Hello, fellow writers in the editing trenches. Let's have a talk about noun-verb agreement.
Noun-verb agreement means that your subject noun of your sentence needs to agree, or match properly, with your verb. So if you use a first person singular noun, your verb needs to be in the first person singular form as well.
Examples: I ate the cookie.
They walked the dog.
Did you read the book?

Simple, right? Most of the time, we see problems with noun-verb agreement in more complicated sentences, like these:
They went to the store, shopped for groceries, and drove home.
She sang a song, skipping as she went.
Grabbing his coat, he said goodbye to his wife.
When there are multiple actions in a sentence, they each have to coordinate with their noun.

Things get even more complicated if you switch subjects partway through the sentence, and noun-verb agreement becomes extra important. Otherwise the reader can't tell who's doing what in the sentence. For example:
Jane sang a song, while the children danced wildly.

Here's a tricky format I've seen authors struggle with:
He listened to the music,  his feet tapping​, and smiled.
In this case, "he" is the subject of listened and smiled. "His feet" are the subject of tapping. Since I used a simple verb form for listen and smile, and a gerund (-ing) form for his feet, it should be pretty clear which verbs go with which nouns.

But what if I had written it as: He listened to the music, his feet tapping, and smiling. In that case, it suddenly sounds like his feet are smiling, since those verb forms match.

If I really wanted to use the gerund form of smile, I could clear up the confusing by changing the order so that smile comes before I change subject nouns: He listened to the music, smiling, his feet tapping. 

This works because a verb refers back to the most recent noun that agrees with it. So if you love to write long, complicated sentences (like I do!), always remember to make sure that your nouns and verbs are in agreement. Otherwise, you might end up with smiling feet.

Who's ready for a few quick tips on how to pick out a title for your novel?

1. Remember that your title is probably going to change. So if you can't come up with The Absolute Perfect title, that's okay. Many publishers will want to have input on your title, and they know a lot about what sells across categories and genres. Come up with as good a title as you can, but be open to changing it.

2. Check out comp titles. Do you see any patterns? Some genres have different expectations for word length for titles. Fantasy is more willing to accept longer titles, for example. Romance titles often reference one of the characters somehow. Action-packed stories tend to have shorter, punchier titles. Mystery series' often have something in common across all their titles.

3. Shoot for a word count title in the right range. For most genres and age categories, titles fall within one to six words.

4. Avoid subtitles. Especially if they're redundant or overly-explanatory. An info dump in the title is not a good sign. For example, if I wrote a serious novel and titled it The Sleeping Cat: A Novel About Naptime, Purring, and Forgiveness​, you probably would back away slowly. Some kinds of non-fiction books can get away with this sort of title, but it's much rarer in fiction.

5. Don't chase trends. Remember a couple years ago when so many hit books had "girl" in the title? It became a joke. And if someone tried to capitalize on that trend and titled their book accordingly, by the time the book was actually published, the trend would be long over.

6. Look at your manuscript for repeated themes and imagery, important lines, or significant places or characters. Most books draw on these elements for their titles. It's often rewarding for a reader to discover the passage a title is taken from.

7. When in doubt, keep it simple.

That's it for today. Have fun editing, and as always, let us know if you have any thoughts or suggestions in the comments!

We've done a few posts on how to improve your dialogue and your dialogue tags. (You can read them here for a quick refresher.)
Today we'll give you one quick reminder, and one quick tip to make your editing easier.

1. Remember that "said" is neutral. The reader's eye skims over it.
You want to trim down your dialogue tags, sure, but you also don't want to overdo it by replacing "said" with too many alternatives. The farther you go from simple choices like "said", "replied", or "answered", the more noticeable the dialogue tag becomes. And this is one instance where you don't want your word choice to be noticeable, because it tends to disrupt the flow of the narrative. Eliminating a tag altogether, using action to clue the reader in to who's talking, or using said are generally all better choices than "he remarked."

