The Writership Podcast Editing Tips For Fiction Authors

In this episode, editor Leslie Watts takes a small detour from the usual format to discuss World Building, the way you craft the domain your characters inhabit. She offers several exercises to help improve your story by strengthening your world.

The Writership Podcast is designed to help you develop self-editing skills and write a better story. In a typical episode, Leslie critiques a fiction submission from a real writer who is, or hopes to be, a published author. They understand they may need help seeing what's working and not in their stories and are brave enough to share the experience. Each episode comes with an editorial mission to apply the topic discussed so you can improve your writing too.

Click here for the full show notes.

In this episode, Leslie and Alyssa critique the opening pages of a steampunk novel in progress. They discuss what was working for the story, how to improve the opening paragraphs, tension, and open-ended questions. They go on to talk about getting past the police description, diction, and identifying echoes.

In this episode, Leslie and Clark critique “Doing the Work,” an as yet unpublished contemporary short story by Julie Prudhome. They discuss stories that tackle social issues and ways to use them powerfully, brand names, and questions we explore in our writing. Trigger warning: This submission contains a discussion of child abuse and exploitation.

In this episode, fiction editors Leslie and Clark discuss point of view (POV) in their critique of “The Second Prayer: A Confession for the Dead,” a thriller short story by David L. Storm. The POV is the filter through which the reader experiences your story: Each option has advantages and disadvantages and can produce vastly different results. In this week’s editorial mission, Leslie and Clark share a list of questions to ask when you choose the POV for your first draft and later when you revise your draft. Check out the show notes at Writership.org/episodes for the complete story and written critique.

Alyssa & Leslie critique the opening of Lincoln Cole’s Raven’s Peak, and discuss tone, using secondary character reactions to develop your reader’s understanding of the protagonist, restraint in delivery, and a few finer points of comma & colon usage.