About Editing

Hello, may I present…

Introducing a character to the reader is a bit like introducing that special someone to your parents. The temptation is to tell everything you know about them so the reader will love them as much as you do.  The problem is that page and the extolling of the character’s looks,

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Testimonial from Rebekah Lee Jenkins

I hired Alex for my second book, Hope in Oakland, because his work is meticulous. If you are looking for a fantastic content editor, you found him and you should hire him immediately. I learned early that your book is not your baby, it is your business. That means you

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Styles and Formatting

Book Template The link above will download an updated .docx file with paragraph styles I use most often defined. I’ve set them now so the proper style follows automatically so you don’t need to remember to change them. The advantage is you don’t have to wade through the dozens on

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Testimonial from Laurence O’Brien

“I definitely recommend Alex’s editing service. I have had three books published by Harper Collins around the world and Alex’s service is equal to the structural edits I have received from them. Do not release a book without a structural edit of the type Alex provides. You need Alex McGilvery

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Tense Situations – Past, Present or Future?

  We don’t pay a lot of attention to tense when we talk. It feels natural and easy to slot our words into past, present or future. In writing it can be more complicated. If we are writing in past tense, the past is our ‘present’ in the story. To

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When to Deep Six that story.

Writing may be a hobby, but if you’re publishing your books or stories, you have a responsibility to produce a quality story. I’ve got lots of articles on how to do that. What I want to address today is what to do when a story is awful. I’m not talking

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Preparing your manuscript for editing

Preparing your Manuscript for Editing Workshop This the outline I used for a workshop to help prepare writers to make the most effective use out of an editorl What is editing? Content/Structural Editing Foundational issues: Plot, character, tone, structure, world building Copy/Line Editing Prose, sentences, paragraphs, pacing. Word use and

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Pain and Writing

Over the years I’ve dealt with being fired, poor, homeless, not to mention  time as a single parent after my wife’s accident left her unable to parent for the better part of a year. There’ve been some real highlights too, the resurrection of our marriage, the continuing joy of being

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A Guide to Head Hopping: Person and Point of View

The person that you write your story in will have a big effect on your Point of View. Person is whether you tell the story as if it were happening to you – I pulled up my gun and yelled “This is a stick up!” The advantage of first person is the

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