Is there a better feeling in the world than finishing a manuscript? Typing The End, gazing lovingly at the overall word count, and recognizing you’ve accomplished something that not many people can do…you’re floating on cloud nine, and all is right with the world.

And then come the revisions.

Hear that sound? That’s you, crashing to the ground.

Revision isn’t typically super fun because it requires you to look at your story—your perfect, incredible, one-of-a-kind story—realistically. You’re going to find problems—BIG problems—that need fixing. You’ll have to take a scalpel, machete, or jackhammer to your baby and carve out some of those words you were so proud of coming up with. It’s hard. Writers aren’t typically excited about this part of the journey.

But I would encourage you to look at it differently. Revision is how your story goes from good (or garbage) to great. Characters become more authentic and well-rounded, plotlines are streamlined, settings become multi-dimensional, pace-killing fluff and filler are eradicated, and your voice begins to shine. 

When you’re able to look at the revision process through this lens, it becomes a positive experience that results in something amazing, something that couldn’t have come about without it. So changing your mindset about revisions is a huge part of getting the most out of them.

But it’s not just our attitude about revision that limits us. Sometimes, it’s the process itself. There are so many story elements to examine and fix; it’s daunting to do all of this, especially for a full-length novel. This is why Angela and I created the Revision Roadmap at One Stop for Writers. It takes authors through the revision stage for their story one step at a time, breaking the process into manageable rounds. There are a million ways to revise, but here’s how we suggest chunking the process to make it doable.

Run a First Draft Health Assessment

After you’ve let your manuscript sit for a while to give you some much-needed objectivity, it’s time to read it again—but don’t make any changes. Not yet. At this point, just make notes of all the things you notice that need work. It can also help to use a checklist to make overall impressions about the major elements of the story, such as characters, plot, pacing, etc. Create your own resource or use our list of Final Draft Challenge Questions, which can be downloaded via the Revision Roadmap.

Revision Round 1: Rough in the Big Changes

Using the notes from your read-through, go back to your story and start working on the big-picture fixes: primary characters, character arc, plot, setting, theme, and pacing. Don’t try and make everything perfect; just get the changes framed in to shore up the weak spots.

Round 2: Smooth out the Round 1 Changes

Go back through your manuscript and tighten all the places you touched in the first round. Expand on them, tweak the wording, choose the right details, etc. As you go, start working on the next level of story elements: point-of-view, conflict, stakes, voice, etc. These don’t always take as much time as the big-picture items, so you can address them as you’re moving through this round.

Round 3: Incorporate Feedback From
Critique Partners

Getting feedback from other authors is pivotal for improving your story. This can happen at any point in the process, but we like it after the second round. This ensures that you’ve already fixed the problems you’ve been able to identify and will be giving readers a pretty solid version of your story. While you’re making changes based on their feedback, keep an eye out for other issues, like places where you’ve told instead of shown, spots where the pace is flagging, and descriptions that can be updated to do double-duty.

Polishing Round

Now you’re ready to get granular. Look for sentence structures that are repeated or read awkwardly, seek and destroy your favorite crutch words, rewrite passages where the flow doesn’t quite work, strengthen the dialogue, and correct typos.

And that’s it. By this time, you’ll have addressed your story’s major and minor issues. This is just one way of breaking up the work. Some writers like to split it up even more, which creates more rounds with fewer elements to work on in each. Others choose to take a scene-by-scene approach—essentially, dealing with everything at once but in smaller sections at a time.

As with every part of writing a story, there’s no right or wrong way to revise. If you’ve already got a process that works for you, that’s awesome. Stick with it.

If revision tends to freak you out, our method can make this stage of the journey a little less scary. If you’d like more information on this process and its individual rounds, the One Stop for Writers Revision Roadmap has a ton of information and resources to keep things simple.

BECCA PUGLISI

Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and its sequels. Her books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post Overwhelmed with Revisions? Use This Roadmap to Stay On Course. appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

By Kristina Stanley and Lucy Cooke

Do you have a draft written but aren’t sure if there is a strong story in that draft?

In our book, Secrets to Editing Success, we go into great depth on how to perform a story edit—a structural edit—on any novel. We take the theory and show you the process to story edit.

We’re going to share some of our secrets here. And the first secret is how you know if there is a story in the draft.

The Most Important Question

Does the draft contain a story?

That’s a big one, and how do you answer it if you’ve just written that draft? And to go deeper, how do you answer it objectively?

First, You Perform a Story Test

What do we mean when we talk about having proof that there is a story? We are asking if you can write a synopsis.

We define a synopsis as a blurb plus the five story arc scenes plus the ending. A synopsis is a cinch when you know that’s all it boils down to.

When authors find it tough to write a synopsis, it’s normally because either they don’t have an understanding of what goes into the synopsis or there isn’t a full story yet.

A story synopsis is a tool you can use to determine if there is a story in the draft manuscript. We’re not asking you to write a polished synopsis. We’re asking you to write a skeleton synopsis.

Skeleton Synopsis = Skeleton Blurb + 5 Story Arc Scenes + Resolution

The first part of the story test is to create a skeleton blurb.

Skeleton Blurb

A skeleton blurb answers three simple questions.

1. Who is the protagonist?
2. What is the story goal?
3. What is at stake?

The answers to these questions are found in every story. If you cannot answer them from the draft, then we can tell you the story promised is not there yet. And the draft is not ready to be edited.

With your skeleton blurb, you found the protagonist, the story goal, and the story stakes. With your skeleton synopsis, you will find the story.

The Skeleton Synopsis is Your Next Tool

A skeleton synopsis is a short description of the story.

Here is an outline for the skeleton synopsis:

The protagonist _________________ finds out the story goal __________________ (Inciting Incident). Then _______________________ happens, and the protagonist must go forward toward the story goal, (Plot Point 1). In the new “world,” ________________ happens, and the protagonist becomes proactive to the Story Goal (Middle Plot Point). But _______________________________ happens, and the protagonist’s hope is destroyed, they realize they must change to achieve the story goal (Plot Point 2). But the protagonist ______________________, and the world changes, they finally address the story goal (Climax).

To fill in the blanks, read the draft and find the inciting incident, plot point 1, the middle plot point, plot point 2, and the climax. Use the action in each of these scenes to fill in the blanks.

You can find out more about the story arc and how to find your story arc scenes at The Story Arc: Definitions & Examples.

Listing the Story Arc Scenes Shows You Whether There Is a Story.

• Does the protagonist find out the story goal,
• then something happens that propels the protagonist onto chasing the story goal,
• so that they can learn to be proactive,
• change themselves after all hope is lost,
• and use what they have learned on their journey to answer the story goal that they found at the start of their journey?

What you just read is the most basic form of a story. And all great stories are structurally similar.

How to Create a Skeleton Synopsis

Step 1: Perform a Hands-Off Read-Through

A hands-off read-through means you read the story without making any changes.

Step 2: Name Every Scene

You can do this when you’re performing a hands-off read-through. A hands-off read-through means you read the story without making any changes, but you can and should make notes and name every scene.

When naming the scenes, find and label the inciting incident, plot point 1, the middle plot point, plot point 2, and the climax.

Step 3: Dig Deeper into the Story Arc Scenes

To write a skeleton synopsis at this stage, the following story elements for each story arc scene will help you set it up.

1. Scene Name
2. Point of View Character
3. Point of View Character’s Goal
4. Scene Middle
5. Scene Climax
6. Scene Impact on Point of View Character

Step 4: Create the Skeleton Synopsis

Now there are four clear steps to getting that skeleton synopsis done:

1. Reference the skeleton blurb.
2. Find the five Fictionary Story Arc scenes on the story arc.
3. List scene name, scene middle, scene climax and impact on point of view character for each of these scenes.
4. Summarize the ending showing the story’s resolution.

Step 5: Does the Draft Contain a Story?

The synopsis will help you determine if there is a story or not. You’ll find that if you can’t write the synopsis at this stage, then most likely the story is not finished. The attempt at writing a synopsis will highlight which portions of the story still need to be written.

If one of the 5 story arc scenes is missing, is in the wrong place, or doesn’t satisfy the requirements of a story scene, then there isn’t a story in the draft, yet.

It’s time to start revising the draft until the skeleton synopsis shows you there is a story. Once there is a story, you can move on to a full story edit.

All of this is covered in depth in Secrets to Editing Success: The Creative Story Editing Method.

Ready to become an exceptional editor? Whether you’re working on your own manuscript or helping clients succeed, this guide shows you how to structurally edit and make every story better. Learn how to evaluate at both the story and scene level using Fictionary’s proven process and 38 Story Elements, so you know exactly what needs to be strengthened, and where!

Combining her degree in computer mathematics with her success as a bestselling, award-winning author and fiction editor, Kristina Stanley founded Fictionary and is the CEO. Fictionary helps writers and editors create better stories faster with software, an online community, editing services and training.

Her most recent publication is Secrets to Editing Success: The Creative Story Editing Method. Her novels include The Stone Mountain mystery series and Look the Other Way. Her first novel Descent was nominated for the 2014 Arthur Ellis Unhanged Arthur for excellence in crime writing. Blaze was shortlisted for the 2014 Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger.

