Editing Your Story Archives

Ready to Learn More about Editing?

The Editing Your Story section of Jami's blog is filled with editing tips and advice to improve our drafts.

Sample topics:

* saving broken stories

* revising tricks

* using beat sheets for revisions

* making our writing stronger

* MS Word tricks

* fixing unlikable characters, etc.

If you want even more writing advice, be sure to check out Jami's Craft Highlights page, which features some of her most-helpful posts on this topic, as well as on writing craft, pacing, story flow, and more. On that page, you can also find links to related free worksheets/tools and information guides.

Or want to refine these results? The Search page offers many filtering options.

Escape Generic Storytelling by Asking “Why?”

The most important question we can ask to get in touch with every aspect of our story is “why”—even helping us escape generic or cliché storytelling.

Escape Generic Storytelling by Asking “Why?”

Storytelling Verb Tenses: Past, Present, and “Literary” Past Tense

Most stories are written in literary past tense. What does that term mean, and if different from normal past tense, how is literary past tense different?

Storytelling Verb Tenses: Past, Present, and “Literary” Past Tense

Character Internalization: To Italicize or Not to Italicize?

A common question in writing forums asks when we should italicize a character’s thoughts. How should we format our characters’ internalizations?

Character Internalization: To Italicize or Not to Italicize?

Writing Craft: How Point-of-View Affects Dialogue

We often want to share both characters’ reactions during dialogue. How can we do so without causing point-of-view, head-hopping, or attribution issues?

Writing Craft: How Point-of-View Affects Dialogue

Writing Craft Basics: How to Format Dialogue

We probably think we know everything about dialogue formatting already, but let’s make sure we know all there is to know before assuming.

Writing Craft Basics: How to Format Dialogue

Story Elements: Give Them Purpose

For a strong story pace, we need to ensure every element has purpose. How can we do that? How can we know if a scene or sentence is pointless?

Story Elements: Give Them Purpose

Story Pacing: How Can We Ensure Our Pacing Is “Good”?

It’s time for another post as a Resident Writing Coach over at Writers Helping Writers, where we’re talking about what makes a story’s pacing “good.”

Story Pacing: How Can We Ensure Our Pacing Is “Good”?

Need Advice from an Editor?

As we go through the editing process, we might have questions we wish we could ask a professional editor. How can we get our question answered?

Need Advice from an Editor?

Discovering What Matters: Editing and Your Life

What does the moving process have in common with the editing process? Both make us prioritize, purge, and question what matters.

Discovering What Matters: Editing and Your Life

How to Bridge the Gap in Your Story’s Momentum

It’s time for another post as a Resident Writing Coach over at Writers Helping Writers, and this time we’re talking about bridging conflict.

How to Bridge the Gap in Your Story’s Momentum

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