7 Proofing Steps For Quality Writing

How could a writer possibly decide whether their own story or even article has a low, medium, or high "quality?"

"Quality" is a word, and concept that means something different to each person who uses it, and in each context where you find it.

"Quality" essentially means "it feels good to me, so it doesn't matter what you like."

But "Quality" is also a comparison measure to other things "like" this one -- whatever it is; a sofa, a dress, a silk neck tie, a painting, a story.

The problem with applying the word "Quality" to writing is that writing is an amalgam of Craft and Art.

Art does have some objective parameters to it, but different people respond to or care about different parameters. You really can't assign an objective measure to the "Quality" of Art.

Craft, however, is almost entirely objective, and the measure of "Quality" in craftsmanship has two dimensions.

1) Does the craftsmanship produce a seamless, smooth, useful product? (i.e. if it's a plumbing pipe, does it hold water? If it's a story, does it deliver an emotional punch, intellectual high or spiritual journey?)

2) Does the craftsmanship of this object compare well to the craftsman of similar objects? (i.e. does this pipe hold water better than that pipe? Does this story deliver a bigger punch than that story?)

The problem in judging "Quality" is that readers, or end-users of any product, measure "quality" by different standards than the originator of the object -- or the purveyor (in writing, that's the publisher).

For a writer, "Quality" means, "Does it say what I wanted to say?"

For a publisher, "Quality" means, "Does it have a huge market, bigger than anything else like it?"

For a reader, "Quality" means, "Does it satisfy me? Is this what I've been wishing for?"

It sounds like an impossible task for a writer (an originator) to look at the brand new product and judge whether the reader, end-user, will see it as a "Quality" item.

And in a way it is, and in a way it's not that hard because there are a few objective measures of quality in writing.

The writer is half-way-born-editor, just as most editors have some writing in them.

Editors, however, are not publishers. A publisher is someone who is in the business of peddling a product to a market. An editor is in the business of finding or generating product the publisher can peddle at a profit.

We've discussed writing as a business, and you've read many other blogs here and elsewhere about self-publishing, the fastest growing segment of publishing.

But there's something going on at YouTube and on the Web 2.0 sites like it that you need to understand in order to apply the objective measures of quality to your work AT A PROFIT.

This article explains where a lot of the most popular videos on YouTube are coming from, who makes them, and what their profit margin is, and why that profit margin is so slim -- and this article also offers a way for writers and videographers to make a little money on the side, provided they understand this "Quality" issue I'm discussing here.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_demandmedia

Demand Media is doing what the Dime Novel did for the Wild West. But Demand Media has developed an algorithm to data-mine all the searches people do on google etc. They buy the search terms people put in from the search engine company, then sift and arrange the terms to generate topics of interest to lots of people at any given time.

Then they hire a videographer or writer to do a video or article explaining the topic. They have a web page where they post topics they want material on. They pay almost nothing, but they do pay writers. They're a volume shop.

The videographers and writers doing this work are often professionals who have worked to the extremely high and demanding specifications of the general media.

But now these craftsmen are learning a new way to look at their trade, and it's a lesson all writers, especially e-book or self-published writers and eventually traditionally published writers have to learn.

Traditional publishing is withdrawing support for writers so that publishers expect writers to fund and execute publicity for themselves. So eventually, traditionally published writers will be in the same boat as self-published writers (or vice-versa).

So read that article in Wired Magazine and think about what it says about the higher "quality" videos produced for much more money, and the business model behind that. Think about what this article implies about the shifting parameters in this world, and what it implies about craft mastery, and objective measures of "Quality."

This article in Wired Magazine is actually describing what used to be the difference between the Hardcover or Trade Paperback and the Mass Market paperback. Writers working in Mass Market had much less time to spend rewriting and polishing. Writers working in Hard Cover were expected to spend ten to a hundred times more time but Mass Market paid more. The trick was to get a Hard Cover into a Mass Market edition to get paid for the extra time spent.

With the $$/hour parameter of the business model dominating all your choices, there are two attitudes you might choose from.

A) It's all shlock so why bother trying so hard?

B) What I do is worth $20 so I have to do it three times an hour in order to live. So how can I produce "Quality" without spending time?

In other words, how do you train your art producing subconscious to spit out words already crafted in a high-quality product (or photograph images that you can clean up pretty good in the time allotted?).

How do you perfect SPEED and ACCURACY in craftsmanship?

The answer is simple and rather horrid to contemplate.

Slow, tedious repetition and self-correction, critical analysis of your own work, refusing to accept the first shlock that comes out, until at last that very first effluent from your subconscious is "Quality" crafted. Training subconscious is like training a puppy.

That's how you get to Carnegie Hall - practice, disciplined practice.

But not practicing your errors, practicing doing it right. The company that the Wired Magazine article is talking about might be a great place to do that practice and get paid for it.

Marion Zimmer Bradley once fed her family by writing True Confessions and Astrology articles for a market very much like the one Wired is describing. She rose to edit the Astrology magazine, too. She often said writing short non-fiction made her a better fiction writer.

