This week, I'm joined by queer scifi/fantasy indie author Bri Spicer to talk about the process for editing her self-published serial novel, In the Light of a Broken Moon.
Music: Harlequin by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3858-harlequin
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Show Notes:
Find Bri Spicer at Instagram: @brispicerwrites ; Website: www.brispicer.com ; Twitter: @brispicerwrites
Purchase the first episode of her serial novel, In the Light of a Broken Moon, on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DCRFKPH
C. M. McCann, Whimsical Words editing services: https://linktr.ee/authorcmmccann
Inciting Incidents explained: https://blog.reedsy.com/inciting-incident/
Dark Night of the Soul and Save the Cat! beats explained: https://timstout.wordpress.com/story-structure/blake-snyders-beat-sheet/
Skye Horne, Kingdoms of Faerie series: https://linktr.ee/skyehorn_author
J. D. Evans, Mages of the Wheel series: https://linktr.ee/jdevansbooks
Nicole Haley, cover art and graphic design: nicolehayley.com
Stella B. James, author: https://www.stellabjames.com/
J. Kap, author, @LadyKapDragon: https://authorjkap.com/
Transcript:
Ariel: Hi there, and welcome to Edit Your Darlings, a podcast that tries to take the sting out of editing by talking with darling authors about their experiences. In this week's episode, I'm joined by Bri Spicer, a queer scifi and fantasy writer who lives in a little college town in the American South with two tubby Dachsunds and far too many books. She has a BA and an MFA in creative writing, and she spends most of her free time writing about world building and reading through the Hugo and Nebula SFF nominee list from the last decade. The first episode of her science fantasy serial novel, In the Light of a Broken Moon, is now available on Amazon. And y'all, I read it this weekend, and could not put it down. Thank you so much for joining me, Bri.
Bri: Thank you so much. I'm really, really glad that you enjoyed that first episode, seriously.
Ariel: Oh, it was so wholesome. The love of Demya is really palpable. So let's get into the questions. First, I want to talk about your personal approach to revising your own work, since you're both a writer and an editor, sort of juggling those different hats. And then you mentioned that you're really meticulous about sending only your best work to others for feedback. So how do you ensure that it's your best work? And how do you decide when you are done being the writer on it and ready to move into editing?
Bri: Yes, my very first draft is my alpha draft. I often jokingly refer to it as my barf draft. Not to be crude. But the idea is to get everything out on the page as quickly as possible. I do it in very colloquial English, I sort of just talk myself through the story. if you read through it, it sounds very much as if I, you know, had gone to the coffee shop—you know, pre-pandemic—I'd gone to the coffee shop and sat down with a friend and just sort of talked them through, okay, and then this happens. And this is how my characters feel about it. And this is why it's important. And then I send that alpha draft out to alpha readers. And these are people who... they're very skilled with storytelling structure, they understand how story works, they understand stakes, tension, and, you know, all of the moving pieces. All of their notes are about, here's the plot holes, here's where the story fell slack, here's where I was bored, I have questions about this or that, right? So then I incorporate that into a revision draft and do a full on, this is the actual text of the novel that someone is going to read.
That then goes to beta readers, who then give me feedback on okay, I buy this sentence, I think that this is an unbelievable emotion, or this is a little bit overwrought, or there's too much description here. And then finally, after beta readers, it goes for copy edits and and then proof edits. The way that I try to ensure that it is the very best draft, I give it a full read through once I write it, I make any corrections I need to make. And at that point—because I don't want to nitpick it to death. If I nitpick it, I'll get to a point where I hate it. And that's when I know that, that it has stayed with me for too long. Like, I don't want to hate the thing that I'm creating, I want to love it as much as I can all the way through to the point where I feel, okay, I'm getting exhausted with this, I can't see anything else, I'm too close to it. That's when I send it out for alphas betas, and then copy edits and proof edits.
Ariel: And so you don't put it in a closet for a couple of months first?
