After unsuccessfully querying my dystopian sci-fi novel (Project: T.A.G.) a couple of years ago, I decided to work with a developmental editor, which was a fantastic decision. With substantial revisions nearly done, I’ve revisited my query letter and synopsis, making updates to those, too.
Honestly, I read more stuff after my initial failed querying attempt than before, so I now know I had significant flaws the first time around. But hopefully I’ve fixed those problems.
To be sure, at the urging of my wife Kate, I’ve hired an editor to review both my query letter and synopsis. Kate worked with a book proposal editor for her first solo nonfiction book and was able to fairly quickly get an agent and attract offers from two publishers. Fingers crossed that a well-edited query letter and synopsis will bring me similar success.
Fellow authors…
Have you worked with an editor on your query letter, synopsis, or book proposal? If so, do you have any learnings to share? What were your blind spots?
Writers have conflicting advice when it comes to the use of the speech tag “said.” A number of folks, particularly on Instagram lately, have argued that writers should vary up their speech tags, in much the same way you’d vary your adjectives, verbs, and nouns.
The argument against “said” goes: Why use “said” over and over when you could be mixing things up and using “declared,” “replied,” “announced,” or other verbs?
That said, most of the books on novel writing I’ve read have been pro-“said.” The one that immediately comes to mind is Good Writing by Neal Allen and Anne Lamott. It shares 36 ways to improve sentences and rule #4 is “Stick with ‘Said.’” While not technically a ranked list, the earliest rules do seem more fundamental, so it being #4 is saying something.
From Good Writing by Neal Allen and Anne Lamott
Others have argued that “said” is so common and so expected that it’s functionally invisible—like an article or conjunction.
A journalistic influence
Like myself, Allen is a former journalist, so this rule makes a lot of sense to me. “Said” is neutral and unbiased, which is important in journalism. Embellish the speech tags on quotes and you’re editorializing.
That said, novels aren’t journalism. And as with most of Neal’s rules, Lamott delivers some counterpoints, arguing in favor of some “said” alternatives like “mumbled” and “whispered,” for example. I agree with Lamott that speech tags like those that tell how a statement was physically delivered are useful.
A crutch akin to an adverb
But here’s the part in Neal’s argument that really resonates with me. He says, “Why not let the reader interpret the character’s statement all on their own?”
That feels like the general rule about choosing strong verbs so you don’t have to use adverbs. For instance, if you have to say, “he quipped,” then perhaps it’s not a good quip. Similarly, if you’re dialogue is solid, there’s no reason to use the speech tags “agreed,” “promised,” or “conceded,” for example, as they’d just be redundant with the dialogue.
To bring in the adverb angle, that’s in the same vein as “he said snidely.” The character’s words, body language, and context should convey his snideness without you having to say so.
Keeping myself honest
So, where do I come down on this issue in practice? I did a quick search for speech tags in the manuscript for the first book in my dystopian sci-fi trilogy (Project: T.A.G.), which has been seen by a developmental editor and copy editor. Here’s a partial breakdown:
You can see I’m solidly in the present tense of the “said” camp, but not an absolutist. “Asks” feels similarly invisible to me. “Whispers,” “announces,” “mumbles,” and “declares” bring a little color to the physical manner in which things were said. The “barks” are mainly associated with one character, and the “coos” with another, so those are part of characterization.
The next best thing to ‘said’
I also did a quick check of the very first draft of my manuscript and found that my latest version has 10% fewer speech tags overall. In most cases, I was able to replace speech tags with action beats that established which character is currently acting, rendering the speech tag unnecessary. While “said” is quite invisible, being able to eliminate a speech tag altogether is even better.
What do you think?
Do you prefer “said” or do you like to aggressively vary your speech tags or do you fall something in between?
If you’re like me and had to read The Elements of Style by Strunk and White in school, then you need to read this book. That’s because The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker will undo all the bad advice in The Elements of Style that you knew in your heart was wrong.
Never start a sentence with “and” or “but.” Never end a sentence with a preposition. That advice never made sense because people don’t talk like that, and don’t write like that either.
Essentially, Strunk and White tried to paternalistically force new stylistic rules on people because that’s what they thought was right. Pinker tells you how the English language works today—and in many cases, how it’s worked for a hundred or more years—and backs it all up with research.
I give it 5 stars, 6 dog-ears, and 1 Post-it.
Things I dog-eared and Post-it’d in The Sense of Style include:
A list of all the parts of speech
A list of “morbidly obese phrases,” such as “in the event that,” which can be simplified down to just “if”
A discussion of structural parallelism, which is a great rhetorical device
The principle of saving the heaviest for last
The cognitive philosophy of introducing a topic before your comment
A list of words and what they mean according to purists and what they mean according to common usage
The July/August 2026 issue of Writer’s Digest had a whole article on why it’s fine to end a sentence with a preposition
Despite their popular acclaim, I’ve never watched Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, or Succession. And I stopped watching House of Cards and Barry when it became clear that there was no redemption arc for their lead characters. There was just a steady descent, which I don’t find enjoyable in my fiction.