Lucy Cooke is a Fictionary Certified StoryCoach Editor and Business Development Manager at Fictionary. Secrets to Editing Success is her first book. She teaches editing through the Fictionary community, and she is an instructor for the Fictionary Certified StoryCoach program. Her passion is story, and she’s dedicated to helping others create the best story possible.

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Interested in posting at Writers Helping Writers? Review our content guidelines to see what we’re looking for and how to pitch us your ideas.

The post Where to Start a Story Edit appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Practical tips to tackle a manuscript that’s too long without killing the scenes you love.

So, you’ve written THE END on your draft, congratulations! The only problem is, your word count is way too high for your genre. I work with a lot of writers working on their first books, which I love. But I don’t love delivering hard news. Like, when a writer comes to me with a book that’s 175,000 words — and it’s middle grade. (If you’re new to word count norms in publishing, this is about 3x too long for a middle grade novel). 

Writers come to me, wanting me to developmentally edit their book, even if they know it’s waaay too long. They hope I’ll tell them their book is so good they can publish it that way. But I can’t say that. Because here’s the problem with bloated word count:

• You’re breaking reader expectations, which may result in their disappointment
• You’ll get instantly rejected by agents and publishers, thinking you haven’t done your homework (and they may not bother to tell you why)

Also, please don’t compare yourself to that one breakout book that is oodles too long in your genre. Unless you already have millions of readers lined up, you haven’t earned the right to be that exception yet, because extra word count means:

• Higher editing/layout costs
  • Higher printing costs
  • Higher costs to produce an audio-book
  • Publishers will have to charge an arm and a leg to make a profit on your book, so instead, they’ll pass on the opportunity to work with you
  • Even if you publish independently, you’ll struggle to make a profit, because these costs will be yours to bear

(Word count expectations depend on the genre, but can range from 50,000 for a non-fiction self help or a middle grade, to 110,000 for an adult fantasy novel. There’s a little bit of wiggle room in the ranges, but don’t be way outside. If you’re not sure what expectations are in your genre, look at similar books that have been recently published.)

If you insist on keeping every word you’ve written, you’re only making your journey to find readers harder on yourself. But I get it. You’ve spent months, probably years on your manuscript. You were so focused on producing words every time you sat down to write that you forgot to track the total word count, or maybe you didn’t even know word count was a thing.

You love your characters. You feel every scene and action you included is needed in your book. The thought of parting with any of it feels like a vice is squeezing you around the chest. But for the reasons listed above, trimming your word count will be your book’s best chance of getting discovered, read, loved, and shared, selling thousands of copies. If you want this for your book (I know you do!), you have to deal with this problem.

Sometimes, the answer is to split your manuscript into multiple books, if there’s a natural break. But usually, there’s a better, easier option. Have I got your attention? Good.

What if I told you there are places you can target in your book to get rid of word count, while making your writing even more engaging for your reader?

The techniques I share here don’t require a rewrite, and will make your writing more readable and focused. You’ve got nothing to lose by giving them a try.

Slash Filler Words

When we speak, we use “um” or “ah” to pause when we’re thinking. In writing, writers use filler words to fill that gap while they type (or pen) their words to let their brains catch up. Weird, right?

The thing about filler words is they’re not incorrect. Your sentences will read fine with them, so spell check won’t catch them. But about 80% of the time, these words distract the reader, and the sentence can be restructured without them. Note: Sometimes these words serve a purpose, so please don’t delete them all, you’ll have to do a FIND (ctrl F on most keyboards will get you to the find function) and look at them one at a time. I’ve had dozens of clients weed out 3,000 words or more from a manuscript just by using this trick (that’s 12 pages of filler!), so it’s totally worth your time.

Some of the most common words writers use as filler are

• That
• Just
• Like

But there are dozens more. You might be surprised which words you’re sticking into sentences as you go.

I’ve personally had a different problem word with each book I’ve written that I didn’t notice until the revision stage. Brains are amazing, right? Run your manuscript against the full list of filler words/phrases I’ve compiled. You can get a PDF list here.

Kill Filter Words/Phrases

Filter words, like Filler words are unnecessary in your writing. But these have the added consequence of making your readers care less about your characters and their journeys, because they are used to distance your Point of View (POV) character from the actions your characters are taking. When you use them, it’s like you’ve inserted a filter or narrator between your reader and what’s happening on the page. This doesn’t make them feel like they’re in your book, experiencing what your character is experiencing.

If you read a lot of classic books, you’ll see their pages are riddled with filter phrases. So, if you’re going for more of a literary or old-timey feel, a few filter phrases might be fine. But in recent years, deep point of view is becoming more popular, and removing these phrases will drag your readers in more. Not to mention, since you’re eliminating several words with each instance, removing them can reduce word count fast, and that’s what we’re targeting in this list.

Look for these verbs that indicate you might be using filter phrases and see if you can rework the sentence without them. Aim to reduce these by 90% if you can. Some examples to search for and remove include:

Eliminate Dialogue Tags

If you’re writing for adults, dialogue tags (example: she said) aren’t strictly necessary. Look for places in your draft where you have a dialogue tag and then an action beat, like this:

Instead of (10 words):

“Your word count is shrinking,” Suzy said (dialogue tag), clapping her hands (action beat).

Try (9 words):

Remove the dialogue tag, and leave only the action beat.

“Your word count is shrinking.” Suzy clapped her hands.

Note: If you’re writing middle grade or for a lower reading level, you’ll want to leave the dialogue tags in, because newer readers need them for comprehension. But if you’re writing for adults? Go to town. Just be sure to leave the action beats there so that readers can tell who’s talking.

Remove Character Names in Dialogue

This one’s easy.

If you phoned me right now, you could say, “Suzy, this advice is awesome!”

But it’s less words to say, “This advice is awesome!” and it means the same thing, since I know you’re talking to me. Plus, in real life, we don’t go around using people’s names all the time. It’s just awkward.

Combine Repeated Scenes, Recaps, or Characters

If your word count is still too high, don’t despair. The next place to look is for places in your book that feel similar.

1. Do your characters visit a location several times? See if you can combine the events into less visits to that location. You’ll keep all the “stuff” that happens, but combining scenes will give you lots of opportunity to tighten up word count.
2. Do you have a scene where a character is telling their brother about something that the reader already witnessed in an earlier scene? Don’t make us hear it all again *yawn*. Reduce it to a quick recap:
   Geronimo filled Luther in on the fist fight.
3. Have a few characters that ended up with similar goals and voices? Combine them into one person. This allows you to keep dialogue, keep events, even backstory, but will definitely save you word count, because you have less characters to introduce and include.

Even if you love your draft the way it is, try to keep an open mind. Fitting within a genre’s word count expectations will make your book more accessible to readers, and more saleable. And ultimately, these changes will make your writing as strong as it can be, so it’s a win-win situation.

Looking for more practical writing tips?

I share some of my best tips writing tips in my all-new free Masterclass. Watch it here.

SUZY VADORI - Resident Writing Coach

Suzy Vadori is the award-winning author of The Fountain Series. She is a certified Book Coach with Author Accelerator and the Founder of Wicked Good Fiction Bootcamp. Suzy breaks down important writing concepts into practical steps to make it easy for writers coming from outside the industry to get up to speed in a snap, so that they can realize their big, wild writing dreams!

In addition to her weekly newsletter encouraging writers, and online courses, Suzy offers both developmental editing and 1:1 Book Coaching. Find out more about our RWC team here and discover how to connect with Suzy and all the resources she has to offer here.

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Unless you wrote your book exclusively for your own satisfaction, once your creative vision is on the page, it’s time to zoom in on how the book works for readers. The key is getting the right kind of feedback for where you are in the revision and editing process—and dodging the kind that will pull you off track.

Much of this choice hinges on your editorial budget. You could do most or all these steps for yourself at no cost, but the quality of your book will reflect the quality of the production behind it. Most writers end up drawing on both free and paid feedback options.

Let’s make sure you’re leaning on the right options at the right time.

Writing Feedback: Stage by Stage

With a newly complete manuscript

Volunteer feedback is perfect at this stage of your book’s development. One or two alpha readers (often a spouse, critique partner, or close friend) provide that initial gut check on what’s hitting home and what’s missing the target.

During second and later drafts

As you continue working through early drafts, crowdsourced feedback continues to be your best bet. Lean on your peers in critique partners and groups, collecting enough opinions to sort out which point to genuine issues and which simply refer to personal taste.

Active drafting can be an opportunity for coaching or mentoring on story problems identified by critique buddies—a character arc that refuses to gel, saggy pacing, a general lack of zing—if your budget and time comfortably allow it. A little one-on-one help from a pro now could prevent you from filling your manuscript with pernicious errors that will inflate your editing rate down the line. (Incorrect use of dialogue tags and action beats, I’m looking at you!)

Before you’re ready for professional editing

Once you sense you’re nearing the limits of your ability to improve your book on your own, it’s time to bring in beta readers. Beta readers provide high-level, subjective, personal feedback such as “the pacing felt slow in the middle” or “I just didn’t like that character at all.”

