As editing fiction manuscripts across the years, a number of style issues tend to appear over and over in the manuscripts of novice writers. You can make your story more presentable to readers if you address them before publishing.

Five style problems to watch for in your story include:
• Dialogue – Use quotation marks and other standard punctuation rather than dashes.
• It – All too often sentences are structured so that readers don’t know what “it” refers to. By rewriting these sentences, you’ll make that clear and tighten the story as well. For example, rather than writing “It took about a week to make a plan and to start advertising the block for this poor girl” tell what “it” is, such as “They spent a week planning and obtaining advertising for the blog.”
• Active voice – Rewrite passive voice sentences (those using being verbs) so they are in active voice. For example, instead of using the passive “They both were working on this project days and nights” change it to the active “They worked on this project night and day.”
• Show don’t tell – Replace exposition with descriptions that infer a person’s emotional state and response. Instead of telling us “Her mother was hysterical,” let the reader infer it by writing “She could hardly catch her breath as pacing the room.”
• Begin fallacy – Writers rarely need to tell us that some action “begins”; just go ahead and say what the action is. Rather than saying “She began crying again” write “She cried again.”

Making these revision will make the stories flow more smoothly and more appealing to readers.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 350 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my self-publishing guidebooks:

“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.” – Herman Melville

“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” – Benjamin Franklin

“Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.” – Matthew Arnold

“No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.” – Henry Adams

“To have something to say is a question of sleepless nights and worry and endless ratiocination of a subject – of endless trying to dig out of the essential truth, the essential justice.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

These two words have been playing cloak-and-dagger with American writers for some time now. But which one is the good guy?

Both words come from the verb sneak, which means to move in a stealthy way. Sneak is used in the present tense, as in Sneak up on them from behind! The problem arises when switching to past tense when writers and speakers use either sneaked or snuck.

Sneaked follows the verb’s regular construction: sneak > sneaked > (have) sneaked. Because of this, it is the traditional and more common past tense form of sneak, as in He sneaked out the backdoor.

Snuck began as a regional American variant of sneaked during the 1800s. Though long considered nonstandard, its use has spread and become more widely accepted down the decades. Today, some people might say He snuck out the backdoor.

Which past tense version to use largely depends on what you’re writing. In most cases, I’d recommend the traditional sneaked, especially for formal and academic manuscripts. Indeed, The AP Stylebook, Garner’s Modern American, and British stylebooks prefer sneaked. A character or a first-person narrator in a work of fiction, though, might use snuck, if it fits his personality.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 350 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my self-publishing guidebooks:

No one is born being afraid of telling a story. People learn to distrust themselves. But if they can learn fear, then they also can learn to again trust their creativity and to tell the great tales inside them.

Remember: That teachers, editors, family members or even experts have said you never would be a writer doesn’t matter. The only voice of any importance is your inner critic.

Struggling with this inner critic is your inner muse that keeps coming up with story ideas, with scenes, with pithy lines of dialogue and intriguing imagery, with outlines of whole books. Writers through the centuries have recognized the power of this muse. The ancient Greeks believed she was a goddess whispering in your ear. The Romantics believed it was the love for a woman inspiring you. Scientists say it’s the way your brain neurons have wired themselves to be creative. Regardless of why it occurs, the fact is that you if enjoy writing and are creative, some inner power drives your passion for penning stories or poems.

If you are to be a successful writer, your inner critic must instead listen to your muse and turn a deaf ear to those who pooh-poohed your writing abilities.

Until that occurs, the inner critic will throw the anchor despite that a good wind pushes your boat’s sails. Don’t allow yourself to be stuck in one place. Embrace your inner muse and let her take you on an incredible journey!

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 350 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my self-publishing guidebooks:

“If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” – Toni Morrison, novelist

“Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn’t wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say.” – Sharon O’Brien, author

“The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.” – Vladimir Nabakov, novelist

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” – Ray Bradbury, science fiction author

“The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it.” ~Jules Renard, “Diary,” February 1895

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

Any journey you set out on requires time and at least some hard work. No matter how difficult such travels may be, though, the destination is always reachable. Wrong turns may be made along the way or a cliff then a thicket of thorns may stand between the starting point and your goal, but ultimately with some careful thought, a little sweat, and a never-say-quit attitude, you can overcome those setbacks and obstacles.

In many ways, writing a story or a book is much like a journey in which you are out at sea on a rowboat. Your destination – a palm-fringed island or the published novel fresh from the printing press – beckons in the distance. Though making a straight line for that objective seems sound, the endpoint is farther away than it initially appears. So you row a little harder.

Sometimes rough waves and the receding tide push you back and deeper into the waters. As a writer, this may be the equivalent of rewriting a chapter, or restructuring a subplot, or redeveloping a character.

In the rowboat, you must remain persistent, not allow the ocean swells to sink you; as a writer you must not allow the editing of a piece or the thoughts of a beta reader overwhelm you and keep you from believing in your goal.

Instead you must concentrate solely on rowing…on writing…of dipping oar into water…of pressing pen against paper. After a while, you look up and realize that landing is indeed closer.

And then, suddenly, the oars no longer can go as deep as they did before…and there’s only a few paragraphs left to write. You’ve reached the sand rising to the beach…the final page of your tale.

At last, you can you stand triumphant.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 350 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my self-publishing guidebooks:

When self-editing a draft of your manuscript, consider doing it the old-fashioned way: printing it out on paper.

Reading text on paper will allow you to catch errors that you might not spot when editing on a computer screen. That’s because we read text on computer screens differently than we do that on paper. With computer screens, our eyes tend to glaze over the text – hence, why so many website writing gurus encourage using bullet points and short paragraphs with white space between them.

When printing out the manuscript, you may need to adjust its appearance. Reading double spaced manuscript in 12-point Times Roman with black ink typically is easier on the eyes and provides space to write comments and make corrections. Use white paper as well.

In addition, use a red pen, just like your middle school language arts teacher did. Red ink stands out best against the black print and will be easier to spot later.

______________________

My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 350 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my self-publishing guidebooks:

“What we call fiction is the ancient way of knowing, the total discourse that antedates all the special vocabularies….Fiction is democratic, it reasserts the authority of the single mind to make and remake the world.” – E. L. Doctorow

“Unlike the actual, the fictional explains itself.” – Mason Cooley

“Fiction is about stuff that’s screwed up.” – Nancy Kress

“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating. ‘Imaginative literature,’ therefore, is either boring or immoral or a mixture of both.” – Simone Weil

“Fiction writing is great. You can make up almost anything.” – Ivana Trump

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks: