5 Key Questions Writers Should Ask When Revising Writing
As a longtime nonfiction book and magazine editor, I’ve given notes on revising numerous manuscripts and articles. Here's what all writers should know.
Meet James Scott Bell, Author of Revision and Self-Editing for Publication, 2nd Edition
Whether you are a huge fan of James Scott Bell’s books, or are at the point where you are writing a novel, take some time out of your day to learn more about revising your novel from one of the bestselling authors today, James Scott Bell, whose newest book, Revising and...
A Handy Checklist to Help You Edit Your Writing
This excerpt from The Writer’s Little Helper by James V. Smith Jr., explores the common mistakes that writers make–and how to avoid them. Refer to this checklist when you’re ready to submit your manuscript to an agent or editor. Amateur and Common Mistakes Before you send your manuscript or writing sample...
How Do I Resubmit a Revised Manuscript?
The rules of resubmitting a revised manuscript are pretty simple, but it's important to take a few extra steps to ensure the editor remembers you and your story. Here's what you need to do.
4 Techniques For Improving Your Writing Style
Today’s tip of the day comes from Grammatically Correct and describes some techniques for improving your writing style and for assessing how well your efforts are succeeding. Not all these strategies will be right for everyone, but it can’t hurt to at least consider them. Focus on the whole as well...
4 Tips For Revising Your Work
No matter what type of writing you do–fiction, nonfiction, or freelance–you should expect to revise your work. Learn four essential tips for revising your work from Christina Katz, author of The Writer’s Workout. When you are a professional writer, you spend at least half of your time rewriting, likely even more...
4 Editing & Proofreading Techniques For Your Novel
Joseph Bates, author of The Nighttime Novelist, shares tips for editing and proofreading a novel or book. Creating A System For Editing & Proofreading Revision is really about seeing your book as a whole–recognizing patterns you didn’t notice before, and reconciling any disparate parts into a unified whole. The best way...
How to Resurrect a Stalled Manuscript
Is your manuscript stuck? Take a break from completing your fiction project and diagnose it. Here's how to take your manuscript into its next phase: completion.
How to Gain Perspective on Your Work
The most essential part of revision is often the least discussed: the need to get in the mindset to effectively evaluate what you’ve written. These techniques will freshen your eye and sharpen your saw.
How to Revise Your Writing (& Awesome Editing Symbols You Should Know)
Maybe I'm a nerd, but I love the editing process. I love recasting sentences to make them stronger, choosing specific words to make dialogue sing, correcting grammar until it's fit to print and drawing little squibblies all over the page (mainly because I like the way squibblies look). Honestly, I use...
Simile vs. Metaphor: Smackdown!
The title to this post makes it sound like I’m going to have similes breaking chairs across metaphors’ backs. Maybe metaphors will pin similes. As if. Similes and metaphors both have their uses in poetry. I don’t want to say that one is always better than the other, because they are...
How Poeming Is Like Dating
We’ve been discussing the composition of poetry on Twitter today. It sounds like many poets (including myself) tend to treat writing poetry like dating. Start off for funAt first, it’s just an image. Or an idea. Or a line. Something small and (what initially) seems unique triggers the beginning of a poem....
Poetry Workshop: 014
Okay, I haven’t tackled one of these poetry workshops in a while, so let’s look at a poem from Khara House. Here the original draft: Our daily bread, by Khara E. House Pull one thread to unravel a sweater–one thing leads to another. Hansel and Gretel scatter breadcrumb path–come the birds, eat the...
Quality v. Quantity: Do they need each other?
Now that I’m escaping from the vacuum of National Poetry Month and another successful April Poem-A-Day Challenge, I find myself wondering about the relationship of quantity and quality in writing. Is there value in writing every day? Is a writing routine a good or bad thing for poets? Questions such as...