Inventing Reality Editing Service

Fixing tab errors when formatting an ebook

When formatting an ebook in Microsoft Word, one problem a number of authors run into is a “tab” error. In the case of Kindle ebooks, this usually means an unsightly, extra space or two before a heading or a paragraph. In the case of other ebook formats, especially if uploading them through Smashwords, this usually means not being included in their premium catalogs until the “problem” is correcting.

Fortunately, fixing tab errors is simple enough:
• In the command ribbon at the top of your document, look for the section labeled “Paragraph”. To the right of that word should be an arrow pointing southeast. Click that arrow.
• A window will open on your screen. In the lower left-hand corner of the screen, click “Tabs”.
• A new window will open. In the lower right-hand corner, click “Clear All” then “OK”.
All the tabs in your manuscript will disappear.

That may create a new problem for you, however: If you formatted your ebook so that each new paragraph was indented, all of the indents just disappeared. You’ll have to go back and add a blank line (aka a paragraph return) between each paragraph – which is how Smashwords anyways wants you to format your text anyway.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like New York City or a small town like Lost Springs, Wyoming, I'll provide that keen second eye.

A cosmetic difference? makeup vs. make-up

I wouldn’t make up this: Apparently people who’ve been applying makeup all of their lives don’t know how to spell what they’re putting on their face! Time for a makeup study session on this.

How the word is spelled really centers on what part of a speech it is in a sentence.

If a verb, it’s two words (“make up”) as in “You can make up the test after school.”

If a noun or adjective, it’s one word, no hyphen (“makeup”). To wit, “She purchased makeup at the cosmetics counter” (noun) and “Are you ready to take your makeup test?” (adjective).

Now you’re already to take that grammar test!

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Honolulu, Hawaii, or a small town like Beaver, Oklahoma, I can provide that second eye.

Give readers sleepless nights with narrative drive

Ever read story before bed and find it so gripping that you stay up far later than you should just to find out what is going to happen? If so, you’ve been a “victim” of narrative drive.

Narrative drive is the force that makes a reader feel that something is about to happen. The more powerful your narrative drive, the less likely the reader is to put down the story.

Narrative drive is the force that makes a reader feel that something is about to happen. The more powerful your narrative drive, the less likely the reader is to put down the story.

All of the great works of literature have powerful narrative drives.

But creating a strong narrative drive involves a lot more than creating interesting settings (as does Frank Herbert in “Dune”), intriguing characters (as does Orson Scott Card in “Ender’s Game”), or a fascinating premise (as does Isaac Asimov in “Foundation”). It is all of these things more: good plotting, mesmerizing settings, captivating characters, proper point of view selection, an absorbing theme, and an artists’ handling of stylistic issues. So, while we can discuss elements of a story in isolation, as occurs on this Web site, always remember that a good story is the sum of these parts.

To obtain narrative drive, then requires a full sense of a story’s various elements. Still, there are a couple of things to keep in mind to improve your story’s narrative drive:
• Link description with action – Whenever you opt to describe a landscape or character, ensure that it serves the dual purpose of moving forward the story’s plot.
• Avoid stiff writing by using repetitious and superfluous wording – Poor writing follows a “He did this then this happened” pattern while quality writing takes an “As he did this, this happened” approach.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you be in a big city like Chicago or a small town like Fence, Wisconsin, I can provide that second eye.

Start your story with solid narrative hook

One sign of a good opener is that it makes the reader want to continue with the story. Using a fishing metaphor, a good opener “hooks” the reader.

Writers who catch the reader have employed a successful narrative hook. A narrative hook involves dangling elements of the story before the reader so he can’t help but bite. This is done by making the reader want to know more - the who, what, where, when, how and why of the story.

Consider this story opener:

Jord ducked around the corner, pressed himself hard against the damp wall, wishing he could fade into it. His eyes darted toward the wall’s edge, hoping to catch the shift of a shadow, a movement of brush, any sign at all that they were close.

Notice how it dangles elements of the story. The reader wants to know why Jord is running and who is chasing him. The reader wants to know if Jord will get caught.

Successful narrative hooks usually begin the story in the middle of the action. Conflict already is underway. Beginning a story this way immediately creates dramatic tension, which for most readers is the delight of the narrative.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Fort Myers, Florida, or a small town like Knock 'em Stiff, Ohio, I can provide that second eye.

Limit number of key characters in story

Can your story have too many characters? Probably not – but your story can have too many key characters.

Authors populate their stories with as many characters as needed to make a scene work. A scene about an ancient battle between two armies may literally have thousands of characters. However, almost all of them are background characters with no dialogue or description of their appearance and actions. Instead, the writer focuses on just a couple of characters – perhaps the leader of each opposing army. A couple of their subordinates might be minor characters in scenes, but the take is all about the angst and decisions of the leaders and the conflict they experience internally and externally with one another.

