Publishing a printed book is much less forgiving than producing an e-book. I have known that since I started working with electronic publishing, lo many years ago. But I really felt it with the production of my third book, Army of Worn Soles. I have printed books before, and I thought getting a print version […]
Things writers do to drive me crazy, part 3 I’ve advised against using the passive voice before. Sure, there are places where it’s warranted. (See what I did, there?) But those are rare. To clarify what passive voice means, let’s contrast it against the active voice: Active: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy […]
Last week, I wrote about a common problem in many manuscripts: unnecessary details. This week, I move on to another common error: shifting point-of-view in fiction, also known as Head-hopping This term describes text that jumping between characters’ points of view (POV). Let’s take a look at this, adapted slightly from a recent project to […]
You may have noticed that I’ve been posting and announcing about the number of manuscripts I’ve been editing lately. am editing a lot of fiction these days. The latest books edited by The Written Word to be published Amnesia By D.G. Torrens Cassie is suffering from trauma-induced amnesia. Weekly visits to her psychologist are proving […]
The importance of clarity Every message has to have one clear, main message. Mix in too many, and you risk coming across as confused, dishonest or ridiculous. And when you change your messaging, you lose credibility. Sometimes, you have to change your message because circumstances change, or we learn more. Even so, you will raise […]
The darling of marketing communications today is “content marketing,” but it’s nothing new. Businesses large and small have been doing it for decades, through newsletters and free hand-outs in print. Think of your in-flight magazine describing your destination, or the white papers about technical subjects. Content marketing isn’t just for big corporations, though. Smaller and […]
Get a GRIP on writing: Goal, Reader, Idea and, this post’s focus, the Plan.