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g Fiction Writing Site
Elsa Neal
BellaOnline's Fiction Writing Editor

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Editing Skills

Developing your own editing, proofreading, and critiquing skills is important to your success as a professional writer.

Active voice, passive voice, and stative sentences star
One of the easiest ways to check and improve your writing in the editing phase is to target passive and stative sentences and convert them to active sentences where possible. Active voice moves the story along and allows for "showing", while passive voice forces a "telling" style.

Adjectives and Adverbs - Editing Skills star
Weak adjectives and adverbs are usually the first words to be tackled in the editing phase, but you can improve your writing skills by choosing these more wisely in your early drafts too. Selecting a noun or verb, and then using another word to modify it, weakens the quality of your writing.

Breaking grammar rules in fiction star
Using fragments and run on sentences for effect. You may have found places in your story where using incorrect grammar sounds better, but choosing exactly where to use good grammar and when to drop into conversational style can be a tricky skill to develop.

Critiquing your own manuscript star
Self-critiquing is a very valuable skill to develop. However it's also very difficult to think neutrally about something you've written yourself. Thankfully, critical reading, even of your own work, can improve with practice.

First Five Pages Workshop star
Free 10-week workshop in self-editing of fiction, based on Noah Lukeman's bestseller, The First Five Pages.

Tips for proofreading your manuscript star
Proofreading goes hand in hand with the editing phase of creating your manuscript. Here are some simple tricks for carefully proofreading shorter works, and advice on tackling the proofreading of longer novel-length manuscripts.

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Past Issues

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The Right to Write by Julia Cameron - Review

Breaking grammar rules in fiction

On Writing by Stephen King - Review

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