Testing…Testing….1… 2… 3…

One of my co-workers came back with her feedback on the children’s book. 

She really likes the story, the characters, and the message of the book.  The only issue she had was with the dialogue’s format.  Once I explained the idea, she’s fine with it.  She encourages me to keep on writing.

I’m glad she brought up the format issue.  Even if it didn’t have anything to do with the story, her comment did make me stop and rethink the issue. 

Initially, I formatted the dialogue that way to save myself time but, in the long run, did it?

Do I have the resources to go around to all the publishers, agents, potential readers and explain away a formatting issue of the book?  Can I afford to have a formatting issue, potentially, ruin my chances of being published?

Of course not!  It’s much easier to rework the book and eliminate the confusion from the start.

And… come to think about it… I ran into the same type of problem when I was laying down audio tracks for the book.  Again, the story was fine.  It all had to do with the format of the dialogue — the way it was laid out.  It would work well, if we had voices for each of the 15 characters, but not if one person was reading the story aloud. 

Yep.  I’m glad I had my friend read the book, and I’m glad that I experimented with the audio tracks, even though it means that I have to revamp the book to add more descriptive lead-ins for the dialogues and start all over again with the audio version.  At least I found out these problems now, before sending it out to publishers.

So, back to the drawing board…

OH!  Drawing boards reminded me… Katherine has a friend who is a graphics artist.  He may be interested in helping us illustrate the book.  I’m wondering… would he be interested in creating illustrative slides for the audio version as well?

It never hurts to ask...




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