Denise and Louise discuss the grammar police, how to manage them, and why they're nothing to do with professional editing.

• Who are the grammar police?
• Social media and the grammar police
• Pedantry versus professional editing for style, preference and flow
• Writing style: Business, academia, web copy, creative non-fiction, fiction
• Conventions and standards versus rules and errors
• How and when to tell a writer about an error
• Dealing with the grammar police

• Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation by Jane Straus
• TextExpander

The easiest way to ping us a question is via Facebook Messenger: Visit the podcast's Facebook page and click on the SEND MESSAGE button.

• Denise Cowle Editorial Services
• Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor

‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

Denise and Louise talk with guest Sea Chapman about constructed languages, or conlangs.

• What is a constructed language, or conlang?
• The different types of conlang
• Tips for writers who want to include conlangs in fiction
• The rules of play
• Base languages sometimes and conlang creation

• Email Sea Chapman ([email protected]) for handouts from her ACES 2018 presentation, ‘Conlangs: Languages with Stories to Tell’ or to request additional resources
• Language Creation Society
• Conlangs on Reddit
• Constructed Languages on Facebook
• ConWorkShop forum
• Conlangery podcast
• Iain Banks talks writing, world events and Mastermind (video)
• ‘A few notes on Marain by Iain M. Banks’
• Fabulosa!: The Story of Polari, Britain's Secret Gay Language
• ‘What’s Polari?’

The easiest way to ping us a question is via Facebook Messenger: Visit the podcast's Facebook page and click on the SEND MESSAGE button.

• Denise Cowle Editorial Services
• Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor

‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

Denise and Louise discuss em dashes, or em rules, and how to use them in fiction and non-fiction writing.

• Parenthetical use
• Indicating a new speaker
• Indicating omission
• Profanity
• Showing faltering speech
• Conveying end-of-line interruptions

• The Magic of Fiction, Beth Hill
• ‘Start here: How to self-publish your book’, Jane Friedman

The easiest way to ping us a question is via Facebook Messenger: Visit the podcast's Facebook page and click on the SEND MESSAGE button.

• Denise Cowle Editorial Services
• Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor

‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

Denise and Louise explain what a comma splice is, why you should usually avoid it, and how it can add clarity.

• What a comma splice is
• Commas, lists and why splices confuse readers
• When editing out comma splices would spoil rhythm
• Anaphora

• The Emotional Craft of Fiction, Donald Maass
• The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, 3rd ed., David Crystal

The easiest way to ping us a question is via Facebook Messenger: Visit the podcast's Facebook page and click on the SEND MESSAGE button.

• Denise Cowle Editorial Services
• Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor

‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

Denise and Louise discuss en dashes, or en rules, and how to use them in fiction and non-fiction writing.

• Parenthetical use
• Indicating number spans
• Placement in dialogue interrupted by narrative description
• Linking in adjectival compounds
• Showing faltering speech
• Indicating a relationship/alternative
• Profanity

• Masterclass
• The Conscious Style Guide

The easiest way to ping us a question is via Facebook Messenger: Visit the podcast's Facebook page and click on the SEND MESSAGE button.

• Denise Cowle Editorial Services
• Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor

‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

Denise and Louise chat with editor Sophie Playle about developmental editing and critiques for fiction authors.

• An overview of what developmental editing includes
• Critiques as big-picture evaluation
• Who benefits from developmental editing and critiques
• Where developmental editing and critiques fit into the editing process
• Whether an author needs to hire a specialist editor for developmental editing
• Writing coaching versus developmental editing
• The difference between story and plot
• Story structure – planning versus revision
• Story structure – conscious deviation from traditional three-act structure
• Story structure – momentum
• Narrative style
• Subplots – when they work and
• How theme can hold a story together

• Sophie Playle, Liminal Pages
• Sophie’s editing courses
• Email: [email protected]
• Twitter: @sophieplayle
• Facebook: facebook.com/liminalpages
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sophieplayle

• ‘How to Write a Query Letter – Everything You Need to Know’, Sophie Playle
• ‘How to Write a Synopsis – Everything You Need to Know’, Sophie Playle
• Write a Great Synopsis: Nicola Morgan
• Developmental Editing: A Handbook for Freelancers, Authors and Publishers: Scott Norton
• Poetics, Aristotle
• Masterclass: David Mamet Teaches Dramatic Writing

The easiest way to ping us a question is via Facebook Messenger: Visit the podcast's Facebook page and click on the SEND MESSAGE button.

• Denise Cowle Editorial Services
• Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor

‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

Denise and Louise demystify (and stand up for) one of the most misunderstood pieces of punctuation – the semi-colon.

• What the semi-colon looks like
• Separating two independent clauses
• Subjects and predicates
• Weighting and parallelism
• Comma splices
• Separating items in a list
• Emojis
• Objections to the semi-colon

• National Centre for Writing’s podcast
• Semicolon: How a misunderstood punctuation mark can improve your writing, enrich your reading and even change your life, by Cecilia Watson

The easiest way to ping us a question is via Facebook Messenger: Visit the podcast's Facebook page and click on the SEND MESSAGE button.

• Denise Cowle Editorial Services
• Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor

‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

Denise and Louise chat with guest Tim Storm about the concept of unearned writing, and how to craft prose that's authentic and plausible.

• The writer’s responsibility to the reader and the story
• Story events and character reactions in relation to plausibility and authenticity
• Salvation events
• Unnatural character realizations
• Contrived plot turns
• Thematic insertions or digressions
• Turning unearned writing into earned prose
• Idea flow in non-fiction

• Title Case Converter
• The Allusionist podcast
• Storm Writing School
• Free course from Tim: The Gold Standard Scene: Analyses of Near-Perfect Scenes in Prose Fiction
• Storm Writing School on Twitter
• Storm Writing School on Facebook
• Storm Writing School on Pinterest

The easiest way to ping us a question is via Facebook Messenger: Visit the podcast's Facebook page and click on the SEND MESSAGE button.

• Denise Cowle Editorial Services
• Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor

‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

Denise and Louise chat about 4 features of written language that are often thought to be Americanisms but aren’t. 

• -iz- spellings
• serial commas
• em dashes
• which/that in restrictive relative clauses

• Lexico/Oxford: ‘The Differences Between British and American Terms’
• Lynne Murphy on British and American English (video)
• Free PDF booklet: Verbs ending in -ize, -ise, -yze and -yse

The easiest way to ping us a question is via Facebook Messenger: Visit the podcast's Facebook page and click on the SEND MESSAGE button.

Denise Cowle Editorial Services

Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor

‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

Denise and Louise talk with linguist Rob Drummond about grammar pedantry, peevery, youth language, and non-standard language in context.

• Correct or conventional – a linguist’s perspective
• Better versus standard
• Zombie rules, and what we can ditch
• Youth language – dumbing down English or enriching it?
• Young people's language in relation to identity and language change
• Varieties of English in written communication: globalization, national and cultural identities
• The internet’s impact on pedantry and peevery
• The relationship between knowledge and pedantry
• The difference between preferences and judgements
• Recognizing our own pedantry and respecting contextually appropriate style
• Stepping outside our linguistic comfort zones

• Radical Copyeditor blog
• 'The Business of Being a Writer, with Jane Friedman’
• Rob Drummond Linguistics
• TED Talk: John McWhorter: Txtng is killing language. JK!!!
• Rob's graph: Linguistic knowledge versus linguistic pedantry

The easiest way to ping us a question is via Facebook Messenger: Visit the podcast's Facebook page and click on the SEND MESSAGE button.

• Denise Cowle Editorial Services
• Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor

‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.