Fiction, storytelling, is the same regardless of genre, and over the past century, we’ve made some gradual concessions in favor of organization and clarity over artistic expression. In other words, there are rules to good writing. Not about the word choice or material itself, but in the presentation of material. To take it from a handful of jarring, undeveloped flights of fancy or snippets of unfinished (and uninspired) scenes and
14 Crucial things you need in every scene (advanced fiction writing tips & novel revision checklist)
It can be tricky to self-edit a scene to make sure it’s working, so here’s a handy revision checklist for editing your novels, with 14 things to focus on or check. Each of these are useful tricks to improve a slow or plodding scene that you like but just isn’t dramatic enough to keep momentum. Watch the video for a full-walkthrough! What happens Motivation (what do the characters need/want and
Nonfiction books can seem a bit simpler, since we don’t need to tackle character development or scene description; nor focus as much on conflict or intrigue. However there are some unique challenges nonfiction authors will face and I hope to address them here so you know what to expect when searching for a book editor. Firstly, it’s hugely important for a nonfiction book to have a winning theme or premise:
There’s an ad I’ve seen promoting Grammarly: a young woman gets a new job as a social media manager, and uses Grammarly to avoid embarrassingly simple grammar and spelling mistakes. If you’re like me, you might think that a “real writer” already can spell well enough, and that somebody shouldn’t take on a writing job if they can’t. But here’s the thing: in the passion of first-draft creative writing –
Writing a book is a life-goal for many people, and the creative anxieties surrounding such an intense, long-term project can be distracting. If you’re like most authors, you’ll teeter between unchecked enthusiasm (my book will be the best in the world!) and practical limitations (how do I make the words go?). In my experience, most authors don’t really deal with the fear until later. They aren’t necessarily afraid of failure, negative
At the end of the day, answering your emails isn’t nearly as satisfying and productive as writing 500 words in your manuscript. I have some mutated Wonder Woman glitch in my brain that makes me volunteer for jobs or writing projects or helping friends out at a rate that would stagger a cheetah. And it ends badly. I’m either stressed out so much that I start eating my weight in
Most people think writing a book happens in just two stages: the rough draft the final polish I’ve actually had disagreements with successful author friends about which part of this is the most valuable – you can outsource the rough writing part and fine tune it; or you can rough draft it and pay for editing. But an editor will rarely make the significant changes necessary to pull a real
A guided zombie adventure of the most common grammatical mistakes in English English has a lot of rules. Sometimes they can be tricky. So we’ve taken the top 25 most abused grammatical rules and woven them into a zombie narrative. Enjoy! 1. The use of “who” and “whom” Who – subjective pronoun, like “he,” “she,” “it” – acts as a subject. Whom – objective pronoun, like “him,” “her” “us” The
We had a lot of great essays but could only pick one winner, and it was… Jail Time, Poo, and Writing by Crystal Aceves Crystal will get a free edit and we’re going to help her redo her book cover and finalize her print book. We also decided to award some runner-up prizes. These other essays also caught our attention – the writers will get 20% off editing at Book