Listener Rebel of the Week was Matthew Goodall, you can find out more about Matthew on his Facebook and website.
If you’d like to get exclusive content and all the episodes early you can by joining me on Patreon.
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How To Self-Edit With Kristina Stanley
You can find out more about Kristina Stanley on her website, Twitter and Facebook.
If you want to find out more about her Story editing software, visit Fictionary here.
Find Kristina’s books here.
One of Kristina’s recommendations was The Artful Edit by Susan Bell, grab a copy from Amazon USA or Amazon UK.
Kristina discusses the top ten editing mistakes writers make and references a blog post she wrote which goes into much more detail. If you’d like to read the post, you can right here.
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Episode Transcript
Learn How to Self-Edit Like a Pro with @StanleyKMS #indieauthor #selfpublishing #IARTG #ASMRG #writingcommunity Share on X
Sacha Black
Hello and welcome back to The Rebel Author Podcast. Today I’m with Kristina Stanley. Kristina is a best selling author, story editor and the CEO of Fictionary. Fictionary helps writers tell powerful stories with breakthrough online software. That simplifies story editing. She’s the author of the Stone Mountain mystery series, Look the Other Way, and The Authors Guide to Selling Books to Non-Bookstores.
Kristina Stanley
Welcome. Hi, Sacha. It’s really great to be here. I thank you for having me. And you and I have talked a lot about editing and how to help writers edit books and stuff. So it’s kind of fun now to actually put it into a podcast.
Sacha Black
I know so. So for context for everybody listening, Kristina and I got hooked up by a mutual friend of ours and we have a great shared interest in editing, we’re both editors. And we’ve been working on secret things in the background. And we’ve never had a chance. Although we spoken kind of always about business and always about editing. This is really a chance for us to geek out over the nitty gritty of editing. And you can hear it you can hear the excitement in my voice. Yeah, so welcome. Thank you so much for giving me your time. I know how busy you are. But I would love it if you could tell everybody listening a little about your journey and your writing career and how you have ended up here.
Kristina Stanley
Sure, I would love to who doesn’t like talking about writing stories.
Sacha Black
Tell me your whole life story. Start with you were born…!
Kristina Stanley
I’m going to start with the interesting bit. I worked in a ski resort, which was really great. And I was the Director of Human Resources and of the security team. So I thought every single thing that happened In the ski resort, whether it was staff or a guest, and every crazy thing came across my desk. So I did this for six years. And then at the end of the six years, my husband and I quit, and we went sailing. And I had all the stories from living in the ski resort of things people actually do, and they’re all running around in my head. And I also loved that job, best job in my life. And so it kind of stuck with me. And while we were away, I needed something to really engage my brain and I so I thought, naively, I’m going to write a book. How hard can that be?
Sacha Black
Yeah, we all start there.
Kristina Stanley
Anyway, so I did and on that boat and I wrote three of my books, and I wrote in the murder mysteries genre because I love to read murder mysteries. That’sthe book when I go to I just want something to read that I can totally escape from and sit down and do just for myself. It’s that kind of work. So I thought, well, I should be writing that kind of book. And so it really just came from a desire to do something that challenged my brain and that was creative and that I was interested in but no real specific opening moment of why I wanted to become a writer.
Sacha Black
Two questions the first one, how long did you live on the boat? And the second one, I think is actually more of a point. So we get told to write what we know. And I think that’s such a mistake of advice. I think we should be writing what we love. So I love young adult fantasy or young adult fiction generally. And I’m that’s all I read so why would I not read that? I’m not a young adult. So therefore, how can I know young adults things now… But you know… I am in my head! That’s what I love. So yeah, I can totally see why you ended up writing that. Although I did kind of chuckle to myself because I don’t see mystery as escapism, I kind of see it as a puzzle. So, you know, my wife reads, psychological thrillers and crime books. And it’s just the whole time I can see her eyes glinting, she’s trying to work out the puzzle. I mean, that is obviously a form of escapism, but I love them for the for the for the puzzle. And but yes, tell me about the boat.
Kristina Stanley
Okay, just before that I want to comment on about writing what you know, and you’re the first person I talked to, that I have a true belief in what you said, right? what you love, you have to spend so many hours with your story again and again and again. And so it better be something you love and are passionate about. Because otherwise why would you spend those hours and the human brain can learn anything? Anybody can you just need to put in the time and effort and do your research and interview people or go experience something or whatever it is, but you can learn it you don’t have to know it but if you love it, writings a joy if you don’t, I’m not sure writings a joy as opposed to the desire to write something and create something, but not the actual joy of writing about it.
