Under Cover or Old Soul

Have you seen the movie John Carter, based on the book, Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs? We watched it last week (we own it, much to my pleasure), and because of that, I decided to start reading the book again. We bought the movie, which prompted my buying the series of books from Amazon for my Kindle Fire last winter when we were in town.

I might prefer books, but my kindle has made reading so much simpler for me. Until last year, I've needed to have a candle to read by, and though I like candles and have lots of wax to make into them, with my kindle I don't need candles anymore. The best part, I don't have to wait until I go to town and maybe get to go to a bookstore in order to find fresh reading material.

But I digress

Anyway, I started reading Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, my absolute favorite author when I was a kid (meaning preteen). As I look back on that in regards to this author, I was already developing my obsession for collections as I must have read every book the man ever wrote, those that I could find anyway. I know I checked them out of the library multiple times as I read them over and over again. Tarzan was equally a favorite back then.

As I am reading the book, it occurs to me how the style varies so very much from today. The writing is almost lyrical and somewhat verbose by comparison. As I remember my own first writing, I wonder if I was imitating Burroughs. I think most beginning writers do that, imitate their favorite author in their style. At any rate, it was forever since I've read those books and I had completely forgotten about any style change over the years. I was just a reader; what did I know about writing?

When my first writings came out all sort of lyrical and somewhat scattered and verbose, I totally missed the connection and saw it only as something to overcome, a habit to be broken in the interest of writing a book people will find easy to read. Anyway, as I'm reading along, it occurs to me that I kinda like the style, though it's not something I'll ever imitate. If you've ever read Tolkien's books, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, you can easily see how a writer's style can change.

Some years ago my husband bought me those books in a single binder. Reading through that book was pretty much the first time I'd read it for at least a few years, and at first I thought Tolkien intended the older style for the whole series, but then 'got into' the telling of the story and the lyrical style fell by the way side.

ANYWAY a few days ago, a friend of mine from a forum other than Facebook, finally published his book. I knew he'd been working on it for some time, and even having some financial difficulties along the way. I'd love to hear his story. But anyway, it was finally done and published. Originally planned for hard cover only, I couldn't hope to afford it any time soon, but I did my best to give him all the support I could. Then I get an email from him. Could I take a look at the kindle edition? Oh my, I was so honored and accepted the offer immediately.

Now there were some formatting problems with the edition I had but they were known problems so I offered to help there too however I could.

But again, I digress

Guess what? Upon my first glimpse of this book, I'm right back into the same style of Burroughs and Tolkien at first, that lovely, lyrical, verbose style that just sings to me. Oh and by the way, the friend I mentioned, he's better than either of them. The words flow smoothly and the picture is well painted. I can just see this proper gentleman with maybe an umbrella or cane swinging from his arm (or leather-bound notebook in his hand) walking down the street. Maybe he's wearing a top hat; at least he is in my painting. Oh yeah, completely enjoying this book. It's almost going to be hard to go back to Burroughs, though I will. I even stopped over to Amazon and bought the first two books of the Tarzan series. I'm curious if he kept the same style. I honestly don't remember though I remember the story well enough.

So, are you an author undercover as a writer from a previous life? Or are you an old soul very comfortable with a much older style of writing? Me - I'm beginning to wonder.

The Appearance of your Document

Okay, so you've proofed your work. What more is there to do? Aside from doing every bit of research you can find to do in order to make your content the best that it can be, there is one thing I do. I look at the appearance of the text. Yes, I said appearance. I reduce the magnification of the document down to 10%. This size is helpful mostly with the placement of pictures; it allows you to see at a glance if your pictures are aligned properly and not breaking across a page. Any red or green lines are also visible, just in case you missed something.

Another thing to do with appearance is to begin a new chapter on a new page. This may not be such a big deal. I don't own an eReader, and I've heard that some of them don't have 'pages' so much as a constant scroll down. Pardon me if this is incorrect; I've seen only one up close and it did have 'pages'. At any rate, starting each chapter on a new page makes your document cleaner.

Now, back to appearance. Here is where 25% magnification can help you see how your document looks. I aim for approximately ten pages per chapter. This is not a hard and fast rule, just something I aim for. If my chapter is way more than that, I try to find a place where it can be broken; if it is too short, I look to add content, or maybe it can be melded in with another chapter. At 25% magnification, there are eight pages across a full screen. This allows me to spot the chapter headings, and I should have one on almost every line.

Most writers who work with Word know how to insert a page break before a chapter heading, but this is something I had to learn on my own. Before I learned that little trick, I used the 25% magnification quite often to make sure I had my chapter headings where I wanted them. For those of you who don't know how to do that, go to 'insert'; in the drop-down window you will see 'break' and from there you can choose several kinds of breaks. A page break will start whatever is after it on the next page, and even if you add content before it, enough to fill the page, your break will move along, pushing your next chapter heading to the beginning of the next page. There is also the section break. This is very helpful in numbering your pages. Using section break allows page 1 to be on the beginning of your story, not on your title page, which makes your table of contents work properly too.

In my latest and longest work in progress (it keeps getting shelved as other projects come up), I have two levels of chapters. As per the plan, there will be 16 main chapters spanning ten years of my character's life as a druid. Each main chapter has approximately 10 secondary chapters covering incidents and events along the way. Yeah, this one is a long one, and it has me worried. It's almost in a format to be a television series. At this point, I'm near the end of the second season of four, possibly five seasons, and if we cover each season as one year within the book, it'll be ten seasons - now wouldn't that be fun?

One thing that makes navigating this, and all of my documents, is the 'document map'. To make it work, your chapter heading need to be actual style headings, and you can modify your heading so they appear the way you want, and are consistent. These headings are another thing that makes your table of contents work. Another little thing a document map is good for is if you happen to number your chapters, you can easily see if you've skipped a number or repeated a number. Of course this will show up in your table of contents too.

In my opinion, appearance is every bit as important as good spelling and grammar. Inconsistent formatting, font and size is something a reader will notice.

Do you check your document's appearance, or do you leave that up to your publisher?