Bri: I know a lot of people like to do that. I like to move from one project to the next. My personal philosophy is that I only learned by doing and I don't like to put a project up and sit for a couple of months. Usually when I'm kind of in the midst of a project, starting another one in that timeframe is not a good idea for me, I lose... I lose the thread of the first one. I move very quickly. And then, you know, when a project is done, it's done. I've learned what I can from it. And then I can start the next thing.
Ariel: Yeah. In addition to being an author, you're also a developmental editor. And I don't think that you mentioned that; you said that you went from beta readers to copy editors and proofers. Do you go through a developmental editor?
Bri: I do not. I read a lot. That is just some advice to throw out there: read, read, read, read read. Just never, ever stop reading. Like, know your market, know your audience, know what's popular, know the classics in your genre. I feel like, you know, because I've read so much, you sort of start to—by osmosis, you start to kind of pick up the basics of here's how a story works. Here is how tension works, here is how plot beats work, here is how POV and, you know, different character arcs all should work together. Developmental editors, I know a lot of folks use them if they are into a project and they feel lost in the weeds, a developmental editor can really see sort of an eagle's eye view of Okay, here's the whole story, here's where the issues are. But at this point, with my writing, I have not run into the, Okay, I’m through an alpha draft, and I feel like I'm lost in the weeds at this point. And it may be because once that alpha draft goes out, in my process, that alpha draft goes out to about four different people who have, you know, a little bit more experience writing than I do, who review for a living, folks who kind of have a firm grasp of how that works. So, you know, at that point, if there is any problems, they're going to point it out. But I don't seek out a developmental editor at the start, just because I feel like I've got a grip on this is... this is how it's really supposed to work.
Ariel: Yeah. And you mentioned that your alpha readers tend to have more experience than you. How did you find these people?
Bri: Some of them in college, we were friends and we were in some of the same courses together. So you know, I picked up some folks there, and then I had other friends in writers groups online. Like when we used to write fanfiction, I wrote an absolute metric crapload of Sailor Moon fanfiction when I was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. And people, I know that they kind of crap on fanfiction, but it is an excellent apprenticeship to learn how to do this. You have vicious feedback immediately. So if you've done something wrong or the story isn't working, they're gonna let you know about it. So you also develop a thick skin. And so I picked up a lot of writing friends from there as well. And we've just kind of followed each other through the years, each of us working on our own projects, and you know, getting more skilled and more experienced as we go.
Ariel: Do you think that thick skin has been really important to you, or?
Bri: Yeah, yeah.
Ariel: Can it get in your way?
Bri: Sometimes. I always kind of take the Jack Sparrow approach. You know, in the very first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, the British Captain says, you know, oh God, you’re the worst pirate I have ever heard of. And Jack says, but you have heard of me. So I kind of take that approach with reviews or notes. It's like, okay, you're not very good at this. Okay, well, at least I put it out there. And that's the only way that—your mileage may vary, obviously—but in my personal experience, that is, you have to do the thing to get better at doing the thing. Having a thin skin can sometimes... it can shut you down, I can, it can overwhelm you with emotions and feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. Whereas if you kind of got that thicker skin, and it's like, okay, that critique was valid—harsh, but valid.
Ariel: Like I said, I read In the Light of a Broken Moon over the weekend, and there was a line that stuck out to me where your protagonist, Demya, kind of has imposter syndrome. And she says, she almost feels like “an actor putting on airs for a role she's not qualified to play.” And I feel like a lot of authors, when they get to those revisions, and they're staring at a page with just red everywhere or thousands of changes, it can make them feel that same way of they're not good enough. And maybe they should just stop right there. Was that your experience, too? And how do you deal with it? The thick skin is important so that you're not crushed, but it also can't be made of rubber so that none of the critiques teach you anything.
Bri: Exactly.
Ariel: How do you balance imposter syndrome with progress?