Sacha Black
Yeah, I just cannot agree with you more. Write what you know, is one of those bullshit pieces of advice that a myth just builds up around it. Like also you must write every day or you are a heathen. Like, what? No, no, you do not. You have to have a habit. But that doesn’t mean you have to write every day everybody. Yeah, don’t have to write every day.
Kristina Stanley
And if you have a job, you don’t go to your job every day.
Sacha Black
Exactly.
Kristina Stanley
And there’s laws around that because you can’t be productive and healthy. If you do that. It’s not possible. And in Canada, the Employment Standards laws are quite strong. And that’s a big thing about it is people need to get away and the same goes for writing so I’m a believer in that too. Yes, you have to be diligent and persistent and work hard. But in a way that’s healthy for you as a person and for your mind to make it creative.
Sacha Black
Absolutely. And they’re changing. I read an article the other day that said that changing the working time directive or something I think that’s what it’s cooled in Sweden say that they only work four days a week. I just think it’s fantastic. I mean, yes, don’t be self-employed because then you work seven days a week.
Kristina Stanley
Really good.
Sacha Black
The boat, the boat, the boat.
Kristina Stanley
I’ll just do that very quickly. I have a little story later. I want to relate to relate it writing but I’ve spent nine years living on a sailboat went out once for four and another five. So it’s obviously sailing is a passion of mine. And and we’ve gone twice because after being on a boat for a few years, you feel a great desire to be on land and connected and part of you know of the world. So you kind of we’ve gone in and out when you go, it’s terribly exciting. And after a few years goes by, okay, I’m not I’m kind of tired of making water every day. So yeah.
Sacha Black
I just think it’s so cool though. I like you know, that must just feed your mind though was such inspiration, and also no distractions that I’m surrounded by distractions. So I wanted to ask you about Fictionary because you are the CEO, founder, creator, mega mastermind of Fictionary. So for those listeners who haven’t heard of Fictionary, please do tell us a little bit about Fictionary where it came from, and what it can do for for writers.
Kristina Stanley
Okay, so it really is. You know, it’s something that we built for writers based on on my writing career. So when I had written the three books in the Stone Mountain series I had an editor and she not an editor, sorry, I had an agent. And my agent suggested that I take the third book and make it the first book. She was right. But imagine the amount of work it takes to do that. So I great, I built this spreadsheet that literally had my, you know, hundred books of writing advice that I’d read in it along with 86 columns of every piece of key story element I wanted to analyze against every scene and make sure I was consistent and was doing the right things. And I did that for every single scene and all three books. And I had this huge, massive network of spreadsheets and stuff. My husband one day looked over my shoulder was like, What are you doing? Oh, I’m writing like, spreadsheet like, oh, because blah, blah, blah. So he went, Oh, there’s an app for that. I’ll find you one. And he came back and went, guess what? There’s not there’s nothing that focuses on editing a story from the big picture. The way character plot and setting. It’s all about grammar and punctuation. There’s nothing and so his idea was, well, let’s build it, let’s take what you did, because you built it, and let’s put it into a piece of software that other writers can use. And so that was this start of it. You know, and then of course, we went away and and kind of spent two years just really designing it to figure out what would work and we interviewed hundreds of writers of how do you write how do you edit? What are your problem? What would you like? And on and on and on, it went until we came out with the prototype in January of 2018. And then we let it sit for six months and just talk to writers who were using it and got a ton of feedback on on what they liked and didn’t like and what they really, really need. And then we spent another long time adding those features into where we are today. And then from there. The other thing that happened us we had a whole bunch of editors. Editors, like you, who said to us, you know, it’s great for writers, can’t you build something for editors? So we thought, okay, sure we could. So then the whole process started over again with well, let’s interview editors. Can you figure out what they’re doing in their day to day editing life to help writers? And how could we put that into a piece of software? So we’ve ended up with Storyteller, which is for writers and Storycoach, which is for editors. And the goal of Storyteller is to help a writer do a big picture, story, edit, and we call it a story edit instead of structural, developmental, substantive, one because nobody knows what those terms mean. And they all mean something different depending on who you talk to. And we think story edit is really clear. you’re editing your story, not the words. And so, we went with that term to make it friendly, so it’s accessible to writers and they can understand what they’re trying to accomplish. In doing a story edit. And on the Storycoach side, what the goal is, is to help editors be the best in the world editors, so they don’t miss things. They don’t have their own areas that they tend to focus on that you get, you know, everybody gets in patterns. And that’s what they see. And they don’t see everything else. And so the goal was Storycoach is to help editor really do a comprehensive at it, but not take more time to do it. Because obviously, they have to run a business, they have to live off that business. And it’s hard. So the goal is to give the editors a tool to be better at their job in a really consistent, comprehensive way. And so we kind of, you know, we branched a little bit but we really discovered that writers and editors work together and they need to help each other. So that then they end up with that powerful story that we all talk about want.
