Creativity trumps all. If you have a creative, imaginative, compelling story to tell, you’ll find an editor who wants to buy it and readers who want to snatch it up.
But if you want to control that story, to tell it the way you see and hear it in your mind, here’s my advice: learn style, usage, and grammar rules and increase your vocabulary. Otherwise, you’re ceding control of the story to pesky editors like…me. 🙂 Continue reading
Imagine you’re writing a tautly plotted detective story, and your tough-guy PI’s name is Stephen “Sting” Raye. Imagine your beautifully crafted tale has lines like this in it:
He saw the setup. He could spot it a mile away. He was probably the only fellow in the audience who guessed the setup in that Paul Newman movie, “The Sting” before twenty minutes of the flick had rolled by…
When he caught her gaze, he was immediately taken by the deep blue of her arresting eyes…
“You know why they call me Sting, don’t you?” he hissed at the perp, gun to his neck. He didn’t wait for an answer but slapped the guy–hard–with the gun across the cheek, leaving red welts and watery eyes. “Sting. Like bees. I swarm in and sting.” Continue reading
Noting continuity issues is a big part of a copy editor’s job. Not just timeline continuity, making sure the author stays true to the days of the week or any mention of time passing, but also continuity within one scene.
For example, if a character enters a room and stands talking to another character, then several pages later, the author writes, “He stood…” readers will stumble if they didn’t know when he’d sat down. The last time they “saw” him, he was standing. Readers might even shuffle back through pages to see where they made a mistake and missed the author’s reference to him sitting down. I know I’ve done that, as a reader. I want to keep an accurate picture of the tale unfolding in my head.
Does this mean an author has to describe every action in a scene? No. Continue reading
“Libby is fast, meticulous, and detail-oriented. I highly recommend her as an editor.” —Courtney Milan, New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author.
“Like silent mariners, the clouds skittered by, their jejune iconoclasm contrasting with the blue sky’s sterile composure, making Khendra sigh with longing and a deeply felt miasma of melancholy.”
Man, that’s beautiful writing, isn’t it?
Well, maybe it’s a beautiful series of syllables, but it’s not really good writing. It’s unclear. Except for the beginning of the sentence — Like silent mariners, the clouds skittered by — the images it conveys are vague, set within confusing language that takes the reader out of an emotion the writer might want to convey. It makes the reader stumble. Continue reading
“I highly recommend Libby Sternberg’s editorial services. I’ve worked with more than a dozen different editors over my twenty-six year publishing career in romantic fiction, and Libby is one of the best I’ve used. Some editors try and put their own stamp on you or change your writing style. Libby’s edits are detailed and hit all the important elements without taking away from my own voice or the story I was trying to tell. It added to the quality of the work and caught issues I’d overlooked. She is also fast, accurate, and is
willing to give a thorough explanation of anything you don’t understand.”  — Day Leclaire, USA TODAY bestselling author of sixty-plus novels and eleven-time RITA nominee.
I received my driver’s license mumble-mumble years ago in Maryland, back in the day when teen driving regulations were pretty light–no restrictions on number and age of passengers or driving at night.
Since that time, however, many states have adopted “graduated license” regulations that place specific limitations on drivers under the age of 18, who are driving on “learner’s permits” or “provisional licenses.” For example, in Pennsylvania, the state where I now reside, this relatively new restriction exists:
As of Dec. 27, 2011, for the first six months after receiving their junior driver’s license, a driver is not permitted to have more than one passenger under age 18 who is not an immediate family member (brother, sister,
stepbrother, stepsister of the junior driver and adopted or foster children living in the same household as the junior driver) in their vehicle unless they are accompanied by a parent or legal guardian. If they have not been convicted of a driving violation or been partially or fully responsible for a reportable crash after six months, they may have up to three passengers under age 18 who are not immediate family members without a parent or legal guardian present. If they have any convictions or are partially or fully responsible for a reportable crash while a junior driver, they are once again restricted to one passenger.
