Review: Manuscript Makeover by Elizabeth Lyon L. Rochelle 06/22/08     Elizabeth Lyon’s Manuscript Makeover: Revision Techniques No Fiction Writer Can Afford to Ignore addresses your completed manuscript’s structural nuances. It helps you dissect your book from plot to characters, and dimension to grammar. Its premise is to revise for perfection, an already-written manuscript. However, I recommend you study it at any time before or during the writing of your book. Then again, when you think you’re finished.   Although you don’t want to bog yourself down with semantics when you’re feeling particularly creative, anything you can do for a better book while writing saves time and energy, later. Manuscript Makeover is a great instructional book and refresher course all rolled into one.   Lyon has produced another outstanding tool to help us publish readable, entertaining books. Before I even had an opportunity to review it, I had a reason to use it! Although meant for the author in the final steps before submitting your manuscript to an editor, agent, or self publishing company, I found it useful as I edited for a client. Nonfiction, even.   Every now and then I come across general text structure that I know is somehow lacking, but can’t quite identify the offending source. My brain disappears into a fog and my editing/writing knowledge takes a vacation. Of course, I have volumes of reference books, but I had recently received Manuscript Makeover and recalled scanning the table of contents, noting the Copyediting chapter. I figured I’d give it a shot – the book was already on my desk and heaven forbid that I would travel 20 feet to the back office for a reference tome -- it was exactly what I needed.   Not only did Manuscript Makeover help recognize the problem – combination of passive construction and dead words that defied the first editing run-through – but Lyon’s simple and concise explanatory paragraphs refreshed my grammar knowledge. Explaining to my client the changes I made also proved much easier.   For fiction writers, Lyon doesn’t just tell you how to do it – she shows you – taking the “show don’t tell” idiom literally. She demonstrates both how-to and how not to with “real” best seller authors’ excerpts; tempering a few with complimentary comments on content to offset sporadic, gentle rebukes. We’re treated to classic lines from Barbara Kingsolver (a personal favorite), a passage from Stephen King’s short story, “Everything’s Eventual,” and examples from various Pulitzer Prize-winners.   As a writer, I found chapter five’s “Whole Book: Five-Stage Structure” particularly effective. Of course I’d learned these basics some years ago, but remembering to apply them (or to review for them) is the key. Lyon reminds us to avoid common character traps writers can trip over, like “Too little at stake; goal inconsequential” and “Problem and situation too familiar or clichéd.”   Subtle humor slips into her instructions without warning, as in the paragraph on page 75 that focuses on character development. “One way to deepen characterization and create complication is to take every opportunity to pit characters against inner conflicts as well as outer obstacles. Be mean. You might even want to write, with a permanent black marker, or better yet have tattooed on the back of your hand, the word CONFLICT.” Funny. I immediately envisioned scores of writers with CONFLICT emblazoned on their hands as if inducted into a secret organization.   With astronomical fuel prices and escalating food costs, everyone is looking for ways to save money. Those services we used to pay for, we now attempt in Do-It-Yourself projects, whether we’re equipped or not.   Publishing our books is no exception; and though professionals are still recommended to help with various stages, without a doubt, you can save major editing and reconstruction fees by purchasing and using Lyon’s Manuscript Makeover. She provides the self-editing steps you need to help cut your costs and simply make you a better writer.   # # #