Why You Should Avoid Proposing Solutions While You Beta Read a Novel

Reading someone else's novel can be tricky. What level of feedback is right? How much is too much? Should you focus on a few big things, or try to do everything? It's hard, it's slippery, and it's easy to mess up. But do you know what makes beta reading really hard? The fact that writing …

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On Using Criticism to Level Up, from Author Delilah S. Dawson

I normally write a way more wordy post every week. But this thread on when and how to take criticism on your work was just too perfect. Enjoy: https://twitter.com/DelilahSDawson/status/1087360935059181573 (It's a thread. Be sure to click through it and read the whole thing!) And now, an unrelated thought-dump on blogging, and what topics to blog …

Why Garbage First Drafts are Good–As Long As You’re Being Strategic

I'm sure you've heard this advice before: get your first draft down. Don't overthink it. Just get the thoughts down, get the words down, and finish. It's common advice, and it's not hard to see why. One of the hardest lessons for a new writer to learn is that you have to actually finish projects. …

Word Repetition Counter: A Little Tool for Writers

I'm having a heck of a time coming up with a post this week. So, here! Check out this Word Repetition Counter I made! Warning: I made it in JavaScript. I'm very new at JavaScript. If you break it, I won't be surprised. Just tell me so I can fix it. Here's how it works: …

Do you have two spaces after every period? You can fix those in five seconds.

I wanted to do a short post today. So let's talk about something easy! Here's the situation: You, like so many unfortunate people, might have been taught to put two spaces after every period, because that's how it was done in the days of the typewriter. But alas, that's not how it works anymore. When …

An Introduction to Editing: Doing Your Pre-editing Research

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about how there are a lot of different kinds of edits and how you can edit a novel more easily by fixing different parts of your story at different times. If that sounds interesting, go check it out! This post'll be here when you get back. …

An Introduction to Editing: The Many Different Types of Edits and How You Can Use Them on Your Novel

Writing a novel feels great, doesn't it? It's so emotional! So engaging! (All right, well, it can be, when you don't feel like you're yanking ideas out of your brain with a pair of pliers.) But when you're in the zone, everything you write feels powerful, important, and deep. Then you edit it. And whoops! It's... …

A Quick-and-Dirty Guide to Making Imperfect .EPUB Files

I've been reviewing works in progress for folks on Absolute Write's Beta Readers, Mentors, and Writing Buddies board. (Which is an amazing place if you really want to get a story reviewed, by the way. I got 4 offers in under 24 hours for my 70,000 YA fantasy novel.) One of them taught me how …

The Top 10 Worst Types of Critique Partners | WritersDigest.com

This was in last week's Guide to Literary Agents newsletter: The Top 10 Worst Types of Critique Partners | WritersDigest.com. Oh man. It's amusing, because many of these tropes apply to getting anyone, anywhere to read your novels, but... It's also kind of fascinating, because I've never actually attended an in-person critique group for creative …

The Fire in Fiction

I know I've already mentioned this a few times. I'm going to mention it again, because now it's actually timely. The Fire in Fiction, by Donald Maass is such a lovely book. I love it to death. I need to get a non e-book version one of these days, because then I could actually flip …