I’m looking for hope, both in real-life and in my entertainment. And in my novels, I strive to give hope.
Stories of Redemption
In all of the novels I’m currently working on, the stories have clear heroes, who are often making up for past sins and missteps. Often, they make more mistakes on their way to redemption and self-acceptance.
The world is an imperfect place full of imperfect people, and so are my novels. But the vast majority of the characters you’ll find my stories are trying to do the right thing for those they care about. If that sounds good to you, I hope you’ll stick around and follow me on Instagram or Substack.
For months, I’ve been thinking about Shy Girl, the book whose US publication was cancelled after accusations of using AI. I already knew that using AI was poisonous to a book’s chances of being traditionally published, because using it introduces the risks of copyright infringement and having your book’s copyrights invalidated. But I’ve also come to two more conclusions about what this episode means for authors.
1. The imperative to maintain chain of custody
When accused of using AI, Mia Ballard claimed that her editor must have used AI to change her book. She then said that she didn’t have time to review all the changes her editor made.
Regardless of whether you believe the first claim, the second one floored me. I’ve been working on my sci-fi trilogy for many years now and I’m invested in every word. When I worked with my development editor and my copy editor, I manually transferred every edit of theirs that I approved over to my master manuscript. While that introduces the potential for me to have missed an important edit, it guarantees that every single change to my manuscript was made by me alone.
As a journalist and marketer, I’ve written thousands of articles and blog posts and it’s exceedingly rare for me to not review the final copy before it goes live. So, it’s not really about the length of what’s written. My name’s on it, so I’m ultimately accountable for what the words say, so abdicating that to an editor is just mind boggling to me.
On the heels of Shy Girl, people using AI to write entire books from nothing has gotten more attention. It appears that many of these people (I won’t call them authors because they didn’t write anything) are upfront about their use of AI—which Warner refers to as “out and proud.”
In the wake of that, I can’t help but think that being able to show the history of our work on a book and what influenced it is becoming more important. That’s not why I started my author website, but it seems that’s now a critical aspect of it.
So, when I finally publish my sci-fi trilogy, readers will be able to look back on the long, long process that it took to get it published, see which craft books influenced my writing, and the events, news stories, and novels that inspired me. When I get closer to publication, I have dozens of vignettes I want to share to give readers an inside look at how I think and how my novel took shape.
Heeding the advice of Jane Friedman, I launched my author website and my presence on Instagram and Substack a little over a year ago. Since I don’t have a publication date for the first novel in my dystopian sci-fi trilogy yet, my goal has been to connect with other writers and potential future readers. And to learn, learn, learn.
But while I’ve definitely learned a ton, I’m not chasing the algorithm or using AI to auto-generate content. If I learned anything from building my author platform for my nonfiction book series, Email Marketing Rules, it’s that I’m at my best when I’m just myself. I’m not the flashiest or loudest or most entertaining, but people trust me to tell them the facts and share opinions that are rooted in facts and research.
So, I’m just trying to share the things that I’m genuinely excited about and interested in as I pursue my goal of publishing my first novel and becoming a better writer. If that resonates with you, great. If not, c’est la vie.
One of the things that’s been really fascinating to see is that very different content rises to the top on different platforms.
My most-liked Instagram posts
I recently celebrated reaching 1,000 followers on Instagram, where folks most appreciate updates on how my author journey is going.
When suddenly given the option to steal music rather than pay for it, lots of people decided music was too expensive. Music piracy was so pervasive at the beginning of the new millennium, it threatened the entire music industry. Ultimately, it resulted in lawsuits not only against Napster and its creator Shawn Fanning, but against the most egregious individual Napster users, too.
The longer term impact of Napster is that it fueled the transition to digital music sales, where people could buy individual tracks instead of full albums for the first time. And that led to streaming. Both of those moves had huge negative impacts on music sales.
The music industry’s revenues have fallen in half since its peak a quarter century ago when CD albums drove demand. And if you adjust for inflation, that fall looks even worse. Thankfully, live performances and tours allow musicians to still make money, since they now make very little on music sales and royalties.
For those folks who thought piracy was a way to stick it to music labels, they succeeded. But the collateral damage to artists was also high.
‘Not our problem to pay absurd prices’
While the US book publishing industry has fared better than the music industry over the past two decades, it has still shrunk significantly when inflation is accounted for. During that time, the percentage of adults who read for pleasure has fallen, and even fewer read to their children.
Meanwhile, the publishing industry has become very fragile. We learned during the Penguin Random House antitrust trial that only 35% of its books are profitable, with just 4% accounting for the majority of profits.
At the same time, self-publishing has exploded. Since 2023, the majority of Kindle’s Top 400 books have been self-published. That means for those people who steal digital books because they fancy themselves literary Robin Hoods, they’re just as likely to be stealing from indie authors—who make less than $13,000 a year from their writing.
