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Be Your Own Copy Editor #1: Do You Need a Question Mark at the End of That...
Sometimes writers find it difficult to tell whether they’ve written a direct question or not, with the result that they are unsure if a question mark should be placed at the end of a sentence. They...
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Be Your Own Copy Editor #2: When and How to Use Italics for Inner Monologue
Something genre fiction writers often need to think about during both writing and self-editing is how to style inner monologue. I’m going to talk specifically here about what we can call ‘direct...
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Be Your Own Copy Editor #3: Why You Shouldn’t Believe a Word You’ve Written
“Paulie’s watching you, his gun is loaded, and he’s going to treat you with as much contempt and brutal violence as he’d treat an FBI informant if you so much as put a hyphen in Tic Tac.” I’ve got some...
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Be Your Own Copy Editor #5: Your Danglers Are on Display
Big mistake. Honestly, I don’t know what came over me. There I was, perusing the online edition of The Guardian, looking through the books section, when I chanced upon an interview with Sharon Olds, a...
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Be Your Own Copy Editor #6: Are All Your Actions in Order?
Assuming you’ve been following the advice I’ve been giving in this blog series, when you fact-checked your manuscript, or went on dangler patrol, or eliminated those commas in compound predicates, it...
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Be Your Own Copy Editor #7: The Relentless Rise of the Dot Dot Dot
Stickler, meet ellipsis; ellipsis, meet stickler. Dot dot dots are dot-dot-dotted around everywhere these days. While those of us who get passionate about punctuation have been discussing whether...
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Could You Write a Kindle Serial?
Roberto Calas, author of The Scourge, talks about what it was like trying to produce between 8,000 and 10,000 words of perfect storytelling every two weeks, without the option of editing the whole work...
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Verbs for Carrying Dialogue: “Said” Versus the Rest
How much thought have you given to the verbs you’re using to carry dialogue in your novel? Elmore Leonard believes said is the only verb you should use, yet there are accomplished writers out there...
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Speech Tag Specifics
Have you decided whether to give the verb first or the name first in speech tags? And what about their position? Should they always go after a line of dialogue, or is there something to gain by placing...
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Passive Aggressors
There’s not a lot of love going around for the passive. The list of those who’ve given it a mauling includes George Orwell, Strunk and White, and Stephen King. But is it really such a bad thing to use...
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Present and Correct
Do you tell your story using past tenses? If so, don’t think you can’t also use the present tense. Sometimes it’s the right tool for the job. Be Your Own Copy Editor #11 When copy-editing novels...
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Spelling Trouble
The English language is a warzone, with all sorts of people fighting over what they think is right and wrong. But when it comes to spelling, like in so many other matters, there isn’t necessarily only...
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Marcus Trower 30 June 1967 – 05 June 2019
There are precious few occasions in life when you come across someone you are moved to believe is truly extraordinary. But when it happens, you know they are a blessed gift. Marcus was one of these...
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