Bri: One of the things that I always try to keep in mind: I don't ever want to be the smartest person in the room. I'm in the wrong room, if I'm... if I'm the smartest person in the room. So the people that I pick to give me feedback, and to be vicious and to tell me what is wrong, I trust those people's judgment. These are people I profoundly respect. So when they write back and they say okay, here are the scenes that just popped these were great you did. This is perfect. Do not change a single word. I can trust that. I know what I'm doing. And when they say this scene, hmmm, I know what you're going for. But here's what's on the page, here's what I'm picking up, you need to put down more on the page, if you want me to pick up something else—I trust that. So I think a lot of times, there's a push for Oh, get as many beta readers as you can get, as much feedback as you can. And in my opinion, in my experience, too, it's just more pick for quality, pick people that you trust, pick people that you respect, pick people who, you know, are infinitely more skilled than you at certain things, and let them teach you, let them guide you. If you trust what they tell you, like imposter syndrome? In that instances, it's not as strong, because you can trust their positive feedback just as much as you can trust any constructive critique that they give you.
Ariel: Yeah, yeah. I guess I just wonder, if an author goes to a directory and they're looking for an editor, they're looking for beta readers, they're looking for a copy editor, and all they have is those people's websites? How do they trust? How do they find a good one?
Bri: So I've never done beta readers that way. So I can't quite speak to that. But for an editor, I found C. M. McCann on Instagram. She's absolutely wonderful. I saw other writers who had used her services. And I was impressed with those writers, I was impressed with their skill, with their storytelling, with their prose. And my thought process was that I'm impressed with their work, and she had a hand in helping get that to its final stage, then I need to look at her. If she, if she can create something that is beautiful and polished, right, and catch, you know, all the little embarrassing errors that can make a manuscript feel unprofessional and unfinished, I need to check out her work. So I messaged her, and we chatted up, and I ended up sending her my first chapter. She did a read through, she gave me critique, feedback on—at that point, it was copy edits—and put that up, sent it back, it was extremely, extremely thorough. She also made a point of, Okay, this is a suggestion, or this is something that you absolutely need changed. She made sure that she noted out in her notes, okay, this is totally fine, if you want to leave it, but I'm suggesting that you, you know, consider XYZ solution. From that experience, I knew she was professional, she was thorough, she was insightful. She had a really firm grasp of the English language, where I knew that she was going to be able to take the text, and give me back the critique that I needed on a sentence level. So that's what I would recommend for an editor. You know, if you're in a community, looking at the people whose work is finished, ask them. Uou know, no one's gonna mind if you message them, like, Hey, wow, I really was impressed with this. Who did you use for your editor for your copy edits or your proofs?
Ariel: On the other hand, do not reach out to an author and say, Hey, your work is full of errors Who do I avoid? Don't do it, guys. It’s just mean.
Bri: Yeah, do not do that. Because I guarantee you, the second they uploaded, if they're an indie, the second they uploaded, they saw it.
Ariel: Oh, yeah.
Bri: They know. But they're scrambling to get it fixed.
Ariel: Did your copy editor do your cleanup round? Or did you do your final round? Who accepted the changes?
Bri: I did. Yeah. So she sent me back copy edits. I went through and corrected. All of those that I agree with, there were two or three out of the ones that she found that I was like, no, they're perfectly fine the way they are. Thanks for the suggestion.
Ariel: Quick aside, another way that Bri might have said, thanks for your suggestion, but I like it the way it is, is the simple copy editing term, stet. Latin for “let it stand,” it's the author's way of saying, “I said what I said.”
Bri: Sent it back, she did her proofs, she sent those back, I implemented all of those without questions, because it's basic spelling or commas. And then we were good to go.
Ariel: Okay. There are pros and cons to accepting your own track changes. Because there's always the possibility that somebody is going to introduce an error. But the author can introduce an error or the copy editor can introduce an error. It happens on both sides. So I feel like whichever way the author is more comfortable with, that's probably the best way to go.
Bri: Yeah.
Ariel: You put your editor on your copyright page, which is an interesting choice to me. Why did they get the limelight like that?
Bri: I feel like anybody involved in a creative work—cover artists, illustrators, editors, for comic books letters, line art, colorist—deserves recognition. It was my story idea. It was my plot concept, it’s my characters. It's my world. But her input and her insight were so helpful. And so needed. She did a tremendous job.
Ariel: And so what is the difference between putting them on the copyright page and putting them in the acknowledgments?
Bri: For me, it was just a matter of, I wanted it to be prominent.