Sacha Black
Amazing and so, let’s focus on the writer side for now,
Kristina Stanley
Yep, that’s great.
Sacha Black
When is the best time for a writer to use this software?
Kristina Stanley
So that ends up being a big question because we thought it was after they finished the first draft or almost a first draft so that they import their manuscript and Fictionary scans it and it draws the story arc and it draws out their word count per scene so they can look at pacing and it’s links all their characters to each scene so they can see who is where and when… You want to say something?
Sacha Black
I do, because one of the things that I really love about Fictionary is that it’s all very, very visual. So the you know, what, when, you know, when Kristina was saying, it shows you, it really shows you, you know, in pictures, it’s so cool.
Kristina Stanley
Yeah, it’s very visual, and it’s, and once you’ve written a draft, it’s really really hard and the advice that drives me crazy is put it in a drawer for two weeks or a month or whatever and then come back and reread it and edit it. That never worked for me. But what happens when writers import their manuscript, they see it in a completely different way. So it triggers their imagination. And then they get ideas and they can actually finish their story. It gives them a way to really look at different aspects between character plot and setting and go, Oh, I haven’t even thought about that. I need to go back to every scene and look at how do I enter a scene? And how do I get out of the scene? And by being structured, the writer can do it. And that comment we often get back was Holy cow, I was stuck on this. I couldn’t look at it anymore. And now I have all these ideas, and I’m going to finish it and I’m really excited and Yay. And so of course, I love hearing that because that’s the goal. So it takes away that thing of how do you actually see your own work because Fictionary shows it to you.
Sacha Black
And yeah, and I just think that’s magical, because that is the problem that, you know, we get so close to our manuscripts we live and breathe and sweat and pour into them and you know, there’s no possible way you can see the wood for the trees when you’ve been on a manuscript for so long, you know, and it’s kind of like a best critique partner, buddy, beta reader or you know, rolled into a piece of technological awesomeness. But like, okay, let’s talk about editing for for a minute.
Kristina Stanley
Sure.
Sacha Black
What are the most common mistakes that you see either through your own editing with the clients or through the things that have gone through Fictionary, through your testing, and through your software?
Kristina Stanley
So it’s funny that you asked that question because I’ve collected data on that for two years. On just to answer that, and and I have 10 things, and I’ll send you a link to a blog. I wrote about it if anyone’s interested in really hearing the detail behind it. I’ll go down in the order that they tend to happen. One is the word count doesn’t follow genre requirements. It’s surprising, but many authors don’t think about that when they start writing their story. And so they read a Young Adult book, that’s 153,000 words. So that’s three books, and you have a series and you don’t even know it. Right? Like, how glorious is that to find out when you go ha! Look at that. So yeah.
Sacha Black
Kerchinggggg
Kristina Stanley
Right. So quite often, a writer doesn’t understand the commercial aspect, not that you should write your book too commercial. But if you’re writing genre fiction, and you want to sell it to Young Adults, or a mystery novel you want to sell it should be around 80,000 words long. These are things you should know as a writer. And the other thing about word count is they don’t get pacing and how to apply word count per scene to control pacing of their story.
Sacha Black
So let me just come back on the couple of points there for anyone panicking and going Oh shit, you know, how do I work? You know what the genre accounts are? A) google it be if that doesn’t come up with an answer, because I’m sure people aren’t posting their book length, go into a bookstore, and have a look in your genre area. And look at how many pages on average your book has each page on a book has roughly 250 words, so you can work it out. Just Just go to a bookstore. And pacing. Tell me about pacing. Sorry.
