Mystery story ideas often follow a similar pattern. Early on, a dead body turns up, a valuable item goes missing, or a puzzle begs to be solved. The reader knows that by the end of the book, questions will have been answered, which is a comforting element in even the most gruesome murder mysteries. This simple structure allows for
Category: Writing Matters
Hi, everyone! This is the last in a 7-part series about how to rewrite, revise, and edit a novel. I love editing a book, but many people find it overwhelming. However you approach it, the key is to break it down step by step. We’ve talked about clarifying your character arcs, fixing your pacing, increasing your story’s impact, fine-tuning speech and
Hey there! So far, this series has focused on shaping up your story and then getting it into the hands of beta readers. Once you’ve read over your beta reader feedback, and you’ve made any other changes to your book that you think will improve the story, it’s time to focus on your prose style. A “dialogue tag” is any
Welcome back to my 7-part series on how to rewrite, revise, and edit a novel! So far, we’ve been talking about ways to fix up the story, and the 2 segments after this will be more about polishing up your writing style. But before you get into sentence structure and word choice and so on, you need some feedback.
So far in my series about how to revise and edit your book, we’ve covered character arcs, pacing, and amplifying the strengths of your story. All three of these things can sometimes lead to big rewrites, though they don’t always. Now, we’re starting to get down to a more detailed level. This editing pass is all about making sure your
Hey, welcome back to my 7-part series on rewriting and editing your book! Every writer and every story is different, so this isn’t a comprehensive checklist. Hopefully, though, my way of breaking the revision process down will give you some inspiration. Today I’m going to talk about my favorite editing pass, and I hope you like it, too! Like the
Hey, welcome back to my series about how to rewrite, revise, and edit a book after you write it! Last time, I talked about clarifying your character arcs, or emphasizing the ways in which your main characters change and grow over the course of the story. Today, we’ll talk about pacing. “Pacing” refers to the speed at which