ANNOUNCEMENT: This Developmental Editor Has Moved to a New Website!

Hello everyone!

I’ve been working on a new website, and now that it’s finished, I’m excited to share it with you. I feel like I’ve cleaned and primped it like a new home and I’m ready to welcome you there.

You’ll find more information about the developmental editing process, an easy view of my services, and more about me (and even the answer to that long mystery of “What the heck is an Apoidea?”). I hope it will all be useful to you!

My website URL is still the same, but redirects you here:

www.apoideaeditorial.com

My blog is attached to the site where you can grab my RSS or add yourself to my mailing list to receive every new blog post here:

www.apoideaeditorial.com/blog

I know it’s not as simple as following through the WordPress reader, but it’s still convenient to stay in touch with the RSS function and mailing list option. I will continue blogging about all the good stuff pertaining to fiction writing, story development, and book editing.

I hope to see you there!

What is Developmental Editing? A Diagram Explains It

I’ve been playing in Prezi lately because I’ve wanted to create a simple and hopefully easy-to-understand presentation to explain what developmental editing is. What do you think?

A Side to Developmental Editing Writers May Not Know: Thinking About Your Story Subconsciously

I submerge myself in authors’ stories. And while I’m in those stories, I’m thinking about them a lot—whether I’m directly editing them or doing something else. Those stories are still moving around in my mind. It’s unlike any normal reading experience.

An Easy Way to Organize Your Scenes Without Scrolling Back and Forth in Your Manuscript

There’s nothing more overwhelming than sitting down to a messy draft and preparing yourself for revision. You know there are problems, you may even know what to fix, but then all that text seems like a storm of activity ready to confuse and drown you. Are you ready for an easy way to organize your scenes?

Story Openings: Should We Start With Showing or Telling?

How do we start a story that’s been consuming us for weeks, maybe even months? Do we begin describing some backstory to give readers immediate context or do we throw readers directly in the middle of an action-packed moment?

On Writing: Showing vs. Telling and Why Writers Need Both

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the mantra “show, don’t tell” and I always want to shake my fist and say “not always.”

365 Grateful and Finding Inspiration in Writing

Once a day you take a photo of something you’re grateful for and write about it. This is a daily mental exercise, a personal journey, that forces us to observe and appreciate what happens around us and to us.

Why Developmental Editors Give Superb Critiques

Critiques, also known as evaluations, are inherently part of a developmental editor’s work. We do them naturally as a way of organizing all the big pieces that hang together, deciding what a story needs, and drawing up an estimate.

Resources for Writers: Latest Round Up

Because publishing is evolving, it’s not always easy to find the person you need in the wild west of the Internet.

A Writer’s (and Editor’s) Tool: A Subconscious Mind

Stephen King had it right when he referred to “the boys in the basement” as a mode of creative process. The “boys” are the muse, the background noise of our consciousness, and a place where our imagination simmers.