Working with a collaborator.

This could be a professional editor, beta reader that’s a friend or family member. It could be a paid beta reader or your significant other reading through your work and giving you their two cents. This could be you reading to someone. Whatever it is that you do and you get feedback from someone about your work, you must do something with that feedback.

You can do two things. Use it or toss it!

Did you pay for the service? A professional editor? Then you better put it to good use and incorporate it into the story. Make the suggested changes. Get your moneys worth. IF it fits and is true to the story.

Is it you best friend that has a technical advisor insight into your work so much so that that is what he is to you. So of course there’s weight to his words as well. You must consider them.

I’m not going into more examples but what I’m going to say is this; we have to realize that no matter what, if it’s paid for, or it’s from our best friend or wife, it’s still your book.

Give in and delete things that definitely need to go, like the long winded passages that slow your pacing and the momentum of an action scene. That kills it.

BUT, things that are near and dear to you and do not stall the pacing. Keep it. Things that actually give a little bit of color and maybe make your target audience smile because they GET it! Then keep it! Like a reference to a certain show or movie that the target audience would definitely understand and say “yeah, that’s cool to see in this book!” “That fits.”

I’ll place my example here, that I need to stand by and keep in my first book. Bret has two dogs. Bret grew up watching Magnum P.I.. Higgins in the original TV series has two dogs that he affectionately call “Lads”. Where as Bret calls his two dogs “Boys”.

I as the Author like this little snippet, so much that I’ve had two separate people recommend taking it out but you know what? I don’t think so. I also have another Magnum P.I. reference in book one comparing one of the characters mustache to Thomas Magnum’s.

I don’t know, call me goofy but I find stuff like that just cool and fun. Adding real world stuff to your characters. Stuff that is nostalgic and that people may just chuckle at.

So if it’s important to you, don’t back down. Unless people can absolutely explain to you that it doesn’t fit well.

Here’s to standing your ground! In your books and in your daily life!