In general, one or two key characters is the limit in a short story. A novel might have up to three or four at most. Even in novels about a group of characters – say one of the “Star Wars” stories in which Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Chewbacca, C3PO and R2D2 form the main cast – the writer builds the story around just two or three of them. For example, Luke, Leia and Han typically are the major characters with Chewie and the two droids relegated to secondary roles in most scenes.

There’s good reason for an author to limit the number of key characters:
• Plot loses its urgency – When one or two characters have something at stake, the drama is heightened. If too many characters have conflicts that must be resolved, the writer has fewer words to fully work through each plot line, potentially diffusing the tension.
• Prevents strong character development – Too many character decreases the reader’s ability to identify with any one of them. If a reader doesn’t have any feelings about the character (whether they be good or bad), the book likely will be set aside for a more interesting one. After all, what incentive is there to finish the story?
• Confuses readers – When each new chapter means that the point of view will be shifted to focus on a different character, you risk perplexing the reader, at least until they catch on to what you’re doing. In addition, the more key characters there are, the more difficulty readers will have keeping track of each one through the story.

While a novel allows writers the luxury of more key characters as the increased number of words gives room to develop them each of them, a challenge they face is introducing all of the key ones early in the book. Waiting too long to introduce a key character limits the ability to develop them and lessens their integration in the overall plot so that their late entrance can feel contrived. Because of this, many novelists follow a rule that they must introduce all key characters by chapter three.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you hail from a big city like San Francisco, California, or a small town like Tunnelton, West Virginia, I can provide that second eye.

Types of academic papers you could write

Once you’ve received your writing assignment, you’ll need to determine what kind of paper you’re expected to write. Knowing this information will shape how you conduct your research and ultimately how you structure your paper. Not knowing this information will cost you time as you do unnecessary work or could lead you to writing a paper that doesn’t meet your instructor’s expectations, meaning a low grade.

Broadly speaking, there are three types of papers you could write:
• Report – In this type of paper, you describe what you learned from your readings and research. This is what was taught in elementary school: for example, the teacher might say “Write a report about cardinals” and you would read encyclopedias and some entries in scattered books about birds then collate all of that data into something sensible, making you a mini-expert on the songbird.
• Position – This perhaps is the most common type of paper for high school students and undergraduates to write: They take a position and support it with evidence. For example, they might take the position that the death penalty should be abolished and then offer three supporting points as to why it should be: it is an inhumane and barbaric form of punishment, it is an irreversible sentence that could be carried out against an innocent person, and it doesn’t deter the crime it punishes.
• Analysis – The more advanced the class, the greater the chance that students will be asked to analyze an issue. In a sense, the analysis paper begins as little more than a report, but at its end offers conclusions about this data. For example, an analysis paper might examine both sides of the gun control issue and present the data used to support those viewpoints. The challenge is to draw some conclusion about that data and hence the validity of those arguments. In that sense, an analysis often ends acting like a position paper.

Each of these types of papers can be written using a variety of structures (we’ll examine those in a future entry).

Knowing what the instructor expects will guide your research in the days ahead. If writing the position paper about the death penalty, you may not need to spend a lot of time researching the arguments for capital punishment but instead to go very in depth finding evidence and explaining the reasoning that supports your position. If you wrote an analysis paper about the same topic, you’d have to spend as much time researching one side of the argument as the other.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you live in a big city like San Jose, California, or a small town like Humptulips, Washington, I can provide that second eye.

Increase website visits with strategic SEO

Search Engine Optimization is another way to improve your page rank. As search engine robots and crawlers check over your website, they seek key words so that someone using a search engine gets sites that best match their needs. Simply incorporating certain keywords into your website text will improve the chances of someone finding your site when they search for those words.

Sometimes, though, you can’t fit those words into the text – for example, my Hikes with Tykes: A Practical Guide to Day Hiking with Kids book would appeal to parents, fathers, mothers, grandparents, grandfathers, grandmothers, Boy Scout leaders, Girl Scout leaders, and teachers. Getting “parents” and “grandparents” into text on my website was easy enough, but the other words felt forced. To get around that, we can use meta tags.

Meta tags are coding you insert into your website to let search engine robots and crawlers identify these words as relevant. When someone types “Boy Scout Leader” into their search engine, my website might pop up, whereas before it stood no chance at all of doing so.

There are two types of meta tags that are important to your website. One is the “description,” which is a 150-200 character sentence telling what your website is all about. The other is the “keyword” in which you list words that don’t necessarily appear on your site; since someone typing them into a search engine likely would find your site useful, it will now pop up for them.

