Welcome, everyone! We are on day 26 of the 28-day writing challenge. Yesterday, I started talking about doing a paper edit as opposed to a digital edit. Today, I’ll explain more about that.
Today I numbered all the paragraphs in my book. I came up with more than 700 paragraphs, which is what I expected because there are 208 pages.
Review
To review what I said yesterday, start off at the very last paragraph in your book. That last paragraph is numbered one, the next to the last is number two, and so on. Work your way all the way to the very first paragraph of your book. You’ll end up with a very large number. In my case, it was over 700.
The reason why you start at the back instead of at the front is that you are trying to evaluate each paragraph on its own instead of in the continuation of the story or flow of the book.
How To
So you start with paragraph number one, and you rate each paragraph in your opinion, between one and 10. Ten is just wonderful, great. People would set off fireworks as a result of it. Number one is you need to dig a grave for it. It is just the worst paragraph ever. Then all the ranges in between.
You need to be sort of careful as you’re doing this. You can be overly critical of every paragraph or you can be overly enamored with all of your writing. So you should remember that five is about an average type of paragraph.
So you will go through and review all of your paragraphs. Now, if you’re hiring a professional editor to help you you may skip this part, although I even recommend it for that because your book will be in much better shape before you give it to them. Then the editor can spend their time on more in-depth and even better editing.
Yes, this is time-consuming, slow, and tedious.
Average Rating
But go back through rank all of your paragraphs from one to 10. After you’ve got all the way through, one thing that is recommended is to add up all those numbers and then divide it by the number of paragraphs and you will end up with an average rating.
If your average rating is seven or greater then you’re in really good shape. It should be somewhere between four and eight or nine. s
When you do that, you’ll get an average rating for your paragraphs. That may help you to see if you are being too hard on yourself and maybe you should consider them to be a point or two higher. That’s fine as this is for your benefit and is your opinion.
Weeding Out the Below Average Paragraphs
Now the next step at this point is any paragraph that’s rated seven or higher, just leave it alone. If it is rated three or less, get rid of it.
What???
Well, yes, just eliminate it. That means that you might have to make a transition point from the paragraph before to the next one. In some cases you can just eliminate it and it just flows from one to the next and doesn’t make any difference.
But go through and eliminate all of those that are threes, twos, and ones.
Polishing the Four, Five and Six Rated Paragraphs
That leaves the ones that are rated at four, five, and six. These are paragraphs that are okay paragraphs but could be better. What you ought to do with each one of those is to do whatever is necessary to bring it up to at least a seven.
I’ll talk a little bit more tomorrow about how you can do that with some of those paragraphs.
That’s where I am now. I’ve gone through the entire book, numbered all the paragraphs, and then come back and rated all the paragraphs.
Now I have to confess to you I don’t have all of mine rated yet.
My Progress
The digital editing that I did before this big grand paper editing that I’m talking about, will be finished tomorrow. Then I’ll work on these paragraphs for the paper editing.
Actually, this could be like the next step, but I think I’ll have that done by day 28. Then I will have a good rough draft and a good first round of editing and then this even more in-depth editing.
That might actually be what you consider going on into the next step.
I’m confident to say that I have written a book in 28 days or less and done it without stressing myself to death, which is the goal of the last book I wrote.
Again, if you’re interested in that, click here and download a digital copy or buy a paper copy. It has all of the techniques that I’ve talked about and many more things that I’ve talked about during these 28 days.
So the next step after getting the book written, which will be written by day 28, is to start on the promotion of the book; getting it ready to be published and to be sold.
Unless something unforeseen happens, the book will be available on Amazon before the end of next month (March 2022). It will probably be somewhere around the third week or so but don’t hold me to that. I’ve got the whole month to work on doing that.
How About You?
Well, I am glad you have joined me on day 26 of the 28-day writing challenge. Did you attempt to write a book yourself? If you have I hope it’s gone well.
If you haven’t and have just watched what I was doing and saw my ups and downs, my joys, and my sorrows, I hope that’s been encouraging to you.
Until next time, remember, YOU CAN WRITE A BOOK!