It’s amazing what a good editor can do to improve a manuscript, and every writer can benefit from an objective eye and a discerning red pencil. Sometimes it’s just a matter of a few changes that can make a good book better, and I discovered how valuable that can be when an editor, Paula Stallings-Yost, offered to look at the first few chapters of One Small Victory before I submitted it to a publisher. Paula and I are good friends, and we have periodically done some editing for each other, and that input from fresh eyes has been much appreciated. One of the things Paula pointed out to me was the importance of using a dramatic punch line. I knew about comedic punch lines and how the timing of delivery can make or break a joke, but I had never thought about dramatic punch lines until Paula pointed it out in a passage of my first chapter. Here is what I had originally written: Sometime soon she'd have to clean out the closet. Isn't that what usually happens? Tears burned her eye...