Kristina Stanley
So pacing is an interesting one. Because
“If you’re trying to speed up to something, and your scenes are really, really long, that’s tiresome for the reader, and no matter what you put in there, they’re going to think it slowed down. And so an easy technique is to break your scenes up. So you you start with your bigger scene, you go smaller and smaller, and the book just seems to get faster and faster.”
If you’re trying to slow it down because you’re having an emotional reaction to some event for the character. You can write a longer scene. But you need to do that all in the context of the story arc. Because if you’re inciting incident, your plot points, your climax are too short, your reader is going to feel ripped off that you can’t have a super short climax scene that doesn’t feel satisfying. And if you have a super long scene, that’s not a main point of the story, the balances off and you can see that when you see your word count per scene graph and fixed there you go all look, most of my scenes around 1000 to 2000 words, and I have this one big one at 5000 it’s not a key scene. So what’s in that scene? And should I just cut it? Should I pieces of it? Should I break it into a scene but gives your mind a trigger? Go look at that. And then you can you can rewrite in your own way to make the story better.
Sacha Black
Yeah, and I think one of the magical things about pacing is that you have the power as the author to decide where… You you know, just because story structure, you know commands that you have certain scenes of certain lengths in certain places doesn’t mean that you have to do that.
“You can choose, like you were saying, if you want to have an emotional scene because you’re inserting a subplot or you’re adding an emotional reaction to something, you can do that. That’s okay. But you can play with structure and pacing and andthe longer something is, the more you draw your reader’s attention to that particular scene. And that effect also can go down into the paragraph and into the sentence level and into the metaphors and juxtaposition.”
The more you – excuse me – create detail and length, the more your reader’s attention is focused on that. I’m sorry, geek out about craft now, sorry!
Kristina Stanley
It’s so good. But, you know, and the thing is, that’s the whole thing about Fictionary is there’s a form around telling a powerful story. But it’s not a formula, right? It’s to trigger the writers mind to think about things, and then understand why they’re making a decision. And there’s lots of examples of books that don’t follow the story arc and and have been hugely successful and people love them. But that writer knew how to do that.
Sacha Black
Yeah.
Kristina Stanley
And they made a decision of why to do that. And the Harry Potter series is an excellent example. Because the first book, The climax happens earlier in the book that is normally recommended for a book. But when you look at the story arc across the structure of her series, it happens at exactly the right time to give enough time at the end of the book, to lead into the next story. So she clearly knew what she was doing there. We all know how successful she was. And it’s a great example of someone who did not follow the exact story argument in a book but it just works.
Sacha Black
So we have genre length and pace.
Kristina Stanley
Right? So that’s all word count. That’s one thing. The there are ten! But I will give you a link because the blog explains all of this in detail. And yes to more detail if there’s a particular subject somebody wants to read up on the information is there. So the next one is the point of view is confusing, or inconsistent, or unbalanced. And those are three areas of point of view. When a writer chooses a point of view there, they are making a promise to reader, that’s whose eyes they’re going to see the story from. And if the writer can’t or the reader can’t figure that out, it’s confusing. And then what happens is the reader doesn’t connect to the character. And so then they’re not motivated to read about the character and then down goes the book, right? Inconsistency I’ll trying to say this really short. Inconsistency is if you don’t change point of view regularly. So say in one person’s point of view, and then all of a sudden you jar into another for no particular reason. That’s inconsistent. If you write in multiple points of view, if there’s an unbalanced there in that, if it’s too long between your protagonist point of view, or a different character’s point of view, and their next point of view the readers forgotten who they are, and why do they have a point of view and again, it throws the reader off and they lose interest. So that’s number two. Number three is the point of view goal is not clear. And the reason this is super, super important. If your character doesn’t have a goal, and the reader doesn’t get what it is, what’s the character doing? It’s boring, and it’s harsh. I know that’s harsh to say it that way. But it’s boring. readers want to root for a character and they might want them to fail or they might want them to succeed. You don’t know but they want to root for them, and if they can’t figure out what they’re rooting for boring, boring, boring, boring, so it’s really important every scene, there’s a goal. And it could even be a desperate need for sleep but can’t get it because some emergency thing is happening. It doesn’t have to be an earth shattering goal. It has to be something that character really wants for some for whatever reason in the book, that’s number three. And then following right behind that, which is usually a lead in if there’s no clear goal is what’s the purpose of the scene? So why is it even in the book and we all get carried away as writers you get writing you’re right there’s an awesome scene that you loved and and then you read it later and like you have no idea what it has to do with plot so what why why did I put that in there? But it’s hard to see yourself but if you ask yourself a question for every single scene, what is the purpose of this scene? And if you can’t figure it out, go back and look at is the goal clear because quite often, the goal is not clear. The purpose isn’t clear in the two kind of roll around each other. And if the scene doesn’t have a purpose, put one in, cut it, or take the bits out of it that you need for your story and throw on a different scene that does have a purpose. Okay, sounds like we’re moving to do four.
