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2nd Edition or Relaunch – What Happened in Scrivener

COPYING INTO SCRIVENER

I watched a video on YouTube teaching how to import a Word document into Scrivener.  It suggested that you could use a symbol like the pound sign (#) to indicate the end of a chapter.  It sounded so easy, but it didn't work.  At least for me, it didn't work.

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So I just copy and pasted each chapter into a new document.  By breaking up the novel back into separate chapters and having the tools inside Scrivener to keep an overview of things, it made the whole process seem a lot easier.

CHANGES I MADE:

I decided not to change the actual plotline of the story because I still liked it.  I chose to polish up my prose and add some additional foreshadowing.

When I originally wrote the book, I wasn't sure there would be a second book.  I wound up writing 5 books in the series.  There wasn't much foreshadowing in the book, and the characters had developed over the series, so I was able to beef up the characters in the first book and add some foreshadowing now knowing how the series would end.  I decided that these changes would bring Book 1 to a place I would be happy to then let go of the series.

checking time scheduleNow, this decision was made in real time.  In other words, until I hit a stride in about the fourth chapter, I was still unsure if I would even continue on with the rewrite.  But by the fifth chapter, I realized that the changes I was making, even though it wasn't changing the actual plotline, were good and well worth the effort.

The advice I would pass on to anyone who is considering a 2nd edition and you're not sure of it, try to be okay with proceeding one step at a time with some general doubt.  Let that be okay.  This is the advice I would have given myself on the day I started in Scrivener.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM THE PROCESS AND WHAT I WOULD DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME:

Now that I have been through the entire 2nd Edition process once already, I realize that there are continual doubts along the way that I needed to just push through.

The one change I would make to how I did things is this:  I would make a separate copy of my final manuscript and go into Word first.  If I decided to change the actual plotline, then I would bring the book into Scrivener as I would need to use the outline mode to keep track of everything.  However, since I only added foreshadowing and improved he prose, I would have done the work in Word.

The only reason for proceeding in Word only is because compiling the book from Scrivener to Word does mess up the styles and the formatting a bit.  This gives rise to a need to re-read the book again before handing it off to an editor.

TIME OUT FOR A LITTLE ADVICE ON EDITING:

I had the book edited originally, but I just changed every other sentence, so it had to be re-edited.  I knew that going into this, so it was okay.  Now, I like to edit the book myself and I have an elaborate multi-layer stage of proofreading that I go through so that when I pass the book to an editor, his or her time is not eaten up with correcting silly typos and adding forgotten commas.

By doing a thorough proofread, and with a suggestion that my weakness is verb tense and reading over my own typos, the editor can focus on the things I need the most help with.

THE NEXT DECISION TO MAKE:

The rewrite with prose improvement and foreshadowing added turned out to be MUCH easier than I anticipated.  So after passing off the first book, Darius - A Vampire Story, to my editor, I decided to do an upgrade on the second book too.  I just passed that one off to the editor yesterday.



SHOULD I MAKDE A NEW BOOK COVER?

I wish I could say this was an easier decision to make, but it wasn't.  I really like the present book cover on my first book, but I changed the artwork a little bit for one reason:

I wanted to tweak my marketing strategy when I get the second book done so I wanted the book cover to look like a cross between a cozy mystery and a low-fantasy paranormal romance.   My book has a ribbon of Catholic morality running through it, as well as a satirical commentary, so readers who are used to vampire hunters, or dark despair-saturated books like those of Anne Rice, or teenage books like Twilight would be disappointed in my book.

So as I move forward, I'm still experimenting.  I decided to go with the new cover, but I'm planning a marketing relaunch when this 2nd book comes back from the editor and then I will watch to see if the new cover or even the 2nd edition makes any difference in sales or reviews.  If it doesn't make a difference, then I may go back to my original book cover and then let go of it entirely.

So even now, I'm still proceeding one step at a time.  I'm still waiting to see what happens.  All I do know for sure is that once this last change is done, I will be ready to let go and let the series be what it is.



The Long Saga of My 2nd Edition of Darius – A Vampire Story

THIS IS NOT THE 'HOW-TO' BLOG POST

Before I get to how to do a 2nd edition of your book, the preliminary questions you need to answer are:

    1. Should you do a 2nd edition of one book or the entire series?
    2. Why should you do it?
    3. Is it worth it?
    4. Should you just accept the earlier book as not your best and move on?
    5. What will I get out of it?
    6. Isn't it easier to just move on and write a better book or book series?

The reason I'm sharing my experience in publishing a second edition of Darius - A Vampire Story is because it seemed overwhelming when I was thinking about doing it.  It turned out to be one of the hardest decisions I had to make in my writing career, and I had doubts the entire way through the process.

However, in looking back, the decision itself -- answering all the above questions and deciding to move forward with it -- was the hardest part.  I assumed reworking the book would have been the hardest part, but it wasn't.  But in the end, it was much easier than I thought.

SHOULD I DO A 2ND EDITION OR NOT?

