From Rick: Being an editor, it’s important that I keep up to date on the latest grammar and style changes in the language, particularly since it seems to be changing very rapidly. There are two authoritative references that all writers
Read MoreFrom Rick: Next week: Scott does Part 2 of his action scenes series. For this off week, I wanted to give you a couple of articles on a topic near and dear to my heart: Editors. A few years back
Read MoreFrom Rick: Okay, so maybe I wasn’t done with this series, as I thought I was. I was going through my older emails this past week and I came across one article on this subject that I felt worth passing
Read MoreFrom Rick: Last time I gave you an editing challenge. This time I’ll prove the answers in two forms. One is the corrected version. The other is a file showing the actual changes to create that correction. Here are the
Read MoreFrom Rick: Last time I said I would try to come up with a little test of your editing skills. The sample below is from an upcoming novel called Searching For Sound by Dave Schulz, a friend I have been
Read MoreFrom Rick: This week going to give you some tidbits of advice and a couple of worthwhile articles to read. USING SONG LYRICS IN YOUR BOOK—an important reminder— You cannot—I repeat you can NOT—use song lyrics in your book unless
Read MoreFrom Rick: Two weeks ago, I did a joint blog post with Kellee Kranendonk on some basics of grammar and spelling. One of my writer friends from Ireland was quick to point out an error of sorts in my statement
Read Moreguest post by Adam Fenner (reposted with permission from 13Thirty Books and with minor edits) I am going to open this up by saying that my grammar is poor—at best. I think in run-on sentences, and I rely heavily on
Read MoreFrom Rick: Mark Twain said it best: “Use the right word, not its second cousin.” Although this comes from his essay “The Literary Offenses of [James] Fenimore Cooper” in which he delivers a scathing attack on that writer’s work, notably
Read MoreFrom Scott: Last time, I wrote about levels of editing and mentioned that it all starts with you, the writer. The primary responsibility for ensuring the quality of your work starts with the editing you do. If you use a
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