“Lack of scene anchoring. So this one is an interesting thing. When a reader starts to scene, they need to know who’s got the point of view. They need to know where they are. And they need to know what the timing is. And if one of those isn’t clear. It’s a big risk because if the reader is thinking, well wait, when did this happen? Was this two hours or yesterday or, you know, in the future, or they don’t know when. Then they start thinking about that, and they’re out of your story. So very quickly, you want to anchor your readers in those three things.”
Sacha Black
Yeah, that’s one of the things that actually I see quite a lot with newer writers, because I think I think the reason it happens is because the story is so embedded in a writer’s mind that they you know accidentally for whatever reason take take for granted that the reader also knows exactly where the characters are in the in the writers head. Just on the last one, and whilst you absolutely must cut those scenes from your novel, don’t delete them because they make you a fantastic giveaways or freebies or extra insights in for your mailing list or for the back of the book or for giveaways or whatever. Yeah, so just a little tip though.
Kristina Stanley
And also if you write a series or a prequel or something you might use that scene.
Sacha Black
Yeah.
Kristina Stanley
Or completely different book you might be able to take that scene so absolutely, I forgot to say that is don’t ever delete it, name it something so you remember what it is? Yeah, but
Sacha Black
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Kristina Stanley
So the next one is entry and exit hooks for a scene. So we’ve all heard the advice, your first line has to hook the reader, you’ve got to get them right there. Yes, you do. And the first line of every scene has to hook the reader because you think of a person sitting in bed at night and they’re tired. And they flipped to the next scene to see do I want to read this or not. And the opening asked me to go off. Now I have to read them, really to go to bed really early, early, but I’m going to read this scene, because it’s got something right at the beginning, they put the book down and a week goes by them I never come back to so not that everybody’s going to read your book in one sitting, but you want them even if they put it down, you want them to go, Okay, I gotta come back to that book because the beginning of that scene… I need to know. And the same when you leave, or end the scene, you want the reader leaving with like, ‘oooh’ I just got to see what’s in the next scene and pull them through. And so you need to be careful that you don’t use the same like don’t use a cliffhanger every scene because it’s boring. You can’t do that. But you can, you know, give partial secrets away or some big revelation or there’s somebody question that comes up, there’s many ways to do it. But you need to leave the reader at the beginning and white just have to check.
Sacha Black
One of the things that I have seen on occasion is that writers think they’re creating a cliffhanger, but they’re actually telling the reader what happens next. So, you know, but never knew such and such was coming. No, actually, you need to end the chapter, the very sentence before. So you absolutely must not tell the reader what is coming. The point is, is to leave the question in their mind that they that they must have answered because that’s what what keeps them up until three o’clock in the morning. You know, they love to hate that feeling of having to read on.
Kristina Stanley
That is so true. The next one is not enough tension in every scene. And that links back to the purpose of the scene – if there isn’t tension. And it doesn’t have to be huge drama attention, it doesn’t have to be conflict and a flight or fight but there needs to be something that the reader’s a little bit on edge about and thinking about and worried about. If your scene lacks tension, you need to add it in, take some bits out or cut it all together with the same caveat of don’t throw it away.
Sacha Black
Yeah, absolutely.
Kristina Stanley
And and then backstory having too much backstory too early. So, you know, there I like to link that to, so you go to a party, and you meet somebody new, and they go, “Hey, I was born in and then I and then I…” and they tell you or they tell your whole story of their day about picking up dry cleaning or something and you’re thinking what? I know I don’t want to know that. But if you meet them at a party And then go, “Oh, man, I totaled my car today.” They’re starting in media res. You go, oh, really what happened? Interesting, or, you know, I sold my first book today, or something that’s really relevant and exciting that you want to talk to them about. And a book is the same way that the reader does not need to know everything about a character. And they certainly don’t need to know all of the important bits early on. It’s better if there’s a bit of mystery in there that you know, somebody is an orphan. And then there’s a little hint about the way the parents died, but not how they died or when they died or anything, just a hint. So then you worry about the character of she’s 12 years old and doesn’t have parents and but you have no idea what happened. No backstory there, just enough to entice the reader to be curious.
