At first blush, horror and romance might seem as far apart as two genres can be. But on closer inspection, the genres exhibit many similarities. Beyond the story-level connections, the readerships of these two genres share a protectiveness born from the feeling others look down on their genre of choice as being of low merit, […]
“Only by thoughtful concentration on details can fiction be satisfactorily edited.” —Words into Type [On April 4, 2025, I presented “The Case of Ever-Changing Eye Color: Tracking Continuity in Manuscripts” to a live audience at ACES 2025 in Salt Lake City. This series of posts is largely based on that presentation.] What Are Continuity Issues? […]
People are often surprised by the time it takes to copyedit manuscripts, probably because they have a sense of how long it takes to read a book of similar length. But copyediting does take longer—much longer—and authors and readers benefit from the hours upon hours copy editors dedicate to their craft. (This post refers largely […]
Too often people view editing as a one-way service in which the editor “corrects” the author’s prose. To get the most out of the author–editor relationship, however, it’s important to remember two things: • Editing is a conversation. • Edits are suggestions. (Though general principles still apply, the following is geared toward the relationship between […]
Isolating in our homes during the COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly increased the amount of time we’re spending in virtual spaces for business, pleasure, and education. Before the pandemic, I had weekly meetings with clients on Google Hangouts and Skype, but since the shelter-in-place guidance I’ve seen a big increase in meetings via Zoom (not to […]
Lifting the lid on a slow cooker, even for a second, supposedly adds thirty minutes to cooking time. In much the same way, there seems to be a disproportionate amount of time lost when an interruption takes editors out of their editing groove. If I’m editing a manuscript and have to stop to address a […]
After a publisher client suggested that all its editors try Word’s Read Aloud feature to help eliminate errors such as missing or repeated words, I decided to give it a shot. I hadn’t used the feature before and suspected I’d react badly to another voice in my head while editing. But for a last look […]
Reading a manuscript aloud or listening to it being read can help writers and editors identify errors of spelling, grammar, or tone that they might miss otherwise. If you want to give this a whirl, you can read the manuscript out loud yourself, have someone else read it to you, or use a text-to-speech (TTS) […]
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