There's a lot of advice given to authors about the importance of having another set of eyes review your manuscript because the outside editor will view the manuscript without preconceived notions of what the author thinks the reader understands, and because when reviewing a manuscript the author tends to, in his mind, fill in missing articles and information, even though they may not be on the page.
When I received a proof copy of The Gantlet Brothers: Sold Out for review I left it sitting on my desk for a couple of months, instead of rushing to do a final edit. Part of this was procrastination, because I know that editing is a time consuming process that eats away at minutes that could be used to be creating some new story, but the other part of my reasoning is that it's wise for an author to give their manuscripts time to cool off.
Once the author is away from their manuscript for a time, they forget how they intended certain sentences to read, and are able to view the story with fresher eyes. Even though I had edited the manuscript at a prior time, and then it had been edited by a professional editor, I found things that we had both missed.
Here's an impartial list of things I found:
Easy to make errors: at least one your (possessive) which should have been a you're (you are), and it's (it is) that should have been an its (possessive), a few instances where the plurality of the verb didn't manage the plurality of the object.
Continuity errors:
A) When Matthias enters communist Czechoslovakia his 44 magnum Desert Eagle is mentioned, yet he never uses it--instead using his 454 Cassul revolver. Now, Matthias has been known to carry both pistols at the same time, but I found it better to remove the mention of the Desert Eagle and replace it with a mention of the 454.
B) Matthias is betrayed while helping a Czech priest escape from the dreaded Pancrac Prison. He grabs the betrayer and twists his arm up behind his back, and in the uncorrected version there is an audible crack which might indicate his arm is broken, yet later in the manuscript the betrayer is able to drive a motorcycle without any difficulties. I removed the cracking noise and problem solved.
C) Fritz loads the "last" belt of ammunition into his Swiss machine gun twice. I'm not sure how he managed that--probably the same way that, in many movies, cowboys with one six-shooter manage to fire eleven bullets. Anyway, I deleted "last" and the problem is fixed. I try to keep track of how many bullets characters are firing and make sure that their guns actually hold that many rounds.
Repetitive Words: This is one that my pro editor doesn't seem to spot. Sometimes I will use the same word (and I'm not talking about the, a, this, that and there) in adjacent sentences. I like to minimize this practice and use a synonym, or sometimes I discover the word isn't necessary at all in one of the sentences.
Missing quotation marks: It's just one stroke of the typewriter, but a missing quotation mark can be confusing to the reader.
Clarity: Sometimes an article like it, him or her is not precise enough and the reader can be confused about which it, him, or her the writer is referring to. In these instances, it is best to replace that article with a specific.
Extra Prepositions: Take an especially close look at any instance where you might have two prepositions next to each other. Often, one of these prepositions is unnecessary. Sometimes I find these extra prepositions which have crept into the initial draft. They tend to clutter the sentence. If the sentence still makes perfect sense without the extra in, over, by, through, or under I delete it.
So, sum and total, I'm glad I took the time to peruse Sold Out one more time, because I found many errors, and imprecisions that I was able to improve. Is Sold Out perfect now? Unlikely, but a writer has to send his baby out into the world sometime.
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