“I just got the manuscript back from my editor, and it’s covered in red. What do I do now?” If you’ve never worked with tracked changes before, it can seem overwhelming. The thing to remember is that this method helps you retain control of your manuscript. You can see everything the editor changed and exercise [...]

If you’ve never worked with a professional editor before, you probably have a lot of questions: How does the editing process work? What kinds of changes will the editor make to my manuscript? How will I know what changes he or she made? Most importantly, how do I ensure this remains my manuscript with my [...]

Great stories can be ruined by too many words. Redundancy in particular can make your prose squeak like the clarinetists in a middle school band (I’m allowed to say that because I played clarinet). Not all repetition is bad. It can be used to emphasize or connect important ideas, like “I have a dream” in [...]

Most editors (or maybe it’s just me) like to delude themselves that they are so eagle-eyed, so perfectionist that no error would dare elude them. According to one study,1 however, human proofreaders—even professional ones—are at best 95% accurate. Test me, test me! Surely I can beat that. I think. The Cost of Perfection But even [...]

If you’re an author or screenwriter and you’ve never watched the YouTube series “Everything Wrong with…” by CinemaSins, then I have homework for you. Scan their offerings, find their review of a movie you loved, and then watch every minute of it. Watch and learn. It’s become a tradition for me and my husband after [...]

You've written something. You've poured all your skill, creativity, and time into it. You've made sacrifices to reach the finish line, and you can now congratulate yourself on a job well done. But what's next? You know that something needs to happen between the completed draft and publication. Trouble is, you aren't quite sure what. There [...]