Did you get a request from a pitch at nationals? Good for you! Here's a checklist of ten things to do before you send in your requested full manuscript.
Theresa
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Got Editing Questions?
If you have an editing question you'd like us to address, feel free to send it to rasley at gmail dot com. We like reader questions because they save us from having to think up post topics on our own. ;)
Readers' Choice for Top Ten Blog Posts
- 1. Top Ten Reasons the Editor Doesn't Love What Your Critique Group Loves
- 2. How to Put It Together Into One Neat Tweet
- 3. Marks of the Amateur - Starting a List
- 4. When Unnamed Characters Speak
- 5. Character-Driven/Plot-Driven
- 6. The Words Not Spoken, the Steps Not Taken
- 7. This Was in the Comments, But It's a Great Question, So Let's Discuss--
- 8. Dialogue Tags
- 9. Enjambment in Fiction
- 10. Thoughts on Pacing - Nothing Brilliant
Readers' Choice for Best Series by Alicia
Readers' Choice for Best Series by Theresa
Readers' Choice for Best Series by Both Editors
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Romance University Now Features Theresa in a Monthly Column! Click the Picture for Details
Our Promise to Authors
Every day we work with writers to shape their manuscripts for publication. We also evaluate submissions, read our friends’ pages, give second opinions to other editors -- in short, we confront a whole lot of manuscript pages for a whole lot of reasons. But here’s what we don’t do. We don’t -- and we never will -- pull examples directly from any of these manuscripts. The editor-author relationship depends on mutual trust and respect, and we won’t ever compromise that. We might get ideas for blog posts in the course of our interaction with writers and manuscripts, but all examples are ours, with the occasional exception of literary sources.
Theresa's Dubious Honor
Useful Sites for Writers
- AAR
- Alicia's Writer's Corner
- Brian's Common Errors Site
- Internet-Resources (Killer Collection of Links for Writers)
- Merriam Webster Online
- Poets & Writers Online
- Purdue's OWL Grammar Handouts
- Schoolhouse Rock Grammar Rock Lyrics
- The Chicago Manual of Style online
- Theresa Stevens, Editor
- U. of Chicago's Excellent Collection of Grammar References
- Vision Index: A Review Site for Books About Writing
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July
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- Ari Gold's Worst Thing
- Agents and direct publishing?
- Today at RU
- What is Melodrama?
- The Contest Writer's Synopsis
- More metaphor
- Fiction as Metaphor
- Making the Moment
- Cheating Melodrama
- Guest Post: The Dreaded Flashback by Adrienne Gior...
- Not Much Gossip
- The reports of comma death are greatly exaggerated
- The true self
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When Theresa's not reading manuscripts, she's reading:
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Posts
3 comments:
Great suggestions. I've had too many submitters who blow off proofreading or think they've already taken care of that, and they're wrong. I would actually think about getting someone else to read it, even if you have to pay.
I love the "match the edges" term.
A
I'm obsessive about proofing my manuscripts before I submit. I'm sure I still miss things here and there, but it was really nice to have my editor tell me I submitted a really nice, polished manuscript.
The tips in that article are wonderful and I'll be printing it out for future reference for sure.
J.
Ooh, this is great stuff. I hope someday soon I'll be in a position to be following these recs. Thank you!
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