Fantasy stories, books, and tips for new writers

You sat on your bum, wrote consistently, tuned into your inspiration, planned, plotted, pantsed, and danced around to summon the muses (or just built a habit, because muses can't be trusted), and finished a book. And now comes the real work—editing. But there are multiple levels of editing, and not all writers can hire a professional editor (not to mention 4 of them). So how can you self-edit on a budget? In the previous post, we talked about developmental editing on a budget

You finished writing your first draft. Congrats! But before your messy, passionate, and possibly brilliant first draft is ready to be published in any way or form, it needs to be polished like a diamond until it shines. And this polishing means editing. The problem is what do you do when you can’t afford an editor? Many writers tend to think of editing as this one-in-all stop, when in fact, there are different levels of editing a book needs to undergo: Developmental editing L

If plotting feels like too heavy an investment, and pantsing often keeps you stuck, a good approach that can help you make progress on your book is loose outlining. A loose outline is like a plot, only that it doesn’t need to be particularly detailed or even complete; it can be a general idea of the main events or just the next part of the book you’re about to write. Having a plan (even a loosely defined one) is a great way of ensuring that you know where your story is going,