Strengthen your Writing!
You can analyze what works and why it is working while reading. These bookmarks will help you keep an eye out for certain writing elements. Our general editing bookmark will remind you to look at the most common writing tips and the more specific ones will narrow your focus.
General Editing Tips
Our base bookmark that covers all the important things to think about while reading.
Remind yourself about:
- Goal, Motivation, and Conflict (GMC)
- Action and reaction
- Voice
- Conflict
- And more!
Story Structure
Story structure is the basis of all storytelling. Having a base understanding of structure is important in telling any story (especially if you plan to break any rules). This story structure bookmark is here to help you think about the pacing and forward momentum of the story while you're reading.
What forms the foundation of your current read?
Emotional Wounds
Creating compelling and relatable characters are all about their emotional wounds. Important characters should have emotional wounds and writers should poke at those wounds.
How do those wounds influence a story and how does a story force your character to change? All characters have a lie that they tell themselves that stops them from achieving their goals. What is their lie and how do they interact with it?
What emotional wound does a character have and how does the book confront it?
Worldbuilding
All books need worldbuilding, no matter the genre!
Our worldbuilding bookmark will help you think about worldbuilding and setting in different ways. It will help you see the interplay between characters and the world and how that will change and expand the story.
Why does this book need to take place here?
Emotion
Emotion needs to be layered in through revisions. What you're feeling, what the character is feeling, and how that influences the story are all very important.
How can you use word choices to reflect emotion?
Learn more about our editors
“I can’t rave about Carly enough! She performed a quick, yet thorough, read-through of my novel and created six pages of talking points. Then we skyped so I fully understood her points and recommendations. Together, we crafted a battle strategy for revisions—it was so efficient that the actual edits only took a week! And looking at the old draft versus the new one… wow. Her edits added a whole new dimension to my story, without sacrificing my original vision for the novel. If you’re hesitating on purchasing her work, don’t! After three years of querying, it took my newly revised manuscript just three months to find a home with a literary agent. That’s all thanks to Carly!"
-Rebecca Thorne, author of This Gilded Abyss and Can't Spell Treason Without Tea
