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 …
Category: Editing
Watch your language usage
When editors speak of language usage, we’re not talking about potentially offensive terms. At least, not exclusively. We’re talking about taking care with the words you choose and avoiding those Vizzini moments. ☐ Usage is in accordance with convention.
A punctuation primer
Editing for manuscript mechanics involves examining your manuscript closely for minuscule details like these: ☐ Punctuation is properly applied. The most common punctuation errors I see have to do with commas, which is why I created the Comma Cheat Sheet. Few people have trouble with periods. They go at the …
When editing, save mechanics for last
It’s worth emphasizing that manuscript mechanics are placed last on the Elements of Fiction Editing Checklist because, though they’re the things our critique partners often spend the most time on, they’re the least important element of fiction. If you get everything else right, a copyeditor can fix the mechanics. But if …
How to find your writing voice
Think about voice in terms of style—your voice is your unique style of writing. When we start out, we tend to write like we think writers ought to sound, instead of finding our own sound. This leads to stilted, stiff writing. Here are some tips for finding your distinctive style. …
Avoiding cliches and purple prose
The next item on the Elements of Fiction Editing Checklist packs in several problems we see in novice writers’ voices: ☐ The author avoids flowery or “purple” prose, as well as cliches, recycled phrases, and unnecessarily repeated words. Now, there are some words you need to repeat or you’ll sound …
Finer points of voice
Part of the problem in talking about voice is that voice is interwoven with a writer’s personal style. Several points on the list need to be taken loosely, since what is effective can cover a broad range. ☐ Paragraph and sentence lengths are varied in accordance with pace. Monotonous sentence …
When is it OK to open your novel with “telling?”
Over on Facebook, I got some pushback to last week’s article “The difference between Storytelling and Dramatization.” One Facebook commenter noted that the “before” examples given in show vs. tell articles like mine are “often deliberately and obviously poor by any standards.” She’s talking about examples like the one I …
The difference between Storytelling and Dramatization
In his excellent book The Art & Craft of Writing Christian Fiction, Jeff Gerke urges novel-writers to stop seeing themselves as storytellers and instead think of themselves as filmmakers. As you’re examining your manuscript for telling consider this: If your book were a movie, what would the camera record? In …
Use Narrative Summary Appropriately
Last time, I said Inappropriate Narrative Summary was one of the main “telling” problems I see in manuscripts. Sometimes summary is appropriate. When your hero has to make a long journey, but the journey itself isn’t what’s important to the story, you could put “he traveled across the Atlantic that …