Last week I received the galleys to my upcoming book, Look To The East. This is an exciting phase in book production, because I get to see what the book will look like in its finished form. It’s typeset, with headers and page numbers and pretty little doohickeys between sections to signify breaks.
All the trimmings are there, too. The copyright page, the dedication and acknowledgements, along with my author’s note and even a little snippet of my current project, Book Two in this Great War Series, just to whet the reader’s appetite so they can look forward to the next book.
I’m happy to report that everything looks great! Reading through the project one last time makes me excited all over again about having others finally read it. Although the backdrop includes a war, the genre is really historical romance — which has always been my favorite kind of escapist fiction. And these days who doesn’t need a little escape?
Okay, so I can hear you asking if I found anything. After all, why do we even want to see the galleys, if not to search for any mistakes? Well, I didn’t find much. By this phase I’ve already read through the story several times, and shared it with my critique partner. A couple of editors have read through it more than once, and it’s even been seen by a few people outside the editorial department who are given the opportunity to look over upcoming releases and give feedback on what works (and what doesn’t!). By now even the copy editor has gone through it, so it’s very unlikely anything will get by so many eyes.
But I did find one thing. It’s in a scene toward the back of the book. I’ve found this is a common place for errors, because by now (hopefully) the reader is as caught up in the story as I was when writing it, so little errors can slip by.
In this particular scene I have one of my characters boarding a small biplane. (Remember, this is World War One, where planes were used in combat and reconnaissance for the first time.) In this almost-too-late-to-change version, I noticed my character boards the plane in one paragraph—and then a couple paragraphs later he boards it again, albeit in a slightly different manner!
Would this be something that would spoil the reading experience? Maybe, for some. For the careful reader. It’s a minor error, but this is exactly the kind of thing we’re all looking for at this stage. I’m eager to find out if I’m the only one who caught it, or if they’ll tell me: thanks, but it’s already been fixed.
It reminded me of a behind-the-scenes recap I once heard about the old movie Ben Hur. They said in the first filming of the big chariot race scene that a plane flew overhead in the sky just above the backdrop of the set. Imagine watching an old Roman chariot race and having the eye caught by a modern day plane soaring overhead!
That’s what final editing is all about.
Join Me!