I'm pretty sure that some of this information will be repeated in / from other sections, but I wanted to give you guys a look into what the editors of MoonQuill work from as suggestions.
Necessary Tools
I’m pretty sure you guys are savvy enough to work your way around Google Docs; if not, you need to learn. Below are a few tips to help make G.Docs a little less annoying and a bit more useful.
Required Add-ons:
These are required. If you use an alternative, that’s fine too.
Grammar and spell Checker - LanguageTool
https://gsuite.google.com/u/0/marketplace/app/grammar_and_spell_checker_languagetool/805250893316?hl=en&pann=docs_addon_widget
This is handy because it’ll underline minor mistakes in blue and major ones red. You’ll be able to hover over it to see the suggested correction and click on it to make the change. It’s pretty nice and keeps you from typing “a apple” instead of “an apple” and helps locate those small changes quickly in documents.
OneLook Thesaurus
https://gsuite.google.com/marketplace/app/onelook_thesaurus/372652075936
If you prefer to use a different thesaurus (book or online) you can, but please make sure it’s a good one.
Dictionary
There is one built into Google Docs, however it can be lackluster and useless at times. I suggest using one of these:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/
https://www.lexico.com/
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/
https://www.dictionary.com/
The first three allow you to pick between American English and British English and have some other features as well.
Curvy Quotations and Apostrophes
This is non-negotiable and needs to be one. If you notice that the document has straight apostrophes or quotations, please fix them. To turn them on in Google Docs go to Tool -> Preferences -> Use Smart Quotes (checked). This will not fix existing quotations in the document, only new ones that are made.
Suggested Add-ons:
If you’re someone who cannot stand the immaculate brightness of Google Docs, I suggest getting this:
Google Docs Dark Mode
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-docs-dark-mode/lgjhepbpjcmfmjlpkkdjlbgomamkgonb?hl=en
Additionally, you can change the color of the document page by going to File -> Page Setup and adjust the page color to whatever you’d like. Please leave the Orientation as Portrait and the Paper Size as Letter (8.5” x 11”), margins should remain at 1 (inches) as well.
How to Keep Your Sanity
Let’s be very honest, we won’t always like the content of the book that we’re editing. Regardless it’s our job to make bring that book up to its fullest potential, but that doesn’t mean it has to come at the cost of our sanity.
I
highly
recommend creating an editing schedule for yourself. If you’re given a 50K novel, and 50 days to work on it, clearly doing 1k a day would make the process easy. However, life happens and sometimes we get burned out and don’t want to edit / have time to edit for a few days and that’s okay too. If you’re someone who likes to work on as much as you can in a day, please remember to take breaks, and take them often.
One way to stay ahead of your deadline is taking out a few days for downtime. For example, my last assignment was 234K words and I was given 147 days to work on it. I took out 14 days (roughly 10%) of the allotted time, leaving me with 133 days to finish the manuscript. From there I calculated how many words I’d have to do per day. It came to about 1,760 words per day. Some days I was able to keep on track, and some days I wasn’t. I still finished my assignment prior to the deadline with a few days to spare, even with taking almost a month off of editing.
Personally, I set a timer for an hour and when that hour is up, I take a 20–30 minute break. If I need a longer break, fine. If I don’t meet my goal for the day, that’s okay too. I can easily make it up on another day. That being said, find something that works for you and try to stick with it. You might have to adjust a bit, but it’ll make things easier.
If you need to calculate exactly how many days you have try this calculator:
https://www.timeanddate.com/date/duration.html
Editing Tips:
Make use of the #grammar-and-writing-tips section of MoonQuill:
https://discord.gg/yPPRDyK
There are tons of resources there and if you have any to share, feel free to post them or add them to the Editor’s Corner and I’ll add them to the list. These five you should probably always have open:
476 Ways to Avoid Saying “Said”
Commonly Confused Words
How to Punctuate Dialogue
The Punctuation Guide
Comments
This isn’t an add-on, obviously, but definitely utilize the comment option within Google Docs. You can leave notes or suggestions for the author or others with access to the document to read.
How to Create a Comment
Select or highlight a word or a section of text and click the + sign that will appear on the right side of the document edge.
Select or highlight the word or section of text then right click on it, and click on comment.
Select or highlight, then press Ctrl+Alt+M
Select text then click on Insert -> Comment
Select text, then click on the little speech bubble in the top right corner of the window next to “Share” — you can also view the comment history this way as well.
All five ways will pop up a little box and allow you to type in a comment for the selected text. When you’re done, click “comment.” It’ll be permanently on the doc unless you delete it or until it gets “resolved” and the end product will look like this. Others can reply to the comment that you leave as well.