Ariel: Let's talk a little bit about your acknowledgments. I always read the acknowledgments of every book that I read, and I read them really carefully. Because they matter to me so much. I feel like a lot of people probably skip over them. But your acknowledgment page was amazing. You gave such specific credit to all of the people who had a hand in your work. And for one, you know, you said, “your notes are so often filled with the encouragement I need.” And to another you said, “Instead of attempting to spare my feelings, you pull out your knife and carve right through my story’s carotid.” And that's just so lovingly specific. What role did each type of feedback, the positive and the negative, play in making your work shine? Which one did you prefer? How did they make you feel?
Bri: So the encouragement that I always appreciate is the, you know, I thoroughly enjoyed this, I want the next piece, I need to know what happens next. Whereas the more constructive critique—and I choose to never see it as a negative, it's always constructive critique—that is what pushes it to become just the really clear, cut clean gem that I want my story to be. The one is the encouragement to keep going. Yes, this work is hard. And often, it feels overwhelming. And often it feels like it will never be done. But keep going because I need to know what happened. And like I said, with the constructive, it's more of the, this can be better. This is good. It is very, very good. But it can be better. And here are the ways that it can be better. And that friend specifically with her knife going after my stor’s carotid, she is very much of the opinion that her friends who she views to be writers of, you know, high caliber should not put out work that is anything less than the very best if I can. And so it's her job in that to help that happen.
Ariel: Can we talk a little bit about the fact that your novel is serialized?
Bri: Yeah.
Ariel: Did you work with your editor in individual chunks? Did you write the whole thing and then work it all at the same time before chunking it up? How did that go?
Bri: So I wrote the alpha draft first, just full on, month-long sprints to get every single plot point down and described in like, I said, really colloquial English as if I was having coffee and explaining it to people. And then I broke that out into, here's how many beats I have. Here's how many scenes I'm gonna have. And I typically know how long my scenes run. I wanted every episode to be between 25,000 and 30,000 words, because when I finished I have four episodes, I wanted it to be about the size of an epic fantasy or epic science fiction novel, around 100,000 to 120,000 words. So each one I chunked up. The first episode is the first act. The second episode is act 2a, pretty much from the inciting incident to the midpoint. The third episode is from the midpoint to the point of no return, the, you know, the dark night of the soul. And then the last episode is the concluding act of the book, the third act for the book.
Ariel: Quick aside. Bri’s big, beautiful brain is full of writerly knowledge. But if you, like me, were vaguely familiar with this terms, but not quite sure what they actually meant, I got you. An inciting incident is the occurrence that launches the protagonist into the plot. Think Katniss Everdeen volunteering for the Hunger Games, or Luke Skywalker discovering a hidden message in the droid he just bought. Dark night of the soul is a beat in Blake Snyder's Save the Cat! screenwriting template. In this formula, each beat is an emotional chord that needs to be struck along the way as the story advances. Dark night of the soul is the character's rock bottom, just before the climax.
Bri: That was how I divided it up. And then I dove into writing the actual text that's going to appear in the book one at a time that, you know, episode one got written, it got into an editor. While she was editing it, I started drafting for Episode Two. Episode Two goes to the editor on December 1, and I start drafting for Episode 3. Each episode, I like to have sort of a concrete, here as what happened and none of that can change. Because when I try to work on longer novels, what I find is that my perfectionist nature, I want to go back, you know. I finished the book, and I'm like, oh, but we could make, you know, chapter one, two, and three, this, you know, improve it in these ways. And at that point, the book becomes a tangled mess, I fell out of love with it, the project doesn't get finished. So writing it in these, you know, 25,000 to 30,000 chunks, it doesn't let me do that. It says you have to finish and you have to hand it in, then it has to be published. And then you better be starting on the next page. There can't be any of this, you know, going back and fiddling with it. Else, it'll never get finished, and you'll never move on to the next thing and learn. Learn what it can teach you.
Ariel: Your second installment is supposed to be out December 28.
Bri: Yes.
Ariel: And it's not to edits yet.
Bri: It goes on December 1.
Ariel: Oh, my heart!