To add meta tags to your website, you’ll need to access the screen in which your website appears as html text (this is all of the coding used to build your website). You can find this on the website host pages where you built your site. Look for in the html code (it should be near the top). After it, copy and paste the following two meta tags:

<META name="description" content="A 200-character description of your webpage goes here.">

<META name="keywords" content="keywords, go, here">

Next, write in the quotations marks following “content=” your website description in the first meta tag and the keywords in the second one. Keywords must be separated by a comma (as shown in the meta tag above).

Be sure to save this change. Within a month or two, you should begin seeing results as search engine robots and crawlers identify them.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Tucson, Arizona, or a small town like Zap, North Dakota, I can provide that second eye.

How to determine your book’s margins

Once you decide the size of your book (or the trim size), the next step in self-publishing is to set your margins. This is the white frame that runs between the page’s text and the page’s edge.

To ensure that the words aren’t too close to the page edge where they could be cut off when the printer trims the paper, you want to ensue there’s enough white space. At the same time, the greater the white space, the more paper you’ll need for the book, potentially raising the printing cost.

Margins are measured in inches by their distance from the text to the page edge. Imagine a line running across the very top of your text. Place the edge of your ruler there then measure to the page edge, and you have your margin size.

Determining margins for your book first requires that you know your book’s trim size. Generally, for any book whose trim size is 6”x9” or smaller, use half-inch margins on all sides of the book except for the one nearest the binding. This is called the inside margin and needs to be slightly larger, usually three-quarters of an inch.

You want to have a larger inside margin because books curl near the spine. This means less light gets there, making words on that side of the page more difficult to read. A wider inside margin eliminates this issue.

Not all printers and book designers will agree with these simple rules. For example, mainstream publishing houses typically print books with top margins that are narrower than then the bottom margins. They also typically include a running footer, such as a page number, in the bottom margin. Many who self-publish, especially those formatting their books in Microsoft Word documents, place the page number in the top margin because doing so requires less fussing around. You’ll have decide which approach to take, but know that in self-publishing equal top and bottom margins are quite common.

Sometimes the “rules” for margins have little to do with the page edge. “The Chicago Manual of Style,” for example, recommends printing 65 to 70 characters (including spaces) on each line. This can be set if formatting Microsoft Word.

Some related terms you might run into when self-publishing include:
• Alignment – Text can be centered or the margins on the page’s right side either can be left ragged or so that the last letter of every line stops at the same spot (except at a paragraph’s end). The option you choose is the text’s alignment. If using Microsoft Word, opt for the “Justify” alignment, which is how this book’s right margin is printed (all letters end at a standard straight line).
• Justification – This either can refer to the alignment selected or to where your lines end at the bottom of the page. Regarding the latter, presuming the text fills the entire page, you want the last line of every page to end at exactly where the bottom margin begins. You wouldn’t want the text to end a half-inch from the page’s edge on an even-numbered page but then 4/7 of an inch from the page’s edge on the facing odd-numbered page, as this would look amateurish.
• Gutters – In larger books, you might split the text into two or even three columns. The white space between these columns is the gutter. Usually, the gutter is no more than a quarter-inch wide. When dividing books into columns, make sure each column is the same width. Also, if you have three columns that seem awfully thin, it’s always better to opt for two wide columns.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Grand Rapids, Michigan, or a small town like Frying Pan Landing, North Carolina, I can provide that second eye.

Getting concrete with literally vs. figuratively

Ever get a feeling when hearing these two words that you don’t quite know what one means?

“Literal” means you’re saying exactly what happened. “Figurative” means you’re speaking metaphorically.

So, during a headache, one’s head “figuratively explodes” not “literally explodes.”

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Rochester, New York, or a small town like Beech Bottom, West Virginia, I can provide that second eye.

Avoid using weak pushbutton words in story

Sometimes rather than finding a truly evocative term, writers get lazy and use pushbutton words. Pushbutton words attempt to evoke an emotional response from readers without appealing to their critical faculties or intellect. American writer Lewis Shiner coined the term.

Examples of pushbutton words include: dreams, poet, song and tears in sentences like these:

He wondered if his dreams would ever come true.

Her heart sang like a poet’s.

He could not shake the image of her smile, which remained in his head like a pretty song.

Tears welled in her eyes.

Each of these words is intended to evoke an emotional response (dreams=hope, poet’s=love, song=beauty, tears=sadness), as if the writer says, “I want readers to feel sadness, so I will push the button marked ‘tears’ and that’s what they’ll feel." Because writers overuse these words, however, the stimuli doesn’t work so well; there is a bad connection between the button and the reader’s response.

If using a pushbutton word in your writing, delete the sentence and start over. Seek another way to be evocative.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from an urban area like Akron-Canton, Ohio, or a rural community like Toadlena, New Mexico, I can provide that second eye.