Although I decided to move forward with doing the 2nd edition, I was unclear even as I went about it.

I read Chris Fox's book Relaunch Your Novel and he had great advice.  He got my wheels turning and he asked the right questions about why you would want to relaunch your novel.

These questions were what triggered the process.  There are lots of reasons why you would want to relaunch a book.  It's important to know what your particular reasons are because although it is not hard, there are a lot of steps to it, some costs, and you will need a sense of mission to spur you on in the process.

THE BIGGEST TEMPTATION:

The biggest temptation along the way was to take the attitude that everyone's early books aren't that great, so let go and just move on.  This would have certainly given me a quick fix.  But in my case, I just couldn't leave the book alone knowing that I could probably polish it up a bit before moving on.  So for me, even though it was tempting to just let go and move on, I decided I want to fix the book -- and maybe even the entire series -- but I wasn't sure whether I just wanted to do a re-edit or to change the storyline, etc.

ONE STEP AT A TIME:

I decided that I wanted to just fix the first book in the series because it had the lowest ratings.  The second reason I wanted to make the effort with fixing the book is that I have now finished the series with the 5th book, and now that I know how the story ends, I wanted to put a little foreshadowing into the book while I was buffing it up.

I let go of the idea of redoing the entire series because I knew I could be happy to just fix the one book, so that's one reason I proceeded forward.

 



WHAT WILL I GET OUT OF IT?

This was the one question that led me down the road of choosing to write a 2nd edition:  What will I get out of it?   The answer was and is:  I knew if I fixed Book 1 that then I would be able to let go of the entire series and move on.  I still like the stories and the series itself.  It's not my most popular book series, but I still like it.  So fixing the first book was important to me in terms of 'my body of work'.  I knew I had more experience and I could improve the book, even if it was just adding some foreshadowing or improving on the prose.

scrivener-iconThe first decision I made was to pull the novel into Scrivener, divide it up into chapters and read through it.  The next question I had to answer was:  Do you want to change the plotline?  Or do you want to add some foreshadowing and just improve the prose?

To be honest:  I wasn't sure but I knew reading the book chapter by chapter would lead me to the answer.  So I pulled the manuscript into Scrivener.  The first question I needed to answer was:  What do you want to change?  Will this just be a normal update or will it be an actual second edition.

In the next installment of this blog series, I will go into what happened when I went into Scrivener and began the read through.



Converting a Word Docx to an ePub for KDP

IS THIS CONVERSION NECESSARY?

If you only sell on Amazon and don't give your books away, you may not need to convert your docx at all.  You can successfully upload a Word docx document and the converter behind the scenes at Amazon KDP will convert it usually without a problem.

HOWEVER, I would caution you that you should do all of your styling using the style gallery.  I have a few videos on my YouTube Channel that will show you how to format and how important using the style gallery is.

That being said, if you use the style gallery, don't give your books away and only sell on Amazon, you are good to go with only a Word document.

EBOOK GIVEAWAYS - THAT'S ANOTHER STORY:

Bookfunnel-and-siteorigin-logosIf you, however, are self-publishing and are planning to do your own marketing, giving away your book, especially when you are just breaking in as an author is crucial.  Once you decide to give away your books, you will need a PDF document and an ePub document.

convertio-iconAs I'm sure you already know, you can create a PDF inside Word, so that's not a problem.  However, you will need a conversion program to create the ePub.  I use the program called Convertio.co.  This is a paid plan, and it comes to $9.00 a month at the time of this blog.  If you only have one book, you can sign up for one month and then stop the service -- but check to make sure that's an option before you do that.

Otherwise, you can take a trip over to Fiverr.com and search convert DOCX to ePub and see who comes up.  One word of caution:  I tried this and Fiverr is now defaulting to a slightly higher price on almost all services, so look for the drop down that lets you put in your budget.  I was able to find someone who was willing to do it for $10.00.

However, if Convertio.co allows you to quit after one month, you may be able to use it a few times.  I offer this suggestion because I remember when I was brand new, I had to do things multiple times -- I'm not even sure why.  So be aware that you may want to do more than one per month.

Another example is that I am presently preparing an ARC copy of the document and will need to add several pages for the final manuscript when it's back from the Final Edit.  So, I will need two conversions at least on this one book.  So be aware of this type of thing.



TO SIGIL OR NOT TO SIGIL:

Sigil is a program for making or polishing up ePubs after conversion.  I always had to get rid of a lot of crazy codes in the ePub so that's why I used Sigil throughout the years.

However, what I noticed with this last time I used it, and this is because I have disciplined myself to use only the Style Gallery in Word and not use individual changes, I had very little clean up in Sigil.  I could have even skipped the Sigil step all together.

If you are intimidated by computer code -- and it can be a little tricky -- then you may want to clean up your formatting in Word by using only the Style Gallery.

I have a video below where I go into a little detail as to why you have to be so careful with sigil and computer code.  I wish I had known about the importance of the style gallery when I first started, but at least I know now and I'm passing on the knowledge to you!

