Starlog

Lesson Twenty-Eight from a Manuscript Red Line: Very Discreet Point of View Switches

I’ve talked about this before, but the second time might be a charm. I think a lot of people are having trouble with discreet POV switches. The big ones… where we pop heads for half a chapter are easy to find. The one-liners may be harder to spot. For an intro into where these tips… Read more

May 11, 2015
No, I am not crazy. I’m just really, really anal.

Last week I posted an article about word clouds and how you can use them to spot overused words. One of the comments, from a dear friend and fantastic author, was this: Ok, 300 – 400 times out of 80,000+ words? That’s like what, .005% of your words are the same? seriously woman? You crack… Read more

May 8, 2015
Lesson Twenty-Seven from a Manuscript Red Line: Fluidity in Action – How to write a good action scene

Disclaimer – I have a “rewritten” fight scene below. It is FAR from well written. There are a few show verses tell issues in it that I hadn’t noticed a few years ago when this originally posted. But I think it still gets its point across. (And I don’t have time to re-write it since… Read more

May 4, 2015
Finding the helpfulness in fun things. AKA: Fun and easy ways to improve your writing

About four years ago I posted about a cool website called Wordle (http://www.wordle.net/) that will make a cloud of words from the most used words in your manuscript. The words that you’ve used the most (AKA the words you may be overusing) will appear the biggest. . I don’t know what made me think of… Read more

May 1, 2015
Lesson Twenty-Six from a Manuscript Red Line: CAPITAL LETTERS

2015 note: The post below is a reblog from 2012. I wanted to note that my current publisher Month9Books does allow all caps, but they must be formatted as smallcaps. (Check Word formatting) In general, though, I would suggest using with caution, and sparingly. Now on with the post! Do you use Capital letters when… Read more

April 27, 2015
Even after you’ve learned everything you could possibly learn – Find ways to learn more @SJWriters

Last week I attended a talk at SJWG given by fellow Month9Books author Donna Galanti. It is always interesting to hear how other authors clawed their way through the world of publishing. But what really stuck out to me, was when Donna discussed some of the mistakes she saw authors make while she was working… Read more

April 24, 2015