When Jern finishes a novel, I switch hats to technical editor. She writes freely in Scrivener with no red squiggles or “helpful” suggestions, and only when the draft is complete do I take over and run a set of checks I built to keep our books clean and consistent—without ever letting a computer change a single word on its own. In this first segment, I explain why I bothered (speed, consistency, and remembering our choices from one pass to the next), then walk through the early, unglamorous stages: breaking the manuscript into chapters, catching any leftover editorial notes, tidying common formatting slips like double spaces and punctuation quirks, and then doing a careful spelling pass that also learns our made-up words, place names, and book-specific terms. The goal isn’t to change Jern’s writing—it’s to protect the story by quietly removing distractions, so readers can stay inside the fiction.
Happy reading, —Eddie.