Although paying for beta reading ensures the readers will finish the book and return feedback, it’s not necessary to hire a pro. In fact (unpopular opinion ahead), an editor is the wrong choice for beta reading. The reason is simple: Beta reading is not Editing Lite. It’s designed to generate genuine reader reaction, not analysis from a trained professional.

When you’re ready for professional editing

When you’re ready for professional editing, marching in with a request for a particular type or level of editing puts you at risk of getting precisely what you ask for—whether your manuscript needs it or not. It would be like relying on Dr. Google to diagnose a physical ailment, then convincing a local doctor to prescribe strictly the medications and treatments you’ve decided you need.

Choose your editor with care. You deserve a specialist who resonates with you and your work, not whoever offers the lowest rates and immediate availability.

Once you’ve found the perfect editorial collaborator, let them recommend what your manuscript needs. Their recommendations should be based on what will best support your story, your writing, and your publishing goals. If your editor hasn’t reviewed all those points, you can’t be sure you’ll get what you need.

Between edits

Another popular point for beta reading is in between edits. For example, betas can check whether the revisions you made after a developmental edit satisfy the needs the edit identified.

Don’t use beta readers beyond the point at which you’re willing to make big-picture changes. Once the story is settled, it’s time to move forward into editing.

Before you query

Raw talent shouldn’t mean raw material, and having your manuscript edited before you query agents and publishers helps you get your foot in the door.

“Our agency consistently see proposals that are okay, but simply not written at a level that is needed to break into the market,” writes literary agent Steve Laube. “Agents are not freelance editors so there is only so much we are willing to do to fix a project. I have said it this way, ‘If I get something that is 90% ready, I can take it the rest of the way. But if it is only 80% ready I will kick it back to the writer with a rejection. We are looking for the best of the best.’”

Agents are not there to provide you with free editing. In The Shit No One Tells You About Writing (season 2, episode 1), literary agent Cece Lyra advises writers not to expect feedback from an agent until “your writing is so, so good to the point that your agent is actually ready to sell it, then he’ll give you editorial feedback. … Your agent’s job is to sell your work. You need to have other sources of feedback too.”

Authors like Bianca Marais (The Witches of Moonshine Manor) seek out professional help before sending their manuscripts to agents. “I think as writers, we need to get into the habit of seeking out the expertise that we want, and that means paying for it,” she notes in The Shit No One Tells You About Writing (season 2, episode 1), “but it makes the agent’s job that much easier to be able to sell the work because the work is so much more polished and professional at that time.”

Before you self-publish

Self-publishing your work means assuming the responsibility for producing a professional-quality product—and that means paying for professional-caliber editing.

A developmental editor will help you master and refine the principles of story structure, genre, and storytelling technique. Your need for this level of editing may diminish as you master the craft, but you can’t afford to launch your writing career with limp storytelling.

And when it’s time for line editing and copyediting, your friend the English teacher can tell you if you have a problem with dangling participles, but they probably haven’t the foggiest about publishing industry standards for fiction style and punctuation. Get a professional copyedit.

Proofreading could be a suitable time to loop in friends and family who’ve promised to help. Vet their recommendations carefully—their knowledge of current grammar and usage or publishing industry standards will not always be on target—and be clear that you’re asking for help identifying typos and objective errors. Collate and compare volunteer findings, then get a professional editor or proofreader to review the results. You may be able to get this done as part of your editing follow-up or at an extremely low rate.

Keep Hold of the Creative Reins

Finally, follow these three guidelines for incorporating feedback into your work at any stage.

1. Don’t seek creative feedback from anyone you wouldn’t entrust with molding your book’s creative vision.

2. Take responsibility for learning your craft. “The conscious writer listens to everyone, tries everything, but follows no one; they are their own guru,” advises story development consultant Jeff Lyons. “(The conscious writer) takes responsibility for their failures as well as their successes and knows that they, not some fortune cookie, are the only ones who can solve their writing problems—and they love that responsibility.”

3. Don’t get sucked into an endless feedback loop. Gather constructive input, make your decisions and revisions, and move on to the next novel. You want a writing career filled with books, don’t you?

Onward!

LISA POISSO - Resident Writing Coach

Lisa Poisso specializes in helping new and emerging fiction writers. A veteran of the disciplined world of classical dance, she brings that same practiced artistry to writing—where structure, form, and technique are springboards that give you freedom of movement on the page. Explore her Writing & Editing Resources for valuable tools to develop your manuscript, and subscribe to the Writes of Fiction newsletter to receive Lisa’s hand-picked writing advice delivered directly to your inbox. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Lisa below.

The post Feedback and Editing: The Right Eyes at the Right Time appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

So, three things about me:

1. I like to help (really, I’m a bit psycho about it – be warned)
2. I like to build unique storytelling tools
3. I like to share great resource finds with other writers

Online, I try to match people with the information they need. Sometimes people reach out through email or a Facebook page to see if I can help them solve a problem they’re having. Many writers tend to have similar struggles, and so I often end up recommending the same tools or sites again and again. I thought it might be fun to round up the resources I recommend the most.

#1: The Critique Circle

A lot of writers reach out because they’ve 1) written a book and need guidance on the next steps, 2) they’ve become frustrated because they can’t seem to sell their book and need to know if there’s something wrong with it, or 3), they need an editor for a manuscript. While it sounds like these writers may need different things, likely they don’t. All three could benefit from the same thing – unbiased feedback.

Critique Circle is an online community where you can submit your work for critique and offer feedback to others in turn. You’ll get a variety of critiques (six, ten, maybe more) from writers at different levels. Having six sets of eyes (or more) on your work means collectively you’ll get some good guidance on what to fix, and multiple critiques can help with spotting patterns. If several folks are all pointing out the same or similar issues, you know there’s a problem to fix.

You might be wondering why I would send someone who is submitting to agents and publishers to a critique group and not an editor, right? Well, it’s simple: many writers submit before they’re ready. (I sure did, back in the day.) And taking your book to an editor right off the bat is going to cost money, whereas the Critique Circle is free (they do have a paid plan, too). Starting with a free option is a good first step.

So, unless a person tells me they’ve extensively workshopped a book and have already used critique groups, I recommend starting at Critique Circle, even if a person just needs an unbiased opinion on whether a book is ready for submitting. Once the writer has learned what they can at the critique level, they can decide if they need to move to an editor, or focus on their query letter & targeting to achieve a better response rate.

#2: ProWritingAid

Another handy-dandy tool I suggest to writers all the time as they polish and tighten is ProWritingAid. It’s a brilliant tool with a free and paid version (and the cost is reasonable and offers great value). As I mentioned above, hiring a freelance editor can be costly, so the stronger you make your writing before seeking one out, the better. And if you are querying, or sending a synopsis and sample pages, you don’t want typos, grammar or weak writing to distract an agent or editor from your brilliant story premise.

#3: Jane Friedman

One reason why it’s such a great time to be a writer is that our community is packed with experts willing to share their experience to help us navigate publishing. In the old days, it was straightforward – you wrote the best book you could, got an agent, and then submitted to publishers. Straightforward, but far from easy. Like today, you needed a stellar book with a fresh premise, a killer query, and then to win the lottery by finding the right agent and editor at the right time, who was looking for a project just like yours. That’s traditional publishing.

Of course now we have self-publishing and hybrid publishing options, too, and so we need to think about the right path for us. Once we decide, we need to buckle in and get ready for a mountain of work. But fear not, writing friend, because we have Jane Friedman‘s beautiful brain and her step-by-step guidance as we navigate the publishing path we’ve chosen.

Jane been in the industry for a long time and knows it inside and out. She’s taken a deep dive into different publishing routes and so has many articles and resources to help writers. (Her blog is also filled with tons of great articles on craft and marketing, too!)

#4: Buffer

Ah, marketing, the necessary evil. We can write a book, and publish it, but if we don’t market it, chances are, no one will find it. So, we need to proactively think about our audience and how to reach them. I know you’re worried about coming across as car salesman-y, but here’s a secret – marketing isn’t about selling books. It’s about having a focus, being authentic, and building relationships. (You can read more about my FAR Marketing Method here.),

If we want to find our reading audience across the entire world, we should get online and embrace social media to some degree. Don’t worry, we don’t need to do it all, but we should do some, focusing on platforms where our ideal audience hangs out.

A big problem with social media is that it can steal a lot of time, so using tools in the right way can help us be more efficient. A tool I couldn’t live without is Buffer. It allows me to schedule content on all my social platforms, so I’m always sharing helpful articles and occasional items to help people discover how I can help them. Scheduling this content means I get time back to use my social media time to hang out and chit-chat on feeds and DMs, as being social is what it’s really about.

