Author Stewart Bint is visiting my blog today and talking about his editing process. Please welcome hime to my blog, and I’ll leave the word to Stewart now.
Editing Process
Editing. Writers either love it or hate it.
Maybe I’ll get a splinter in my posterior for sitting on the fence on that issue.
But that’s only because it depends on what stage of my book we’re talking about. I always expect to do a considerable amount of editing after the first draft to knock it into some semblance of order before sending it on to my publisher’s editor, so it doesn’t get torn apart too badly.
I regard editing as a two part process: roughing, then finishing.
So, a couple of weeks after finishing the first draft I print it off and have a read-through. And nearly die of embarrassment. Did I really write such rubbish? Ah, but hold hard – it’s always like this, isn’t it? A few days of picking through it, developing a few scenes here, cutting a few scenes there, showing a particular character trait earlier in the book so the reader’s not surprised by something later on, and, yeah…that’s okay. Pleased with that. That’s the editing I like.
Off it goes to the professional editor.
And back it comes, almost every page marked with red. Developmental edits, they call them. “Oh, and change the order of a couple of chapters.”
OK…now to print off two copies. One showing all the editor’s comments with the tracked changes, and one without the comments so I can read the story clearly. Yes, what you’ve asked for makes perfect sense, and it will work extremely well. Order of chapters changed: check. New scenes added: check. More banter added between the main characters: check. Final read through, and back it goes.
So in summary – my process involves big edits to the first draft, to get the story roughly into shape. Then developmental edits as suggested by the professional, which finishes everything off nicely. I hope!
About the Book
Title: Timeshaft
Author: Stewart Bint
Genre: Time Travel
By the twenty-seventh century, mankind has finally mastered time travel—and is driving recklessly towards wiping itself out. The guerilla environmentalist group WorldSave, with its chief operative Ashday’s Child, uses the Timeshaft to correct mistakes of the past in an effort to extend the life of the planet.
But the enigmatic Ashday’s Child has his own destiny to accomplish, and will do whatever it takes within a complicated web of paradoxes to do so. While his destiny—and very existence—is challenged from the beginning to the end of time, he must collect the key players through the ages to create the very Timeshaft itself.
“Do our actions as time travellers change what would otherwise have happened, or is everything already laid down in a predetermined plan?” he asks. Stewart Bint’s Timeshaft is an expertly synchronized saga of time travel, the irresistible force of destiny, and the responsibility of mankind as rulers of the world.
Author Bio
Stewart Bint is a novelist, magazine columnist and PR writer. He lives with his wife, Sue, in Leicestershire, in the UK, and has two grown-up children, Christopher and Charlotte.
He is a former radio presenter, newsreader and phone-in show host, but always wanted to become a fiction writer — a dream that came true when his first novel was published in 2012 at the age of 56. Now the author of five novels, a collection of short stories and a compilation of his early magazine columns, he was signed by Booktrope in 2015, who published a revised edition of his paranormal novel, In Shadows Waiting, in August.
They are publishing a revised and re-edited edition of Timeshaft shortly.
As a member of a local barefoot hiking group, when not writing he can often be found hiking in bare feet on woodland trails and urban streets.
Stewart Bint online:
Website and blog: http://stewartbintauthor.weebly.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StewartBintAuthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/authorsjb
Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stewart-Bint/e/B00D18IARS
Amazon USA: http://www.amazon.com/Stewart-Bint/e/B00D18IARS
Links
Buy the Book on Amazon (Kindle)
Buy the Book on Amazon (Paperback)
Editor Charlene 