Inventing Reality Editing Service: Craft of Writing

9 Tricks to Improve Your Writing Overnight

• Vividness
• Diction
• Narrative drive
• Fragments for rhetorical effect
• Word choice
• Eyeball kick
• Freeze-frame
• Mimic sounds
• Physical gestures to show not tell
• BONUS: “The adjective is the enemy of the noun.” – Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire

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.

Posted at 06:45 AM in Craft of Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

6 Secrets to Creating and Sustaining Suspense

• Maintain tension throughout your story
• Start your story in middle to increase suspense
• Your main character must fail
• Increase story's suspense through reversal
• Avoid 'organ music' to create story suspense
• Don’t break circuit of suspense when it’s hot
• BONUS: "...many beginning writers end their stories when the real story is just ready to begin." – Stanley Schmidt

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.

Posted at 06:45 AM in Craft of Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

50 Ways to Improve Your Writing Skills

As a long-time book editor, I get the same questions over and over from my clients: How can I make my writing pop? How can I show rather than tell? How can I tighten my prose?

I’ve compiled answers to these and many similar questions in my book 7 Minutes a Day to Mastering the Craft of Writing. It gives quick, easy-to-understand examples of how to improve your writing’s diction and voice, how to strengthen your writing’s narrative drive, and how to give your piece more color.

Passive voice, begin fallacies, verb tense shifts, vanilla prose, nulls, dull dialogue, fuzzy words – I’ve seen them and many other problems in hundreds of manuscripts. With Mastering the Craft of Writing, I’ll provide tried-and-true ways to identify and fix those issues. Apply them to your manuscript, and you’ll know all the secrets of the bestselling authors!

Mastering the Craft of Writing has topped Amazon.com bestseller lists for writing and is available in both paperback and ebook.

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.

Posted at 06:37 PM in Craft of Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

8 Tips for Avoiding Bland Writing

• Use active voice
• Show don't tell
• Avoid weak verbs
• Cull out cliches
• Cut repetition
• Say "no" to self-indulgent digressions
• Delete nulls
• Nix polysyllabism
• BONUS: "...the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music the words make." – Truman Capote

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.

Posted at 06:45 AM in Craft of Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

Great Quotations about Opening Lines

“Bring all your intelligence to bear on your beginning.” – Elizabeth Bowen

“The best advice on writing I’ve ever received is, ‘Knock ‘em dead with that lead sentence.’” – Whitney Balliett

“An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.” – Stephen King

“The last thing we discover in composing a work is what to put down first.” – Blaise Pascal

“Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Get your character is trouble in the first sentence and out of trouble in the last sentence.” – Barthe DeClements

“Make everybody fall out of the plane first, and then explain who they were and why they were in the plane to begin with.” –Nancy Ann Dibble

“If you start with a bang, you won’t end with a whimper.” – T.S. Eliot

“In nearly all good fiction, the basic – all but inescapable – plot form is this: A central character wants something, goes after it despite opposition (perhaps including his own doubts), and so arrives at a win, lose, or draw.” – John Gardner

“Don’t mistake a good setup for a satisfying conclusion – many beginning writers end their stories when the real story is just ready to begin.” – Stanley Schmidt

“It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.” – William Faulkner

“First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him!” – Ray Bradbury

“One of my many theories about short stories is that their titles and first lines ought to be memorable, because if not memorable they will not be remembered, and if not remembered the stories will not be reprinted (because no one can find them).” – Damon Knight

“I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.” – Stephen King

“The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book.” – Mickey Spillane

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.

Posted at 06:45 AM in Craft of Writing, Fiction - General | Permalink | Comments (0)

9 Common Writing Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

• Laugh track
• Countersinking
• Summary over scene
• Rear-view mirror descriptions
• Verb tense shifts
• Mime conversations
• Perception fallacy
• Passive voice
• Answering-the-phone cliché
• BONUS: "There are many rules of good writing, but the best way to find them is to be a good reader."

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.

Posted at 06:45 AM in Craft of Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

5 Great Quotations about Craft of Writing

“Make it so good and so clear that it doesn't need any further explanation.” - Shel Silverstein

“Each thing you add to your story is a drop of paint falling into clear water; it spreads through and colors everything.” - Lisa Cron

“The whole labor of writing is to make it look like it just came off the top of your head.” - Paddy Chayefsky

“Don’t write so that you can be understood, write so that you can’t be misunderstood.” - William Howard Taft

“It is with words as with sunbeams - the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.” - Robert Southey

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.

Posted at 07:35 AM in Craft of Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

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.