#5: Trello

Between writing, publishing, marketing, and running a business, well, writers juggle A LOT. Lists can be our friend, but having a way to visualize our action items and track important spreadsheets, links and sites in one place is really helpful. Becca and I use Trello, which allows us to create boards, lists, and cards for everything we do from our publication process for each book, to marketing objectives and goals, to brainstorming ideas for blog posts, books, and new tools for One Stop for Writers. Cards can be dragged from one column to the next, reordered, labelled, etc. It’s a brilliant way to map out a to-do list or process, or even brainstorm ideas for a new book. Did I mention Trello has a generous free version? Check it out!

#6: One Stop for Writers

As you know, Becca and I work to help writers strengthen their description skills because the better we get at showing the things that matter in a story, the more readers can truly experience the story, and a good book becomes exceptional. Many are familiar with our Thesaurus Writing Guides, and so write us to see if we have a thesaurus on a particular topic they need help describing.

Ironically, more often than not, we point them to One Stop for Writers because we have many more descriptive thesaurus topics there (16) than we do in book form (7). Our thesauruses are all centralized in one database, meaning it’s all in one place, saving writers time.

The site has a lot of other special lists, generators, worksheets, and crazy-helpful tools (like the Character Builder) that can help writers with everything to do with a story, so even if something isn’t covered in a thesaurus, it’s tackled somewhere. If you’d like to poke around to see all the resources and tools, test drive the 2-week free trial.

#7: Wide for the Win Facebook Group

If there’s one truth in this world, it’s that writers work freaking hard to get their books into the world. And that work doesn’t stop at writing “the end” or hitting the publish button at Ingram, Amazon, or elsewhere, either.

When we choose to be authors, we’re also choosing to become business owners, marketers, publishers, publicists, and accountants. And boy, is there a lot to know.

One of the best sources of information I’ve found is the Wide for the Win Facebook group. It’s over 10,000 strong, and each member is motivated to share knowledge and experience to help one another succeed.

If you’re an indie, this is the group for you. But honestly, I think even if you’re traditionally published, I think there’s a lot to learn here about how to sell. One thing to note – this is a “going wide” group, meaning discussion is around leveraging multiple platforms to reach readers, not restricting a book to Kindle Unlimited.

#8 The Storyteller’s Roadmap

Another thing people ask about is where to hire a story coach (here are some options). A story coach can be wonderful for someone who needs guidance, but for some, the cost is not in the budget. Becca and I created a solution for writers who want step-by-step help but are on a budget – the Storyteller’s Roadmap.

There are a lot of steps to planning, writing, and revising a powerful novel, meaning more than a few places where writers can become stuck, blocked, lost, and frustrated enough to quit. It’s important to keep going because this story called out to be written, right? There’s a diamond within, and if it’s written, it can be fixed.

The Storyteller’s Roadmap is your writing GPS, helping you navigate your way to a publish-ready novel. It guides you to what you need as you need it, too, pointing out tools, resources, and advice that help make your job easier. You loved your story enough to start it, and the Storyteller’s Roadmap at One Stop for Writers will help you finish it.

#9: I Need Help With… Resource Mother Lode

Finally, last year when we redesigned Writers Helping Writers, we built a powerful I need help with… section on the home page with our very best articles, tools, tip sheets, and more. You’ll find a ton of help in key areas, not only to help you write a stronger story, but also market your book, and manage your mindset and business. Just choose your topic to find what you need:

These are my top recommendations…what are yours?

ANGELA ACKERMAN

Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post The Sites I Recommend the Most to Writers appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Most writers have read the wide-eyed articles from newly-agented writers detailing the pressure of revising and returning edits on a tight schedule and working with an assigned editor. But what if you’re the one hiring the editor? By their nature as entrepreneurs, every independent editor’s business practices vary. Ask your editor about these common expectations and practices before agreeing to any work.

Before Your Edit

1. Agreements about the business details of your project protect you both. An agreement needn’t be a formal printed contract signed in person; an email constitutes a legal agreement. The agreement should define the scope of work, start and finish dates and other relevant deadlines, total cost and payment schedule, and a clear explanation of what happens if either party cancels or breaches the agreement.

2. New writers often mistakenly believe they need a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) to protect their material. Your work is legally copyrighted the moment you commit it to print, making NDAs cumbersome, unnecessary, and often a sign of professional mistrust.

3. Most editors require a deposit to get your book on their calendar, customarily ranging from a flat fee of $100 or more to the first half of the total fee. You can expect to pay your total editing bill in full before the editor releases the edited manuscript.

4. If you can’t or don’t want to use your editor’s preferred payment method, aren’t located in the same country as they are, or prefer a slow payment method like personal checks, ask if your choice will create any issues. Allow enough time to process payments without holding up the project.

5. Missing your editing date by even a day or two could leave your manuscript without time to fit into its scheduled slot, if the deadline is tight or your editor is busy. Communicate as soon as you suspect you may have a problem hitting your scheduled editing date.

6. The time it takes to edit a manuscript varies widely, depending on your manuscript’s needs, the type of editing, and the editor’s schedule and work practices. Developmental editing usually takes the longest. Line editing is slower than copyediting, and proofreading is the fastest editing service.

If there were such a thing as a typical editing rate among all these levels of service, it might run from 20,000 to 35,000 words per week. You get what you pay for. If all the editor has time for is a breakneck race through the manuscript, that’s precisely what you’ll get.

Don’t try to reverse-engineer what you think an editor’s editing rate should be based on words or pages per hour. Manuscript speed doesn’t account for writing an editorial report or letter; creating a style sheet; formatting and preparing the file; running automated software and macros to check mechanics, formatting, and style; an initial read-through; a follow-up read-through; or book mapping and structural analysis. If there’s no time for these (or if your editor prices the edit without them), you’ll be missing many aspects of a thorough professional edit.

7. Submitting a manuscript that’s as error-free as possible allows your editor to spend their time on elements that require professional skill and judgment. If the writing needs extensive spelling, grammar, and punctuation cleanup, those things are exactly where the editor will spend their time. Leaving messes for the editor to clean up costs money—your money. Clean manuscripts give editors elbow room to help you elevate your story and writing.

8. Don’t jump the gun with fancy formatting or graphics. It’s not time for your manuscript to look like a book yet. Standard manuscript format—12-point double-spaced Times New Roman, one-inch margins, first-line paragraph indents instead of tabs, one space (not two) between sentences, and no line space between paragraphs—lets your editor get right to work.

9. Although most editors spot-check facts and look for obvious errors (mostly for narrative and internal consistency), factual accuracy—including science, geography, history, and foreign languages—is your responsibility as the author.

During Your Edit

10. Some editors consider work complete when they return the edited manuscript to you. This is typical for edits designed to inspire revision and new writing, such as developmental or line edits. Other editors ask that you review and approve or revise their edits and return the manuscript for final adjustments; this is more typical for polishing edits like copyediting or proofreading. These editors will review some or all of your changes; the first sort consider that a new round of editing. Neither way is wrong or superior. Included follow-up rounds generally mean higher rates; many editors who don’t include follow-up rounds offer deep discounts for additional rounds. Ask your editor what’s included.

11. Especially early in your writing career, your manuscript could need multiple rounds of the same type of editing. If a developmental edit leads to significant changes, for example, you could need a second round after revisions. Don’t let this possibility take you by surprise.

12. Expect to work using Microsoft Word and tracked changes. Most editors use Word because it permits the use of editorial tools that increase the accuracy and quality of the edit, a benefit you very much want for your manuscript. Agents, editors, and other publishing professionals will also expect to receive your manuscript as a Word file, not as a PDF or “compatible” file. Word and tracked changes look intimidating but aren’t difficult to learn, and working with them is part of a writer’s baseline skills.

13. You may not hear much from your editor while your edit is in progress, or they may contact you with various questions. Both are normal. Editing isn’t a sequential process that starts with chapter one and finishes at “The End.” Editors work in layers. There’s often not much to say about an edit in progress beyond “Yep, still working.”

14. For anything but proofreading, edits are the beginning of the revision process, not the end. Reviewing a copyedit is relatively straightforward, but line and developmental edits are designed to steer you toward deeper, better writing. It’s up to you to follow through with the work.

After Your Edit

15. Editing is a subjective process, and you’re free not to take every edit and recommendation. It’s your book and your vision. Most editors include follow-up time to review points of confusion or disagreement. Disagreeing with the substance of the feedback, however, does not entitle you to a discount or refund.

16. A full-length edit can generate hundreds of comments and tens of thousands of edits. Considering this scope, the final manuscript will inevitably contain some residual errors. You can minimize these by starting with a manuscript as clean as you can possibly manage and finishing with a professional proofread.

17. Just as you wouldn’t want your editor to discuss or share your manuscript with others, it’s unprofessional to share your edits online or kvetch about the specifics with other writers or editors. The edited final product is yours to do with as you wish, but the edits, comments, and editorial feedback themselves are intended for you alone.

18. If you find yourself rejecting most of the edits and suggestions in your edit, you may have hired the wrong editor for the job or pushed for a level of editing your manuscript wasn’t ready for. More often, you simply need some emotional distance from the feedback. Putting away a difficult edit for a while can help you regain objectivity.

