Category: The Editor’s Hat

Advice for writing and editing, along with some thoughts about working with editors.

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The Inner Critic… Will they win?

Editing... Just when I thought I had finished with this manuscript, there it is again. The revisions go on, and on, and on, and on... Did I mention that they go on and on?

When you're writing, it's the inner critic that whispers sweet little nothings about self-doubt that just won't go away. If you're anything like me, you type so fast that sometimes your brain struggles to keep up; the spelling goes out the window and the autocorrect monster just gobbles up that carefully chosen word... without you noticing!

But the editor in me can't just let a new piece of writing go unchecked. I always go back and reread what I had written after a break (even a break as short as a toilet break). I see the punctuation errors, the grammar flaws, and the faults in the writing itself. I struggle in a big way to shut off the editor brain long enough to actually do any writing.

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The Pinch Points of a Story

For years, I have been talking about story structure (at least I have within my in-person writing groups). And for years, I've been trying to help writers understand that the antagonist is just as important to a story as the protagonist.

It all comes down to understanding both the role of the antagonist in a story and their nature. While I have written about this before, to quickly summarize, the antagonist is simply getting in the way of the protagonist achieving their goals, whatever those goals might be. But that doesn't make the antagonist a villain. In fact, the antagonist can be anything that is getting in the way, be that another character, the weather, societal norms, or the protagonist themselves.

When we're looking at story structure, there will be points within the story where the reader gets to see the antagonist in all their glory. Two critical beat points that are antagonistic beats are known as the pinch points.

Be advised that this blog post refers to beats and sections described in the Mohr Story Structure model.

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Death of the Author (Literary Term Explained)

I don't remember where I first heard the term, but I had encountered an entire conversation on one of my social media channels about the death of the author. It turns out that it's a term that refers back to an essay from 1967. In that essay, entitled The Death of the Author, Roland Barthes postulated the idea that at some point (after publication), a story takes on a life of its own, separate from the writer's intentions.

The idea makes sense when you think about it, because readers will add their own context and meaning to things based on their personal experiences. However, the essay has been debated for many long years about how much an author's intent should be incorporated into literary discussions about the meanings behind a written work.

In today's post, I want to take a look at this death-of-the-author idea, pointing out how I'm watching my own death unfold before my eyes… and my novel is still a newly-published work.

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Woman with knee tucked up in front of her while typing on a laptop and enjoying a cup of coffee.

Write Fast Now! Editing Hell Later?

We are rapidly approaching the time of year when writers around the world embark on one writing challenge or another, with the most common writing challenges focusing on writing a minimum of 50,000 words within 30 days. Some of these challenges will extend to the idea of editing and publishing, extending the challenge out to 90 days. But the idea is still to write a lot of words, completing a long-form story within a short period of time.

To some writers, the whole challenge is a daunting task. But for many people who have never written before, embarking on the challenge can be freeing, as it encourages you to turn off the inner critic and just write! However, for many writers who have been writing for a while (myself included), such a challenge forces us to examine our writing habits—and sometimes, reset our routines.

Every year, I share my thoughts about how aiming for a high word count shouldn't be your ultimate goal. In my opinion, the challenge to write 50,000 words in a month is not really about writing those 50,000 words. It's more about developing writing habits that will carry you through into your future writing career.

With that in mind, we need to address certain practices that will help you write fast now but avoid the editing hell later.

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Deciding between First Person and Third Person

If you’re anything like me, when you’re in writing mode, you’ll have a narrative style that you naturally gravitate towards. For me, my default style is third person, past tense, using deep point of view. But again, if you’re anything like me, you will encounter that one story that makes you question whether your default is the right choice.

Perhaps there is something within the narrative construction that makes you think you need to be a little bit closer to the characters. Or maybe there is something within the narrative that wants you to be more distant. Or maybe you just want to experiment and see what you’re capable of doing.

But there are some things about certain narrative constructions and certain stories that lend themselves more to one particular style of narrative as opposed to another. Making that decision as to which is most appropriate is not an easy thing to do.

In today’s post, I want to explore this idea of whether a narrative wants to be in first person or whether it should remain in third person. And I want to discuss what is similar about first-person and third-person, deep-point-of-view narratives and what is different.

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