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Christy's avatar

Just wanted to say this is so helpful. I’m currently letting my manuscript sit so I forget and read with fresh eyes. I recently reworked the first 50 pages. Now I have something to grade it against. Everything you said here reaffirmed my decision for this big edit. Look forward to your next post!

I just finished “The Second Chance Supper Club” a fun story of two sisters. I uploaded and listened on Speechify, easy to read along or put your headphones on and go do the dishes and laundry.

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JunkMan's avatar

Thank you for this article. It’s such a good reminder that writers have to ground what they do in the basics, to make sure that longform fiction lays down the bones for a living story. Recently I’ve had to read some very poorly done first novel chapters, and the mistakes they make are of the type that you are talking about. Chief among them is this compulsion to take writerly excursions into fancy language and pseudo profound bullshit about the meaning of life and love. It ends up feeling kind of self indulgent and isn’t reader centered.

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