9 Fundamental Proofreading Principles for both New and Experienced Fiction Writers

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Denise Alicea

This blog was created by Denise in September 2008 to blog about writing, book reviews, and technology. Slowly, but surely this blog expanded to what it has become now, a central for book reviews of all kinds interviews, contests, and of course promotional venue for authors, etc

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9 Fundamental Proofreading Principles for both New and Experienced Fiction Writers

Prepare your eyes

Do you feel like everything is getting harder to read? Maybe you’re using a smaller font, or your eyesight has become poor. Your eyesight will worsen over time and make it difficult to read without moving closer to your book, PC, or tablet. Therefore, if you have to reposition your reading device when proofreading your work, you may want to consider reading glasses to clear up images.

Once you are done with writing, no matter what type of write-up that is, proofreading remains the toughest thing to do especially for fiction writers. As a fiction writer, it is really difficult to proofread your own work, since you are required to critically go through your write-up from readers’ perspective! Thus, to assist all fiction writers out there, here are a few great tips, which will surely enable you to produce a quality work after thorough proofreading!

 

1: Always Take a Break Once You Finish Writing

 

If you want to proofread your write-up on behalf of your readers, better take a break after you have finished writing. For a thorough proofreading, it is necessary that what you have written be diminished from your mind; otherwise you won’t be able to catch up your mistakes! So, leave your manuscript somewhere away from you for a few weeks (remember, few weeks), so that when you read it again, you would be going through each and every phrase of it keenly.

 

2: Check the Hard Copy of Write-Up

 

Another tip for good proofreading, which has been recognized by everyone since long, is to check the hard copy of a write-up. Even if you may have typed your story on your PC/laptop, taking its printouts will help you focus more keenly on it. While reading the document, you may keep the soft copy of that file opened on your system, and can incorporate the changes in the original file then and there, but make sure to do this after you have read the entire article, and have marked changes in it.

 

3: Make Up an Appropriate Proofreading Schedule

 

What you most significantly require for a keen proofreading process is complete concentration on your work. Thus you need a suitable time and place so that there would be least or no disturbance for you. After you decide a calm place, assign a suitable time-frame when you have nothing else to do besides proofreading. Occasionally, take breaks so that you won’t be exhausted due to constant stress. Around 3-4 hours of full concentration would suffice the purpose.

 

4: Prepare a Checklist to Overview Important Elements

 

Of course, while reading your article, it would be very difficult to focus on each and every aspect. Hence, preparing a check list of all items which you need to check in your write-up will be helpful for you.  List out all aspects in it:

 

  • Formatting
  • Grammar check
  • Spell check
  • Typo errors
  • Verbosity
  • Inappropriate vocabulary
  • Misused homophones
  • Other elements

 

Taking a few rounds of skimming your write-up, one for each aspect will surely make it error-free.

 

5: Read Your Article Aloud

 

Reading anything aloud is a very old and very useful tip for good proofreading. Since when we are silent, our only focus is on what we are thinking. But when we read aloud something, our focus moves to the words we hear. So, read aloud each and every word individually, so that even a slightest error can be detected.

 

6: Check for Repetitions/Duplications

 

Repetition of words in your write-up shows your weakness of vocabulary. Even in fiction, this action either depicts your weakness in writing, or your biasness towards certain aspect(s). So, you need to recheck your write-up for any duplication/repetitions of words/phrases as well. You may come up with other suitable words to replace the old ones, which will surely make your write-up more effective.

 

7: Representation of Facts

Though what you have written is a piece of fiction, but still, you cannot work on imaginary stories, having no link to reality. There would be some aspects which coincide or contradict what facts are! You may have taken care of this while writing, but when you skim it after sometime, you will definitely find some more errors.

 

8: Take Help from Tracker Tools

It will be difficult for you to recall the entire plot, characters, and sequence of events, timeliness, and other minute details while you are proofreading your write-up. There could have introduced several contradictions in these details while writing, therefore, you need to keep a check on these details as well. Note down the character details, dates, and events separately while reading your article, so that you can find out the actual points of errors.

 

9: Don’t Hesitate to Get Expert’s Assistance

The biggest help in proofreading your article can be from an expert who can read it without any prior information. This independent reviewer without any biasness towards the work is able to detect even the slightest errors which you might never be able to detect in your own work.

Whenever you are planning to submit your work for publication, make sure to follow these simple tips, and you will eventually be submitting an error-free manuscript to the publishers.

 

Author Bio

Kaitlin Patrick is a blogger, writer and a proofreader since 2011. She always loves writing but stumbled upon blogging just by an accident when a friend referred her job vacancies for bloggers at ENOSITE – Website Builder, a company in Canada. She knew little about blogging but her passion helped her become the best within a couple of years.

1 comment

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