19. American authors, don’t file a 1099-MISC for editing fees if you paid using a service such as PayPal. Payments made with a credit card or payment card and certain other types of payments, including third-party network transactions, must be reported on Form 1099-K by the payment settlement entity under section 6050W and are not subject to reporting on Form 1099-MISC. 

20. Want to thank your editor? Recommend them in writers’ groups. It’s the editorial equivalent of posting a reader review online. And consider sending a signed copy of your book. If your editor doesn’t have space to keep it, they can donate it to a Little Free Library—more readers for your brilliantly edited creation.

This article does not constitute legal or financial advice; for specific issues and questions, you should seek advice from a qualified attorney or financial professional.

LISA POISSO - Resident Writing Coach

Lisa Poisso specializes in helping new and emerging fiction writers. A veteran of the disciplined world of classical dance, she brings that same practiced artistry to writing—where structure, form, and technique are springboards that give you freedom of movement on the page. Explore her Writing & Editing Resources for valuable tools to develop your manuscript, and subscribe to the Writes of Fiction newsletter to receive Lisa’s hand-picked writing advice delivered directly to your inbox. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Lisa below.

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By David G. Brown

The Two Pillars of Storytelling

After my first couple years as a fiction editor, I realized that all of my developmental feedback for clients fit into one of two categories. The first is immersion: the quality of a narrative that transports readers to another time and place. The second is emotional draw: that which maintains readers’ interest in a character and thus keeps them turning pages.

Immersion is achieved with scene-based writing, which means a focus on the protagonist’s moment-to-moment experience of setting and conflict. A reader’s sense of immediacy grows out of sensory details, movement, action, and dialogue.

Emotional draw is more complicated. Readers are diverse, and each one brings a slightly different reason for turning the page. But the main components are:

• Trajectory—the momentum of a character struggling toward a goal
• Anticipation—a desire to know what happens next
• Stakes—a looming consequence should the character fail

Immersive Potential

The author’s first job, whether they are writing fiction or narrative nonfiction, is to transport readers into their characters’ world. Context is important in any story, but sensory details are paramount since they are key to a reader’s imaginative experience of the text.

Comb through your scenes with this principle in mind. On every page, ask yourself what your readers might be seeing, hearing, smelling, and feeling. Do they know within a few sentences where a scene is taking place? Can they picture the surroundings? Do they have a physical sense of the characters moving through and occupying space in this locale?

Judge each sentence by the following criteria: does it convey the focal character’s moment-to-moment experience of the scene? Or does it instead provide context?

The more scene you have on each page, the deeper your readers’ potential immersion. As soon as you showcase context, your readers’ imaginative experience diminishes. That’s not to say there isn’t room for snippets of context. It’s a question of balance.

Context includes setting, world-building, backstory, and even interiority—your protagonist’s analysis and reflections. Again, context is important, but it works best when it surfaces in hints rather than explanations.

Treat your readers like detectives—give them clues and let them come to their own conclusions about context.

Chapter Arcs and Consequence

Here’s another reason scene-based writing is so important: it’s where both plot and character come to life.

When characters make decisions and take risks, readers see them for who they really are. Witty asides and snippets of narrative context can give a story much depth, but the true essence of character is contained in what they are willing to do—or not—to get what they want.

Therein lies the nugget of a chapter arc: a character either takes action toward a goal or reacts to a new obstacle. The result is a consequence—their path forward has changed. In most cases, the scene will have some bearing on the overarching narrative trajectory (more on trajectory in a moment), but the action/reaction and consequence might also develop a subplot.

Take a close look at each scene in your manuscript and ask yourself:

• Does the focal character make a choice or take action in pursuit of a goal?
• Does this choice or action result in a consequence that leads into the next scene?

If the answer is no or if you aren’t sure, flag the scene for reconsideration: either bring it into the story’s chain of consequence or send it to the chopping block!

Plot is a Chain of Consequence

A large part of emotional draw flows out of trajectory: a character struggling toward a goal. As the protagonist makes decisions and takes risks in pursuit of their goal, they court failure of some kind. If nothing is at stake, it’s extremely difficult to hold readers’ interest, and without a specific goal, the story becomes aimless.

In terms of structure, the beginning of a narrative is the point when a character’s underlying motivation crystallizes into this clear, relatable, and specific goal—the first link in the story’s chain of consequence. Keep in mind, many novels open sometime after this point. For example, in Moby Dick, Ahab’s inciting incident is implied.

In genre fiction, the narrative goal is often in sharp focus: it’s a quest to save the world or a mission to stop a killer. While emotional draw in literary fiction is usually connected to deeper thematic elements, the narrative goal is still a major component, even if the quest is subtler.

A protagonist’s goal is sometimes referred to as a narrative bridge—a question asked in the beginning of the novel that is answered by the end. The protagonist’s goal is the question, and whether or not they achieve it is the answer. This answer also forms the final link in the story’s chain of consequence.

The rest of the narrative chain lies between the inciting incident and the climax. That means each scene causes the next. In other words, if you map out your story scene by scene, there should be a causal transition between each segment: this happens, therefore this happens, but then this happens, therefore… The alternative lacks momentum; it’s anecdotal: this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens.

Here’s a simple example: Rumpelstiltskin.

The miller’s daughter is the protagonist. Her inciting incident comes when her father brags to the king that she can spin gold from straw. She is therefore locked in a room where she is expected to perform her magical feat.

Father and daughter are in deep trouble, but then Rumpelstiltskin appears and offers to do the deed in exchange for her necklace. She agrees and therefore presents the king with his gold the next morning. But then the king wants even more gold; therefore the miller’s daughter needs Rumpelstiltskin’s services again and must make greater and greater sacrifices to pay for them.

The chain of consequence wraps up at the climax: eventually, when Rumpelstiltskin comes to collect on his final demand (her first-born child), the miller’s daughter tries to renegotiate. He gives her an unlikely escape clause: she must guess his name. She therefore follows him into the forest, finds his home, and overhears him singing his secret.

A novel is much more complex, especially given subplots like interpersonal arcs and side quests. For this reason, it’s a good idea to create separate causal maps for your story’s main trajectory as well as the secondary storylines. However, when you look at the big picture, each scene should fit into one of these chains of consequence.

Bringing It All Together

Though this article first touches on the importance of your readers’ story-world immersion, you are better off to focus your initial self-editing efforts on your manuscript’s chain of consequence. You might find that entire scenes aren’t pulling their (causal) weight, which means they either need to be cut or substantially changed to align with the protagonist’s trajectory. For this reason, it’s best to nail down the structure before you start fleshing out and polishing scenes.

To conclude, here are a few more tips for your next self-editing adventure:

• Take time away from your project. Work on something else for a month or two!
• On your next read through, pretend your worst enemy is following along over your shoulder. What would they say? What would they roll their eyes at?
• Between each draft, consider your story from wildly different angles—what if the protagonist and antagonist traded places? What if you switched genres? How would the conflicts play out in a different time and place?
• Don’t be afraid to tear down walls and install a new front door. In fact, sometimes we need to burn down the house altogether to find the best way forward.

David G. Brown is the founder of Darling Axe Editing and Darling Indie Marketing. He is an award-winning short fiction writer, and his debut novel is represented by the Donaghy Literary Group. He has published poetry, fiction, and nonfiction in magazines and literary journals, and he has an MFA in creative writing from UBC. David lives in Victoria, Canada, in the traditional territory of the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations.

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The post Stoking Your Story’s Fire: Three Considerations for Revising Scene by Scene appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

By Michelle Barker

Part of the trick of hiring an editor is knowing when your manuscript is ready to hand over to them. There’s no point submitting a draft that you already know has POV issues or structural problems. The ideal situation I like to be in when I deliver my manuscript to an editor is that I think it’s perfect. Of course, it never is, but “perfect to me” means I’ve done everything I know how to do. That way, the editor will teach me something.

There are three main types of edits: developmental, line, and proofreading. At each stage, an author can do a lot of self-editing to create a “perfect-to-me” manuscript.

The Developmental Stage

A developmental edit tackles big-picture issues: plot, structure, characterization, point of view and the like. It can be hard to see where a novel isn’t working on a substantive level. Sometimes you know it’s not working but can’t figure out why. In both cases, I find it helpful to work through structural exercises.

List the major structural elements that should appear in a novel and fill in the blanks. You can go as basic as three-act structure (inciting incident, midpoint, climax, etc.) or you can get more detailed with something like a Save the Cat beat sheet. It amounts to the same thing: a novel must build momentum and it does this by hitting certain pivotal moments. If while doing this exercise you discover you’ve skipped a step or two, that’s probably where your problem lies.

Literary agent Hannah Sheppard boils this process down to a single sentence: When A (inciting incident) happens, B (character) must do C (action) otherwise/before D (catastrophe). Try filling it in. If you can’t, you’ll know there’s a problem.

One of the most common developmental issues I encounter as an editor is the protagonist’s lack of a strong, measurable goal. This goal needs to power the main character through the whole manuscript. One way to test this is to write a synopsis of the novel. Yuk, I know. A synopsis shows flaws. It’s a scary process. If you can’t boil your story down to a few pages that clearly trace a protagonist’s quest for a goal, you’ve got trouble.

