A trend I’m noticing: fiction as a means to write characters we hate and love to hate. I call it The White Lotus effect. Yesteryear springs to mind, and Best American Short Stories of 2025 had a ton of these in it. Why do we do it?
Read MoreEkphrastic Creative Writing: The Leitmotif
I'm a big fan of drawing ekphrastic inspiration from other art forms to inform my own creative writing, and in a stroke of luck (though maybe not for my husband), I recently rediscovered some of my teenage musical theater obsessions. As such, I thought I'd bring up one of my favorite elements to borrow from the world of music—the leitmotif.
Read MoreHow Would You Like to Do This?
Instead of forcing my brain to create a lackluster and possibly unconvincing beat sheet, I took my solution straight from the pages of the Player’s Handbook (Fifth Edition) and made all characters involved “roll for it.”
Read MoreThe Top 5 Editorial Mistakes I’ve Seen… and How to Fix Them, Part 5.
This final Editorial Mistake concerns errors that happen on a line-by-line and sentence-by-sentence basis.
This is line editing, which typically has a localized impact, if any, on the reader's experience. However, when copyediting errors are abundant in a manuscript, it can keep the reader from investing interest in the story at hand.
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What is Developmental Editing?
Even the most talented, thoughtful writer can miss critical mistakes when it comes to a passion project. Objective editorial feedback – whether from a professional editor, a beta reader, or even a software program – can help catch and correct embarrassing mistakes before they’re disseminated, along with the manuscript, to a wider audience.
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