Playing in Someone Else's Sandbox: The Revision Process

[dragonbat2006]

Getting Ready to Post

You’ve written your story. While some writers might choose to immediately post it online, or—if the canon is in the public domain—rush it off to a publisher, a wiser course of action would be to hold off. Before posting your story, there are a few steps that you should take.

1. Sleep on it.


2. Spell check and grammar check.


3. Reread.


4. Get at least one other set of eyes to review it.


5. Reread again.


6. Make sure that all tags, warnings, and disclaimers have been added. If you are citing song lyrics or referencing canon dialogue, ensure that all sources are properly attributed.


7. Post to archives that allow revision.


8. Reread one final time.


9. If you have any fan-fiction archives on your list that do not give you the option to make edits after posting, post there now.

Sleeping on it

No matter how hard you’ve worked, and no matter how well-written you think your story is, once you’ve finished writing it, step away. Go to sleep, take a walk, read a book, watch TV. Do something that has nothing to do with your story. Leave it alone for a few hours, or even a few days. Then reread. Don’t scrutinize it too closely, just pick it up, pretend it’s somebody else’s work, and start reading.

Usually, something will jump out at you. Maybe you forgot to close quotation marks or parentheses. Maybe you realize that you accidentally left out a word, and now you have a sentence that means the exact opposite of what you meant to convey. Don’t go over it with a fine-tooth comb. Just read and see what you can see.

Spell check and grammar check

If you haven’t run them before, now is the time.

Spell check isn’t going to catch everything, and it will sometimes fail to recognize character names and canon terminology. It is, however, one of the easiest ways to catch errors.

A word of caution with regard to grammar checks: some word processing tools do not like the passive voice or sentence fragments. They also take exception to reflexive pronouns. Keep in mind that in informal writing, use of all three may be needed. In other words, spell check and grammar check are helpful, but not infallible. And neither is a substitute for a good beta-reader.

Reread

See whether you can spot something you missed the first time around.

Get another pair of eyes to review the story

Beta-readers, or “betas” read over your fan-fiction before you publish it. Sometimes they are friends or family members. They may be fans, or people you connected with on a forum or message board. They may have one or more area of expertise, including—but not limited to:

• Spelling, punctuation and grammar (SPaG)


• Canon details


• Subject-specific expertise (examples: medicine, law, police procedures, martial arts)

If you acquire a beta who excels at all three, you are extremely fortunate. You may find, however, that you are sending your work to several beta readers in order to have all your bases covered.

• Never use the fact that you have a beta-reader as an excuse for not running a spelling and grammar check. Your beta is there to help with the errors that slip through the checkers. Don’t make them do more work than they have to!


• If you prefer not to work with a beta, it is recommended that you review your story a good deal more carefully.


• Corrections and suggestions from betas should never be dismissed out of hand. You may find that you disagree with some of the changes they propose. That’s fine. Unlike mainstream publishing—where the editor has the power to withhold publication if changes aren’t made—you have total freedom to reject their suggestions and post your story as is. The only consequence that you may face could be your beta declining to work with you in future. However, keep in mind that you are showing your work to a beta reader in order to catch errors before you post your fan-fiction. When a beta comes back to you with the errors that they have caught, pay attention. You may ultimately choose to reject a suggestion, but at least consider what they are telling you.

It can be painful to make changes should a beta come back to you with a list of errors in your content (canon or subject-specific). For example:

1. Character A is in the hospital fighting for his life. A week ago, he and Character B had a fight, and in the heat of the moment, B told A that he wished A was dead. Now B is feeling guilty and wants to know how serious A’s condition is. So he calls the hospital, speaks to a nurse, and obtains a complete report of A’s condition, who else has been to see him, the fact that A has been having nightmares.
   
   But...
   
   

   Your beta comes back to you and points out that under the privacy laws, the nurse would not be able to discuss A’s condition with B at all, without first obtaining A’s written consent. The problem is, you intended to use B’s conversation with the nurse to start a subplot that would span the next three chapters and had several other plot threads branching out from there.



2. Your story is set in New England in 1702. Your character is the daughter of a woman who was burned at the stake in Salem, MA for witchcraft. Your character witnessed it and has an absolute horror of fire as a result. The smell of smoke can give her a panic attack. You have written about your character’s fears and flashbacks in detail and know that you have painted a frightening picture of the tragedy that haunts her, even now, ten years after the fact.
   
   However...
   
   

   Your beta points out to you that witches were hanged, rather than burned in the colonial U.S.



3. Your character is ten years old and steals a chocolate bar from a Toronto drugstore in 2005¹. The store presses charges and although it’s his first offence, he is sentenced to three years in juvenile detention, after which he is placed in a foster home in another province over his parents’ strenuous protests.
   
   And then...
   
   

   Your beta tells you in no uncertain terms that a ten year old would be unlikely to serve any time in juvenile detention for a single instance of shoplifting, a court would not terminate parental rights in this instance, and even if the child did need to be placed in foster care, it would likely be in his own city.

SPaG issues are relatively easy to fix. Content issues, on the other hand, can involve major rewrites, and are thus more frustrating and more time-consuming. Sometimes, there can be a major temptation to ignore your beta, simply because of the amount of work involved in fixing your story. Try not to give in. Your betas aren’t pointing out problems to hurt you or to mock your story. They are pointing out problems so that you can fix them. Listen to them. In the end, you may choose to disregard their suggestions, but give them a fair hearing before you do.

Reread again

Have you and your beta missed anything? Did you catch all of the corrections, including the semi-colon that should have been a comma? This is your last chance to fix things before you post.

Make sure that all tags, warnings, and disclaimers have been added. If you are citing song lyrics or referencing canon dialogue, ensure that all sources are properly attributed. And don’t forget to thank your beta!

This one is pretty self-explanatory. But seriously, thank your beta. Publicly. In an author note.

Posting your fan-fiction

Some archives allow you to revise and correct even after you’ve posted. Others do not. If you post to more than one archive, post first to the places that allow you to edit your posts.

Reread the story in the archive. Pay attention, not only to SPaG, but also to text formatting.

Sometimes your formats can be lost in transition. Spaces between paragraphs may disappear, bolding and italics can be lost, and some punctuation, such as single- and double-quotation marks may be replaced by “decimal numeric character references”². Once you have ascertained that the text is properly presented, go ahead and post to the other archives.

Congratulations! Your fic is now online!

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¹ Location and timing can be relevant. In some cultures and societies certain crimes were at one time punishable by death or mutilation (example: poaching in Robin Hood’s England). In Victorian times, children were not always judged more leniently than adults in the court system.
² When coding in HTML, certain punctuation marks, such as curly (or “smart”) quotation marks and em-dashes, are created by typing a unique short code. For example, the ‘left double quotation mark’ (“) is created by holding down on the ‘alt’ key and typing 8220. Sometimes, particularly if—instead of uploading your document to an archive—you are copy-pasting your text directly from MS Word, you may find that all of your quotation marks are replaced by special entity codes or text symbols embedded into the body of your document. (Example: $#8220Hello,” said John. & quot Hi,& quot said Janet.)