Getting work as a freelance editor is always a challenge, and my colleagues sometimes see an opportunity when a local business or other organization publishes a newsletter or blog post with errors. They ask me, “I’m thinking about pointing out the errors and offering my editorial services for pay. What do you think?” I think…
I’m frequently asked, “How do I get my first client?” This is one of those questions that can take three hundred pages to answer. But I did want to provide an overview answer to this question. First, I want to distinguish between a beginning editor who has no idea what they’re doing and needs to…
When I encounter a manuscript with a sagging middle, the very first thing I turn to is the conflict. Is there a clear conflict in the ms, and is it of sufficient weight to support a full story? Conflict drives narrative. Without it, we often have a lot of splashing around that makes everyone wet…
Ah, the sagging middle. Also called the muddle, the slog, the struggle, and other depressing nicknames. The middle of the story is known to cause existential dread among authors as they toil over it. You’ve surely encountered problems with a sagging middle before in a novel you’ve read. A story starts off with a bang!…
Back when I edited a custom magazine, I assigned and edited a package about an upcoming event (similar to a business conference) which included profiles of some of the attendees and speakers, a how-to-get ready checklist, a travel piece on side trips to take at the location, a celebration of highlights of the event over…
People like to pretend that you can write a book and make passive income from it. You can’t. If you write a book and stick it up on Amazon and never do anything to promote or market it, you’re not going to sell any copies. Okay, you might sell three or four to people who…
When copyediting fiction, it’s common to run up against issues that pit author preference against standard editing approaches. For example, in a story I wrote some years ago, the main character’s neighbor is referred to as “3-B” as that is her apartment number and the MC doesn’t know her name. Fine. She can be referred…
One of the lessons I’ve learned over many years of editing is that you have to let the manuscript teach you how to edit it. Every manuscript is different and every manuscript needs a different touch. Even when an author does something I’ve seen many times before, I have to edit for that particular manuscript,…
The setting of a novel consists of multiple elements, big and small, that nest inside each other like those little Russian dolls. We might show this hierarchy of settings like so: If you think about it, the micro setting of “the living room of 601 San Mateo Road Apartment 16” implies the existence of all…
Writers often use setting like a painted backdrop to their stories, rather than as an integral element of their storytelling. As DEs, we can help them make the setting come to life. If we think of Wuthering Heights, we think of the Yorkshire moors. When we think of Moby Dick, it’s a whaler on the…