Bri: It’s already been through copy edits.
Ariel: Okay.
Bri: So it goes for it—Yeah. It goes for proofs on December 1, I'll get it back about December 15, I have a week to implement proofs. And then it goes to the format. And I don't deal with formatting.
Ariel: And who sets these deadlines?
Bri: I do this to myself. I do this to myself. And I mean, again, this is my first time doing serial. Next time, I'll probably give myself a little bit more breathing room. But it was really a thing of, I had been writing in this universe since about 2016. And I had not finished a project.
Ariel: Yeah.
Bri: I just kept starting a book and getting about three quarters of the way through it and then kept going back and revising. And there was a long dry spell of writing, about seven months where I didn't write anything. And then I had this idea and I'm like, we're doing it. Made the announcement on Instagram, and at that point, there was no going back. There were deadlines. We're out in the world, and we're doing it.
Ariel: I love it. There's just a spark about that. I think that we've hit on all of our major talking points. So let's get into the questions that I ask all of my guests. What do you hate about the editing process?
Bri: Oh my god. So when I write, I write the meat of the scene, I write the muscle. And the big moments of, you know, the killer line, or the killer action scene or the really sweet romance. what I hate about editing is I leave these little carat marks throughout the manuscript: come back later and do the tendon stuff. Build, do the tendon, add in the skin later. I hate, I hate connective tissue in a story where it's those lines have scene transitions, or you know, an emotional beat that I don't quite have my head wrapped around the first time through the scene, I just leave a little note, come back. And there's got to be something here. There's a beat missing here. And so when I come back through and there's that connective tissue work, it just,
I can't stand it. I don't, I don't quite like that. And when I come back through for a sort of final pass, that's the other area because it's like, this is going out. And it's done. And you're committed to that, and this, this is it. This is what's going out into the world. This is what people are going to read. And you know, speak now forever or hold your peace, right?
Ariel: Yeah, there's a little bit of anxiety there. And there's a little bit of like, this is my baby, will it be safe?
Bri: Right, right. Because when it—when it leaves my hands and it goes into Kindle, right? And, you know, it's just out there getting processed, and people start pre-ordering it, that book no longer belongs to me. That book now belongs, is now in the hands of my readers. And I've done everything I can and I have gotten to that finish line as best I can. But when it passes out of my hands, it's not mine anymore. And that, that is that's nerve racking. I'm not gonna lie.
Ariel: Yeah. What's the most common bit of feedback you receive?
Bri: Oh, trust yourself.
Ariel: Trust yourself.
Bri: Trust yourself. Trust yourself. Trust yourself. I write in a science fantasy world. There's magic. There's tech, there's, you know, a mystical group of warrior librarians. And that is not a concept that is sort of broadly out there in the science fiction world. So I worry when I write is, is this clear, are readers following this? Do they understand it? And so part of my editing process is going back on the copy edits piece, it’s you've already said this, right, he made it clear two paragraphs above, like you don't stop beating this dead horse. You're not, you're not trusting yourself. You said it clearly two paragraphs ago. Let it go. Trust your audience.
Ariel: Yeah, that's what it really comes down to.
Bri: Yeah, trust that your audience is invested in your characters, that they are invested in your world, that they want to see where the plot is going, that they are paying attention, and those, those two, the trust yourself and trust your audience, those are the ones that I get most frequently, which is both a, you know, it's positive and a constructive, you know, it, the constructive is stop beating yourself, Bri. And the positive piece of it is, you've already...you're good at it, you know, you're fine, you've already covered it, you're clear, you're...you're okay, you can keep going, just trust that you've done what you need to do.
Ariel: At least those are easy things to fix, right?
Bri: Yeah.
Ariel: It's not like you're having to continue pouring yourself into the page, right? You were a little extra generous, and you just got a mop a little bit up. Just a little...little puddles. Any last words of advice?
Bri: I would say probably—and again, this is in my experience—writers tend to hand a lot of their power about their work to their alpha readers, to their beta readers, to their critique partners, to their editors, and I don't think that's something that writers need to do. Right? Like, it's a collaborative process, you, you didn't create this thing to then hand it over and be like, okay, please eviscerate this. Think of, I created this thing, can you help me make it better? Can you point out what's working and what's not?