2. If you want to focus on dialogue tags during an edit, use your search/find function in your word program and search for ,". If you search for the comma+close quotation marks combination, you'll find all the places where you used a dialogue tag. And if you have a habit of using too many tags (or of using too many adverbs with your dialogue tags) in your early drafts, using the Find function lets you write those early drafts without having to agonize over every tag, because you know you can fix them later.
Just make sure you do remember to go back and fix them later.

Today's tip is all about whether to use ME or I when writing about two (or more) people. And I have to admit that I get this one wrong far too often if I don't stop and think about it. So for me, and anyone else out there who struggles with me vs. I, here's a handy reminder.

I functions as the subject noun of a sentence. I is the same grammatically as she or he or they.
Example: My aunt and I went to the beach.
My kids and I read a book together.
Stephanie, Whitney, and I are friends.
In each of these sentences, I could be replaced by another subject pronoun, like she/he/they, and the sentence would still be correct, because I is the subject of the verb. I is doing the action in the sentence.

Me functions as an ​object noun in a sentence. Me is equivalent to her/him/them.
Example: Stephanie went to the beach with Whitney and me.
My kids read a book to Kate and me.
In each of these sentences, me could be replaced by the object form of a pronoun, like her/him/them. To be honest, this is the one that gives me trouble, because it just sounds strange to me. In spoken language, many native English speakers do mix up the pronouns in this construction. But if you're like me, and you sometimes say it wrong, you can at least catch it in your manuscripts when you're editing and get it right in print.
Happy editing!

Here's a fun writing tip that's quite helpful for plotting.

The beginning and ending of your story are often going to be opposites.

What this means is that your main character typically starts out in an ordinary environment, not living life to their fullest for whatever reason. Then an inciting incident comes along. The main character is pushed beyond their previous limits, discovering themselves and a new world along the way--sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively.
By the time the main character has overcome the obstacles in their path, they should also have experienced significant personal growth. The older the audience of your story, the greater the change is likely to be.

At the end of the story, the main character typically has a different outlook on life, a different view of their future, and a changed environment.

Let's take a look at this in action.
In the classic Cinderella, Cinderella is a poor, overworked, underappreciated maid in her own home at the beginning of the movie. She's too meek to stand up for herself. By the end of the movie, she's a beautiful princess, married to the prince, and moving into the castle. And more importantly, she makes the decision to speak up when her stepmother breaks the slipper and lets the prince know that she's the mystery girl. This is the opposite of her beginning.

In The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins is a simple hobbit who doesn't want to go off on an adventure. He knows little of the outside world, and has never encountered anyone capable of true evil in his entire life. Hobbits are peaceful, unnoticed by the outside world. By the time Bilbo's journey is done, he's learned to be brave, traveled farther than many creatures of Middle Earth, fought incredible dangers, and become one of the most significant figures in the battle between good and evil. While Bilbo ends up back home again, he is forever changed and doesn't feel completely at ease until he gives up the ring and leaves again.

If you know where you want your story to begin, but not where it should end, try envisioning how to turn the main character's situation on its head. Then chart a path that will lead them there. This also works if you know your ending but not your beginning.

​Happy editing!

Let's talk about filtering words--what they are, and why you want to use them sparingly.
Filtering words are words that put more space between the reader and the characters in a story. Instead of directly experiencing whatever the character is experiencing, filter words move the reader back so that the character's experience is being relayed to the reader by the narrator.

(Pro tip: Filter words are typically verbs revolving around the five senses and the character's thoughts and knowledge.)

Why is filtering a bad thing? Well, it isn't always. Sometimes short and to the point is fine. But filter words, by putting distance between the reader and the action, make it harder for a reader to stay immersed in a story. They keep readers at arms' length, instead of creating connections.

One good rule of thumb is that the more involved you want a reader to feel with a scene or character, the less filtering you should use.

If you want to build drama and tension in a scene, you want the reader to feel like they're there, right alongside the main character. That means you want to replace filtering words with stronger verbs that pull the reader in to the experience.

Examples of filtering verbs: to see, to hear, to feel, to touch, to smell, to taste, to know, to wonder, to realize, etc.