Another thing a synopsis will reveal is causality (or the lack of it). If you find yourself connecting plot elements with the words, “and then,” (as opposed to “but,” or “therefore”), your story won’t be building the momentum it needs to hold a reader’s attention.

Has your protagonist done something at the end of the novel that he couldn’t have done at the beginning? If not, you have a character arc issue.

I could write an entire piece on point of view—and indeed, many editors have. Go read a few of them. I will say one thing here. It seems like it would be easiest to write in omniscient so you have access to every character’s thoughts. In fact, it’s the hardest POV to master.

Don’t be tempted to add new business to a novel to solve an existing problem. Often, you simply haven’t delivered on the promises you’ve made.

Most clients I deal with believe one developmental edit is all their novel needs. In fact, it takes several passes to wrinkle out developmental issues. Writing a novel is (or should be) like building a house of cards. Remove one card and half the house topples. Developmental edits are hard for that reason. As soon as you solve one problem, you’ve created five others. You should not expect this to be a quick and simple job. Most writers are in too much of a rush. Good work takes time. A novel benefits greatly from smoking on the shelf for a month or so after a major edit. Indeed, time might be the best editor of all.

Sometimes clients are tempted to skip the developmental stage. Because they’ve worked for so long on their novels and have used beta readers, they believe they can jump straight into a line edit and (bonus) save some money. Skipping the developmental stage is like building a house on sand. Even when I’ve worked for a year on a novel and finally decide it’s ready to send to my publisher, the first thing they do is assign me—you guessed it—a developmental editor.

Line Edit

Once the developmental issues have been tackled—and only then—it’s time to move onto a line edit. The most useful self-editing tool I can suggest before you send your work to an editor is to read the entire novel out loud in as short a time span as you can manage. The errors your eyes glossed over will sound like nails on a chalkboard to your ears. Missing words, repetitions, logical flaws, sheer boredom—I’ve encountered all of these in my own manuscripts, even after reading the work countless times in my head. I never noticed the flaws until I heard them.

A line edit is the most expensive editing job of the three. The worse shape your novel is in, the more you’ll pay. A line editor won’t fix developmental flaws. We’ll make suggestions, sure. We will move sentences and change words, but if the book is fundamentally flawed, that’s like repainting a room when the walls need to come down.

 When I’m reviewing my own novel at this stage, I’m looking for certain things:

• Is every scene grounded in physical and/or sensory detail?
• Have I noticed pet words or phrases repeating themselves ad nauseum? The common offenders include: of course, just, very, little—as well as all those useless generic gestures that do nothing to develop character: laughing, smiling, looking, shrugging, nodding.
• Does every scene contain tension? Does every chapter end with it?
• Have I let the novel sit? Yes, I’ve mentioned this twice now. That’s how important it is.

Proofreading

Proofreading comes at the end of the process. All the other issues should have been fixed by now. If you’re still finding problems with grammar and verb tenses—or worse, structural issues—your novel isn’t ready to send to the proofreader.

Run your manuscript through a spell- and grammar- check. If your novel contains complicated spellings of proper names, use the find/replace functions to make sure you’ve been consistent. Even if you’ve proofread until your eyes are crossed, I guarantee a proofreader will catch things you’ve missed. Don’t skip this stage, especially if you’re self-publishing.

It’s tempting to assume that because a manuscript seems perfect to you, it’s good enough and doesn’t need an editor. Never in my life have I handed over a manuscript to an editor and been told there’s nothing wrong with it, nor have I ever delivered that news to a client. Writing is a learning process, and because every story is different, they each have something to teach us about the craft.

PSSST! If you’re struggling with the revision stage of your story, One Stop for Writers has a Revision Roadmap to take you step-by-step through the process of fixing, tightening, and tidying up your manuscript .

Michelle Barker is the award-winning author of The House of One Thousand Eyes. She is also a senior editor at darlingaxe.com, a novel development and editing service presently offering a special NaNoWriMo deal for authors (https://darlingaxe.com/blogs/news/post-nanowrimo).

Her newest novel, My Long List of Impossible Things, was released in 2020 with Annick Press. You can find her on Twitter (@MBarker_190) Facebook (@MichelleBarkerAuthor), and her website www.michellebarker.ca.

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The post “Perfect to Me”: How Self-Editing Can Take Your Novel to the Next Stage appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

What is a Darling?

Darlings are words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and even whole scenes that we’re often most proud of and attached to. We love them to the point that we almost don’t care if they muddy the storyline. We worked hard and want to keep our darlings right where they are, thank you. We should be able to keep whatever we want, right?

Wrong.

A writer needs to consider the reader. When we disregard the reader’s needs for the sake of our own, we fail. If that sounds harsh, consider a world without readers.

How To Identify a Darling

If you’re desperately in love with a word/sentence/paragraph/page/scene, but you keep fighting with it to make it work, it’s a darling.

If your beta readers are confused by it, but the thought of losing it shreds your soul, it’s a darling.

If you have a scene that’s your best writing ever but it feels out-of-place, like it belongs in a different book, it’s a darling.

If you can cut the word/sentence/paragraph/page/scene without disrupting the story, it’s a darling.

One of the first places to look is at filler words.

Darling Filler Words

Just

This darling should almost always be murdered.

Original: I just couldn’t say goodbye.
Rewrite: I couldn’t bear to say goodbye.

That

This darling litters many first drafts, but it can often be killed without any harm to the sentence.

Original: I believe that all writers kill their darlings.
Rewrite: I believe all writers kill their darlings.

The original and rewrite have a second darling. Did you catch it?

Final Rewrite: All writers kill their darlings.

“Believe” in this context is a telling word. Any time we tell the reader things like “I thought” or “He knew” or “She felt” or “I believe” we slip out of deep POV. Thus, the little darling must die.

So

Original: So, this huge guy glared at me in the coffee line.
Rewrite: An enormous dude with linebacker shoulders glared at me in the coffee line.

Confession? I use “so” all the time online, but that doesn’t mean I leave the filler in my work. The only exception is if it’s used with purpose, like as a character cue word.

Really

Original: She broke up with him. He still really loved her.

Sometimes killing your darlings means combining/rewording sentences rather than merely removing filler.

Rewrite: When she severed their relationship, his heart stalled.

Very

Here’s another meaningless word. Be ruthless with this darling.

Original: He made me very happy.
Rewrite: When he neared, my skin tingled.

Of

The way to determine if “of” is needed is by reading the sentence with and without it. Does the sentence still make sense?

Original: She bolted out of the door.
Rewrite: She bolted out the door.

Up (with certain actions)

Original: He rose up from the table.
Rewrite: He rose from the table.

Down (with certain actions)

Original: He sat down on the couch.
Rewrite: He sat on the couch.

And/But (to start a sentence)

I’m not saying we should never use “and” or “but” to start a sentence, though editors might disagree. Depends on context.

Original: He died. And I’m heartbroken.
Rewrite: When he died, my soul shattered.

Also search for places where “but” is used to connect two sentences. Can you combine them into one sentence without losing the meaning?

Original: He moved out of state, but I miss him. He was the most caring man I’d ever met.
Rewrite: The most caring man I’d ever met moved out of state. I miss him—miss us.

Want(ed)

Want/wanted is another telling word. It must die to preserve deep POV.

Original: I really wanted the chocolate cake.
Rewrite: I drooled over the chocolate cake. One bite. What could it hurt?

Came/Went

The reason came/went is filler is because it’s not specific enough.

Original: I went to the store to buy my favorite ice cream.
Rewrite: I raced to Marco’s General Store to buy salted caramel ice cream, my tastebuds cheering me on.

Had

Too many “had” words give the reader the impression the action took place prior to the main storyline. As a guide, used once in a sentence puts the action in past tense. Twice is repetitive and clutters the writing. Also, if it’s clear the action is in the past, it can often be omitted.

Original: I had gazed at the painting for hours and the eyes didn’t move.
Rewrite: For hours I gazed at the painting and the eyes never wavered.

Looking for more words that are often overused? Download this Editing Help: Crutch Words Checklist.

Paragraph/Page/Scene Darlings

It’s not easy to delete a full page or an entire scene or chapter. I understand. Still, we must kill our darlings, no matter how much it stings. To lessen the pain, save the deleted passages in a separate file marked “Darling Graveyard” or equivalent. Pick a title you’ll remember. You might be able to breathe new life into that dead darling for another book. Plus, it’ll lessen the sting. You may never use the deleted paragraph/page/scene, but at least it’s available.

How To Identify a Scene Darling

Does the scene have a purpose? If no, kill that darling.

Does the scene play well with others — does it interact with the scenes before and after it? If no, kill that darling.

Does the scene drive the plot forward or benefit the storyline? If no, kill that darling.

What happens if you delete the scene? Did the story change? If no, kill that pesky darling.

Redundancy Darlings

One of the most common reasons to kill your darlings is if we’ve overemphasized in some way. Trust the reader. Don’t beat them over the head with this or that. Resist the urge to over-explain.

