Last time I shared the basics a writer needs to know to prepare a book manuscript for submission to an agent or editor. Here are some of the finer points.
Category: Writing
What your typing teacher didn’t tell you about manuscript formatting
A writer once complained to me that she had spent a lot of time going through her manuscript replacing all the five-space paragraph indents with tabs. She didn’t realize the five-space indent was wrong. She said, “I didn’t get that memo!” I almost didn’t have the heart to tell her …
Nonrule: Don’t Use ‘Start’ or ‘Begin’
Fiction writers often tell this lie to one another: “Don’t use words like started or began.” I’ve even heard it referred to as “the start rule.” They don’t realize they’re lying, of course. But this not a rule. It’s advice, and poorly expressed. The more accurate way to express it …
Behold the power of the outline
At a chamber fellowship meeting, I was once asked to share my top editing tip. Didn’t have to think long about it: outline. I resisted outlining for many years, because it reeked of term papers and therefore seemed uncreative. Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Pro software convinced me otherwise. Designed for novel-writing, …
When passive voice is permissible
Writers and editors often pass on things they’ve learned—usually at the knee of some mentor they highly respect—in the form of seemingly inviolable rules: As it was said to me, I say to you, Thou shalt not use the passive voice. I am not saying “you have to know the …