Is there any more disconcerting experience as a writer than changing your mind about how a story is going to go, throwing in a massive plot twist that isn’t even in the neighbourhood of what you were planning when you started, going back to the early chapters in order to revise them and make sure the new direction is adequately foreshadowed… only to discover that somehow, the necessary foreshadowing is inexplicably already present?
A mini-guide on how to line edit! I’m gonna try and make a big long post later, but for those who don’t want to read a lot of words, here’s some quick tips!
What is line editing?
Line editing is a level of editing focusing on the sentences & paragraphs. It looks at the structure of each sentence to see if it’s conveying the idea the best it can. You want to upgrade the prose and clean up the text.
When do I do line editing?
After developmental (or “big picture”) editing, before copyediting (grammar & spelling). Don’t do line edits before you really workshop your piece, because you might end up getting rid of a lot of sections in developmental edits.
Ok, but Kels, what do I do?
Right, here are the quick-and-dirty line editing tips I use:
Some more resources:
best of luck, writers!
"You wanna know what I think?"
"Sure!"
"... You do? For real?"
@adayforducks Christian and Sam lmao
“It’s only a bad idea if it doesn’t work.”
“So what you’re saying is you’re going to do it anyway.”
“Well, of course. I wasn’t asking your permission, I was just letting you know.”
lmaooo I think Sam has actually said to Christian at some point “so what you’re saying is you’re gonna do it anyway”
“Peel your heart like a pomegranate. Offer it to him, palms outwards. Say “eat.” Watch him come away stained red by you. You’re in his teeth. He’ll kiss you with that mouth.”
— Azra.T “Fruit”
First, let’s get some definitions out of the way: A twitter pitch party is a scheduled event in which pitching authors post eye-catching summaries of their work and agents ‘like’ the tweets they want to see queries from. It does not take the place of the query - after an agent likes your tweet, use whatever format they prefer to send in your query (and be sure to mention that it is from a tweet they liked, as some agents participate in pitch parties while being closed to regular queries). BEFORE YOU PARTICIPATE, BE SURE TO HAVE:
Not all pitch parties are made equal! New ones pop up each year, but with more and more pitch parties, most agents stick to the big ones. Some of the most popular are:
This doesn’t mean smaller pitch parties are illegitimate! If you’re writing for a niche genre, they might be just right for you.
All pitch parties run differently, but the best rule of thumb is to pitch as early as you can, pitch as many times as allowed, and pay attention to what pitches seem to be getting the most traction - you can always learn from those. Don’t get discouraged and give up - I didn’t get my agent until my third #pitmad, and I know many who didn’t get any hits for years until they finally found the pitch that worked. Also remember, it’s just another tool to get an agent. It’s not your only option, and you’re not less of a writer for not being able to tweet a pitch right off the bat.
Don’ts
In Part 2, we’ll get into how to pitch, useful phrases to know, and looking into the agents that want to see your work. Stay tuned!
idk if anyone will find this useful, but this is how i go about planning my stories. i mostly write fantasy, so that’s what this is most applicable to. but it could work with other genres too.
so there’s three major components to a story: the characters, the plot, and the world. creating them individually is the easy part, but they all connect and affect each other in different ways. (like you can’t have a character who loves peaches and eats them every day if they live a peasant in a region that doesn’t grow peaches, for example.)
so i created a cheat sheet to help connect all three components together.
1) the world creates the characters.
this is related to the peach example above. the characters should be a direct result of the environment they grew up in and the environment they currently live in.
2) the characters are limited by the world.
also related to the peaches. characters can’t do anything outside of what the rules of their surroundings and universe allow, such as eating peaches when they’re not available. this also applies for magic users. they can’t have unlimited magic, so keep in mind what you want out of both the characters and the world when creating magic systems.
3) the characters carry the plot.
we’ve all heard it before: “bad characters can’t carry a good plot. good characters can carry a bad plot.” but we all like a good plot anyway. try to make sure you’re not giving your characters too heavy or too light of a plot to carry.
4) the plot pushes the characters.
if nothing in the plot happens, your characters will remain static forever. if you struggle with plots, try starting with what character development you want to happen, then go from there.
5) the plot depends on the world.
you can’t overthrow the evil government if there isn’t one. think of what your world needs most and what your plot is centered around, and fit those two together.
6) the world is changed by the plot.
even if your plot is centered around something most of your world would call “insignificant”, the world will still experience some change from the plot. either the evil government will be gone, or maybe that one teacher is now way more careful about keeping an eye on the test key. either way, the world will be different from now on.
final note: usually people will be able to write one or two of the components with ease, but don’t know where to go from there. i personally can’t write plots, but thinking this way has really helped me actually make a story out of the world and characters because i looked at what i needed from what i had. i really hope this can help you too! happy writing!
tl;dr this is a cheat sheet to help anyone who struggles with writing one or two of what i consider the three major components to a story.