My self-published nonfiction books are pirated all the time, which is super frustrating. It makes you feel powerless.
And, of course, in the age of AI, book piracy has reached new heights.
Why is it okay to steal creative work?
On the one hand, whether we’re talking about AI companies or individuals who pirate books or music or art, they clearly see it as desirable—perhaps even essential. Otherwise, why would they steal it?
But on the other hand, they see it as unreasonably expensive. I wish more people appreciated just how much time and effort goes into creating a book. In that post by Christopher Penn, he mentions it generally takes 6 to 9 months to write a book. On average, that’s probably about right for nonfiction. But it can take much, much longer, especially for fiction—and that doesn’t count the time the author spent learning the trade, or the time of developmental editors or copy editors, or the time given by beta readers, or the often years spent thinking and planning a book. Plus, most authors only make a buck or two on every book sold. Through that lens, books are cheap.
When I think of things that are unreasonably expensive, I think of car repairs, Uber fares during peak times, and any event ticket sold on the secondary market. I’m sure many people feel the same. But they don’t steal those things, because they can’t.
That seems to be the fundamental reason that creative works get stolen. It’s not that they’re unreasonably expensive; it’s that they’re simply much easier to steal than other things. That not only sucks for creators, but for anyone who wants creators to be able to afford to make more great things.
I believe in the evolution of language. Words mean what most people think they mean, because language belongs to the people, not to academics or institutions. The lexicon refuses to be pinned down. Instead, it’s constantly shifting, growing, and changing shape.
While dictionaries are helpful for spellings, they tend to lag on hyphenations and don’t tend to be helpful when it comes to phrasings. My favorite tool for deciding on those issues is Google Trends.
This free tool allows you to see the popularity of a word or phrase over time. As the name implies, it’s great for understanding trends, like the decline in interest in NFTs and the metaverse. But it also allows you to compare the popularity of two or more things.
That makes it handy for making editing decisions.
Let’s play a game.
Which of these is the more common usage?
break out in a cold sweat
break out into a cold sweat
balls his hand
balls his fingers
face-first into the ground
face first into the ground
over-indexed
overindexed
face-down
facedown
face down
mutually assured destruction
mutual assured destruction
Google Trends gives us the answers below. Some are definitive; others less so. Regardless, it’s a helpful tool in understanding what the common usage is.
After doing painting and building maintenance all through high school, my first real job was as an intern at Texas A&M University Press. I helped build indexes and did proofreading. My finest moment was doing the last pass on Galveston and the Great West and catching an “exits” that was supposed to be “exist.” When my internship was over, they gave me a copy of the book of my choice and I chose that one, which I still have.
At the first publisher I worked for, I proofread Galveston and the Great West, which I still have a copy of
I went on to be copy chief at a financial magazine, a managing editor at Condé Nast, and an assistant news editor at Dow Jones. But despite all of that experience editing other people’s work, and as good as I am at catching my own errors, I’ve never relied completely on self-editing.
For each of my five nonfiction books, I hired a professional copyeditor. And for the first novel in my dystopian sci-fi trilogy, I hired a professional copyeditor, too.
Simply put, it’s very, very difficult to catch your own errors. Because you know what the copy is supposed to say, your mind will sometimes fill in missing words, correct incorrect verb tenses, and otherwise trick you into thinking that sentence you just read is fine.
In Good Writing, Neil Allen says, “Editors don’t improve me; they fill in my blind spots.” While he’s speaking more about developmental editors, the same is true of copyeditors and proofreaders. You need fresh eyes to catch your mistakes, and no matter what tips and tricks you use, yours will never be as fresh as someone else’s.
Self-editing tricks
That’s not to say that you shouldn’t self-edit. You should, because the more mistakes and awkward phrasings you can weed out, the better off your manuscript will be when you hand it off.
Two of the self-editing tricks I’ve found to work best are to:
Read your book aloud. It slows you down and engages your sense of hearing, not just sight. It can also give you a much better sense of the cadence and rhythm of your prose, and where you might want to speed things up or slow them down.
Print your book. Going from screen to paper is a change of form that makes the copy seem fresh and new to your brain.
Those help, but obviously aren’t foolproof. Sadly, even with a professional copyeditor, a few mistakes are likely to slip through. That was the case with three of my five nonfiction books. Thankfully, one of the great things about self-publishing is that your book can be updated.
Is error-free realistic?
But even with fixing the small mistakes I’ve heard about, I wouldn’t be shocked if there was a lingering minor mistake somewhere in each of my books. Readers will forgive that. What they won’t forgive is mistake after mistake after mistake.
In a novel I was reading recently, I encountered four errors—a missing period, a wrong name, an incorrect verb tense—in the first 150 pages. I put it down and began reading another book. That’s what hiring a copyeditor is intended to prevent.
