Editing
Editing

Improve Your Writing With AI Tools

Aspiring authors have a powerful new tool at their disposal: AI-powered writing tools. These aren’t just grammar checkers; they’re sophisticated assistants that can accelerate the improvement of your craft, helping you polish your manuscript and connect with readers faster than ever before. For self-published authors, time is precious. You’re juggling writing with marketing, cover design, research, ad campaigns, and everything else that goes into bringing a book to market. AI tools can streamline the editing process, allowing you to focus on the creative aspects of your story, but more important is how fast you can learn from the suggestions these...

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Ellis Prybylski Talks Editing

We had a great talk with our old friend Ellis Prybylski this week. Ellis has been a writer and editor for sixteen years, has written multiple books on the subject, and is the head of multiple industry associations. His insight into the world of editing and self-publishing is amazing and we’re lucky to have him as a member here on Written Well. You can find Ellis and most of his fiction work on Amazon at his author page. His books on writing and editing are How To Write The Damn Book and How To Publish The Damn Book Ellis is...

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How to Avoid Cliched Phrases

Cliches are sneaky little things. The commonness that makes them cliches also makes them hard to spot; we use them so often in our normal life, we write them without thinking. “It was raining cats and dogs.” “He was bored stiff.” “I’m down in the dumps.” They are all descriptive and everyone will know what you mean, but use them too often and readers will eventually be bored with your prose. I’d rather have someone hate my book than be bored by it. Here’s some simple methods to remove cliches from your writing. 1. Use strong words Cliche phrases are...

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Anthologies: How to Create, Edit, and Publish an Anthology

What is an Anthology? Classically, there are two specific definitions you need to know about short fiction. A Collection is a group of stories, all by the same author. An Anthology, conversely, is a group of stories by a variety of different authors. We’re here to talk about the latter. Generally, an anthology has a central theme, around which all the authors involved have written. It might be sword and sorcery fantasy. Or hard-boiled private detectives. Or military science fiction. (I’ve owned and read all of those at one time or another.) Alternatively, it might be part of a “Year’s...

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Services

We built Written Well to give self-published authors all the tools they need to make a living writing and publishing their own books. But many authors don’t want to be their own publisher, cover designer, blurb writer, formatter, and marketing expert. It can be a lot. Having so many authors asking us to help them publish their books was one of the reasons we started the site, and because we know many authors don’t want to do everything, we continue to offer those services. There is no guarantee of success with these services, and anyone who offers you a guarantee...

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Analyzing Story Beats

Whether it’s on your own stories or someone else’s, learning how to analyze the beats of a story can be an important tool in a writer’s toolbox. First of all, what do I mean by story beats? Story beats are not the plot. In fact, you can map out the beats of a story without talking about the plot at all. Story beats are shifts in tone, in action, in emotion. They are the highs and lows and the movement between those points that make a story enjoyable or tragic or comedic or whatever it is determined to be by...

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Editing your Own Work — The Little Stuff

When I say “little stuff,” I don’t mean it isn’t important. Just that it occupies a small space and requires small changes. I’ll talk about developmental editing and making big revisions in other articles. This one is for the little things that might knock a reader out of your story, things like typos, punctuation mistakes, repeated words, and other little gremlins that can pop up in a first draft. There is already an inherent bias from the public about self-published books. Your work needs to appear as professional as possible. That means it needs to be well edited and sharp,...

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