The Blog

  • Bioshock Infinite and Foreshadowing

    Bioshock Infinite recently came out to a whole slew of accolades– and not just about the gameplay. The characters were remarkable, the story was layered and intricate, and the ending… well, I’m going to talk about the ending, and how it uses really great foreshadowing to present that ending to us. I’ll avoid saying anything Read more

  • DIY Editing: Changing the filter

    Here’s another biggie in the self-editing world: Filtering. What is it? I saw, he heard, she thought, I felt, I smelled– the list goes on. Essentially, filtering is what happens any time we’re informed that the the character is observing the world around them, rather than letting us observe right along with the character. What’s Read more

  • DIY Editing: ‘was’ and other has-beens

    This is possibly the most common aspect I’ve seen editors complain about, and it’s one of the easiest to fix. What is it? Linking verbs. Being verbs. “Was” and “were”. These are verbs that, by themselves mean simply “this thing exists”: am, is, are, was, were, be, being, seems, etc. A step beyond being verbs Read more

  • DIY Editing

    But Jennifer, you may say, isn’t this counterproductive if you’re starting an editing service? Not in the slightest. I’m a big proponent of editors– be they paid professionals or critique buddies, it’s essential to hand your story to somebody else before you try throwing it in the shark tank that is publishing. As writers, we’re Read more

  • Moving to a new host

    For the last few years, I’ve been having some trouble with Blogger, which used to host my blog. For the most part it’s been standard stuff– foibles that arose when I tried to change the layout, awkward deviations from the old WYSIWYG format, etc– and I’d been assuming that it had more to do with Read more