This is an interesting diagram and may be useful for some writers as they work on structuring their stories.
World and character were always easy for me. Plot was tougher, and I had to come up with a definition or formula that I could apply to writing. This would have made that learning process much easier!
This triangle is DMing in a nutshell.
YES.
Therapist: What an excellent way to allow yourself to imagine hope and healing in a safe container. That’s very wise of you.
My therapist legit thought fic was a very creative outlet to process my emotions and experiences
Baby Writer Me, in the 90s and 00s, traumatizing characters both canon and original: This is amazing, can I just keep doing this?
Random haughty writers and editors: Obviously there’s something wrong with you, stop doing that to your characters.
My ADHD Therapist, many years later: Oh, that’s fantastic, please keep on doing it.
See? Those snobby editors back then were wrong all along.
Writing as therapy is well established. Fuck anyone who says different. Write. Write for your goddamn life.
Honestly THIS is what it means when they say ‘write what you know.’
You may not know what it feels like to live in a fantasy village beset by dragons, but you do know all the rage of being told you can’t do something because of society’s unfair standards. Pour all your rage at that eighth grade teacher who said you’d never go anywhere into slaying that dragon.
i’ve been doing my homework on how to break into a writing career and honestly. there’s a Lot that i didn’t know about thats critical to a writing career in this day and age, and on the one hand, its understandable because we’re experiencing a massive cultural shift, but on the other hand, writers who do not have formal training in school or don’t have the connections to learn more via social osmosis end up extremely out of loop and working at a disadvantage.
like, i didnt know about twitter pitch parties!! i didnt know about literary agents and publishers tweeting their manuscript wishlist, in hopes that some poor soul out there has written the book they really want to read and publish!! this isnt some shit you learn about in school! you really need to know the ins and outs of the writing community to be successful!
for anyone interested, here’s what i’ve learned so far in my quest for more writing knowledge:
1. Writer’s Market 2019 is a great place to start– it gives you a list of magazines and journals that you can send your work to depending on the genre as well as lists a shit ton of literary agents that specify what genres they represent, how you can get in contact with them and how they accept query letters. this is a book that updates every year and tbh i only bought it this year so i dont know how critical it is to have an updated version
2. do your research. mostly on literary agents because if you listed on your site that you like to represent fluffy YA novels and some asshole sends you a 80k manuscript about like…gritty viking culture, you will be severely pissed off. always go in finding someone who you know will actually like your work because they’re the ones who will try to advocate for you in getting published.
3. learn how to write a query letter. there are slightly varying formulas to how you can write an effective query letter. you’re also going to want to get feedback on your query letter because its the first thing the literary agent will read and based on how well you do it, it could be the difference between them rejecting you outright and giving your manuscript a quick read
4. unfortunately, you’re gonna want to get a twitter. Twitter is where a lot of literary agents are nowadays, and they host things like twitter pitch parties, where you pitch your manuscript in a few sentences and hashtag it with #Pitmad #Pitdark, some version of pit. a lot of literary agents and publishers will ALSO post their manuscript wishlists, which is just the kind of books they’d like to represent/publish, and they hashtag this with #MSWL (it is NOT for writers to use, only for agents/publishers)
5. connect with other writers, literary agents, publishers at book events. you will absolutely need the connections if you want to get ahead as a writer. thats just kind of the state of the world.
Important info is important -.-
Rebloging for my own benefit, but anyone else who wants to be a writer needs to know this too.
I will go into a lot more depth about this later (when I am not on a strict deadline), but as someone who got my agent through a twitter pitch party, you do not have to take part in twitter to be signed by an agent or participate in the publishing world. There are benefits, but there are also downfalls, and the traditional methods - carefully querying a researched list of agents - still get far more people signed with agents than twitter.
you know the feeling when you’re writing a particularly emotional scene that hurts to write, will hurt your readers, and is currently hurting your characters almost to the point of no repair, so you’re just like
I’m so sorry
but also kinda rubbing your hands together cackling like a villain about to describe their masterplan to the tied up hero?
Also adding: feeling the emotional hurt and the angst so much you gasp for breaths because that shit hurt... And then you need the recovery as much as your characters!
A wonderful addition because I just reached the super angsty scene that comes after the emotional scene and.... hoooo boy. I need a break. And also some fluff. Pronto, thanks!
We’re going to find the author by process of elimination.
@0asissss
@adayforducks WHY WAS I NOT NOTIFIED OF THIS THIS IS SPOT ON 😂
Is it too late to send you a vague spoiler about my WIP? “Looks like a cinnamon roll, can actually kill you”
If Mac kills someone I’m suing for emotional damages
Hey @adayforducks remember this?
*halfway through dialing my lawyer’s number* … yes?
just checking :)