Remember what I learned from Alma Hill that "Writing Is A Performing Art" -- and this $20/article concept is a perfect illustration of that fact. To do this at a profit a videographer or writer must PERFORM as if on stage before a live audience.

That's what you're practicing for - a performance.

When you practice writing, think of it as rehearsal. Any mistake you make is part of the permanent impression on your audience. So rehearse until you can perform your story flawlessly, in the time allotted.

That's not degrading your ART -- it's perfecting your craft.

Now, exactly what do you do, as a writer, to self-correct and train your craftsmanship to the point where you produce objectively measurable quality at the drop of a hat (or paypal deposit).

The following tests are for the objective part of story writing, the craft itself. Art is a totally different subject, but some of these tests will turn up flaws in the Art as well. If you find a flaw in your Art, you can choose to cover it up with Craft real-quick-n-dirty, or tear the story apart and re-do the Art from scratch. Choose by remembering the $$/hour parameter and the "rehearse until it's smooth" parameter.

7 points to self-test a novel for "quality"

1) PLOT INTEGRITY - check to make sure what I call the "because-line" actually tracks logically. If YOU think it tracks, ask someone you don't know to read it then ask them questions about why things happened in the novel. To FIX missing links, make sure every event happens BECAUSE OF the initial event. Anything with a very tight PLOT (PLOT = BECAUSE LINE) but very little EXPOSITION will sell somewhere (that's from Robert A. Heinlein).

2) CHARACTER MOTIVATION (i.e. the STORY-LINE which is the sequence of emotional states that leads the main character to change) must be clear to the target readership (not just to you). You have to explain WHY people do things in SHOW rather than TELL -- that WHY is inside the chosen plot events. When a character DOES SOMETHING the world responds with a LOGICAL consequence from which the CHARACTER derives a (possibly illogical but human) LESSON which the CHARACTER tests by doing something different "next time" which CAUSES (plot-line) another logical consequence, until the character has learned his/her lesson (theme=lesson learned)

3) When you've got both these lines whole, complete, transparent, accessible to your target reader, and precisely formulated to the genre that the symbolism belongs to, when everything makes complete sense, REDUCE THE WHOLE THING to an outline (chapter-by-chapter, describe what happens, why, and what it means in just 2 or 3 complete sentences -- this is your sales tool for your pitch). If you can't do that reduction, there's something wrong with the structure. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE NOT VIOLATED A TROPE OF YOUR GENRE (that is the real criteria by which Manhattan Agents and Editors work - trope-trope-trope.) Trope is often the cause of the PACING issue that editors will cite when rejecting. Editors don't know what's wrong or how to fix it. They're not writers. That's your job. Readers expect you to do your job. If you don't, they call the work badly written or low quality.

4) Go back and DELETE 15% of the words, cut-cut-cut, use better words, delete all the adjectives and adverbs, and shift to well-chosen words. Then if necessary add-add-add to get the exact length for the genre. Then delete almost all the EXPOSITION. Take what's left and break it up like a sonic beam breaks up a kidney stone. Pulverize the exposition and sprinkle it here and there in LOGICAL sequence. The trick with exposition is to make the reader curious to know the fact you need to impart -- take about 50 pages to build the curiosity -- meanwhile drive up the suspense until the reader just HAS TO KNOW. Then tell them in a dependent clause buried in the middle of something -- use an oblique reference, nothing "on the nose." Make the reader FIGURE OUT what you want to tell them in exposition. That's a dodge for SHOW DON'T TELL -- make the reader think it's their own idea, not yours. If you do the work for them, they don't have any fun even though you do. Writing is selling FUN, which means you have to give away your fun in return for money. So you don't get to tell. You have to work to induce the reader to figure it out.

5) Send it out to test readers you DON'T KNOW and who don't know you personally (not work-shoppers you see every month- actual people who have no stake in stroking your ego -- yes, building a cadre of such folks you have access to is one thing online networking can do best). Get tech experts in fields you have used to check the facts.

6) NOW - after all that, you polish the text, not just running spell check, but going through the whole MS looking for word-substitution typos, bad sentence structure, wordy constructions "Well, the fact of the matter is that he lied" becomes "Well... he lied." Don't use grammar-check, learn grammar.

7) Yet another test reader, one who knows grammar, punctuation, spelling and reads books from your target publisher in your target genre. (each publishing house has a style sheet dictating grammar, spelling, punctuation). That's your final step - no sense polishing words you're going to delete. In hand-written times, that was known as "making a fair copy." On foolscap.

After doing this 7 step self-test on various projects, you will eventually come to where your test readers aren't finding so many things to fix. With repetition, you start producing things that actually are publishable if not of the highest quality on second or even first draft. First draft is the goal in low-paying markets, and that means you must PERFORM your writing at concert pitch. In higher paying markets, you might run the story through these 7 tests several times and keep perfecting on each draft, raising the "quality."

THE ESSENCE OF STORY IS CONFLICT

Even if you meet the self-test criteria above, you can still attain the level of "badly written" IF THERE IS NO APPARENT CONFLICT.

