Night's Middle

[azriona]

 So I signed up for one of those editing program things that you see online.  They've been on my mind recently; one of the Nano winner prizes was a discount and chance to win a free lifetime membership at a similar online program. I didn't win the lifetime membership, and the discount wasn't all that fantastic, but it made me wonder if those types

Comments

[belleweather]

I use something like that (different, but also free) for EER writing, because it helps me shorten what I'm saying. I think they work better for cold, non-fictiony prose than they do for like, actual writing. It seriously keeps me sane during EER season.

[azriona]

Oh, now I'm curious what you're using. Does it have a fiction setting? (I have to think this one does, if other fiction writers are using and loving it, and I probably just haven't toggled that button yet.)

[thistle_chaser]

I'm a technical writer/editor, so in the beginning of your post, my eyebrows were lifted high: An author had good results with an editing tool? How in the world could that be? By the end of your post, I was glad to see your results had confirmed what I had thought.

Word's editing tool sometimes gets things right, and I'd expect about those same results from other online editing tools.

Editing is one of the places in the writing process where I usually have a hard time finding help, and but it's also where I feel like I need the most help.

One of the most basic rules in the professional world is that no one can edit their own work. Even the best editor out there needs someone else to edit their work, so you're not alone. :)

[azriona]

One of the most basic rules in the professional world is that no one can edit their own work. Even the best editor out there needs someone else to edit their work

Which makes total sense. As authors, we're too close to our own work. We know what goes unsaid - and that's the problem, because there are things that shouldn't go unsaid, or the text ends up being unclear.

I mean... I'm pretty good at doing my own line edits and fixing misspellings and punctuation and most of the tense switches. I can spot run-ons and rewrite muddy sentences all day long. But as for whether or not I've explained what a character is thinking clearly enough that the reader gets it? Yeah. That tends to be beyond me - but that's also one of the most expensive levels of editing there is, and I really balk at paying several hundred dollars per book (even though I know the editor's time is worth that much - my books don't earn enough to make that expense reasonable).

[amberfocus]

I like Night's Middle. It definitely made me smile. What genre are you writing in now?

[azriona]

Romance - in which lots of things happen in Night's Middle. It's positively hoppin' at that hour.

[amberfocus]

Regular male/female romance? If so, I'd be happy to beta read for plot holes, inconsistencies, and confusing things.

[azriona]

Nope, I have fallen deep into the m/m hole and there I happily reside.

One of the books is m/f, but it's also omegaverse. I tend to write the weird stuff, it's a great deal of fun. :) But it's probably also what makes it hard to find human help, because between those two things, it's hard to find people willing to read it. (Even though there seems to be a HUGE community of readers who want it! I'm not even close to the only m/m o-verse writer on Amazon, it's not nearly as niche as you'd think.)