Editors play a balancing act between editorial style and an author's writing style. We want our clients to keep their voice, their story's voice throughout a work, and we have to make sure that we do that while also keeping the author's words consistent. We use many style books and guides, such as The Chicago Manual of Style  to help in this endeavor. Editorial style can also be about how an editor balances the relationships between editor-words-author. Knowing how an editor handles those relationships is important for writers who seek editors. In part four of our September series Inside the Editor’s Den , we ask BRP editors the following question: How would you define your editorial style? Shonell Bacon Website | FB | Tw Shonell Bacon - As a person who has always believed she was born to teach, I often treat editing as a space to provide teachable moments. Yes, I want to provide the client with a clean, well-developed story, but I also want to provide t...

Last time I spoke of character voices . This time, I'd like to look at your voice. After  a presentation I gave for a local book club, one member said she'd read one of my books. Her comment was, "You write the same way you talk." And, after I sent a chapter to my critique partners, one said, "This sounds very Terry." That, I think, sums up "voice." Any author starting out tries to write what she thinks a writer should sound like. She might work hard to make her characters sound unique, and true to their backgrounds, but all the other stuff—the narrative parts where the character isn't speaking—sounds stilted. It sounds "writerly."  But what the characters say isn't the same as "Voice." It's all the other words, the way the sentences are put together, how the paragraphs break. Can anyone confuse Suzanne Brockmann with Lee Child? Janet Evanovich with Michael Connelly? Even Nora Roberts has a distinctive ...

Come a new year, most writers begin to think of new projects and start to plot out their writing agenda for the new year. While you're figuring out what new projects you want to write, how about figuring out what new style or genre you want to write in? Writers should always be about stretching their literary wings and fine-tuning their writing craft, and they can do that by switching up what they've been doing and trying something new. If you've always written romance, why not add a mystery element to a story? If you spend your time writing dramatic stories, why not try your hand at a comedic piece? If novels are your thing, why not attempt a screenplay? By doing something new, we can learn our strengths and weakness as writers—make it a learning experience. ----- Writing in 140 is my attempt to say something somewhat relevant about writing in 140 words or less. ~~~~~~~~~~ Shon Bacon is an author, editor, and educator. She has ...

In the Writing for the Media course I teach, we use the classic ON WRITING WELL by William Zinsser as our main text. To anyone who truly cares about the art and the craft of writing, it's a must read. One of my favorite chapters in the book is "The Sound of Your Voice." Zinsser begins the chapter by discussing a time in which he was writing a book on baseball and a book on jazz. When doing so, he didn't think to write either book using "baseball English" or "jazz English"; his goal was to use HIS English, HIS voice. In writing, our voice, our style of writing is what keeps us able to not only write, but also to SELL and to continue to sell. People are attracted to the types of stories that authors write and the way in which the authors write them. Toni Morrison is not famous because of her name, but because of the topics and themes that she is drawn to and how her unique style of writing attacks those topics and themes. Same for Mary Higgins Clark...

If I told you to develop your writing style, would you know what I meant? If your answer is “No,” then this article is for you. Here’s a quick definition of style: the way you put together a sentence or group of sentences . The problem with figuring out style is there is no one sure way. It’s subjective. Depending on different forms of writing (essays, articles, stories, etc.) and different disciplines (science, art, humanities, etc.), style may differ. To develop your writing style: 1. First, focus on YOUR STORY. What’s your story about? What themes are present in your story? Who are your characters? What is the tone of the work? Before you can even focus on the nuances of style, you have to understand your work as fully as possible. You are the creator of this work – no one else. Everything we are to know and believe of the work must be derived from you. Once you have a firm sense of your work, focusing on the other tips can be an easier journey. Now, this doesn’t mean your story is ...

When working with clients, I encourage them to read their work aloud and get a feel for the rhythm, which is an important element of style. If a sentence reads awkwardly, the writer has lost the rhythm. EXAMPLE: From Night of The Blackbird by Heather Graham : “Kelly’s Pub was already in full swing when Dan O’Hara emerged from the back room of the tavern, the guest quarters, where he’d been staying.” Done right, the rhythm of a story will ebb and flow along with the build up of the most dramatic moments - mountains and valleys. When you are going up the mountain the pace will be quicker and more concise. In the valleys you can relax and take the time to admire the scenery. In Mystic River , Dennis Lehane has a wonderful sense of that ebb and flow. In the scene I’m going to quote from, three boys have been messing around on the street, and the cops show up. When they leave, they take one boy with them: “Jimmy and Sean stepped back, and the cop hopped in his car and drove off. They watc...