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Polishing Your Prose: Tips on Grammar, Article & Story Structure, and Self-Editing

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Building Your Best Piece
Facing the First Draft - Moira Allen
Five Fatal Flaws that Can Lead to Rejection - Moira Allen
How to Craft a Great Article, Part I: Structure, Focus, Unity and Flow - Dawn Copeman
How to Craft a Great Article, Part II: Hooks, Leads, and Endings - Dawn Copeman
How to "Show Don't Tell" - Dawn Copeman
Rules vs. Tools - Moira Allen
When "First Person" Is the Last Person You Need - Moira Allen
Writing for (Not by) the Ear - Donnell King
Writing for the General Public: It's Not as Easy as it Sounds - Mary J. Breen

Outlines
The Outline Demystified - Moira Allen
To Outline or Not to Outline - Tim Hallinan
Five Tips to Writing Great Subheads - Kristina Springer
Why Do I Need an Outline? - Cheryl Sloan Wray
Your Story Outline: What It's All About - Rekha Ambardar

Choosing Great Titles
Choosing the Right Name for Your Story - John Floyd
Titles for Your Texts
Titles Sell Books! - Judy Cullins
What Every Writer Needs to Know About Article Titles - Julie K. Cohen

Grammar Tips & Pitfalls
Avoiding Comma Confusion - Moira Allen
Connect with Conjunctions - Victoria Grossack
Grammar Gaffes and How to Avoid Them - Marg Gilks
Grammar Griping - Victoria Grossack
Grammar Groping - Victoria Grossack
Grammar Matters! - Moira Allen
Handling Gerunds and Their Relatives - Dawn Copeman
Kill the Adverbs! - Kathleen Ewing
Mixing and Matching Metaphors - Victoria Grossack
My Sister, Eileen... or My Sister Eileen? Understanding the Apposite Phrase - Moira Allen
Parsing Paragraphs - Victoria Grossack
Pondering Personal Pronouns - Victoria Grossack
Punctuating Dialogue - Marg Gilks
Tense Matters: Verbs in the Past, Present, and Future - Victoria Grossack
HUMOR: How to Write Really Bad Fiction and Enjoy the Benefits of Rapid Rejection - Hank Quense

Cutting Unnecessary Words
Counting the Words - Victoria Grossack
Fewer Words Mean Bigger Bucks - Shaunna Privratsky
Less is More: 15 Quick, Clever and Clean Tricks to Reduce Manuscript Word Count - Devyani Borade
Sensible, Sensitive Sentences - Victoria Grossack
Targeting Enemy Words - Sandra Miller

The Final Polish: Self-Editing and Proofreading
The ABCs of Writing for Kids: Active, Brief, and Cut Cut Cut - Eugie Foster
Becoming Your Own Editor - Moira Allen
Death by Revision - Kristin Camiolo
Editing [Fiction] for Consistency - Victoria Grossack
Editing Secrets to Make Your [Children's Writing] Shine - Laura Backes
Grammar Matters! - Moira Allen (editorial)
What a Good Editor Can Do For You - Patricia Fry
Why You Can't Rely on Your Spellchecker - Jan K. the Proofer

For more information, check our links to:
Dictionaries and Glossaries · Grammar Resources


Recommended Reading

(Yep, these are affiliate links - use them to help support Writing-World.com! As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.)


The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

The Elephants of Style: A Trunkload of Tips on the Big Issues and Gray Areas of Contemporary American English

It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences: A Writer's Guide to Crafting Killer Sentences

Manuscript Makeover

The New Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed

On Writing Well

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers

Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose

Woe is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English

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Becoming a successful writer isn't just about mastering great writing skills. It's also about overcoming the challenges and obstacles of the writing life: Rejection, fear of failure, lack of time, writer's block, the "Am I Really a Writer?" syndrome, and, of course, friends and family who just don't get it.

Fortunately, you're not alone. We've all been there. So here's a handy "survival guide" that will bring you inspiration, motivation, support and good old-fashioned advice to help you through the tough times. Don't let those writing gremlins keep you from achieving your dreams!

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