Excellent! You’re at the end now–only a few more things to keep in mind. If you want to, you can re-read the story again, this time skimming for the following elements:
- Point of View
- You should be consistently 1st person (I, we, me, etc.), 2nd person (you–though books written like this are RARE), or 3rd person (she, he, it, they, etc.). Do NOT change point of view/pronouns mid-story.
- Tense
- Your story is probably in past tense (I said) or present tense (I say). You may be experimental and use future tense (I will say), but that’s not common. Make sure your verbs are consistently in the same tense as the rest of the book!
If you have an eye for it, this is a good time to doublecheck your punctuation as well, but that’s in another blog! When in doubt, google it. There are tons of resources on how to use commas, semicolons, colons, hyphens, dashes, parentheses, and ellipses properly (You’re probably fine with periods, question marks, and exclamation points, so you already know a bunch of this stuff!).
Obviously, if you spot typos, fix them. If you’re not sure which word to use (affect/effect, lay/lie, passed/past, etc.)… can you guess what I’m going to say? GOOGLE IT!!! You have all of the knowledge known to mankind at this moment at your fingertips. Use that resource for some good as well as looking at cat videos. (Psst…here’s a cute cat video. You’re welcome, and Rick says hi!).
Wow, it looks like you’re nearly there. One more thing–open your document and zoom way WAY out, down to like 10% or so, and gaze lovingly at your manuscript laid out in tiny little square pages. Skim it, and make sure that your formatting hasn’t gotten wonky somewhere along the way. Your chapters should start on new pages (and ideally should be marked as Heading 1). Your paragraphs should be indented a half-inch. And if you plan to submit your book to 4Horsemen Publications, the whole thing should be double-spaced, Times New Roman, 12-point font. (Come on–you know I had to say it!).
Everything looks good? YAY!! You are now ready to send your manuscript out the door and into the world. Enjoy this feeling of satisfaction, and then get started on the next book!
