Why Advanced Readers Are Critical To The Editing Process

What is in store for 2025: Short Stories, Articles, and The Importance of Advanced Reader Teams and Receiving Feedback.

Hello Friends, and Happy Friday the 13th!

Thank you for all of your support these past few months. Since joining Substack in April, I have been able to experiment with serialization, writing short stories, and posting articles. This has been very enjoyable.

I’m continuing my work on The Inevitable. However, serialization is not the correct format for this series due to the number of characters to follow and the plot lines. I will continue to write in novel form and hopefully have my first draft finished in a few months, after which I will look for willing victims to join an advanced reader team for feedback.

Having an advanced reader team, I believe, is a critical component of my writing process. Writing is a very solitary act, and it is easy for me to get so lost in my story that I can lose some clarity. I start making assumptions that the reader knows what I know. Because I know my characters and storylines intimately, I take a shortcut or lack clarity in a scene that confuses my readers’ experience. When my advanced readers quickly point out how they have been taken out of the story, that is game-changing feedback, and I go back and rework the scene.

One of my rules for writing and receiving feedback is that when a reader tells me they have been “taken out of the story,” that is not up for debate. It is not subjective but objective because it is their experience with the story.

A person can be taken out of the story for many reasons:

• The writing is unclear.

• The facts/research surrounding the scene are inaccurate.

• The character is doing something or saying something that is, no pun intended, “out of character.”

Receiving feedback can be tricky, but I seek it out. Sitting alone in my ivory tower, my ego tells me I have all the answers. Luckily, my years of studying with tough Buddhist Teachers and kind Judo Sensais have done me a great service by beating most of my ego out of me. I am also committed to creating the best “product” I can, and what better feedback can I receive than from those who consume it?

To keep the record straight, there have been times when people have given feedback, especially other writers, and they say, “Your main character should do this…,” or “Your character should say….” That I politely ignore. That’s their story, not mine.

What I listen for are a few catch-phrases:

• “What I don’t understand is…”

• “It was confusing for me when I read…”

• “I had to reread this passage several times…”

When I hear those phrases from readers, I return to the scene and look for clarity, continuity, or timeline issues. Here is a real-life example. After publishing Shock and Denial in April of 2022, I had the audiobook version created that summer. And the reader, the fantastic PJ Ochlan, found a continuity error that two editors and I missed. It was a small detail, but we all missed it: Ms. Luveaux, a fellow poker player at the high stakes tables with Andrew, was wearing a black baseball cap with a black New York Yankees logo. What was the problem? In my Headcase Universe, the Yankees do not exist. The New York Tides do. I changed the Yankees logo to the letters BKLYN, which are short for Brooklyn. Such a small detail, but vital to the continuity of the Headcase World I created! A great catch by PJ!

One of the great things about Amazon and Kindle Direct Publishing is that the books are printed on demand. So, I edited the manuscript and made the change, but boy, that was embarrassing.

As a lifelong learner, I learn from mistakes, so the more people who read my work before it is published, the better. The advanced reader team I had for my serialization of The Inevitable was such a huge part of my process that I could not have done it without them. 

Looking into 2025, I plan to:

• Write short stories as they hit me.

• Post some sneak peeks and chapters from The Inevitable.

• I’m going to write some non-fiction articles on my entrepreneurial experiences.

• Write about my experiences trying to get this second book out.

Please feel free to send me any questions or thoughts about…well, anything that comes to mind. I love to hear from my readers.

Wishing all of you a wonderful holiday season and a very happy beginning to 2025!

Warmest Regards,

Chris K. Jones