Don’t miss this tool for finding your mistakes.
Want to submit an error-free manuscript? Remember one keyboard shortcut.
Seriously. A few days ago, this simple command enabled me to catch multiple problems I’d missed in my first two editing passes through a book-length manuscript.
The novel told a great story. But the author struggled, as many of us do, with a few fine points of English.
He … Continue reading
Fill your mind with effective examples.
The past two weeks I’ve been spending six hours a day editing someone’s novel.
The author’s a solid storyteller, but his mechanics are weak. So I’m taking pains to fix the punctuation on nearly every sentence. And the dialogue attribution. And much of the spelling. Plus some of the verb tenses. I can work no more than an hour at a … Continue reading
Don’t try this in your initial draft.
Forget tight writing and let your book’s first draft flow. Then practice tight editing. As Strunk & White advise in The Elements of Style, retain only those words that earn their keep. No freeloaders.
In the process you’ll find many candidates for deletion.