Must dash! Before I became an editor, I had only vaguely noticed that some dashes were longer than others. I thought it was perhaps a particular type of font, or just that some publishers liked longer lines and some liked … Read More
The topic of filter words came up in conversation with an author recently. What are filter words? Are they a bad thing? Point of View It’s a question of Point of View (PoV). Modern writers are generally encouraged to write … Read More
One of the issues that comes up most frequently when I’m looking at fiction is point of view, or POV. I’m going to go through in some detail about each different POV and its characteristics in future posts, when perhaps … Read More
Apostrophes. Why do so many people get this particular little punctuation mark wrong? We’ve all passed the market stall with “5 banana’s for a £”. Left is one of the ways you can permanently display your ignorance about the correct … Read More
I’d say a fair few novels were started at the beginning of January, so this might be a topical post. Prologues. The devil’s spawn, or perfectly acceptable literary device? Word on the street is that agents hate prologues. And some … Read More