Inventing Reality Editing Service

Nonfiction books consists of several parts

When writing the manuscript of a nonfiction book, you’ll want to think about more than just the main content that forms its chapters. While the main content is what readers primarily look at, there are several other parts.

Generally, the parts of a nonfiction book can be divided into three groups.

The first is the front matter. This is the material that comes before the main content. It includes:
• Title page
• Half-title page (aka copyright page)
• Acknowledgments
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
Of these pages, only the title page and the half-title page really are necessary. In addition, sometimes the acknowledgments are wrapped into the introduction.

Following the front matter comes the bulk of the book, known as the main content. It consists of:
• Parts (i.e. Part I, Part II, Part III)
• Chapters
• Subsections of chapters
The main content can be organized in a number of ways, though the most common structure is by chapter with subsections. Extremely long nonfiction books might have chapters grouped into parts.

The last section, after the main content, is the back matter. Its components are:
• Bibliography
• Appendix/Appendices
• Glossary
• Index
• Author’s bio
None of these back matter elements need be included. Sometimes the author’s bio is placed on the back cover or the book packet.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Who's ownin' who? Who’s vs. whose

Sometimes possession doesn’t require an apostrophe. Such is the case with these two often confused words.

Who’s is a contraction for who is, and less commonly who has. For example, Who’s bringing potato chips to the party?

Whose is the possessive form of who, showing that something belongs to who. To wit, Whose house is the party at? (You wouldn’t write Who is house is the party at?...)

While an apostrophe typically is used to show possession, of course it also can be used to show a contraction. The latter is the case with who’s. And while rare, sometimes possession is shown by changing the form of the word, as in whose.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Four writing prompts: Promise

Good stories center on the clashing of characters’ goals and motivations. Sometimes a character’s goals and motivations arise from fulfilling a pledge to another. Here are four writing prompts for stories that center on promise.

Man vs. nature
A man makes a promise to his best friend (such as a soldier delivering a dying buddy’s letter to a wife), but to keep it he must survive a difficult journey. What natural obstacles does he encounter along the way? In overcoming these obstacles, what does he learn that allows him to overcome an internal flaw that might prevent him from fulfilling his promise?

Man vs. man
A man has made a promise to another person that he now finds the antagonist is preventing him from keeping. Why did he make this promise and why is it so important for him to keep? Why does the antagonist make fulfillment of this promise difficult? How does the man succeed despite this opposition?

Man vs. society
What if the very person the protagonist has promised to protect might just get him killed? Why did he make this promise? How can he convince the organization trying to capture/kill the person he’s protecting to stop what it’s doing?

Man vs. himself
The main character’s loved one – who he’s promised to marry – returns from service overseas. He finds his beloved’s emotional scars from that experience and the conflicts they create between them may be too much for him to keep his promise. What decision does he ultimately make about fulfilling his promise, and how does he arrive at it?

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Your story isn’t its plot or structure

When discussing fiction, sometimes the terms “story” and “structure” are used interchangeably with “plot.” But a story is not a plot or the story’ structure. While this misuse of terminology may seem trifling, it unfortunately mangles many beginning writers’ conception of what plot is, ultimately harming their manuscripts.

A story is an account of how characters react to events. This means not just their physical but their intellectual and emotional responses. As such, a story is more than plot – it is about characters. These events take place someplace and sometime, so setting also is an aspect of story. The events are told from a particular perspective, so point of view is an element of a story as well. There may be a message when telling this account, so theme can be part of a story. Craftsmanship matters, such as the writer’s style, and also can be considered an element of story.

Children, when asked to recount a story, often merely tell about the events that involved conflicts – that is, they only tell or write about the plot. Though they will mention a character’s name for convenience’s sake, they don’t tell how the character grew. The setting often is skipped, and point of view and theme is entirely ignored.

Likewise, if a writer thinks of a story and plot as being synonymous, then short shrift is given to the characters, setting, point of view and theme. The result will be flat protagonists, locations that don’t really enhance the story, selection of a point of view that isn’t the best for the tale (or even a mixing of multiple points of view), and a hazy, poorly developed theme. Instead, plot needs to be thought of as one of several complex components of a story.

Likewise, structure is not story. Neither is it plot exactly. Instead, structure is the way the plot is organized or arranged. For example, a plot might be structured via an inciting incident-rising action-climax-falling action-denouement. Or it might be the hero journey/quest story. Or it may follow a format as television shows uses with a teaser, parts whose lengths are determined by commercial breaks, and a closing. Each of these pieces are elements in the way a plot is structured.

Often beginning writers don’t think much about which structure they will use. Instead they simply begin writing a series of events that involve conflict between characters. This can result in an uneven account of those events, perhaps with too many pages spent on the opening. Or possibly the events don’t build enough tension to merit the climax that is written. Or maybe loose ends aren’t tied up in the end.

Thus, understanding the difference between story, plot and structure isn’t just an academic exercise. It really can help you fully plan out exactly how to best tell about the events you’re recounting.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Five Great Quotations about Manuscript Rejection

“The first thing you have to learn when you go into the arts is to learn to cope with rejection. If you can’t, you’re dead.” - Warren Adler

“Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil - but there is no way around them. - Isaac Asimov

This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don’t consider it rejected. Consider that you’ve addressed it ‘to the editor who can appreciate my work’ and it has simply come back stamped ‘Not at this address’. Just keep looking for the right address.” - Barbara Kingsolver

“Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.” - Oliver Herford

“...the vital point to remember is that the swine who just sent your pearl of a story back with nothing but a coffee-stain and a printed rejection slip can be wrong. You cannot take it for granted that he is wrong, but you have an all-important margin of hope that might be enough to keep you going.” - Brian Stableford

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

I drive my story in the direction it wants to go

Sometimes writers find themselves unable to move forward with their story because it doesn’t match their vision of what the tale should be. For example, the opening you’ve penned doesn’t perfectly match the outline, making useless the latter’s bullet points of what the rising action should look like. Or maybe a beta reader recommended taking a story in a different direction, but that idea just isn’t working out.