Sacha Black
Yeah, and I think the thing here for me personally, is that I love to know a lot of backstory about my characters that my readers don’t need to know. And that’s okay. Because that’s, that’s me building the characters in the background. The thing that I take from backstory is that it gives me their reason why they behave the way they behave. And right. That’s the important bit to put into my stories.
Kristina Stanley
Yeah. Yeah. And that’s the trick. Right? Right. Exactly what you said there when you’re looking at every piece of backstory in the book you want to look at is it helping the story move forward? Is it providing motivation? Does it explain at some weird behavior they had? And if it doesn’t do anything for the story, they don’t need to know the you know, a boy grew up with a cat.
Sacha Black
Yeah, yeah,
Kristina Stanley
They really don’t. It’s got if it’s nothing, even though it’s a nice little tidbit about someone who made it makes them feel like I’m a nice person and things, backstory is one of those things that I’m pretty harsh at cutting when I’m editing. I don’t need to know it. I don’t need to know it. If you if you cross all this out loving the story.
Sacha Black
Yeah. Brutal. But fair!
Kristina Stanley
You know, if we as editors don’t share our thoughts with the writer, what’s the point of having an editor?
Sacha Black
Yeah. Totally.
Kristina Stanley
You also have to show what’s great about the book, and what’s working for the writer where their strengths are, of course, so they know what what they are good at, because that’s hard to see too as a writer, but you can’t shy away from giving, you know, direct and honest feedback. So and then the last thing I see which is the hardest one is the story arc, and writers not understanding what the key points are, and to have the key points, not even the placement of the key points but but to have an inciting incident something that shakes up the protagonist’s world and changes things. You know, a reader needs that every story has one you know, once you start looking at stories and analyzing them, there is something that starts the story and drives it forward. So that’s the last one. And it’s hard because it takes a long time. And that’s why we do that in Fictionary that we we draw, here’s what’s recommended. And here’s what you’re actually doing. And so then the reader can think about, well, where’s my inciting incident? Do I have one and I have it here, but it’s way too late. Or, you know, it’s too short or it’s not quite working, whatever, but it gives them a chance to actually analyze it and how to look.
Sacha Black
Yeah, I think lots of authors get intimidated by the the story arc or the concept of the story arc. And actually, most writers innately feel their way through a story arc an where there are mistakes, it is literally about structuring the story. All of the points generally are there. And obviously some people not but, you know, generally speaking because we have been told stories since we were children, one of the first things children understand when it comes to stories is they have a beginning a middle and an end. My five year old knows that he knows story arc because he knows the stories have a beginning a middle and end. And obviously it gets more and more complicated as we as we create these stories. But a story arc is a map. That’s all. It shows you the beginning the end and how you get to the end of the story.
Kristina Stanley
That’s right, that’s right. Yeah, so there’s my top 10
Sacha Black
Amazing I literally, you know, I’m gonna have to go back and listen to this and write loads of notes because there was so many good points in here. And what’s your pet hate? Go on spill the goss. Every editor I know has a thing that they that they hate the most mind. Hands up minds repetition. I really hate repetition in a novel. But what’s yours?
Kristina Stanley
Well, here’s the thing. When I’m editing, I don’t have a pet hate. What I see that I look at are the writers pet issues. It’s different, right? It’s a different thing. One writer might just have a head hopping problem. But everything else is great, right? So I tend to focus that on when I’m editing. But as a reader, my pet hates is when I can clearly see that the writer has not put the work in to properly edit their book, and that you think there’s actually a good story in here, but nobody took the time to really figure out the tightness of that story and do it properly. And so that drives me crazy as a reader and I don’t really want to invest my time. And sometimes it’s such a good story. I feel like writing the author saying, Okay, if you did the following things, this would be a great story, but you know, I would never do that. I don’t like reading a book that I don’t feel the author has put enough hard work into it.
Sacha Black
That is a great segue into my next question. What? So talk to… Actually talk to new and seasoned writers. What do you think are the one or two things that they can do during their self-edit to really improve their manuscript? And obviously, each writer is different, but but pluck two from the air for me.
