Take a quick browse through a bookstore or Amazon’s virtual shelves and you’ll discover that there are hundreds of books about how to write fiction. But when you need to get serious about self-editing your manuscript, pickings are slim. Still, a few fantastic books stand out as tremendous guides to help fiction writers self-edit. Here’s […]
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If there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to get your proofreaders and editor on your case with a vengeance, it’s falling prey to homophone confusion. Homophones are words that sound alike when you’re speaking out loud but have different spellings and completely different definitions. It might seem, to some, like a small thing – but using […]
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When you sit down for each editing pass on your manuscript’s first draft, you’re going to be working your way through a series of elements (if you’re taking our advice, that is). And one of the elements that demand the utmost scrutiny and determination in editing is dialogue. In this article, we’ll be approaching dialogue […]
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It’s easy to find plenty of talk about ways to maintain productivity when you’re writing… but what about when you’re editing? After all, it could be argued that the editing phase is when you need to be most focused – when you have to push your scrutiny levels to their limit, yet maintain composure as […]
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When you finally reach the end of your novel’s first draft, one huge weight is lifted from your shoulders – only to be replaced with another. Because as uplifting as it is to lay down those final few words in a manuscript, doing so also means that the editing phase is waiting just around the […]
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An interesting discussion (we think) for today: Tumblr user “madlori” has some line editing advice you might not like. Firstly, before we dive into that, it’s important we clarify the difference between line editing and any other form of manuscript editing… Line editing comes near the end of the writing process, before the copy editor […]
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Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning Fog, reading ease, grade level… if all this sounds like gibberish to you, you’re not alone. Some, however, you’ll probably recognise as terms which describe the level of your writing’s readability. The question is: How important is it to understand your readability score, and what does it mean for your story? Before we […]
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Previously, we talked about how descriptive writing is a crucial aspect of creating a book that absorbs, enthrals and entertains your reader… But what happens when descriptive writing goes too far? You know what it’s like – how often have you read a book by a novice that contains seemingly endless run-on sentences so packed […]
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Ah… passive voice. Just hearing that term conjures images of ninth-grade English class with all its confusing grammar rules! Passive voice is something that’s often talked about with disdain by editors and writing coaches – but many writers find it hard to recognise when they’re using it. That muscle can be a difficult one to […]
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If there’s one telltale sign of an amateur writer, it’s a manuscript crammed with adverbs. Adverbs are those –ly words, like quickly or angrily, that we tend to rely on in early drafts. But now you’re in the editing process, most of them need to go. Why? In simple terms, adverbs rely on weak verbs […]
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