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Book Review & Contest Insights from Real Reviews and Submissions
What separates great books from the rest? Below are articles with insights from real reviews and contest submissions—what works, what doesn’t, and how to improve your book. You’ll also find a wide range of articles covering writing, publishing, marketing, and more. Each article has a Comments section so you can read advice from other authors and leave your own.
Why Some Books Win Awards (And Most Don’t) — Insights From Real Contest Submissions New!
What separates award-winning books from the rest? After evaluating contest submissions across a wide range of genres, certain patterns become clear. Some books consistently rise to the top. Others, even with strong ideas and clear effort behind them, fall short. The difference is rarely dramatic—it...
What We’ve Learned From Reviewing Hundreds of Thousands of Books (And Why Most Don’t Stand Out) New!
After reviewing and evaluating books across thousands of submissions over the past two decades, certain patterns become impossible to ignore. Some books immediately stand out to reviewers. Others—even well-intentioned ones—fade into the middle or fall short. The difference is rarely luck. It comes down to...
Leave It For The Copyeditor? Fix it Yourself! Part 3
Two more tips and your manuscript is ready for an editor. Ditch the Prepositions Prepositions are used for relationships between words and when you use too many, your writing becomes weak, unconcise and non-specific. Some of the common prepositions include: About After Against At Before Behind Beneath Except From In Into Like Of Since Too Toward/s You get the idea. Look through a few...
Leave It For The Copyeditor? Fix it Yourself! Part 2
Have you removed all those unnecessary expletives? Good, time to move on. Check your sentences and paragraphs Do they start the same way? While expletives are often the culprit here, there are some other offenders that crop up frequently, including character names and pronouns. You need to...
Leave It For The Copyeditor? Fix it Yourself! Part 1
Every writer comes up against a set of writing problems and any novel that is worth the time it takes to read should be put through some pretty rigorous copyediting. And that works for all writing, not just novels and not just fiction, but I’ll...
Kill The Adjectives – Some of Them, Anyway! Part 3
In the last part of this series, we are looking at ways to replace interpretive adjectives. One way is to use descriptive adjectives that you chose with care. If you really need to use an adjective, choose one that accurately describes the noun it is modifying...
Kill The Adjectives – Some of Them, Anyway! Part 2
So, which adjectives are ripe for killing off? Normally, you would ditch the common ones. You need to identify which adjectives are interpretive and which are descriptive. Interpretive adjectives are normally the common adjectives and are not precise. Depending on the experience your reader is having with...
Kill The Adjectives – Some of Them, Anyway! Part 1
Yep, you read that right. Kill off those adjectives. And adverbs. Stephen King once wrote “The road to hell is paved with adverbs” but he’s not saying you should never use them; the proper verb can pack enough of a punch on its own so, if...
Setting Your Writing Goals Part 2
You should have managed to scrape some time together to write each day by now and maybe you’ve really gotten the writing bug. You can see your novel appearing before you and want to get it finished. Stop. Set Smaller Goals Set your main goal and then...
Setting Your Writing Goals Part 1
Every year, thousands of people say they could write a book tomorrow if they wanted. So why don’t they? Because most will tell you that they simply don’t have the time. They’ve got a job to hold down, kids to run around after, social engagements,...
Editing vs. Proofreading – What is The Difference? Part 3
You now know the difference, roughly, between editing and proofreading but, like all other forms of editing, proofreading and copyediting can also have some pretty blurry lines. There aren’t any really strict boundaries for proofreading but a good proofreader will not miss the words that...
Editing vs. Proofreading – What is The Difference? Part 2
That’s the substantive and/or developmental editing done, time to start copyediting. Fine-Tuning Your Work Copyediting is often called line editing and attention is focused at sentence-level. This means grammar, punctuation, spelling, and so on. Sentences may be rewritten and unnecessary words removed. Where needed, passive verbs are...