Kristina Stanley
Okay. So one is you need to have a structure of doing it. And whether it’s on a whiteboard, whether it’s using my lovely product Fictionary, whether it’s in spreadsheets, like I did with my first books, you need an organized way to review your manuscript because just keep just rereading, and it’s going to waste so much time. Right. And, and so I think every writer needs whatever works for them some comprehensive and structured, objective way of reviewing their own work. Which leads into the other important thing of I like to tell writers, when you’re working with an editor, you need to remember you’re the artist there, the editor is there to help you. But it’s your voice. It’s your story. And you get to decide, unless, of course, you’re working for a publisher, and they dictate it. But to in today’s world, most authors get to decide what they’re putting in. And so two things on that, you need to know your stuff when you’re working with an editor. So you need to basically understand what a story edit is, copy editing, proofreading, depending on the level you’re working with, because if you have a bad editor, and you don’t know that you don’t know what advice to take from them, and it’s hard to know, if you have a good or bad editor, you’d think the person’s an expert, but, you know, maybe maybe their dog died that week, and they weren’t paying attention to your book or you just don’t know. And so, as a writer, I think as the writers responsibility to truly understand the craft behind writing and editing. Then when you use an editor, you get the most out of them because what you deliver to them as a better story, if you understand that, and then they’re working on high level issues and you’re not paying them to work on things you could have learnt yourselves, but it really ensures that when your book goes out, it’s going to be a better book.
Sacha Black
No, and you are on fire because that segues into my next question.
Kristina Stanley
Okay.
Sacha Black
Um, quick any quick tips or tricks for a writer to lower their editing costs?
Kristina Stanley
Yes. Okay, one. Don’t ever pay for a copy editor if you haven’t done a structural edit first. So if you haven’t done your story edit either yourself or paid an editor to do it. You’re wasting your money. Because if you come back later, and do a story edit your whole story changes you could cut scenes, write whole new scene, reorder scenes, and then your copy at it has been a complete waste of money. So don’t don’t don’t do a copyedit too soon. And it’s interesting because I have lots of writers asked me this, I just want to copy at it and I think, no you don’t. You really don’t you know, or can you? Can you story at it and copy at it at the same time? No. Any editor says doing your disservice because you’re going to go away and rewrite a whole bunch of sec sections. And so you’ve just wasted all that time and money on something you’re going to redo. So that’s my biggest Please don’t do.
Sacha Black
Yeah, yeah. And I think that for anyone who hasn’t yet paid for an edit, please understand that a developmental edit is far more expensive than your line edits or your proofread. And the reason for that is because the quantity of feedback that you will get for a story structural developmental edit, is enormous. And yes, that is daunting and scary. But do you want the best story or not? Whereas somebody who’s doing kind of line edits, they are proofing fact checking and making sure your commas and your apostrophes are in the right place. It is very different. Make sure you check which one you are really after. Okay, book recommendations?
Kristina Stanley
Okay, so I’ll just I’m going to give you the one of my favorites that I’m reading right now, which is called The Artful Edit – On the Practice of Editing Yourself. It’s written by Susan Bell, it came out in around 2007, maybe, but it’s an excellent, excellent book on how to self-edit, and really pick up some knowledge behind the craft of self-editing so that you can put the best creative work from that so I just reading it right now, and it’s a fabulous book on, really, in an interesting and fun way explaining what it means to be a self-editor.
Sacha Black
Amazing, and I will make sure that links to that book are in the show notes.
Kristina Stanley
Excellent.
Sacha Black
Now, this podcast is called The Rebel Author Podcast. So tell me about a time you unleashed your inner rebel.
