Beta

Wow two updates in one day. I guess you could call this my celebration not really no not at all.

So, now we'll be talking about editing/Beta'ing. I'm preeeeeeetttyyyyy sure a good majority of the poeple on aff do not beta/proof read their work. I, am guilty as charged. It's too much work and ughhhhh complaints everywhere. but it's always a good thing to re-read, because having spelling mistakes everywhere makes your work look rather unprofessional. Though, sometimes even published books will have errors as well. It's actually a petpeeve of mine when published books do that, but nevermind that.

The best part of this lesson is that you can not only apply this to narrative writing, but any other writing such as essays. 

A Few Ways to Edit/Proof-Read

My grade 7 teacher taught me to not read in chronological order. Since, we already know what we wrote, our brain tends to skip over a few things and we'll end up missing errors.

For example, I'm sure you've all seen something like: I love Paris in the the spring time.

Ususally, we miss out on the second 'the'. On a sidenote, sometimes you'll be lucky that no one notices the errors or people understand well enough what you were trying to get at. However, if you're clumsy like I am, you can end up spelling a completely different word. Seriously, sometimes I spell 'this' as '' or okay as play.

Back on track, my teacher told me to read instead of from top to bottom, I could go from bottom to top or just switch up random paragrapghs and read them.

so briefly:

1.  I have a pineapple
2. insert about how delicious it was
3. I don't know what else to put here tbh

instead of reading it as 1, 2, 3, you could read it as 3, 2, 1 or 3, 1, 2 or  2, 3,1 so on and so forth.

Reading aloud is another great way. It forces your brain to process every little word, helping you spotting little mistakes. Pretend you're reading in front of an imaginary crowd or something, make sure it is full on out loud and not just a little 'above the whisper'

Another way I like to edit is after writing something, I wait a few days, weeks or even months before going back and reading it to catch the mistakes. Since, I wouldn't exactly remember what I wrote, I'm more able to catch my mistakes. A recent way I've discovered to do this is with sticky notes or just writing in a different coloured pen on paper, and the review tab on Microsoft word.

Since I really like to see my progess as well as look back at and see clearly what I've changed or what should've been changed so I can be more careful in the future.

Don't just point out grammar and spelling, point out if there's some sort of loop or contradiction, what else could have been added in, what other verbs could be used to better fit the situation, etc.

And of course, there's always the getting your friend to proof read it for you. They can either just beta for you, fixing up whatever spelling/grammar errors you have or they could give you feedback. And, well. yeah. that's just pretty self-explanatory. Here's a fancy dancy link on how to edit someone else's story: http://inkedoutloud.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/how-to-edit-someone-elses-story/

and then now I don't think I have anything else to say. So, I hope you're having a good day and or night, evening, whatever time you happen to be reading this.