(The Subversive Copy Editor)
(The Subversive Copy Editor)
Narrators and characters in novels and other creative writing can talk about whatever they want. A character might read the Chicago Sun-Times; they might say they like to sing “Drivers License” while brushing their teeth. A narrator might mention a…
Agents and editors want what they want. In an initial query letter, they always want to know your manuscript’s total word count. But if they respond by asking you to submit a full or partial manuscript, they ask for pages, not words.
So how do you know whether your pages equal their pages?
A piece of bossy advice often given to creative writers is to sweep through your manuscripts before you submit them and delete certain words. “Just,” “so,” “very,” and “really” vie for the top target, but the most popular prohibition of…
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the great time I had brainstorming about blogging with Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle at their joyful Editing Podcast. Parts 2 and 3 are now available. In part 1 (26:23 min) we discussed …
Yesterday I had a wonderful time brainstorming about blogging with Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle at their joyful Editing Podcast. In fact, we dug into so many aspects of blogging, they decided to break the chat into 3 parts. In…
Recently, a question that went something like this appeared in a Facebook group for writers seeking help from book editors: Help with this sentence please! “Some advice, for whoever/whomever is interested.” A friend said it should be “whoever” and my…
People sometimes worry about honoring the personal pronouns of those who don’t identify with the gender binary. They’re concerned that using (for instance) “they/them” in place of “he/him” or “she/her” will be complicated or confusing. Some aren’t sure about the…
I’ve written before to caution copyeditors against scrubbing voice and character out of fiction manuscripts by adhering too closely to a style manual. Each novel or story is unique, of course. Some feature dialect and colloquialisms, and others pretty much…
Do you sometimes dither over whether to put a comma between two or more adjectives? a polished, spherical stone or a polished spherical stone? a nice, big check or a nice big check? Although the guidelines for deciding at CMOS 5.91 and CMOS 6.36–37 work…
When you write a book to send to an agent or editor, you are preparing a manuscript. And even if your ideas, characters, and plot twists are colorful and creative, your manuscript format should not be. Agents and editors almost always…