How neat is your stitching?

What the writer sees in a text versus what the reader sees.

My son and his wife are expecting a baby in July. Keen to fit the grandmotherly stereotype, I have been knitting a series of shapeless garments that probably no self-respecting baby would choose to go near. In truth I’m a hopeless knitter: I drop stitches, forget to count and usually spill coffee all over the wool. It’s certainly a labour of love and I have no doubt the poor child will be dutifully photographed in these hand knitted atrocities in order to placate my grandmotherly ego, before the items are banished to the back of the drawer. But at least I try.

It’s a bit the same with writing. It’s no accident pieces of prose are called texts, from the Latin verb ‘texere,’ which meant ‘to weave.’ Written texts are just words, phrases and sentences woven together. If this is done well, the reader has a satisfying experience. But sometimes as writers, all we see is the mess: the literary equivalent of the dropped stitches and tangled wool. There was a picture that did the rounds on Twitter recently, (see above) depicting a piece of embroidery from the back, all messy and confusing, with the description ‘what the writer sees’ and the same from the front, all clear, neat and beautiful, with the description, ‘what the reader sees.’ I thought it was an excellent analogy.

So how do we check our writing chaos is a seamless experience for our readers? Here are a few suggestions:

1. Often as writers we are too close to our own words, we need to find some detachment, to approach our texts afresh as new readers would. If time permits, leaving the writing for a few weeks will often allow us that degree of objectivity.

2. Use ‘beta readers’  - I usually ask my book club friends. These are people who are intelligent readers, but do not write themselves, so again they will evaluate your words from the reader perspective.

3. Use computing technology to help you smooth things out.  I know I have a tendency to write about characters who drive their nails into their palms when frightened, so I do a search for the number of uses of ‘nails’ in the texts to check I am not repeating myself excessively (although a couple of uses several pages apart is fine).

4. You can also use the computer to colour code plot elements, to ensure consistency, or check there is continuity of characterisation.

5.Timelines are often useful to check you have the chronology right. I have two timelines, one for historical events, and one for episodes in my characters’ lives and this generally works well.

6. If you are unpublished, you can employ a freelance editor to do a structural edit on your text. If published, then the publishing company’s in-house editor will do this for you.

None of this guarantees perfection – in fact a couple of errors slipped through the editing process of my last book that were thankfully picked up at a very late stage by the audio reader. (Phew!)

Once your text has gone to print, then try not to look at it again. There is always something that has evaded every check. It will stand out a mile to you, but your readers probably won’t even notice it.

So I’ll continue with my dreadful knitting – I have to confess, I quite enjoy it - but I think I’m actually a lot neater when it comes to writing.