Avoid purple prose. Good writing is concise and to the point. Overly cute or witty turns of phrase must die. You may love a phrase or sentence that sounds beautiful to your ear, but it has no purpose. Sorry but that pretty darling weakens your writing. Be ruthless and kill it.

Darling Characters

Do you need forty-five characters? Of course not. Try combining two or three characters into one. Are they more fleshed out and real now? Yes? Great! Killing the darling characters benefited the storyline.

Darling Subplots/Twists

If we have too many subplots and/or crazy twists, we risk overwhelming and/or distracting the reader. Chances are one or two can go without changing the main plot. Save the cut scenes in the Darling Graveyard. They may be perfect for a different story.

Think of killing your darlings as a good thing. It means you’re tightening your prose, laser-focused on the plot and characters. In short, you’re giving your work the best possible chance of success.

SUE COLETTA - Resident Writing Coach

Sue Coletta is an award-winning crime writer and active member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and International Thriller Writers. Feedspot and Expertido.org named her Murder Blog “Best 100 Crime Blogs on the Net.” She also blogs at the Kill Zone (Writer’s Digest “101 Best Websites for Writers”). Her backlist includes psychological thrillers, the Mayhem Series (books 1-3), Grafton County Series, and true crime/narrative nonfiction. Now, she exclusively writes eco-thrillers, Mayhem Series (books 4-7 and continuing). Sue’s appeared on the Emmy award-winning true crime series, Storm of Suspicion, and three episodes of A Time to Kill on Investigation Discovery. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Sue below or at www.suecoletta.com.

The post Writers, Grab a Knife: How To Kill Your Darlings appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Many writers equate preparing for a professional edit with revision. We’ll cover a few revision tasks in this article, but revision is only half the battle. Preparing your manuscript is the first part of getting ready for editing. The second part is preparing yourself.

Knowing when a manuscript is ready to be sent off for editing is fairly straightforward. The manuscript should be thoroughly revised, incorporating a close review of the plot, character arcs, story, and writing, outside feedback, and a healthy dose of author-powered proofreading. The manuscript you submit for editing should be the very best ambassador of your storytelling and writing abilities it can possibly be.

Knowing when you yourself are ready for editing may seem less obvious. You could choose to approach editing as a brief but unpleasant course of medicine you should hold your nose and chug as quickly as possible. Or you could choose to make more of it, as a relatively rare window allowing you to peer inside your writing in a new way. You, as a writer, are ready for editing when you’re warmed up and ready to grow.

Getting Your Manuscript Ready for Editing

A sparkling novel, like a scintillating diamond gem, is created through cutting and polishing, not simply the pressure that initially forms the stone. A first draft is still a lump of coal. It’s raw potential. A first draft has no business sticking its snoot beyond the cooling fan vents of your computer. It’s for your eyes only.

Editing a less-than-thoroughly-revised manuscript limits the book’s creative and commercial potential. It burns editorial cash and time on issues you could and should have addressed yourself. There’s no need to pay an editor to teach you fundamentals you could’ve found on websites like this one or feedback you could’ve gleaned from critique partners and early readers.

There’s a reason editors suggest revision strategies like the ones I’ve listed below: Together, they give you ample opportunity to make your work as solid as you’re capable of on your own. That’s the secret sauce in making a manuscript ready for editing.

1. Put the manuscript away for at least several weeks. You can’t revise what you can’t see, and you can’t see your own work with fresh eyes until you’ve dried out from the initial deluge of writing. Give yourself at least two weeks away from your manuscript; I recommend eight weeks or more.

2. Revise in layers like an onion, not front to back like a book. Revisions begin at the top—not at the first page of the book, but at the top layer of the manuscript. The number of drafts you generate is less important than making a dedicated revision pass for each layer: character arcs and story, plotting, individual scenes, writing depth, and proofreading. Especially if you’re new to writing, follow a systematic approach. I recommend Janice Hardy’s Revise Your Novel in 31 Days (free web articles) or the full plan in Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft, or get Beth Hill’s encyclopedic masterpiece The Magic of Fiction (affiliate links).

3. Set a deadline. Once you’ve completed your first story-level revision draft, assign yourself a deadline for completing the rest. Story revision tends to take longer than other types, so you should reliably be able to use that to guesstimate the time needed for the rest. If you’re a sucker for some sweet external pressure, find the right editor and book your edit to give yourself a deadline with a deposit on the table.

4. Write a synopsis, even if you’ll be self-publishing. A synopsis is an unambiguous conclusive tool for proving that the plot and character arcs hang together. If you’re having trouble articulating the conflict and stakes or showing how one thing leads to the next, you have more work to do.

5. Get outside feedback. Take an initial temperature reading after your first draft with one or two trusted alpha readers. After the next draft or two, seek informed feedback from writing peers (critique groups and partners). As you get further along, test reader reactions from people you don’t personally know who actively read your genre.

6. Read the entire manuscript out loud. Hearing your book read aloud will reveal a whole host of things you overlooked during revision. Listen to the entire manuscript, noting issues as you go. Reading silently to yourself isn’t the same; you need the slower pace and different input of the hearing the text. If that much reading aloud seems overwhelming, use a text-to-speech feature or app.

By this point, you should be reaching your self-imposed revision deadline. You may notice you’ve begun endlessly fiddling with details of description or dialogue, fussing over the writing rather than structurally improving it. That’s the clarion call: time for editing.

TIP: The Storyteller’s Roadmap at One Stop for Writers has a Revision Map that gives you a good idea of what story revision can look like.

Getting Yourself Ready for Editing

Preparing yourself for editing is arguably more important than preparing your manuscript. Are you crouched in defensive mode, poised to protect your vision from outside influence, or are you ready and open to exploring new depths in your work? It’s the difference between being the naive target of other people’s visions for your work and being an informed master of your creative output.

1. Are you grounded in the craft of storytelling? What you don’t know about writing fiction can hurt you. So many new authors begin writing with the assumption that an awesome idea or scenario is all they need. Without an understanding of how the story engine works, your success will be based on instinct and luck. Level up: Learn the craft.

2. Are you a reader? Can you imagine a songwriter who listened to no music and played no instruments? Me neither. If you’ve never read the sort of book you’re trying to write, why not? If you have no idea what’s on the bestseller lists right now, why should you expect readers to buy your book? Writers write for themselves; authors write for readers. Know your readers—be one.

3. Are you expecting the editor to do the heavy lifting? If your preparation consists of whisking through your manuscript while mumbling “I’ll let the editor fix that,” that’s exactly what you’ll get: editing focused on fixing basics a wordsmith should already have mastered.

4. Are you ready to evolve? Your first few novels and edits are your classroom as a novelist. Are you ready for a major step in your creative evolution? Criticism can be intimidating, but turtling from feedback prevents you from growing as an artist. Editors suggest and recommend; they don’t mandate. The throttle is yours. Are you ready to accelerate?

More Help:

Editorial Feedback: The Right Eyes at the Right Time
Best Practices for Working with an Independent Editor
The Difference Between an Editor & Story Coach

When You’re Not Ready Yet

Most people assume that writing the book is the hard part. They don’t see the part of the iceberg below the waterline, the real development that takes place before and after the first draft.

Like everything else about writing, revision is a skill. You’ll get better with time and practice. If you need help at first, a story or writing coach can help you prioritize and focus your efforts.

In the end, revision may reveal fatal flaws in the manuscript, or you may decide the story has potential but your execution isn’t there yet. That’s okay; better to know that now than after you’ve paid for editing. Sometimes getting ready for editing means shelving the manuscript for now and writing another.

Onward!

LISA POISSO - Resident Writing Coach

Lisa Poisso specializes in helping new and emerging fiction writers. A veteran of the disciplined world of classical dance, she brings that same practiced artistry to writing—where structure, form, and technique are springboards that give you freedom of movement on the page. Explore her Writing & Editing Resources for valuable tools to develop your manuscript, and subscribe to the Writes of Fiction newsletter to receive Lisa’s hand-picked writing advice delivered directly to your inbox. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Lisa below.

The post When Are You Ready for Professional Editing? appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

As writers, fusing our protagonist with the reader creates the ultimate reading experience. Teacher and writer John Gardener referred to this as “the fictional dream.” It’s a state the reader reaches whereby they feel as though they are inside the story, inside the character’s skin, going through events themselves. Achieving this dream-like state is difficult, while undermining it is surprisingly easy to do. But there are three simple tricks you can utilize that increase the odds of drawing your reader into a literary dream from which they won’t want to wake up.

Remove Filter Verbs

If our goal as writers is to allow the reader to experience our stories as though they ARE our characters, then filter verbs are the enemy. Filter verbs (sometimes called distancing verbs) are sensory verbs like look, smell, hear, taste, feel, think. (Note: variations on these words also count, such as see, listen, notice, wonder, etc.).

They look harmless, right? But these words subtly remind the reader that the character’s eyes are doing the seeing, or their brain is doing the thinking, or their heart is doing the feeling. They subtly tell the reader, psst, this isn’t actually your story. Take a look at the following examples, paying attention to the underlined filter verbs and how they can be removed:

Example: He smelled maple syrup and thought of the last time Dad took him to breakfast.
Instead, try: The sweetness of maple syrup took him back to that booth at the diner, sitting across from Dad.

