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Have you ever wanted to know what an editor thinks when he/she receives a manuscript? Have you ever wanted to know what he/she looks for when deciding on an acceptance or rejection? Have you ever wondered why things have been changed in your manuscript when the sentence looked acceptable to you and your beta readers?
Sharpening the Quill answers all those questions and more. I will take you through the editing process and show you what your editor should be looking for. Even better, you can learn from this free e-book and polish your manuscript before submitting it. I deal with commas, clauses, phrases, adverbs, show vs. tell, and a variety of other subjects beneficial to authors.
I hopefully explain things in an understandable way. Does the technical jargon boggle your mind? Do you slap your palm against your forehead because the information just won’t sink in? Try Sharpening the Quill.
Two pages of Sharpening the Quill are below. One deals with using picture recognition to remember what certain words mean. There are several different instances in the book. The other shows how I explain things.
If this way of learning appeals to you, then watch this space. I’m currently working on the book in my spare time, and it should be available here for free download in a couple of weeks. I truly want to help authors learn, so creating this book is a labor of love.
Best wishes,
Fanny
Attention Authors:
If you are having trouble with punctuation or editing issues in general, I highly recommend Fanny’s offering to you. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been given a sneak peek of just what she’s preparing.
Authors will definitely benefit from Sharpening the Quill. And by the way, Fanny, I love the cover art for this book too. Very appropriate and eye-catching.
So authors, keep checking back for this wonderful free pdf that will become an excellent writing tool for you. A gift from Fanny Hill.
Lady C.
Teddypig sits in his seat waiting patiently.
Teddypig´s last blog ..Selling The Kindle Koolaid
Well, I’ve got through a lot so far, but I still have 16 other topics to cover. It should be ready in two weeks or so.
Topics covered already:
THE MECHANICS
1. Punctuation and the Co-ordinating Conjunction
Co-ordinating conjunctions
Commas
Clauses
2. Commas after Introductions
Part 1: Introductions
Independent clause
Dependent clause
Part 2: Introductory Clause
Verb/subject
Introductory dependent clause
Part 3: Introductory Phrases
Absolute phrases
Appositive phrases
Infinitive phrases
Participle phrases
Introductory participle phrases
Prepositional phrases
Prepositions
Introductory prepositional phrases
3. Dangling Modifiers/Dangling Participles
Participles
Antecedents
4. Adverbs
Weeding them out
Adverb list
I’ve just started Exposition.
Hi, Fanny, I’ve got to say that I think this will help a lot of people. It’s my understanding that the public school system in both the United States and Britain stopped teaching formal grammar somewhere in the 1960s and 1970s. I know about the United States from personal experience. I’ve heard about Britain from Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynn Truss, who is British – yes, I’m enough of a nerd that I read books on punctuation, ha, ha!
Meanwhile I’ve seen via reviews on this site and other sites that there are people out there who desperately want to write fiction even though they are starting at point-zero with no skill-base at all. Your work here will help them immensely. There are also a lot like me who know how to write passably well because we soaked it up through a lot of reading, but we have these big, weird holes in our knowledge because we were never formally trained!
Your examples above are very clear and understandable. I look forward to seeing how this develops!
Val Kovalin´s last blog ..Cover Art Analysis at Cerebral Reviews
Hi Val
It’s my hope that this book will fill in the holes you mentioned. I’m covering things that will prevent major edits if my advice is followed prior to an author submitting. If an author can teach themselves, this not only saves time during the editing process, but also gives the author a major boost in seeing how easy it can be to hone the craft.
I’m still writing the chapter on exposition. I’ve written examples of boring, telly passages. I then reworked them as show, so authors can see how it looks when the information is filtered into a scene without being a list or information dump.
I’m really enjoying myself, especially with the thought of possibly helping so many people. If the book is downloaded, and each person that downloads it passes it to one other author, and that author passes it on to another, we’ll have a whole lot of authors learning and writing stronger prose.
I’m a firm believer that if you have knowledge that can help another, you must share it. I hope the word spreads and the book is downloaded by hundreds of people (I’m a dreamer!).
Also, in this economic crisis, new and even established authors may find paying however much for a book like mine a stretch. At least this way they’ll have the chance to find out how to fix errors without scouring the Internet and getting headaches from the technical jargon.
I’m giving people the tools. They’ve just got to learn how to use them.
Fanny is going to make me read the comma section until I stop being so lazy. My excuse is that my brain goes faster than my fingers can type a comma. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
LOL
I am really excited about this book. Thanks in advance.
Oh good, and you’re welcome.
@ Lolita:
She does love her commas, doesn’t she? Sometimes I think she invented them. lol Maybe she did. Oh, my! So that’s who we have to blame, is it?
Regardless, I bow to her superior wisdom on those curvy little bastards.
You go, Fanny! We’re here to help this industry, and I’m thinking your book is a step in the right direction!
Oh, God (my new saying)! I can’t stop laughing at “curvy little bastards.”
Coined a phrase, did I? Good. Maybe it will be my epitaph.
“Here Lies the Curvy Little Bastard Woman”
We all contribute as we can.
We do. I’ll just have to figure out what my contribution will be.
I have it!
Dangling modifiers are sneaky little sh….