Markup involves a lot of line by line analysis. Before you get deep into doing markup, you need to make yourself just as familiar with your book as you were when you first wrote it.

Don't fool yourself into thinking that you remember your book exactly as you wrote it. You don't. It is normal to forget details as time goes by, to mix up bits and pieces from other works. Like cracks in the sidewalk, little differences between what you remember writing, and what you actually wrote, grow and expand over time.

Do a quick re-read of your book before you start to do markup. Your goal is to recall the structure, the sequence of events as they will unfold for the listener. Don't focus on specific words, sentences, or paragraphs.

Get a notepad and pencil out. Anything you write at this stage goes on the notepad, not in the book.

Keep an outlook for first times:

• The first time a character appears,
• The first time a location is described.
• The first time any important object is seen or is used (the car, the house, the cliff, the beach, etc).

By first time, I don't mean first time in the character's life, but first time in page number order. When you encounter a first time, make a note of it with the page number. For example:

• 3 John
• 4 Farm
• 5 Uncle Joe
• 12 the old swing

Make a separate list of the first time a character speaks. It doesn't matter who he is talking to:

• 6 John
• 6 Uncle Joe
• 10 Aunt Ellen

Any time a new voice is introduced, you have to make sure that your listener knows who it is.

Make a note in your pad of any word that you are not absolutely positive that you know how to pronounce correctly. Put down the word and the page number. Don't stop now to look it up. Later on you can look up words in batches.