Ask An Editor: Positioning Your Book
Posted on Friday, August 20th, 2010 by Adrienne Giordano
This month, we’re looking at a question that comes up frequently in the mailbag, though it takes many varied forms. The upshot: a writer is sitting on a completed manuscript. It belongs in a genre [...]
continue readingWandering body parts, oh my!
Posted on Friday, July 16th, 2010 by Adrienne Giordano
Hi, I’m a romance author with my debut ready to go out sometime this year. However, the date has been pushed back because of my bad grammar. My publisher wants me to fix certain things [...]
continue readingAsk An Editor: Synopsis vs. Outline
Posted on Friday, June 18th, 2010 by Kelsey Browning
But we’ve noticed a few trends in the questions. People ask about many of the same issues, and many of those issues center on how to build effective sentences. So now we’re going to alternate questions with these common topics of concern. Don’t worry! This won’t be your junior high English class! And nothing could prove that point better than a quick examination of verb tenses. What you were taught in school isn’t precisely what you need to know as a fiction writer. Let’s examine some of those differences within the five major tenses.
continue readingAsk An Editor: Structuring an Overheard Phone Conversation
Posted on Friday, May 21st, 2010 by Tracey Devlyn
Dear Theresa:
This might not be earth shattering enough to be posted – BUT – I’d really appreciate an answer on this one – as this type of scene is in two different spots in my [...]
Ask An Editor: Verb Tense
Posted on Friday, April 16th, 2010 by Kelsey Browning
But we’ve noticed a few trends in the questions. People ask about many of the same issues, and many of those issues center on how to build effective sentences. So now we’re going to alternate questions with these common topics of concern. Don’t worry! This won’t be your junior high English class! And nothing could prove that point better than a quick examination of verb tenses. What you were taught in school isn’t precisely what you need to know as a fiction writer. Let’s examine some of those differences within the five major tenses.
continue readingAsk An Editor: Submissions
Posted on Friday, March 19th, 2010 by Tracey Devlyn
This month, for something different, we’re going to answer a trio of short questions on the topic of submissions. Be sure to read below to find out how you can win a download of Partners [...]
continue readingAsk an Editor: Paragraph Organization
Posted on Thursday, February 18th, 2010 by Adrienne Giordano
Last month, we looked at a sequencing/verb tense issue in a sample paragraph. We ended up with a paragraph which made the causation and sequencing clear, but that left me asking a question about whether [...]
continue readingAsk An Editor: Problem With Tense?
Posted on Friday, January 15th, 2010 by Tracey Devlyn
This month, for something different, we’re going to examine a paragraph sent in by a reader. She recently received some feedback which complained about the verb tenses in this paragraph.
Her dark gaze darted from [...]
Ask an Editor: Is it a romance?
Posted on Friday, December 18th, 2009 by Adrienne Giordano
Dear Theresa,
I wanted to ask you a question that has been recently discussed at our on line writing group, about the definitions of the romance genre.
To my understanding the definition is that a love story [...]
Ask an Editor: Passive and Literary Writing
Posted on Friday, November 27th, 2009 by Kelsey Browning
Theresa:
Your last column on writing actively brought up a question I’ve had for quite some time on passive voice writing. In commercial genre fiction (romance, mystery, etc), the practice of writing in an active voice [...]