Likewise, you can attain the label "boring" -- or "I couldn't get through it" -- if there is NO COHERENT THEME that is illustrated by the conflict.

A "story" is a sequence sliced out of a character's life wherein they LEARN A LESSON (your theme) by OVERCOMING OBSTACLES or ATTAINING A GOAL (obstacles and goal generate the plot-line).

If you pick the wrong primary character (lead, star or hero), no matter how well you do the objective mechanics in the 7 point checklist, the art fails and your novel is "badly written" or "low quality."

If you pick the right primary character, BUT start at the wrong place in that character's story, the art fails and your novel is "badly written."

"Quality" is actually NOT TASTE -- it is not mysterious.

That's why slush pile readers, screenplay coverage readers, editors, agents, and reviewers can sort a stack of manuscripts, screenplays, ARCs, or published books very quickly and toss out more than half that don't meet the quality standard necessary.

Here's how it's done. (all beginners think this is unfair and won't work, but it is fair and it does work when done professionally)

1) check first page -- any error of craft, toss the MS
2) check p5 -- if the story-development point (beat) is not there, toss.
3) check the MIDDLE. If the high or low EVENT isn't there, toss.
4) check the END. Compare to beginning and middle. If the final image doesn't RESOLVE the conflict set out on pgs 1-5 - toss without reading the whole thing.
5) check the 1/4 and 3/4 points -- if the plot development is correct on those points, then read the whole thing. (a novel is generally 4 "acts" or "movements" like a 1-hour TV episode, so it's quarter-points you look at; but with a screenplay for a feature film, it's usually 3 acts, so the pages for the beats are different, but the principle is the same.

These 5 checks quickly reveal if the writer has violated the TROPE the professional reader is looking for. If the trope the reader wants isn't there, even if the item is high quality of its type, it isn't worth the professional reader's time ($$/Hour remember? Business model rules supreme.)

So what chance does a writer have of getting through this screening process and having a manuscript read by someone who might pay for it?

Getting through those tests is also a learn-able bit of craft.

Focus on the simple fact that these tests are entirely objective.

Matters of taste and art are judged after the objective craft is judged. And according to that article in Wired Magazine, matters of taste and art are currently much less important than they once were.

Note how the article points out that using this computer algorithm to sift search results for what people want, and then providing exactly what they are searching for is more effective than a room full of professional experts creating topics they think people ought to want.

Soon feature films will be marketed that way, I'm sure, maybe novels first. Remember what Rowena Cherry found in that survey of Romance readers -- half want more sex. Survey replaces art.

The MAJORITY AUDIENCE will soon be conditioned to expect this kind of responsiveness from the media. "Quality" means "what I like." And now people are being mass-conditioned to expect their expectations to be met.

When you take their money for a book but betray expectations -- they have no clue what's wrong, so they say "badly written" and don't waste money on that byline again (and warn off all their blog readers).

A lot of editors either fall in that bewildered category, or simply have no time to waste with "writers" who can't write the required trope in the required time. It's not the editor's job to teach you to write. ($$/hour - remember that. Read that Wired Magazine article carefully.)

I have been tackling ways of explaining these parameters of "well written" stories for a couple of years now (not systematically) on this blog.

One thing Marion Zimmer Bradley taught, I have found to be true -- anyone who can write a literate English sentence can sell fiction. A LOT of my students have done so.

And though the article in Wired Magazine points to Demand Media as something "new" -- it actually isn't new from a writer's point of view. Since the commercialization of the printing press, quick-n-dirty production has been a component of the writer's business model. And as I said above, the Dime Novel, the Mass Market paperback, and now today YouTube videos, are all about $$/hour and professionalism.

Professional writing is not a mystery, it's not arbitrary, it's not a secret. It's not even hard except for the part where you take what your artistic subconscious produces and externalize it.

Failing to externalize your art produces what Marion Zimmer Bradley called "self-indulgent" novels. A particular editor might buy it - but readers will call it "badly written" because they don't know where the failure happened.

Externalizing your art is an entirely different process for each writer, it's idiosyncratic, but something you can teach yourself with the 7 point checklist for "Quality" of craft.

E-pub and self-pub is the ONLY route open to those who can do all these other things on the checklist, but fail to externalize their art, de-personlize it, universalize it.

The best way is to train your subconscious in your genre's trope until it produces fiction pre-configured to fit your market.

That's why professional writers warn neo-writers off "workshops" and posting "fanfic" online. You end up rewarding your subconscious for practicing your mistakes, and you train your subconscious to AVOID EXTERNALIZING. That will doom you to a lot of rewriting once you understand which step you have skipped.

"Quality" is often, alas, proportionate to time spent re-doing and perfecting the craft underlying the art. The ingredients of a quality product are often rare (fine olive oil is "virgin" -- the rest of the press is used for something else). Flawed diamonds are not used in the crown jewels, though they work fine for industrial purposes.

Are you in the business of fine art? Or commercial art? Knowing the difference and the difference in business model, could be the real key to success in your life.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/dushau