{"id":195,"date":"2013-05-21T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-21T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/blog\/2013\/05\/21\/tactical-tuesday-advice-for-self-editing_21-2\/"},"modified":"2015-11-25T12:22:17","modified_gmt":"2015-11-25T19:22:17","slug":"tactical-tuesday-advice-for-self-editing_21-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/tactical-tuesday-advice-for-self-editing_21-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Tactical Tuesday: Advice for Self-Editing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div class=\"MsoNormalCxSpFirst\" style=\"text-indent: 0in;\">\nWriting<br \/>\na series of novels does not give an author the right to leave the reader<br \/>\ndangling mid-plot at the end of any of the books in that series.<\/div>\n<div class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\" style=\"text-indent: 0in;\">\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\" style=\"text-indent: 0in;\">\nWhether<br \/>\na compilation of three or ten books is planned, every book should be written to stand<br \/>\nalone. An author should always be mindful that a reader may not pick up book<br \/>\none first. Instead, book three in a series might grab the reader\u2019s attention<br \/>\nand send him looking for the first two books.<\/div>\n<div class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\" style=\"text-indent: 0in;\">\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\" style=\"text-indent: 0in;\">\nIn the last<br \/>\nyear, I read two books written in a popular genre, which because of the genre\u2019s<br \/>\nvery nature, has many similar plots and character names. The first book ended<br \/>\nwithout any plot resolution. Unresolved plots are not the way to this reader\u2019s<br \/>\nheart\u2014and I believe many readers would agree.<\/div>\n<div class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\" style=\"text-indent: 0in;\">\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\" style=\"text-indent: 0in;\">\nAlmost<br \/>\na year later, I pick up another book by the same author, and the frustration began<br \/>\nfrom the very first page. Characters walked on stage without introduction, plots<br \/>\nseemed to have already started before I got into the author\u2019s story world, and<br \/>\nI found myself lost and flipping pages to see if I\u2019d missed anything. Still, I<br \/>\ncontinued on because I\u2019m a glutton for punishment. Halfway through the book, I<br \/>\nconnected the dots and realized that the book in my hand was the second book in<br \/>\nthe series that had aggravated me previously. The good news: I finally got<br \/>\nresolution to the plot. The bad news: I really didn\u2019t much care. The author had<br \/>\ntwo chances to win me over, and she failed.<\/div>\n<div class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\" style=\"text-indent: 0in;\">\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\" style=\"text-indent: 0in;\">\nAuthors do not want their readers to<br \/>\ncomplain about their books. So, when writing a series, it is important to<br \/>\nself-edit with an eye toward giving each book legs of its own. In other words,<br \/>\neven when a plot will resurface in another book in a series, there has to be<br \/>\na definitive end to each plot in the book at hand. A plot that ends with the<br \/>\nhero riding off into the sunset while the heroine looks on in tears provides a<br \/>\nresolution\u2014albeit unhappy\u2014but there is a promise of another story. Failure to resolve<br \/>\na plot causes a reader to feel cheated of both time and money.<\/div>\n<div class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\" style=\"text-indent: 0in;\">\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\" style=\"text-indent: 0in;\">\nHappy<br \/>\nediting.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Writing a series of novels does not give an author the right to leave the reader dangling mid-plot at the end of any of the books in that series. Whether a compilation of three or ten books is planned, every book should be written to stand alone. An author should always be mindful that a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[504],"tags":[170,70,62,171],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editing-writing-advice","tag-plot-resolution","tag-self-editing","tag-tips-for-writing","tag-writing-a-series"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}