Polishing and Editing

I don't usually like to steal blog posts from others, but a friend of mine shared this one on Facebook, and it really made sense to me. So please, if you are like me and preparing a book to go to a publisher or editor take a few minutes to read this blog post!

Number 6 is probably the trickiest for me.

#6  IN HISTORICAL FICTION, DESCRIBING A LOT OF STUFF YOUR CHARACTER WOULDN'T ACTUALLY NOTICE.  Roger Sutton puts it this way “There was this great article in School Library Journal by Joan Blos called ‘Bunches of Hessians’ where she talks about the various mistakes that are made in historical fiction. She said to take something from a historical novel--for example, a mother making dinner--and translate it into contemporary fiction. And then she wrote this hilarious passage about ‘Mother stood in front of the white box and carefully adjusted the black dial.’ It has to be natural to the person telling the story. They shouldn't be noticing things that only an outsider would be paying attention to.”

I am really good at info dumping, its been a challenge going back through my book and getting rid of all of them. Hahaha! Enjoy!

http://www.elawreads.com/blog/2014/7/15/finishing-the-hat-ten-things-that-make-an-editor-stop-reading-your-manuscript