Browsing all articles tagged with editing.
What a Difference an Editor Makes
Marc Aplin, Fantasy-Faction’s own Overlord, wrote persuasively and eloquently a few months ago about the absolute necessity of editing for self-published authors. “The worst thing I see is when an author truly believes they don’t need an editor, that they can do all the refining of the manuscript themselves. They go right ahead and publish […]
Plot Holes and How to Fix Them
whWhatever kind of fantasy you’re writing, sooner or later you’re going to come up against the dreaded issue that can bring your whole book to a screeching halt. That is – the plot hole. So what can you do about it? Plot holes are tricky beasts and can come in many different forms. Mostly, when […]
Does Size Matter In Epic Fantasy?
This year I decided to do something crazy—compete in an online writing contest called Pitch Wars. Run by the wonderful Brenda Drake, this is where unpublished writers query a selection of ‘mentors’ (published writers, agents, editors, etc.), for the chance to get some professional help on their manuscripts one-on-one, before pitching the polished work to […]
Editor Abigail Nathan Interview – Part Two
Welcome back to part two of our interview with professional editor Abigail Nathan of Bothersome Words Writing and Editing Services. In this section we talk more about working with writers and publishers. If you missed Part One, you can read it here. You obviously deal with a lot of fiction in your line of work. […]
Editor Abigail Nathan Interview – Part One
“There is no good writing, only good rewriting.” The writers among you will have heard this many times. Likely you’ve heard different variations of it, but the message is the same: First drafts are about getting something down on paper. It will be rough. It will probably stink. But it’s simply part of the process. […]
Writing Rules and Fantasy: Kill Your Darlings
This is the third in a series of articles about common writing rules and how they apply to fantasy writing. You can check out the first two articles here: Show, Don’t Tell Adverbs Well, obviously this rule isn’t meant to be taken literally, or Peter Pan would have been a significantly darker story. This also […]
The Craft – Part Four: Revision
This is the forth in a series of articles talking with fantasy authors about the craft. You can read the previous posts here: Part One: Breaking In Part Two: The Business Part Three: Careers Revision is a part of writing. Writers who can write perfect prose on their first draft are few and far between. […]
Ready to Submit? Check again…
After taking on the job of editor and the task of assessing submissions, I am finding a disturbing number of unpolished manuscripts crossing my desk. Therefore, I hope you can help me list a few of the simple problems we, as authors, can ‘fix’ before we submit our work to an acquisition editor. When polishing […]
The Case of the Capital in Fantasy
When going through the final edit of a galley, the tension mounts. This is the last opportunity to make changes, fix rogue quotation marks, commas and capitals. It is during the ‘line’ edit that most arguments occur about capitals. At least that is what I am finding. For fantasy writers, the names of races, countries, […]
Revisions – Part Two: The Three Step Process
In my last article, we took a broad look at the subject of revision. I began by delivering the bad news: finishing the first draft is the easy part – revision is where the real work begins. I’ll start this article by delivering more bad news. Revising isn’t a process. It’s multiple processes. You’re going […]
Revisions
You type the final words, then push yourself back from the keyboard and heave a deep sigh. You’ve finished. You’ve written a novel. It’s all there, all down in neat little paragraphs of ten point Courier. You’ve invested all of your free time for weeks, months, pouring the words on to the page. And you’ve […]
Avoid Rejection: Five Ways to Polish Your Manuscript
One: Let It Sit Like a vintage port, your writing can improve with maturity. Sounds odd and hardly proactive, but leaving your completed manuscript to sit for a while can help you see flaws in it later. While the ink is still drying, you are too involved with the characters and situations to look at […]
