What if you skipped paying for a professional editor and crowdsourced your editing instead? Or what about your neighbor who’s a retired English teacher? She says she’d only charge $200 […]
Should you use volunteers to proofread your book? Read More »
The craft books I most enjoy reading are tough tomes with new techniques of breaking down and analyzing recalcitrant manuscripts. But the best books on writing fiction, the ones I
Best Books on Writing Fiction: Recommended books for novelists Read More »
Formatting your manuscript to industry standards is a must-do if you’re submitting your novel to an agent. If you’re a self-publisher, you’ll score major points with your editor and formatter
Formatting your manuscript for editors and agents Read More »
Writing is such a minuscule part of the writing a novel. People who’ve never written anything longer than a school paper have a hard time imagining that pouring all those
What does revision really involve? Read More »
When your whole story lies ahead of you, it’s easy to naively assume you’ll name your manuscript file TheGirlWiththeFuzzyManuscript_Orig, then go to FuzzyGirl_Revised, and maybe finish with TGWTFM_BetaFeedback. What you
File names that show your manuscript revision status Read More »
Some of the most common edits I make at the sentence and paragraph levels have to do with overusing character names in a story. These edits arise from a single
Are you overusing character names in your novel? Read More »
You can quit holding your nose now—this whole synopsis thing is going to take longer than a single breath of air. Writing your synopsis is a must-have writing skill for
12 reasons to learn how to write a brilliant synopsis Read More »
Nothing makes an editor sadder than slogging through a manuscript that isn’t ready for editing yet. Let’s not embark upon a journey your manuscript isn’t ready to take. Really. As
Is your book ready for editing? Read More »
Nobody wants to scale the stony gray wall of revision. Nobody. Not even those crazy Spartan racers. (You go, Spartans.) A novel revision stares you down with the same inscrutable
How to revise the early drafts of your novel Read More »
Whoa, just look at that flowchart! That’s way too many steps! Why, yes. Yes, it very likely is. Few self-published authors can afford all of these editorial production steps. Few
The editing and revision flowchart for self-publishers Read More »