There’s no doubt about it – success in writing (and just about anything else) largely depends on having a plan, even if it’s just a loose set of thoughts in one’s head. The most successful writers, though, recognize that their plans always are open to change. Adaptability and flexibility are key to writing a great story.

If you can’t stick to the original outline, maybe it wasn’t a very good one to begin with. Outlines – like manuscripts – can be done in drafts, too. And if a beta reader’s advice doesn’t inspire your creativity, maybe the suggestions weren’t that solid. After all, each of us has our own writing style and would pen entirely different stories if given the same writing prompt.

Changing your course to keep the story going doesn’t violate any immutable law. After all, maybe the story your inner muse wants to tell – that it must tell – never needs to match any conceived plan of the story you rationalized ought to be written.

Sure, parting ways with your outline or beta reader’s suggestions might seem messy. Just remember that you’re only writing a first draft. You always can pick up those messes later on the second and third drafts. Just get down an inspired first draft so you can move on!

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Tips to ensure your Twitter photos sell books

A compelling picture always will grab someone’s attention faster than text. Given this, when developing social media pages to promote your book (or any service or product, for that matter), you’ll want to pay close attention to the quality and purpose of the photos you use.

On Twitter, perhaps the most important photo is your profile pic. This shot appears atop your home page, and while not the largest photo there, it is the one that is repeated with every tweet you make. The photo is square and 400 x 400 pixels in size. Because the profile pic is tiny next to each tweet, you want to have a very simple profile picture – usually a headshot or a symbol representative of your books. For my writing guidebooks, I use a headshot of myself, but for my hiking guidebooks, I use a pictograph of a hiker, similar to what you would find at a national park (Yes, I have two Twitter sites, one for each set of guidebooks – writing and hiking.).

A photo that is often an afterthought when designing your Twitter page yet is extremely important is the header. This is the main photo that stretches across the top of your home page. It’s rectangular with a size of 1500 pixels wide x 500 pixels high. When selecting a photo for the header, make sure that it fits this rectangular shape or can be cropped to that size and still look good. Don’t stop with the size, though. Use the header for branding, that is, to establish what kind of books you write. The photo ought to be representative of what your books are about. You also may want to add taglines to the photo, especially if you offer services or have authored a series of books; for example, if you write a series about kayaking, your tagline might be “Hittin’ the Waters: Guidebooks for the Best Kayaking Rivers.”

When tweeting, you can add photos to the wording. When this photo appears online – as an in-stream photo preview – it only appears as a rectangle that is 440 pixels wide x 220 pixels high and will automatically be cropped by Twitter to fit. A reader has to click onto the photo to see it fully and in the original shape that you posted. Because of this, you don’t want to post photos that don’t match the 2:1 ratio, or parts of it will be cropped in the preview. That can look silly and unprofessional, especially if you’ve lost wording (such as your website address or a pithy saying) in the crop.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Do self-published writers need business mailbox?

When setting up your authoring business, you will need a physical address for it. Even though most of your work is done in a virtual digital world and that you may only write at a variety of coffee shops, you still need a single location where you can be reached for official purposes.

For most authors, simply using their residential address will be sufficient. A mailbox dedicated solely to your business correspondence is simply an added expense, since you will need to rent a box. The reality is that in the Internet era you’re unlikely to receive much if any business-related mail.

Still, there are a couple of good reasons for having separate mailboxes. Perhaps the best reason is for privacy purposes; you simply may not want customers and clients knowing where you actually reside. In addition, those authors offering services related to their books may prefer to have a more professional, official address than a residential one, though I’m not sure how much of a difference this makes to the average customer.

Be aware that if you incorporate (form an LLC) some states may not allow you to have an address that is a P.O. Box. So, you may need to obtain a mailbox from a private company that gives out a physical address for their box numbers. Private companies also have fewer requirements on you than the U.S. Postal Service when setting up a mailbox.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

No more sneaking around on tiptoe vs. tip-toe

A lot of writers have been skulking around this word, hoping that no one notices they don’t know which one is correct. Time to smell the tulips, authors!

Tiptoe and tiptoeing are one word. That means no space no hyphen between tip and toe.

Perhaps because of the rhythm of the word, tiptoe seems to need a hyphen. Of the most common reasons for using a hyphen (compound adjective, unusual compound nouns, ages, etc.), tiptoe doesn’t fit any of them, however.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Product names: To capitalize or not to capitalize?

Whenever using a trademarked names, you will need to capitalize it. Among the common ones that writers tend not to capitalize are Styrofoam, Xerox and Kleenix.

You do not need to include the trademark symbol (which is a capital R inside a circle) with a trademarked name, however. Some corporations want you to do that, but it usually makes text less readable. The capital letter alone suffices in telling readers that you’re using a proper noun.

If the capital letter looks odd, you can opt to use a generic common name for the product, such as foam cup for Styrofoam or facial tissue for Kleenix.

Still, sometimes such terms can be difficult to read and sound unnatural to readers. In other cases, what that common name might be isn’t even evident. What, for example, would be a generic name for Mountain Dew? Your option then is to change the type of soda that appears in the story.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.