WHERE TO GET THE TOOLS:

Here is a link to go to Convertio.co   This is a service you use online.  There is no download or anything.  You simply upload the Docx file and then download the epub.

Here is a link to go to Sigil to download it.   This is an actual free program that will download and put an icon on your desktop.  When you want to open it, you will double-click the icon and it will open a blank document.  Then you will click on File > Open and bring in your converted epub.

IT HELPS TO SEE IT IN REAL LIFE:

Below is a short video I made going through the process starting from pulling the document into Convertio and then taking it through the rest of the process to checking it on KDP.  I hope this helps you if you are struggling in any way or if you are new and just need information.

https://youtu.be/QVi1XSiQSRs



Writing Short Stories with Downloadable Worksheet

SHARING MY ANALYSIS:

In my quest to improve my marketing in 2005, I decided I needed a couple of short stories to offer as giveaways.  Although I’ve written 14 novels, I’ve never written a short story.

I went on a quest and read several classic short stories and below are my findings.  I’m not an authority on this, of course, but I’m just offering my observations and what I learned to far.

STORY CONTAINMENT:

Woman-writer-containmentThe first thing I noticed is that the story needs to be contained or confined to a shorter version than a novel.  This means that you won’t have the same space to build the characters.

The other thing I noticed is that the storyline is about one event or one meeting of some kind.  For example:  A weekend visit, or a train ride, or a meeting on the street that leads to something happening.

Keeping this need for containment in mind I believe will prevent us, as writers, from setting out to write a short story and somehow writing a novelette or even a novel.

SENTENCES PACKED WITH INFORMATION:

The next thing I noticed was that the sentences in many of the short stories were longer than in novels, as they contained so much added information.  In other words, you need to pack the background and characterization inside the action of the story.  Every word counts and the writers wrote succinctly and every word served the story.

Knowing the need for this, I believe it will help with story containment.

DOWNLOAD THE WORKSHEET:

short-mystery-story-templateThere are templates all over the internet for story crafting, but they all seem to follow the hero’s journey, which I find doesn’t work for mystery books.  At least I was never able to make them work for me.

So I have created a template for a Short Story Mystery Template that asks all the who, what, where, when questions that you will need to set up the bones of the short story.

If you’re interested in downloading the form, click below to access the form.

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Movie Review – The Brotherhood of the Bell

 

This movie was free on YouTube, but unfortunately, it's not available on JustWatch.com.  It could be because this was and is a made-for-TV movie.

This is a 90 minute thriller movie about secret societies.  I normally shy away from thrillers, but this movie was cited on someone else's YouTube video when they were talking about secret societies.  That's why I decided to watch it.

WHAT CAN AUTHORS LEARN FROM THIS MOVIE?

I realized that this is a great movie for writers to watch as the plotline is simple enough and the writing is tight enough to easily take apart to analyze or reverse engineer.  So if you are interested in writing a conspiracy theory plotline or a secret society plotline, this is a good movie to watch.

In my humble opinion, this movie was also made to be shown on national TV probably starting around 8:30 or 9:00 PM, so the plotline is written for both men and women.  I liked the movie very much.

Moral tale that laces through the movie is about what can happen when someone tries to stand up and do the right thing in a system of corruption.  It's also a story about the difference between revenge and the quest for justice.

Here is the review I did on YouTube, if you are interested in viewing it.

 

 



Movie Review – The Satanic Rites of Dracula

 

If this movie is no longer free on YouTube, you can find where it is streaming at JustWatch.com:  https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/the-satanic-rites-of-dracula

CHRISTIAN DISCLAIMER:

Although this is a movie about satanic rites and a satanic cult, it is Christian and Catholic friendly.  The cult is seen as evil and the traditional Dracula rules of crosses and crucifixes are powerful enough to ward off satan, vampires and evil.

WHAT CAN AUTHORS LEARN FROM THIS MOVIE?

This is a modern Dracula story (it was modern in 1973 😊) and this is a good example of how to mix a modern contemporary vampire story with the old-world rules and images of the old gothic vampire genre.

A writer can also learn about adding obstacles to build tension and conflict.  The obstacles used in the movie are easy enough to envision them in whatever you may be working on.

This is also an easy enough "saving the world from evil" storyline that is not complicated or convoluted.  This movie would be easy enough to reverse engineer and learn how to create a story spine for a force that could destroy the world.

There is a moral tale and it's the basic good vs. evil.

Here is the review I did on YouTube, if you are interested in viewing it.

 

 



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All my books have a thread of Catholicism running through them.

Ryan Mallardi Private Investigations
Jack Nolan Detective Series
Newport Vampire Stories Series

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Check out my Book Series!

All my books have a thread of Catholicism running through them.

Ryan Mallardi Private Investigations
Jack Nolan Detective Series
Newport Vampire Stories Series

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Check out my Book Series!

All my books have a thread of Catholicism running through them.

Ryan Mallardi Private Investigations
Jack Nolan Detective Series
Newport Vampire Stories Series