But using sensory descriptions is good, and helps pull in readers, you might protest. And you'd be right. But you want to do it the right way, by showing what the character is experiencing.

Filtering: I heard the birds chirping.
Without filtering: Bird songs filled the clearing, their cheerful conversations bounding from tree to tree like an avian game of Telephone.
Filtering: I smelled cinnamon rolls baking.
Without filtering: The smell of warm, yeasty dough greeted me as I walked in the door, with a hint of something else...cinnamon?

See how the filtering version could be me retelling the experience to someone later? Compare that with the non-filtering version, where I describe an experience as it's happening, as if you, the reader, are there with me. That's what you want your readers to feel.

Give it a try in your own manuscripts, or comment below with a filtered version of a sentence and a non-filtered version if you feel like sharing!

Whether you're a plotter or a pantser (or even a plantser--a little bit of both), we can all agree that coming up with a revision plan is often hard work. But for my fellow pantsers out there, who discover their stories and their characters as they write their first drafts, revisions can seem particularly intimidating. Today's post will give you some tips on how revise once you've finished that first draft.

1. ALWAYS remember that you can't fix everything at once.
Stories go through many drafts before they even start to look polished enough to query. If you sit down and try to go from rough draft to perfection in one round, you will get overwhelmed, burned out, and feel like giving up. Don't do this to yourself!

2. Pick one or two aspects to focus on during each round of drafting, starting with the larger elements first.
Things like plot, theme, and characterization need to be solid before you focus on minute, line-level revisions. Don't waste hours finding the perfect sentence to describe the glint of sunlight off the love interest's hair if you're not sure that scene will be in the finished product. Start big picture, and work your way down to polishing every word choice last.

3. Use a plot chart.
I can hear all the pantsers out there gasping. Once you've discovered your story, though, you might also discover that you need to do some rearranging and remodeling. Try writing down each key scene and check them against one of the many plotting methods available online. (Seven-point story structure is one I like if you haven't done much plotting before.) Do your scenes fit the flow of action in their current order, or do you need to move things around? Do you have scenes that are distracting from the plot and belong in your backstory file, not the novel? Or are you missing pivot points that change the course of the novel? Checking the plot structure after writing a first draft allows pantsers to enjoy that heady discovery phase they need, while helping to ward off pesky saggy middles.

4. Get to know your characters.
Dig deeper into your characters, beyond their appearances. What are their fears, their goals, their loves? What will they fight for? What will they run from? What hurts are they hiding, and what makes them lash out in pain? Find out what motivates your character to behave the way they do, so their behavior will make sense throughout the story. Characters can make strange choices, but they still should make sense for that character, given their emotional trauma, their desires, and their goals.

5. Find the theme or inner core of your story.
What's your story really about? Most stories have some inner truth underlying the action; something that the main character must learn over the course of the story. The theme often ties in to the character's deepest feelings, so completing #4 will help with this task.

And lastly,
6. Give yourself time in between rounds of revisions.
It's vital to give yourself space between yourself and your first draft (and all the others), so you can look at it more objectively. Often what we think we've put on paper is so strong in our heads that we can't see the details we've left out or haven't communicated clearly until we step back from the story for a little while. Come at the story with fresh eyes, and you'll notice more of your mistakes--and be pleasantly surprised by the things you did well.

Today's quick tip is about how to name your files when you're ready to start querying. There are two main things to keep in mind when an agent asks for a document as an attachment.

1. Always include your last name and title in the save file name.
For example, if you were to look inside one of my main writing folders, it looks like this:

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You'll notice how file versions that have been sent out with queries all have the title in all caps and my last name, plus a brief descriptor of the document--query, first chapter, etc. This also prevents me from accidentally sending out the wrong version of a file.
Agents receive thousands of emails. You always want to make sure enough of your contact information is on every document and email for them to find you. When an agent downloads a submission to read, it can be difficult to remember which email and query it went with. Make everyone's life easier by including your name on your file.

