Editing Fiction at Sentence Level

Learn how to self-edit your novel at sentence level so that readers feel compelled to turn the page. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of narrative and dialogue. In addition to the line-craft guidance, there are examples from published fiction that illustrate the learning in action.

PART1: The different levels of editing. PART 2: CHECKING NARRATIVE. The importance of story structure. Holding narrative viewpoint. Choosing tense. Avoiding overwriting. Character description. Using and abusing filter words. Action beats. Playing with sentence length. Commas, conjunctions and rhythm. Anaphora: Purposeful repetition. Adverbs and adverbial phrases. Dealing with ‘seemed’ and other tentative language. Using ‘suddenly’ with caution. Free indirect speech. Showing versus telling. PART 3: CHECKING DIALOGUE AND THOUGHTS. How to write great dialogue. Other dialogue problems. Punctuating dialogue. Dialogue tags. Addressing others in dialogue. Conveying accents. Depicting thoughts. PART 4: PESKY PUNCTUATION. Apostrophes. Semi-colons. Dashes. Round brackets.PART 5: IS IT A RULE? Rules versus style preferences. The most common myths debunked.PART 6: TRACKING STORY. Style sheets. World-building wikis PART 7: INITIAL PREP AND FINAL PROOFS. Preparing your book file for editing. Checking final page proofs. GLOSSARY OF TERMS. WRITING-CRAFT BOOKS