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There are different levels of editing which are lumped together under the same term, which might be what's confusing you. "Syntax glitches and spelling" is line editing, aka proofreading, sometime...
It's an unsubtle cheat. (That doesn't necessarily mean it's not good. Bear with me.) The author wants to get across that Really Important Things are Happening. He wants to hook you with the begin...
Be clear. Write simply and plainly. Define your jargon and your acronyms, even if you think everyone knows them already, and use jargon as sparingly as you can. Imagine handing your document to so...
From "Gone With the Wind": Melanie: That's not fair. The men naturally flock to her. Scarlett's just high spirited and vivacious. Sue Ellen: Men may flirt with a girl like that but they don't mar...
How big is this stove? I'm not asking idly. "Engulfed" means (as noted by others) "completely surrounded." If a fire engulfs someone, he is surrounded, head to foot, in flames. How can he be yell...
Finish them anyway. You get good by writing; plotting alone isn't enough. And yeah, your first novel or two will probably be unpublishable. That's fine - those will be your practice novels. If you...
If you feel like the section needs an introduction, go ahead and put a little text there. If the heading is comprehensible on its own, then don't bother. Example: 1.1 has introductory text; 1.2 do...
You're trying too hard. Put the structure of your novel together. Don't worry if it's been done. It's all been done. There are something like forty plots in all human literature. Trust me, whateve...
Your writing style is stream-of-consciousness, which can be hard to digest. (On the internet this is labeled "tl;dr" for "too long; didn't read.") I strongly suggest breaking this into several para...
Because a poem is more compact than prose, indentation (and line breaks, spacing, leading, and anything else you can think of) can add additional meaning to the poem. So unlike prose, go ahead and ...
4AM at a psychiatric clinic packs a fair punch as an opening. Nothing interesting should be happening there and then, but if something did, it would probably be awfully interesting! The improbable...
While it's difficult to say without seeing the writing in question (and the editor's comments), I've tried to answer this in a general sense, assuming the editor in question is reasonable and can b...
I had terrible tendonitis in both arms for a while, and I had to get a mega-customizable ergo keyboard. http://www.comfortkeyboard.com/ They are not cheap, but I didn't have to get CTS surgery e...
I'm just rewriting. You need more narration and action tags: She stood in front of his desk for a full minute before he noticed her. When he looked up at last, his only greeting was a raised eyebr...
Try tackling some appropriate pages from TV Tropes, and just branching out from there. That should give you about a gazillion times more examples than you'll know what to do with. :P
It's not strange at all. That's exactly how I would do it. A flashback of two paragraphs can take past perfect. A flashback of several pages can be in the simple past as long as you establish the t...
I really like The Writer's Journey. It's very accessible and clearly written.
You have several choices, and which one you use depends on the length of the document to be written, the subject matter, and your personal preferences. All sections here are examples of the techniq...
Do you have the option of turning the signature block off on an individual email? that would solve the redundancy problem. You can also style your sig block so that it's obviously autogenerated (d...
I think it's a good idea, if for no other reason than people are accustomed to searching online, and you want to make it easy for people to find your work so they can buy it. A WordPress site woul...
Ninety-five percent of the time, what you don't see is scarier than what you do see. Think about The Blair Witch Project, even though it's a movie. You never see the villain. That ending STILL giv...
Grok existed in 1700 AD? Ngrams: 1700-1780 1950-2008
If you set any part of your story in a place and time which your readers will recognize, that part will eventually be dated. That's simply fact. Look at The Invisible Man or The Time Machine or The...
Read through your draft. If anything catches your eye, fix it or flag it for fixing later. Fix whatever you can. Then hand it off to a beta reader. Let someone else mark it up for problems. I fin...
Dialogue is not realistic. Human being speak very tediously and brokenly. What makes dialogue authentic is not the vocabulary or diction but the motivation. What does this person say, based on who ...
