Category: Revising/editing

• July 3, 2024

  Thoughts on developmental editing

  I honestly kind of enjoy developmental editing. Not as much as I enjoy line editing, where everything sitting there in front of me, ready to go, and the hard work–as I judge it–is already done. Still, I enjoy watching my stories truly come together and take shape during my developmental editing process. I write first…
• June 9, 2024

  Herezoth and the theological virtues

  I‘ve written before about how, though I do not write explicitly Christian fiction and people from all kinds of backgrounds and views have enjoyed Herezoth, my stories do come from my deep-rooted faith, and they build upon a natural law ethos. I realized recently how/why it is that book two, The Magic Council, is my…
• May 11, 2024

  Rewrites versus Revisions

  I’ve been shocked over the past year to learn that a fair number of writers choose to rewrite a first draft from scratch rather than revise it. That’s because to rewrite a first draft would never occur to me–not unless I’m trying to work with, say, the failed draft of my very first novel that…
• April 16, 2024

  On artistic control as an indie author

  The artistic control / freedom of an indie author is a beautiful gift, if used correctly. That said, it’s important to use it rightly. If you aren’t open to learning from editors and beta readers and such, you’re in trouble as an indie. If you aren’t able to sit back and objectively ask, “Ok, is…
• January 29, 2024

  Sometimes you just have to wait and let the solution to a plot issue come to you

  As I write this, I have FINALLY figured out how to close out a subplot I am trying to add to the prequel to my Herezoth trilogy. General Grombach, who features in The Crimson League: The Fight for Hope, has some serious plot armor in the prequel, and it was causing me issues. I couldn’t…
• January 26, 2024

  Advice for beginning writers 5: hive mind compilation!

  I recently asked on my Facebook page what advice my fellow writers have for beginners. I got some great responses! Paraphrased by me, with credit given to the author who contributed the idea, here is what people offered. I will put author names in quotes as their official Facebook page is named, so that you…
• January 24, 2024

  Advice for beginning writers 4: the rules are more like guidelines, anyway

  This fourth post giving advice to novice writers is this: know the rules. Know grammar–it is your RESPONSIBILITY to know grammar if you want to publish your writing, period. Know stylistic regularities, such as what isn’t a dialogue tag and what is (only words that imply speech. “Smiled,” “grinned,” and so on? NOT dialogue tags.)…
• January 10, 2024

  When characters act counterintuitively

  Is it ok for your characters to do something counterintuitive? Of course! Great characters in great books do this all the time. The key is pretty simple: just make sure they have a reason not to do the logical or simple thing. Maybe their goals aren’t obvious and the seemingly obvious thing to do doesn’t serve…
• January 8, 2024

  Different ways a scene or conversation can advance the plot

  There are various way a scene or conversation in your novel can advance the plot–because every scene should advance the plot in some way (prologues maybe excepted, as they take place before the plot begins and set it up). No scene is going to, or needs to, do all of the things I’m going to…
• January 1, 2024

  The question to ask before you cut a scene or paragraph

  There are LOTS of times as a writer when you need to cut a paragraph or scene from your WIP. Before you do, there’s a question to ask yourself: DOES THIS PIECE OF WRITING CONTRIBUTE SOMETHING SPECIFIC THAT I NEED TO INCORPORATE ELSEWHERE? My editor recently suggested I cut a paragraph from book two of…