Highlights
This is pretty simple, but if you’d prefer to highlight different types of errors or what not in different colors, use the highlight tool located next to the font color-changer
[
A
]
on the upper toolbar.
Outline
This is kinda useful for larger documents with chapter titles or sections. It makes it easier to jump through a document instead of scrolling. To turn it on, click View -> Show Document Outline. Additionally, you can press Ctrl+Alt+A+Ctrl+Alt+H —yes, you have to do both A and H in order for it to turn off or on.
Of course you can adjust the font size and type so that it’s easier for you to read. When you’re done editing, we’ll revert the documents page color and settings back to how we’d like them to be.
Long Conversations or Monologues
Many of the books you’ll encounter will be cultivation novels and they have a tendency to have long monologues stretching on for pages, or conversations between a few characters that go on for an entire chapter. These are a bit of a problem because readers don’t really want to read boring drab conversation, and there are often no breaks or very few action breaks between the paragraphs of dialogue.
When editing, always check for things like this and try to break the dialogue up with some sort of character action to enhance the scene, or cutting out unimportant information or “filler” lines.
“Hello, Kurosaki Ichigo”
“How are you, Uzumaki Naruto?”
“I’m fine, Ichigo. How are you?”
… You get the idea. Unless it’s absolutely necessary, cut the formalities and get into the grit of the conversation.
There is a special rule when formatting things being said by one character over various paragraphs without another character speaking in between, or without action breaks. You do not put an opening and closing quotation mark at the end of each paragraph.
Example of What Not to Do:
“Paragraph 1.”
“Paragraph 2.” Steven waved his hands dismissively. “Continuation of Paragraph 2.”
“Paragraph 3.”
Correct Ways to Format the Dialogue:
“Paragraph 1.
“Paragraph 2.” Steven waved his hand dismissively. “Continuation of Paragraph 2.
“Paragraph 3.”
“Paragraph 1.
“Paragraph 2,” Steven scoffed, waving his hand dismissively. “Continuation of Paragraph 2.
“Paragraph 3.”
Sometimes there may not be an action break in there at all. Just remember, always put an opening quotation tag at the beginning of each paragraph, but only at the end of the last one, when only one character is speaking for an extended period of time.
Different Ways to Write Dialogue
Also, conversations do not always need closing tag words like said, asked, screamed, begged, etc. they can come off as boring and repetitive. Obviously if a character says, “I’m not kidding this time!” they’re screaming / yelling.
“Do we have any vodka,” Svetlana asked with slurred words as she stumbled around.
You could rewrite it as:
In a drunken stupor, Svetlana asked the group if they had any vodka.
Svetlana stumbled around. Her words were slurred and her hair disheveled as she mumbled, “Do we h-have any v-vodka?” A loud belch escaped her lips before she lost her balance, falling to the floor.
Almost every line should paint a picture of what’s going on, there needs to be an even balance of showing and telling. Don’t use flowery language and super fancy words if they don’t fit the novel.
Ctrl+F — Find and Replace
This will be your best friend for repeated errors made by an author. It could also end up being your worst enemy if you use it wrong. If you’re searching for an item, make sure you search the exact term and have “Match Case” checked too. That way, you won’t replace a word that appears in the middle of a sentence like “nevertheless” with “Nevertheless,” which comes at the beginning of a sentence. This will also apply if you have to manually fix quotations and apostrophes.
“
Double Quotations
”
←
Curvy || → Straight "Double Quotations"
‘
Single Quotations
’
← Curvy || Straight → 'Single Quotations'
Apostrophe: It
’
s ← Curvy || Straight → It's
It’s a pain in the buttocks to fix via G.Docs, but there is a rather quick way to deal with it. I’ll only do double quotation marks for the sake of space. Please note that the ellipses ... will change to … if you press space or use an end quotation mark
”
after it. There is a slight difference in spacing, so be cautious of those when editing.
"A --> “A
"H --> “H
"O --> “O
"V
-->
“V
,"
-->
,”
"B --> “B
"I --> “I
"P --> “P
"W
-->
“W
?"
-->
?”
"C --> “C
"J --> “J
"Q --> “Q
"X
-->
“X
!"
-->
!”
"D --> “D
"K --> “K
"R --> “R
"Y
-->
“Y
!?"
-->
!?”
"E --> “E
"L --> “L
"S -->“S
"Z
-->
“Z
—"
-->
—”
"F --> “F
"M --> “M
"T --> “T
."
-->
.”
En Dash -- --> – (alt+0150)
"G --> “G
"N --> “N
"U --> “U
,"
-->
,”
Em Dash ---
-->
— (alt+0151)