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Old 09-04-2017, 10:19 AM   #37
Greg Anos
Grand Sorcerer
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cinisajoy View Post
I wish I was referring to scanned books.
Alas, one author that actually didn't know his father's wastes from his fathers waist told me that he didn't notice homonyms or apostrophe errors and therefore his readers wouldn't notice either. The poor dear was trying to figure out three things.
1. Why he was getting bad reviews.
2. Why he wasn't making many sales.
3. Why 90% of his sold books were being returned.
I am minded of the letter Robert Heinlein sent to the authors of a famous Hugo/Nebula award winning book, after reading the first draft.

Once you've completed the first draft, Start from the beginning and then check the grammar, spelling and then cut out every extra word you can. The start all over from the beginning and cut again. (This would fix the typos along the way.)

Luckily, there is a before/after pulp novel I can recommend to see how this works. The before is in the US public domain, and is on Project Gutenberg. The after was rewritten in 1958, and is considered the "proper" version of the story.

It is the original Space Opera, The Skylark of Space", by E.E.Smith. The first version was 300 pages, the last was 180 pages. Not one scene was cut.

It's not enough to write, you have to ruthlessly "tighten" any story, if you want to sell. . .
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