The Editing Podcast

Denise and Louise chat with book coach and editor Lisa Poisso about honing story craft before embarking on expensive structural and line editing.

• Story basics - the Plot Accelerator 
• Why developmental/structural editing comes after book coaching
• Genre, viewpoint, tense, character motivation and conflict, plot and subplot, and character arc
• Book mapping, and avoiding drinking and thinking!
• Super critiques on steroids: making a story solid
• The dynamics of book coaching
• Most common problems authors face
• Super-critiques

• Email: [email protected]
• Website
• Blog
• Newsletter: The Writes of Fiction
• Scene Accelerator coaching
• Get added to the Scene Accelerator coaching waitlist: [email protected]

• Moniack Mhor, Creative Writing Centre, Scotland
• Start writing fiction: Free Open University course

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.

Louise and Denise talk to technical writer and editor John Espirian about content marketing, editing and bringing a book to market.

• Content DNA - the book
• Developing the book's concept: The shape of you
• Writing the book
• Tackling the editing process
• Cover design and branding
• The benefits of a foreword
• Content marketing, and why it works
• Social media focus and email-list building
• Pricing, marketing and sales
• Creating an audio book
• Finding an audience to use as a springboard for business books
• Building a personal brand that acts as a buffer
• Targeting clients' problems and offering solutions
• What is technical writing?
• Who uses technical writers?

• Website
• Content DNA
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Blog

• AgentQuery.com
• The Tao of Twitter, by Mark Schaefer
• KNOWN, by Mark Schaefer
• Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP)
• Col Gray, graphic design and brand design: pixels ink; YouTube

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 how to use exclamation marks.

• What exclamation marks look like
• Functions: Surprise, emphasis, volume
• How many to use
• Social media use
• Reasons to omit them: web, business academic copy
• Balancing use and abuse

• How to Fix Your Damn Book, by James Osiris Baldwin, CreateSpace, 2016
• Purdue OWL https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/purdue_owl.html

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 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.