Whatever genre you’re writing, remember that the fewer characters a reader has to remember, the better their reading experience will be. Make sure that every character or living person you include plays an integral, and not just a sentimental, role.
Figuring out if you’re supposed to use TOWARD or TOWARDS has stumped quite a few writers. Just as many have no idea this is even a writing decision to make. But either you or your editor will need to choose one.
When well-known authors are asked to describe their typical working day, it’s common for them to say they spend hours with their butts in their chairs. They show up to write in the same way they’d show up for a job that required them to work set hours.
A sample schedule: Every weekday, from nine to twelve, they write new material. They break for lunch and a walk. Then, from one to three, they work on revisions and rewrites.
That’s five hours of concentrated writing time, five days a week. Twenty-five hours of weekly writing.
How can they write for twenty-five hours a week when one hour maxes you out?
Do you ever have a writing question that you need answered quickly? Or you’d like to know something, but you’re not sure who to ask?
Where can a writer source trustworthy feedback for those one-off questions that pop up when you’re deep in the work?
An action beat is a sentence that follows a line of dialogue, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. The speaking character does something before or after their line of dialogue.
When should you use FURTHER and when should you use FARTHER?
Learning about writer’s craft takes time and a great deal of effort. You have to find solid resources, study them, and practice what you’ve learned. Then try to synthesize that new knowledge in your own manuscript. So many authors feel pressure to publish quickly, so even if they want to learn more about writer’s craft, they end up skimping on their education.
I interviewed Den Streef to find out what motivates him to invest in writer’s craft study.
Comma splices sound much trickier than they are. Basically, if you’ve written a common splice, you’ve tried to connect, or splice, two independent sentences with a comma in an incorrect way.
Most writers are aware they need to enlist the help of early readers to get critical feedback for their books, but it can be confusing to know what kind of reader you need and when you need them.
To be clear, having people read your manuscript before you publish it is an excellent idea. Not only will you receive valuable feedback, you’ll build your capacity to be vulnerable when you share your work.
Let’s dive into the different types of early readers you may need, when to utilize them, and the best strategies for ensuring the feedback you receive will be helpful.
The “rules” about how to style numbers still trip up veteran writers (and editors). There are a lot of rules, and numbers is one of the topics that style guides often have very different ways of handling, which adds to the confusion.
In the US book-publishing world, we use the Chicago Manual of Style to determine how to treat numbers in text, whether fiction or nonfiction.