When I’m editing manuscripts, often I’ll come across a jarring scene that feels like it comes out of left field, has nothing to do with the scenes before and after, and never really ends up amounting to much. I call these “Plinko scenes,” after the famous The Price is Right game. (Hello to my fellow […]
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Why are YA sales declining? (This week in books)
This week! Books! News came this week that after years of increasing market share, young adult fiction is now among the only categories posting declines in sales. The #takes have rolled in, and many people cited book bans, a decrease in B&N shelf space for YA, and a lingering lack of diversity. Librarian Karen Jensen […]
Rein in your plot description (query critique)
If you’d like to nominate your own page or query for a public critique, kindly post them here in the discussion forums: Also, if you’d like to test your editing chops, keep your eye on this area or this area! I’ll post the pages and queries a few days before a critique so you can see how your […]
How to edit someone’s novel
Last week I updated my post on how to edit your own novel, and since you may need to be dishing edits out in addition to receiving them, today I’ll update my previous posts on how to edit someone else’s novel. I’ll get into the ins and outs of how to go about this, but […]
No, AI-generated work is not copyrightable (This week in books)
This week! Books! GPT-4 has arrived, leading to all sort of breathless headlines like this one from The Atlantic: ChatGPT Changed Everything. Now Its Follow-Up Is Here. Uhhhh… what exactly has it changed apart from prompting tech types and their financial enablers to lose their collective minds? Longtime readers know I am far from a […]
Contextualize new characters (page critique)
If you’d like to nominate your own page or query for a public critique, kindly post them here in our discussion forums: Also, if you’d like to test your editing chops, keep your eye on this area or this area! I’ll post the pages and queries a few days before a critique so you can see how your redline […]
