A new book on my editing desk promises to be a lot of fun. Small-time crooks without much common sense play big parts in this novel. It's the kind of world made popular by Elmore Leonard. He wrote well into his 80s, including novels that he adapted from the TV series Justified that a producer […]

Your copyeditor or line editor uses the Chicago Manual of Style. But knowing these style and grammar conventions yourself helps your book, too. A manuscript that arrives on my desk with clear writing gets lifted even higher. For example, there's the use of a single-word utterance. How do you handle something like, "Where?" CMOS says […]

Speaking clearly lets us absorb the dialogue Novels are built on acres of dialogue. You can always point to a book like E.L Doctrow's Ragtime as the exception, but so very much talking pushes a story forward. You can help your characters tell the story by helping everyone know who's speaking at all times. Where […]