Sunday, June 26, 2016

10 books that shaped the world



Long before there were books people sat around a fire and told stories. In some cultures story-telling is still very popular. Then there were cave paintings, papyrus scrolls and eventually books.

The “most influential top ten” list varies from list to list, but the Literacy Site has published its list of the ten they consider had most influence on today’s western world.

Several of them are easy to guess, others not so much.
Enjoy.

http://blog.theliteracysite.com/cs-lifealtering-books/

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Sunday, June 19, 2016

Planning a sequel



There has been a rash of serialized stories being published. The idea is take a “book”, make sure each chapter or “chunk” ends on a good hook, and then sell each chapter, or chunk as a separate mini-book.

This works fine as long as readers are invested in the full “story” and don’t get tired of paying by chapter (which usually costs more than buying the total book would cost) or stop caring about the final resolution of the entire story.

Each book (or mini-book) in a series must advance the story arc of the entire venture. Readers have to want to read more, to get to the final resolution.

A genuine series might have a different main character, or a different hero and heroine in each book, but each stand-alone story will lead the reader closer to the endpoint of the entire story arc. It’s this overall umbrella story that needs to draw in the reader so they stay buying and reading until the final episode.

Within each episode something must have happened. The characters must have grown, developed, learned something, solved some problem. With a regular book simply sliced into pieces, often this doesn’t happen. The “hook” at the end is artificial, placed there for the sole purpose of making sales, rather than advancing the characters’ journey.

If you are planning a series, ensure each volume tells a story, and that readers will want to follow the longer, higher story arc to the rest of the books.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Sunday, June 12, 2016

Acronyms that became words



Some of these are obvious but others are really surprising. A few of them impressed me a lot. I would never have guessed they began life as an acronym.

Visit brain jet and see nine common words you never knew were actually Acronyms/Initialisms.

http://www.brainjet.com/x/tgg/random/1257/9-common-words-you-never-knew-were-actually-acronyms-initialisms/#page=1


Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.


Sunday, June 5, 2016

Oops: Just Made a Six-Figure Mistake


Well-known publishers Time Inc. had the clever idea of creating a new site to attract young women. As such companies do, they spent a lot of money and effort selecting and planning the stories they would publish, setting up the website and so on.

Then they spent a six-figure sum buying a full-age advertisement for their new site in the Wall Street Journal.

This is the ad they published. It appears they forgot to hire a copy editor to check it before it went to press.
Oops.



Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.