Fiction Craft Blog

In late 2025, I had my first experience of a bad copyedit (in a technical sense) from a literary magazine. It's unfair to expect all literary magazines (often passion projects with multiple volunteer editors) to keep to the high standards of traditional publishing, but they should stick to the basic editorial principle of "Do No Harm." Besides doing no harm, it's important that literary magazines approach editing as a dialogue or conversation—I asked around and heard that som

It's very common for newer fantasy writers to focus heavily on worldbuilding and much less on developing their characters. After all, worldbuilding is the main draw of fantasy and speculative fiction more widely, and novels in all genres have characters. Older fantasy novels often had quite flat, undeveloped characters. The current Anglo-American market for fantasy fiction has moved on, though. The popularity of Romantasy links to the increased importance of strong emotional

This blog post describes developmental editing services and how they are different from manuscript critiques. The second half covers examples of developmental editing comments an author might expect on their manuscript, with a commentary explaining their purpose. Developmental editing is all about feedback on a complete book manuscript draft to improve it. The first step is usually a manuscript critique, which consists of a first reading of the manuscript, with the editor tak

This blog post describes what a manuscript critique, as a paid developmental editing service , involves. It covers whether authors can really benefit from them, and what kind of specific story advice they might receive. A manuscript critique is a paid service where authors hire a developmental editor to write a critique / assessment / evaluation of their manuscript. The word critique implies that they will tear it to shreds, but this is not a grad school critique. Instead, th

This blog post discusses how social media might be damaging for your business and your well-being, and why the mood has changed so much in 2025. If you're considering leaving social media, read on! Just after the pandemic started, it felt like the world was moving online, and social media was a big part of that. Back in 2020, my business was fairly new, and I was excited to learn how to use all the different social media channels. So I joined the Chartered Institute of Editin

This blog post is packed with tips on how to to navigate the literary magazine space from an editor who writes speculative fiction and translates literary fiction. Literary magazines and overwhelm for new writers When I first became serious about writing fiction, around five years ago, I took some solid advice and used short stories as a canvas to learn fiction writing craft. A novel is a massive investment of time and energy. If you like writing short stories, I heard, why

This blog post is about common story structures used in fantasy fiction, including Save the Cat, the hero’s journey, and the heroine’s journey. Authors don't need to follow these structures, but they have played an important role in the history of the genre, so being familiar with them helps authors make informed choices about story structure in their own writing. The big issue with story structure in fantasy fiction (and beyond) is that there's lots of competing advice out t

Third person point of view is a tricky thing to get right. At one end of the scale, you have third person omniscient, with a narrator external to the story world who can access characters' thoughts and feelings at leisure. At the other end – and the most popular choice in Anglo-American commercial fiction at present – is close third, told from within the body of a character who narrates the events. This point of view is very direct and immersive, similar to first person. And

From time to time, I receive enquiries from authors who have written a really long novel. I consider really long to be anything over 130K words. So what is the ideal fantasy novel length if you are a debut author wanting to find an agent or self-publish? For established authors with a large audience, that can be fine. But for new authors looking to find an agent or self-publish, a very long novel comes with several problems attached: It will almost certainly receive an automa

Looking to hire a book editor? You can work with one directly or you can use a platform such as Upwork, Fiverr, or Reedsy. Reedsy is the platform most strongly associated with the publishing industry so I’ll offer some tips on the pros and cons of using Reedsy versus hiring an editor directly here: What is Reedsy? Reedsy is a platform that connects writers seeking editorial services with book editors and other publishing professionals (translators, book formatters, etc.). The

This blog post covers: The advantages and disadvantages of using a first-person point of view The two main types of first-person point of view – embedded and retrospective Common problems and how to fix them The use of first-person point of view in ethnography First-person points of view have become increasingly popular in various fiction genres over the past few decades. The reason for this is that they are often highly immersive, and there has been increased appetite for im

Long before G.R.R. Martin’s take on dragons fanned the flames of controversy (Are they wyverns? Are they dragons? Do we need to know?),...

Many authors find fight scenes notoriously difficult to write. Maybe you just skipped the fight scene chapter until last? Or maybe you haven’t even written it yet? Sound familiar? If so – and you’ve written a science fiction or fantasy novel – then this blog post is for you. So why are fight scenes tricky to write? Well, they’re usually high stakes and the outcome is crucial to the plot. In a fight scene, every sentence counts, and most authors don’t have lots of personal fig

What if immersive virtual reality technologies existed and were really really good? Better than the real world, in fact? Ernest Cline's novel – awesome and icky in equal measure – explores a future world with dystopic elements, in which teams are hunting for easter eggs that Halliday, the inventor of this VR world, has embedded in the code. The story is told through the eyes of Wade Watts (online avatar: Parzival) – an orphaned teenager living in the ‘stacks’ in Ohio, the mid

When telling a story or writing a factual narrative in English, you have two main tenses you can use: present tense and past tense. Here are two examples: I walk to the castle and speak to the dragons I walked to the castle and spoke to the dragons In English, past tense is standard for fiction . This means its use is not stylistically marked. Writers have another option, too – the present tense . The tense used affects the reader experience: here's how. Use of the past tense

Editors charge a wide range of rates for editing. The industry is unregulated, so in principle, anyone can claim to offer these services. This means you have to choose an editor carefully if quality is important to you. So how much does quality editing cost? In this blog post, I'll share figures in UK currency, but the vast majority of editors (myself included) work for clients all over North America as well, so the market is roughly the same. Trained proofreaders and editors

Blake Snyder’s book Save the Cat! offers a blueprint for screenwriters on how to draft a successful film script. The book draws on his experience as a Hollywood screenwriter and outlines a beat sheet that describes the different points and pacing in many winning films. Somewhat later, Jessica Brody transformed the insights into a craft book for novel writing called Save the Cat! Writes a Novel . Her book includes a similar beat sheet, and she also categorises novels based on

I recently worked with a French author who used the title “Ser” to roughly mean “Sir” in their fantasy novel. This opened up gender and Game of Thrones-shaped cans of worms. First up, the basic answer to the question is that you can use whatever honorifics you like, as long as you make it clear what they mean to the reader (e.g. through how you use them, or how you define them). Now, in English-language fantasy, G.R.R. Martin famously used Ser as an honorific, probably to sou

The short answer is "it depends". The tl;dr is: no copyediting is needed, but you may require professional content feedback and/or stylistic editing if you want to put your best foot forward. And the longer answer: This is a frequent source of confusion among new authors. To answer it, let's go over what will happen if you do find a literary agent and publisher. What editorial support will the publisher offer? First up, if it's published traditionally, the publisher will take

This trope often appears in film, and in popular culture and novels too. It features a woman who has typically experienced some kind of trauma, is quirky with a different appearance (e.g. colored hair) to “normal” women, and who jolts a male protagonist into recognising a deeper life purpose. The character often later needs "rescuing" and the male protag plays a heroic role in doing so. This character is rooted in misogynistic representations of women. The trope is comparable