You’d never submit a query with a typo. Your plot moves, your characters are well-rounded, and your grammar is impeccable. But your manuscript still gets rejected. So what gives?
You may be suffering from what Don McNair calls “foggy writing” – writing that’s chock full of unnecessary words or filters.
“The more words you eliminate without changing your meaning and sacrificing detail, the clearer and more powerful your writing will be,” McNair writes.
Editor-Proof Your Writing aims to shine a highbeam on these “foggy writing mistakes,” with 21 steps to clean up any manuscript. Each chapter ends with set of exercises and a section from a fictitious manuscript for readers to edit and practice what they’ve learned.
The book also contains a section on crucial writing lessons (such as POV, effective scene-writing, and avoiding author intrusion) and a final section on how to publish the reader’s resulting manuscript.
The Midwest Book Review says McNair’s book “provides a foolproof method for identifying common misused and overused words and errors.”
Not convinced? Read our excerpt of McNair’s book here.
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