Ariel: Yeah.
Bri: And on top of the... in claiming your power as a writer, claiming, you know, the responsibility for the work, that also requires you to be responsible with a draft that you can use to make sure that you have collected skilled and talented people who are going to help you make a stronger piece. And it's on you as well to take that critique and take their feedback and incorporate it in a way that's useful and that strengthens your work. That way, you know, they're not wasting their time. And you're not wasting yours. So yeah, last pieces of advice would probably be: be empowered with your work, view it as a collaborative process with your editing staff, and your alpha readers and beta readers and, you know, be responsible for who you bring to look at your work.
Ariel: Yeah. And only by standing on your own two feet as an author and knowing what your voice is, can you really incorporate feedback effectively, because you're going to hear, do this, don't do this, with exactly the same thing. And you're going to need to make those choices. And you have to know which choice feels right for you.
Bri: Yeah, and I mean, that, that requires knowing yourself. And that requires intimately knowing the story that you're trying to tell, you know. You can get pulled this way and that by the market, or, you know, by reviews or by notes from your critique partners and your beta readers. You know, having a very firm sense of I know who I am, I know what I'm trying to say with the story, and I know the story that I'm trying to tell, I'm empowered to say I know what I'm doing. Yes, that that's going to be really key to not getting pulled all over the place and ending up with a book that you don't recognize.
Ariel: Yeah. Just keep reminding yourself: you're good at this.
Bri: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And knowing that perfection is... is deadly. It's just absolutely deadly. And realizing like, okay, so maybe it's not perfect, maybe... maybe it's not a National Book Award winner or a Nebula winner, or a Hugo winner for science fiction writers. I'm learning how to... how to do this. I've never written a full book before like this. Of course, it's my first book. I'm still learning how to do things. And as long as it is the most beautiful, and the most heartfelt, and the most skillfully crafted thing that I can create right now, then I've done my work.
Ariel: Yeah. And you did your work. It is beautiful.
Bri: Thank you. Thank you.
Ariel: So the last portion of our program is a hot and wholesome gossip corner. This is an opportunity for you to lift up other writers or creators doing something that you're excited about or give shoutouts to people who lifted you up. What you got for us?
Bri: If anybody is an indie writer and they're not on Instagram, remedy that because there are so many brilliant people working tirelessly, just ridiculously tirelessly to put out incredible work, incredible content, to build a community. Skye Horne especially. She's an author of the Kingdoms of Fairie series on Amazon. She is one of the kindest, most brilliant, most business savvy women I have talked to in the indie space. JD Evans. She writes the Mages of the Wheel series, which is a huge epic fantasy series. Gorgeous covers. She is immensely kind. When I first got into the indie scene back in April, I messaged JD Evans and I was like, I know I'm new. I don't want to waste your time. But I've got a load of questions. And she took time out of her schedule to sit and talk with me.
Ariel: Wow.
Bri: Just welcoming and full of advice. Nikki Haley is my cover artist. She is also an incredible writer. Stella B. James is also wonderful. She does a lot of poetry. Lady Kap Dragon is also a user on Instagram who's fantastic. She has really great book recommendations and really great craft chats. So yeah, get on Instagram, get to know the indie community there. You will find a ton of people who are just... devote so much time to creating writing resources, creating community events, like live chats and weekly discussions of craft, people who are putting out incredible books. Just, yeah, it's a fantastic community.
Ariel: I'm on Twitter. I'm not yet on Instagram. But I hear that I need to be.
Bri: I use Twitter a little bit more for sort of book recs. I'm not on there very much as a writer, that's probably something I should remedy. But the... the community I'm most involved with is on Instagram. And they are. They're wonderful.
Ariel: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me, Bri. I really appreciate it.
Bri: Yeah, thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate being on here.
Ariel: Like I said, the second episode of Bri’s serial novel comes out on December 28, 2020. I know what I'll be doing that day. Our show notes will include all of the different handles that you heard. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next week.