Kristina Stanley
Okay, that’s a hard question. I’m going to link that back to sailing. So my husband and I were invited to go on a two week sailing trip to Thailand with some friends who charted some sailing boats. But okay, sure, whatever. That sounds nice. So we went and when we were there, we spotted a boat from California. We’re in Thailand, right? You think What the heck? What are those people doing here? And my husband says well they’re cruisers. And I was like oh, what’s a cruiser? Well, it’s people who live on a sailboat and sail around the world. I wanna do that. How come we’re not doing that? We should do that. So we were working as expats in Germany in very lucrative jobs and we quit. And our friends thought we were nuts. Like, what the heck are you doing? And we just decided, you know what, we’re going to go and do this. So we figured it out. We saved every penny we had and flew back to Canada and bought a boat and left and you know, the thing for me part of the reason we did it, I have this fear of missing out. And that comes from I don’t want to live my life and at the end, look back and go, huh, that was boring. That frightens me more than anything else. I mean, obviously not if you’re looking at life and death situation, but you know, in general life thought that, you know, we were considered so crazy that a year after we came back for a visit someone forwarded me an email from some friends. And email was, well I saw the Stanley’s and they’re both alive and well. What is it that? Of course we’re alive and well. And the gossip amongst our friends was: well if they quit those jobs to go sailing one of them must be dying because why else would you do that? Woah, wait a minute, there’s nothing wrong with us. Just that maybe that little inner rebel is coming out that we wanted to do something really different and exciting and yeah it was kind of freaky and scary and you know especially the first year where you know nothing about anything sailing even though you think you do but really you don’t. Just like writing a book in that he knew he knew now would you go back and write a book? If we knew what we knew at the end, at the end of that first year would we have started mmm I’m not sure.
Sacha Black
Like a definitely like having kids as well. No one tells you the real truth. I love it. I love that your friends thought that as well. I think that’s absolutely fucking hilarious.
Kristina Stanley
But no one asked us are you okay?
Sacha Black
Yeah, all too terrified of the answer. So where did you did you literally circumnavigate the globe? Or?
Kristina Stanley
No, we bought a boat in Toronto, Canada. And we sailed it down the east coast of Florida all the way to Aruba and back. And that took us four years because we’re really slow. And what we found was that you go, you find places and you think, oh, we’ll just stay for six months. Yeah, you know, and Aruba, we stayed for a year we left our anchor. It was really funny and it was so great, that we just stayed and then after year we were like well our visas are up, I guess we should go!
Sacha Black
Just out of sheer curiosity, did you work on the boat as well? like did you have to keep jobs whilst you were…
Kristina Stanley
No. You know, from the moment that we were in Thailand to the day we bought our boat was about three years. And during that three years, we didn’t spend money. We saved every penny. So no new furniture, very few new clothes, no toys no like… Our motto was, if it’s not going on the boat, we’re not buying it. And so we went on this super serious focus of we want that thing over there and to get it. And then you know, four years goes by and hey, okay, so we got to go back and go to work. And that’s what I went toward the ski resort.
Sacha Black
Yeah. But it is amazing what you can achieve, like financially, you know, and actually, there’s going to be a podcast. Yeah, exactly. And that in a couple of weeks that will actually I don’t know the scheduling. But there is a podcast booked in talking about money matters for writers who actually want to quit their jobs and do this because it is more than achievable. But that is podcast for another day. So Tell listeners where they can find out more about you your books and Fictionary.
Kristina Stanley
Sure. Okay, so, um, my books are a little interesting. So I’ll get that into a second. So Fictionary is just Fictionary.co and our whole website is there. And I do want to say within the next month, we’re going to have a brand new website and app look. So we’re just about to launch in a whole modern, beautiful look so.
Sacha Black
I think when this goes live, that will also be live. So
Kristina Stanley
Oh good. That’s exciting. That’s perfect. So yeah, so it’s Fictionary dot CO. And under journal, you can find many, many blogs on how to edit your own books and you can read your heart’s content. For my books. It’s Kristinastanley.com. And, and I was very lucky, I had a Canadian publisher. And after we built the Fictionary, I wanted to take my books down and run them through Fictionary. And so I got my rights back and not for… I have a German publisher and so that Staying in German because, you know, it’s in German, so off it goes. My Canadian publisher was very gracious and allowed that and so I’ve rewritten Descent based on what I know today and republished it in July. Blaze should come out in another couple of months, and then I’ll follow it with Avalanche and Look the Other Way. And I, you know, I really wanted to, you know, as they say, put my money where my mouth is, and go, okay, what can I do with this story, knowing what I know now, and with my own tools, rewrite it and do it myself. And so that’s what I’ve done. And I have seen pretty pleased with Descent and how it turned out. And Blaze, this is next up,
Sacha Black
And I will also make sure that there are links to those in the show notes as well.
Kristina Stanley
Excellent.
Sacha Black
So thank you very much, Kristina. And thank you to everybody listening. If you would like to support the show, and get early access to the episodes you can support us on www.patreon.com/SachaBlack. That’s Sacha with a C SACHA. I’m Sacha Black. You were listening to Kristina Stanley and this was The Rebel Author Podcast.
What tips and tricks do you guys use in your self-edit?
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