Writing Tips

How to Pick the Right Title for Your Book

How to Pick the Right Title for Your Book

The moment has finally arrived: you’ve finished writing the book you’ve dreamed of and labored over devotedly. Now the time has come to brand it with a title and send it out into the world. But what will you call it? How can just a few words embody everything about your glorious book? Fear not, […]

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Why Social Media Posts Do Not Make A Book

Filed in Ask the Editor, Writing Tips by on March 29, 2017 0 Comments
Why Social Media Posts Do Not Make A Book

Since I began working at Xulon almost three years ago, I’ve noticed trends come and go from the hundreds–wait, probably thousands by now–of manuscripts I’ve read, reviewed, critiqued, and edited. Recently, one of the trends I’ve noticed is authors turning their social media posts into books. Allow me to explain. There are so many social […]

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Grammatical Gray Areas: Subject-Complement Agreement

Filed in Ask the Editor, Writing Tips by on March 22, 2017 0 Comments
Grammatical Gray Areas: Subject-Complement Agreement

Celebrating National Grammar Day and National Proofreading Day March is a month that calls for grammar nerds—like us—to celebrate. After all, March 4 is National Grammar Day, and March 8 is National Proofreading Day. On days like these, authors, editors, and proofreaders finally get the respect we deserve! (Oddly enough, I’m still waiting for my […]

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Writing Strong Female Characters

Filed in Ask the Editor, Writing Tips by on March 20, 2017 0 Comments
Writing Strong Female Characters

In an age of Women’s Marches and calls for equal pay for women, the question of femininity and what makes a strong woman is in the spotlight. Art reflects life, and the presence of strong female characters in fiction is in high demand, as girls and women alike look for characters to read about and emulate, […]

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Creating Steady Flow in Dialogue

Filed in Ask the Editor, Writing Tips by on March 9, 2017 0 Comments
Creating Steady Flow in Dialogue

People like to talk, and if you listen to some everyday conversations you will hear some common patterns: lots of “like” and “um”, pointless repetition, interjections of completely unrelated topics, and unfinished or incomplete sentences. This is all fine in real life but would never work in your writing—and this is the core of why […]

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