Because Lucia edits mainly romance and women's fiction, some of her points are specific to those genres, but there's a lot of universal truth to what she has to say. Here's my favorite:
Stop overthinking! Because here is what I’m not thinking about: your formatting (just double space and have page numbers and we’re good to go); shifting pov (if it’s jarring, it’s wrong; if it’s not jarring, I don’t care); your font (just don’t use this); the number of times your characters have sexytimes (make it right for the plot); the ‘dark moment’ (I don’t even know what that means); what your betareader (don’t know what that means either) says.
Notice that these are not really "pet peeves" at all; they're suggestions for how you as the writer can find more success.
Which of these do you need to paste to your computer monitor?
2 comments:
Don't worry so much about pov?! What a relief! Someone in my critique group started pounding me about deep pov stuff and I got really worried because I am not a pov scholar. But I think I can handle it now. Thanks!
I am such an over-thinker. But I think it goes with the territory, you know? I mean, the very first time I sat down to write a book-length piece, I probably was not an over-thinker. It was fun, there were no "rules", nothing really to think about. Now that I know the "rules" and conventions and there are parameters I feel like I need to stay within...I'm constantly second guessing myself. I'm fighting REALLY HARD to convince myself that it's okay to move outside of the parameters. Which is probably why it only took me a month or so to write my first book. But every one after that has taken MUCH longer. So yeah...overthinking...I haz it.
Post a Comment