I've written a book

[johns]

Hi guys and gals

The book isn't about Jack the Ripper before you read on any more, but I would like a wee bit of advice from my learned colleagues on casebook about a few matters if anyone has got the time.

It's the first book I've ever written and I'm self-publishing it.

Obviously when I started the project back in January I had no idea whatsoever on how it all worked, but a friend of a friend happens to be a trainee proof reader and she helped me enormously. After she'd read through it and I'd made various ammendments and so on and so forth, I sent it off to my publisher.

The way I've got the book structured isn't conventional in how the dialogue is formatted.

Example.

John - Hi Mrs B, how are you today?

Mrs B - Fine thank you John

rather than...

John said, "Hi Mrs B, How are you today?"
"Fine thank you John," replied Mrs B.

Note how I also have a blank line between each speaker. The narrative passages of the book look conventional. It's only in the dialogue exchanges that I have it like this. Basically because the vast majority of conversations can be quite lengthy, and only a few words long in each case. i think it looks better and suits what the book is about better too. Even the publisher agrees.

Now what's happening is that I sent off my final draft as a DOC file.

They sent back a PDF file of that 1st draft for me to check. It had 21 instances of the blank lines missing.

I sent them a DOC highlighting these errors.

They sent back a revised PDF (version 2) and the original 21 blank lines had all been fixed, but 4 new ones appeared. These can easily be explained because they were lines that were originally spread over 2 pages, but because text has now dropped down with extra blank lines being added, they now sit on the same page.

I sent another DOC highlighting these 4 new "errors"

They sent me back a revised PDF (version 3) and those 4 are fixed but there are now just 2 new instances of these line spacing errors.

This morning I sent them a DOC highlighting them. They will doubtless fix them on Monday. Hopefully that will be it but we'll see eh.

My questions are...

1) When a DOC is converted to PDF wouldn't it just copy over directly without altering anything? The blank lines should remain as they did in the vast majority of cases I would imagine. I may have missed a few of my blank lines out but not 21.
The PDF is also coming in at around 220 pages, whereas my DOC was 164 pages. Obviously I had my DOC set in a smaller font than how the final pages of a regular sized paperback would appear. Also, some of the chapters start on a fresh page if the previous chapter ended near the bottom of a page, whereas my DOC just carried on down the DOC with chapter titles as required.

2) Therefore, with the editor manually starting some chapters on a fresh PDF page, could that cause this? I wouldn't have thought so myself.

3) Having no experience at all in book publishing, what is the expected number of revisions a final draft would go through before it gets to the printers, or indeed the internet? I appreciate that my dialogue is formatted differently, but I would imagine that there would be a few "final drafts".

By the way, I'm not annoyed AT ALL by these revisions, because it's actually given me the opportunity to make 2 very minor changes at the same time, and I'm also taking it as a lesson should I write anything else.

The publishers themselves are more than cooperative and these final draft emails have all taken just a day each time, so it's not taking a long time to sort all this out. We only started on Tuesday last week.

Thanks for your time folks.

John

[Robert]

Hi John

I know nothing whatsoever about book publishing etc. This post is just to suggest that, in the example you quote, you can trim things a bit :

"Hi Mrs B, how are you today?"

"Fine thank you John."

The reader knows who is speaking and who is being addressed.

[Zena]

I've been published well over a decade, with online e-publishers and then self-publishing. (Nothing Jack the Ripper related.) It's been some years since I proofed a PDF for the paperback version of a book, but I don't recall the publisher turning the manuscript from a Word doc to a PDF introducing errors. Other than that, I don't know anything about PDFs.

A few years ago, as my editor and I sent the Word doc of a manuscript back and forth for editing, when I got it back, there would be an extra blank line here and there. No more than five in the whole doc. But the funny thing was, the Find/Replace function wouldn't find them. I had to turn on Show/Hide, the function that shows all the hidden formatting symbols, and manually go through the whole manuscript and delete them. It only happened a few times and hasn't happened again since. We never figured out why and just thought it had to do with our computers having different systems.

I think anything that's "different" from normal formatting might put a book at a disadvantage. (Then there's e.e. cummings and Cormac McCarthy, so what do I know. LOL)

I agree with Robert. Even with short lines of conversation, dialogue tags including action tags would make it not seem so choppy on the page.


"Hi, Mrs B." John tipped his hat. "How are you today?"

Mrs B swatted at a bee buzzing near her head. "Fine, thank you, John."


(The grammar police in me is compelled to point out that when one character addresses another, the name should be set off with commas. )

Tags don't have to be added to every single line of dialogue. As Robert pointed out, the reader will know who's speaking.

As for your questions:

1) Sorry, I can't help you there. As I said, I don't know anything about PDFs.

2) I don't know the answer to that, either. But to be consistent, it seems like every chapter should start on a new page. That's how my e-publishers always formatted my books, e-books and paperbacks, and that's how I format my self-published e-books.

