Kristina Stanley has been a friend of the blog for quite a while. As a fellow author she noticed several things we writer types struggle with and set about finding a way to help. I’ll let her explain, but it’s been a fun and enlightening journey watching this evolve.

Kristina is the best-selling author of the Stone Mountain Mystery Series. Her short stories have been published in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and The Voices From the Valleys anthology. She is the author of THE AUTHOR’S GUIDE TO SELLING BOOKS TO NON-BOOKSTORES.

She is the co-founder and CEO of Feedback Innovations, a company started to help writers rewrite better fiction. She loves the self-editing process and wants to help other writers learn how to do a structural edit on their own work.

Today, I asked her to talk a little about an editing app she’s been working on.

Here’s Kristina.

I’m very pleased to be invited onto Dan’s blog to share my writing and editing journey. I’m an author who loves to edit, and I believe today’s author must also be their own structural editor.

The difficulty with editing is the time it takes and the cost of an editor. So what if I could speed up the process, spend less money, AND write better fiction?

This is the story of how I’m developing an app to help writers edit faster, for less money, and create a novel readers love.

What is the Feedback app?

The Feedback app will help writers turn a first draft into a great story by becoming their own big-picture editor.

With Feedback, you can focus on character, plot, and setting. You can evaluate on a scene-by-scene basis or on the overall novel structure. Feedback will show you the most important structural elements to work on first and guide you through the rewriting process.

Why a big-picture editing app for writers?

Creating Feedback began when I finished the first draft of my first novel. By then I’d read over 50 how-to-write and how-to-self-edit books. I’d taken writing courses and workshops, and had 100s of writing and rewriting tips swirling about in my head.

I knew I had to begin the editing process and improve the quality of my draft before sharing my work, but I didn’t know how to go about it.

My Worries:

How was I supposed to remember the torrent of advice and apply it to each scene? A spreadsheet, that’s how!

I created a spreadsheet with a chapter-by-chapter, scene-by-scene structure. Then I listed the different writing advice I needed to consider for EVERY scene. I ended up with over 75 “key elements of fiction”. I used the reports from the spreadsheet to visualize my novel.

Did Feedback Work For Me?           

 After the hard work of self-editing and rewriting my drafts, the high quality of my fiction was validated when my first two novels were shortlisted for prestigious crime writing awards and I landed a two-book deal with publisher Imajin Books.

My first editor said: “If every manuscript was this good, my job would be so easy!”

The next exciting moment came when DESCENT, my first novel, hit #1 on Amazon’s hot new releases. I’ve since sold the German rights to Luzifer-Verlag for publication in Germany, and the audio rights to Auspicious Apparatus Press. Imajin Books also published BLAZE and AVALANCHE.

Building The Feedback App

 I wanted to share my process, so other writers could benefit from an immediate approach to self-editing and rewriting first drafts. But who would want to use a spreadsheet?  Perhaps a fun, fast, app that helps writers visualize and self-edit their novels would be better.

I formed a company called Feedback Innovations just to build this app. The prototype is being developed. We’re currently testing the app on my novels. Then we’ll reach out to beta testers in April.

You can find out more about the app at www.FeedbackForFiction.com

Download our free eBook  BIG-PICTURE Editing And 13 The Key Elements Of Fiction and learn how big-picture editing is all about evaluating the major components of your story. We call these components the Key Elements Of Fiction.  Our eBook shows you how to use the key elements of fiction to evaluate your story and become your own big-picture editor.

At Feedback Innovations, we believe the app will help authors turn their first draft into a great story.

If you’d like more self-editing tips, you can find out more about her and Feedback at www.FeedbackForFiction.com. Connect with her @FictionRewrite.

Gang, it’s been my pleasure to watch as Kristina’s editing program has evolved (I even got to play with it some – fun stuff)

It’s well worth considering if I mention it here on the blog. It’s not like she paid me to let her talk about it. I think a lot of you would benefit from using it.

Check it out!