A two-sided hazard of narrative nonfiction—whether you’re writing about your own life or someone else’s—is of making the good guys impossibly perfect and the bad guys impossibly evil. Novelists face the same problem, of course, but in nonfiction the problem is magnified because you’re writing about real human beings. Creating …
Category: Editing
Populate Your Book with Engaging People
We’ve talked about what sort of nonfiction you may be writing and why it’s important to use stories to make your point. Now we’re ready to dig into the Nonfiction Checklist. The first category, Personality, is equivalent to Character in fiction. The type of nonfiction you’re writing will determine whether …
Identify Your Nonfiction Genre
Before we can start editing our nonfiction, we need to know what kind of nonfiction we’re dealing with so we can meet the expectations of the genre. In fiction editing, we have to keep in mind, for example, the different needs of contemporary women’s fiction compared to futuristic science fiction. …
How to Edit Your Nonfiction Book
I spent nearly a year discussing the Elements of Fiction, with 92 posts altogether on the topic. Those of you who are writing nonfiction may have wondered when I was going to get to you. As it happens, I’m teaching Edit Like a Pro: Elements of Nonfiction at the Speak …
Q&A: When to hire an editor
Q: I took your Elements of Fiction seminar and read the blog posts and I’ve gone through the checklist. Now what? How do I know when to hire an editor or writing coach? A: When you feel stuck, or when you’re ready to go. If you’ve worked through the …
Know when to stop editing
We’ve made our way through the whole Elements of Fiction Editing Checklist. Now there are two vastly different errors writers can fall into. The first is thinking you’re done. If you are working on your first—or even second or third—novel, one or even two passes through your manuscript will not …
In writing, style isn’t about your clothes
Style is one of those words that has too many meanings to keep track of. I once narrowly avoided attending a conference workshop on “personal style” when I found out that it was actually about clothing and makeup and such. Style as part of your appearance and branding. I had …
Yes, spelling counts in novels also
You may write the most brilliant story with the most sympathetic characters, but if your manuscript is full of spelling errors and typos, you will struggle to find readers. ☐ Spelling is correct. English spelling is notoriously difficult. It is rarely phonetic, as Spanish is, and is not consistent, as …
Beware the nonrules
Last time I noted that there are lots of misconceptions about what constitutes “grammar.” There are also lots of misconceptions about what constitutes “rules” of writing. Adverbs modify verbs is a rule. Don’t use adverbs is a nonrule. You may use adverbs, as long as you do so judiciously.
Get your grammar in line
Most writers are, by nature, very good about their grammar. But there are lots of misconceptions. ☐ Grammatical errors have been eliminated. Grammar, contrary to popular belief, does not include punctuation or spelling, as we often see on lists of “common grammatical errors,” which usually contain things like misplaced commas …