2. For the benefit of agents who read on e-readers, make sure your information is correct on the document's properties.
This one is simple to fix, but I didn't know about it until I saw a few agents mention it some time ago. In MS Word, when you click on the blue "File" tab, you'll see a screen that has all sorts of information about your document. On the right side of the split screen, it lists the number of pages, word count, editing time--which I'm not sure I want to know!-- author name, and title. (The default on author name is often the computer company.)

​

 So why does this matter? Because it can affect how your document information is displayed on an e-reader. Remember, your goal is to make it as easy for an agent who likes your work to find your information as possible. See where "Properties" is underlined in yellow? Click the arrow there, then go to "Advanced Properties," and then "Summary." That will bring up a dialogue box where you can set the document's title and your name in the author field. There you go! Now you're ready to send your documents off into the wild, in search of an agent or a publisher.

Today's post is inspired by the time I spent this week helping one of my kids, who has some learning disabilities, with a writing assignment. She had to write a short story for English, after plotting it out with a nice chart the teacher had given out. And even though kiddo is extremely smart and creative and great at telling stories, putting them on paper is an incredibly stressful experience for her.
Enter writer and editor mom, to the rescue! And as we tackled her assignment together and I did my best to nudge her along, I realized something that hadn't quite clicked before.

Every sentence is a choose-your-own-adventure type pivot point.

Each sentence builds on the one that came before it. Presenting her with choices at each sentence when she didn't know what to say next helped her to avoid getting stuck in the dreaded writer's block.
In practical terms, our discussion went something like this:
Me: Okay, you have a mob of angry villagers approaching the main character and her giant, hungry cat. Does she hear or see them first?
Her: Hear them.
Me: Okay, what do they sound like?
Her: Describes it.
Me: Okay, so does she see them next or run away?
Her: She sees them.
Me: What do they look like?
Her: Angry mob with pitchforks! Standard stuff.
Me: Got it. So how does the main character react? Does she say anything, do anything, feel anything? What is the giant cat who's the cause of all the fuss doing?

Hopefully you get the idea. By using this technique of approaching every sentence as a potential fork in the road, we were able to keep her from getting stuck in any one spot, and actually wrote a first draft that was twice as long as it needed to be. (Oops. But that's what editing is for!)
So next time you feel a bout of writer's block coming on, or you just aren't sure where the scene you're working on is going, try the choose-your-own-adventure approach at the sentence level. You might be surprised at how well it works!

Chances are, if you participate in any online writing communities, you've probably seen NaNoWriMo mentioned a lot this week. NaNoWriMo is a writing challenge that happens every November, with an alternate version in April where you can set your own challenge. For NaNo, participants aim to write 50,000 words of a new story over the course of a month. You can outline and prepare as much as you like beforehand, but no writing until November 1st. If you're shooting for 50,000 words in 30 days, that's an average of 1,667 words per day.

Not everyone does NaNo, and not all participants finish. And that's okay. There are writing tools offered as prizes for the winners, and stat-trackers and writing help groups to keep you on track. The "Adopt a plot-bunny" forum is always one of my favorites, personally. I've participated several times; sometimes I "win," and sometimes I don't.

Here's the key thing to remember: You win at NaNoWriMo when you get words on paper. Any words at all.
It doesn't have to be 50k. It doesn't have to be a thousand. The point of NaNo is to encourage people to write. The theory is that if you sit down to write, and let yourself go, and forget about editing, you help yourself develop routines and strengthen your creative writing muscles. Too often writers get bogged down in trying to edit sentences as they go, striving for perfection in early drafts. This isn't realistic, and inhibits your progress. It's a lot easier to trim and shape and polish a manuscript once you have a completed draft to work from. And editing as you go tends to be discouraging; it's a process that has killed many stories over the years.
Some years NaNoWriMo may work for your schedule, and sometimes it doesn't. This year I'm in an editing phase, so I'm not doing the official challenge. Instead, I'm committing to editing a manuscript in one month. You can do your own version, with whatever goal is realistic for you, any time you want.
The goal is to set aside time for your writing, whatever stage you may be at. The world needs more stories, including yours.