Example: She peered into her boss’ empty office and wondered why he was gone so much lately.
Instead, try: Her boss’ office was empty yet again.

See the difference? We are inside the characters’ senses in a far more bold and confident way. And yes, the latter examples are harder to write. They require intention. But we must trust the reader to understand that the filter verbs are implied and bring them into the character’s viewpoint.

Note: those examples are both in third-person POV, which is harder to imbue with immediacy and intimacy. But as you can see, it’s worth the effort. There’s room for your reader to feel as though they are in the moment, behind the character’s senses and inside their brain and heart.

Eliminate Time Words

Another way we often gently sabotage ourselves and say, “Hey reader, the narrator is talking to you,” is by using time words. Yes, it’s important to orient your reader with passage-of-time phrases, particularly when there’s a gap in time to account for (the next day, later that evening, the following week, etc.). But in terms of time movement within an active scene, consider cutting words like then, next, after that, finally, and when. Time words are often implied because sentences are linearly structured. They add unnecessary clunk and they subtly send the message the narrator is telling the reader what happened and in what order. Just like the previous examples, time words are underlined below:

Example: When they climb into the car, their face is scrunched up in anger.
Instead, try: They climb into the car with their face scrunched up in anger.

Example: As soon as I walk into the house, I jog upstairs and then answer my phone.
Instead, try: I walk into the house, jog upstairs, and answer my phone.

Minimize Internal Dialogue

Notice how I said minimize—not cut—internal dialogue. Novels can and should include internal dialogue. There are times where, without it, the reader would be lost. Confused. Dying to understand how a character is feeling. Or desperate to know what the character is thinking. Internal dialogue oftentimes is the window that affords the crucial meaning of how the character is making sense of what’s happening around them.

But it’s important to imagine your scenes like a coil that you are working to tighten, word by word. Each time we step away from dialogue or external action, that coil threatens to lose tension. Working with editing clients, I often see internal dialogue sending a subtle signal that says, “Here, let me do the thinking and analyzing and feeling for you, dear reader.” 

Some questions to ask as you reevaluate your own usage of internal dialogue:

*It is otherwise impossible to show what’s been told via action and/or dialogue?

*Does it let us know feelings or thoughts the character is hiding from everyone else?

*Is it brief?

That last one is crucial. The longer internal dialogue goes, the more that coil you work to tighten starts to unwind. Author Tim Wynne Jones has referred to long swaths of internal dialogue as Pause Button Violations. Within an active scene, it’s as though the author hits the pause button on all action and dialogue to allow for the internal dialogue. The pause is unnaturally long given the fact that it sits inside an active scene, and can oftentimes be done in a far shorter way or be done using dialogue and action on the page instead.

Consider combing your manuscript in search of these three fictional dream killers. Once you pull them out, you’ll have a far better chance of reeling your reader in.

MARISSA GRAFF - Resident Writing Coach

Marissa has been a freelance editor and reader for literary agent Sarah Davies at Greenhouse Literary Agency for over seven years. In conjunction with Angelella Editorial, she offers developmental editing, author coaching, and more. Marissa feels if she’s done her job well, a client should probably never need her help again because she’s given them a crash-course MFA via deep editorial support and/or coaching. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Marissa below.

The post 3 Simple Tricks to Immerse Your Reader In Your Story appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

For those new to RWC, this is a program where we feature writing experts here at the blog through a series of four posts scattered throughout the year. We bring in a mix of expertise, so you benefit from different voices and perspectives.

Each year we have some new coaches and some returning, so let me first bid goodbye to the wonderful James Scott Bell and Alli Sinclair. We greatly appreciate all you have shared with us. A special thank you to James (Jim) who’s been with the RWC program since the very beginning. It’s been so terrific having you on the blog!

And of course this also means some new RWC faces to introduce!

Both these women have bucket loads of knowledge and experience to share, so without further ado…

Lisa Poisso, who specializes in working with new and emerging authors, abhors the idea that writing a novel can sometimes feel like throwing darts wearing a blindfold. A classically trained dancer, her approach to creativity is grounded in structure, form, and technique as the doorway to freedom of movement. Via her innovative Plot Accelerator and Story Incubator coaching, she fast-tracks authors through story theory and development in just weeks while facilitating an author-paced “developmental edit in a bottle.”

She holds a journalism degree and has decades of professional experience as an award-winning magazine editor and journalist, content writer, and corporate communications manager. In addition to story coaching, she is a developmental and line editor, aided by an industrious team of retired greyhounds. Her popular Baker’s Dozen newsletter shares 13 fresh resources for emerging authors every month. Find Lisa at LisaPoisso.com, download her free Manuscript Prep guide, and connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Sue Coletta is an award-winning crime writer and an active member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and International Thriller Writers. Feedspot and Expertido.org named her Murder Blog as “Best 100 Crime Blogs on the Net” (2018-2021). She’s also a member of the Kill Zone (Writer’s Digest “101 Best Websites for Writers” 2013-2021). 

Sue lives with her husband and two spoiled guinea pigs in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire and writes two psychological thriller series (Tirgearr Publishing) and true crime/narrative nonfiction (Rowman & Littlefield Group, Inc.). Sue appeared on the Emmy award-winning true crime series, Storm of Suspicion. She’ll be a panelist at 2021 New England Crime Bake, and will be teaching an advanced education course on serial killers for Foothills Regional (CT) via Zoom. Sue is happy to discuss murder and mayhem all across social land, including at her website, and on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

These coaches are joined by returning masterminds…

Marissa Graff has been a freelance editor and reader for literary agent Sarah Davies at Greenhouse Literary Agency for over five years. In conjunction with Angelella Editorial, she offers developmental editing, author coaching, and more. She specializes in middle-grade and young-adult fiction, but also works with adult fiction. Marissa feels if she’s done her job well, a client should probably never need her help again because she’s given them a crash-course MFA via deep editorial support and/or coaching. Find out more about Marissa here.

Colleen M. Story inspires writers to overcome modern-day challenges and find creative fulfillment. Her latest release, Your Writing Matters, helps writers overcome self-doubt and determine once and for all where writing fits in their lives. Her previous release, Writer Get Noticed!, was the gold-medal winner in the Reader’s Favorite Book Awards. Overwhelmed Writer Rescue was named Book by Book Publicity’s Best Writing/Publishing Book in 2018, and her novel, Loreena’s Gift, was a Foreword Reviews’ INDIES Book of the Year Awards winner, among others. Find out more about Colleen here.

Lucy V. Hay aka Bang2write is a script editor, author and blogger who helps writers. Lucy is the script editor and advisor on numerous UK features and shorts. She has also been a script reader for over 15 years, providing coverage for indie prodcos, investors, screen agencies, producers, directors and individual writers.

Publishing as LV Hay, Lucy’s debut crime novel, The Other Twin, is out now and is being adapted by Agatha Raisin producers Free@Last TV. Her second crime novel, Do No Harm, was a finalist in the 2019 Dead Good Book Readers’ Awards. Her next title is Never Have I Ever for Hodder Books. You can find out more about Lucy here.

Christina Delay is the hostess of Cruising Writers and an award-winning psychological suspense author. She also writes award-winning supernatural suspense for young adult and adult readers under the name Kris Faryn.

Fun fact: Faryn means ‘to wander or travel.’ Since that’s exactly what she loves to do, you’ll find juicy tidbits on exotic and interesting places in all her books! Find out more about Christina here.

Jami Gold, after muttering writing advice in tongues, decided to become a writer and put her talent for making up stuff to good use. Fueled by chocolate, she shares writing tools, presents workshops, and offers insights on her blog about the craft, business, and life of writing. Jami is the winner of the 2015 National Readers’ Choice Award in Paranormal Romance for the novel Ironclad Devotion in her Mythos Legacy series. Read more about Jami here.

September C. Fawkes can scare people with her enthusiasm for writing and reading. She worked as an assistant to a New York Times bestselling author and writing instructor, and now does freelance editing at FawkesEditing.com. She has edited manuscripts of bestselling and beginning writers. She has published poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction articles, and her award-winning writing tips have appeared in classrooms, conferences, and on Grammar Girl.

She holds an English degree, has served as the managing editor of The Southern Quill literary journal, and had the pleasure of writing her thesis on the worldwide appeal of Harry Potter. Read more about September here.

Lisa Hall-Wilson is a writing teacher and award-winning writer and author. She’s the author of Method Acting For Writers: Learn Deep Point Of View Using Emotional Layers. Her blog Beyond Basics For Writers explores all facets of the popular writing style deep point of view and offers practical tips for writers. She is also the founder of the Deep Dive Author Club which offers a five-week online masterclass on writing in deep point of view and an ongoing membership class with critiques and support. Find out more about Lisa here.

Here’s to another year of amazing posts. As always, if there’s a topic you’d like help with, feel free to add it to the comments below!

ANGELA ACKERMAN

Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post Meet Our Newest Resident Writing Coaches appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.