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.
Read MoreCharacters lacking in agency often don’t have many motivating factors to help them think, speak, or act. Instead, they passively accept the things happening around them.
This can make it difficult for the reader to empathize with your characters, often because it seems the characters are doing nothing to help themselves. As a result, you may risk losing your reader’s interest in your novel.
Read MoreA client recently asked if I could recommend any articles on writing about race, especially about tokenism versus representation.
Aside from an article on not using food metaphors to describe skin color and another on why “gypsy” is not a word we should be using in the twenty-first century, I didn’t have any bookmarked or to share off the top of my head. Determined to do better, I researched and came up with the following list of articles from writers whose experience leads them to be much more expert on these issues than I am.
Read MoreHow do you keep the effort going when you don’t have the extrinsic motivation of a daily email or a monthlong challenge?
My secret? Slow and steady wins the race. In this post, I offer up 4 tips to creating your own disciplined, sustainable writing.
Read MoreHave you ever read through your novel, noticed a continuity error, and then realized that—oh no!—when you took a few months away from the project, you picked back up with the continuity error, which then avalanched into a major (and factually inaccurate) plot point, and now you have to overhaul what you thought was a completed novel?
Ahh!
Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen again.
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