3) The number of revisions varies. My e-publishers would send me the final doc, after the final line editor had a go at it, with errata marked. I'd make the corrections, send it back, and that was it. But since the process seems to be introducing errors into the PDF, it will take as many as it takes to get them all out. Since it's blank lines being added, couldn't your editor just remove them on his/her end? It might be the act of sending it back and forth between you that's adding the blank lines. Just a thought.

Good luck with your book!

[Sam Flynn]

1) When a DOC is converted to PDF wouldn't it just copy over directly without altering anything?

You can lose some of the formatting in the process, as Word uses font substitution when saving to PDF. The fonts might look the same, but they're subtly different, and things like line spacing and page-flow might be affected too. You can get round this, I think, by embedding fonts in the document. You'll find an "embed fonts" option somewhere in Word's settings; don't ask me precisely where, as (a) I use Office for Mac; and (b) I rarely use Word these days. Google is your friend.

[Hercule Poirot]

The way you handle dialogs are quite unusual. I would stick with the traditional approach which will make things easier for readers who are familiar with the dialog writing conventions. As for the tags, in a conversation between two characters, it's better to specify who's talking in the first first lines. The logic and content of a conversation will normally allow the reader to identifie the owner of each following dialogue line.

Let me use your example with some slight changes.

Original:
John said, "Hi Mrs B, How are you today?"
"Fine thank you John," replied Mrs B.
Edited:
"Hi Mrs B, How are you today?" asked John.
"Fine thank you John," replied Mrs B.
"How many lofs of bread today?" He placed his loaded basket on the table.
"I'll take two, one baguette and one multi-grained".

I my novel, 'My Ripper Hunting Days', I identified them only at the beginning of an exchange as it becomes obvious who is speaking.

When more than two characters exchange between themselves, it becomes important to know who is talking. However, a tag doesn't have to be added after each line. A short description of the characters moving around on the 'set', their body language or a short piec of action will help out he reader and also avoid you slipping on the 'talking heads' banana peel.

One last thing about dialogue tags. Many writers tend to avoid as much as possible the use of 'said' and go for alternatives. The following image will show how many alternatives there might be. But I strongly suggest you limit yourself to the most common ones used for the simple reason that they quickly disapear in the mind of the reader as he turns the pages which is not the case with alternatives. And God knows how important it is to maintain a certain pace.

Now for the PDF problem, Microsoft Word and OppenOfice allow you to save under the pdf format. So you could quickly check how it turn out.

I submitted my novel on Createspace and Kindle in the PDF format and not '.doc' or '.html' and never had a problem.

Cheers,
Hercule Poirot

[Pcdunn]

Hello, Johns,

I'm a librarian, with an undergraduate background in literature and creative writing. I have also written fan fiction stories for publication in fanzines.

Your formatting is more typical of that seen in stage plays, with the character's name set off to the left side, before the line of dialogue. It is not conventional in prose fiction like stories
and novels, especially in English. How are you handling the narrative portion of your book?

Other posters have indicated examples of speech and action integrated together, which help your reader get a better "picture" in their minds of what is happening between the characters. It is up to you, of course.

Adding blank lines between lines of dialogue is more common in screenplays (where the character's nane is usually centered above his or her speech. In both plays and film scripts, action is described between brackets or parentheses.

You don't need to add extra lines, but if you want them there, why not try putting the formatting codes into the manuscript? The problem here could be that the e-publisher might not be using the same program, and your marks could get lost or turn up in the story as random characters. Have you looked around to find out if there are e-publishing programs you can use instead of a regular Word program?

[Hercule Poirot]

Hello, Johns,
...Have you looked around to find out if there are e-publishing programs you can use instead of a regular Word program?

calibre is probably the best piece of free software to work with e-books: https://calibre-ebook.com/

I use it to convert .doc files into pdf, mobi into epub files or vice-versa.

OpenOffice has a couple of quirks, adding paragraphs where there are none. But otherwise, it does a good job saving files as..., and it's free.
Cheers,
Hercule Poirot

[johns]

Hi folks

Thanks for all your interest in my silly wee book. Some great observations and ideas there but my issues have now been resolved... I said my publisher was quick.

They duly sent me version 4 this morning which is totally error free so it has now gone for printing. I should have physical paperbacks in my hands by the 24th April they tell me. Wow eh!

Thanks once again folks.

Now that I've published my first book, maybe I can help others in the future. Writing a book is hard enough, but ensuring it is exactly how you want the finished article to look is another.

Cheers
John

[keffins]

Hi John, congratulations on your book.

I too have just finished my first one and intend to self publish. It's around 280 pages, A4 size (again not JTR related).

Could you recommend your publisher, and if so, who is it?!
I have a couple in mind but would prefer experienced advice.

Feel free to pm me if you like.

Many thanks and best of luck.

Lee

[johns]

Feel free to pm me if you like.


Lee

I tried to PM you Lee but your profile has PMs not allowed for some reason. PM me and I'll reply

[Robert]

I think maybe posters have to clock up a certain number of non-pub posts before PMs are allowed to be sent or received. The email facility might still be available.

[johns]

I think maybe posters have to clock up a certain number of non-pub posts before PMs are allowed to be sent or received. The email facility might still be available.

Aha! Cheers Robert