Imagine someone telling you a story at a party. It would be a hilarious story—except that they suck at telling it. Their words are jumbled, and they’re so long-winded, and they messed up the punchline. It’s just a mess. This is what line editing fixes in your story.

There are a lot of things to consider when hiring an editor, so here are eight tips to help you make the right decision.

Language changes and develops with the people speaking it. We do not speak the same in 2022 as we did in 1622. Not even the same as we did fifty years ago! Conventions and meanings change. This means we may have been taught rules that are no longer important. And somehow, some of us have been taught things that were never rules in the first place.

I want to go through some of these grammar “rules” that aren’t rules at all so we can stop worrying about them.

Overwriting often happens with amateur writers. New writers think they need to explain everything to the reader for them to understand. This means there’s lots of meaningless description without much progression of the story. The reader is pulled out of the story and gets bored! So, let’s learn how not to do that!

There are several types of book editors that do different jobs and come at different stages. You’ll want to hire them in the correct order, otherwise someone’s word (and your money) will be for naught. Let’s go through the four main types of editors and what they do!

Are you writing to experts in the field or someone who is just starting to learn about this topic? Are you writing to upper-class people, lower-class people, or people of all SES backgrounds? Are you writing to people in your geographical area only or anywhere in the world?

You don’t need to write to everyone.

Have you wanted to write a book forever but thinking about staring at a blank page is paralyzing? Where do you even start?

Imagine if you could sit down every day (or however often) to write, and you knew exactly what to write about. What if you always knew exactly what came next and could pick up right where you left off each time?

I know you’re probably eager to get started writing your nonfiction book (either memoir or self-help), but you need a plan first. It will be worth it to take the time now and figure out the answers to three big questions before you start writing.

If you thank someone by name in the acknowledgments section of your book, you don’t need permission because it’s probably a positive or neutral mention. If you want to talk about how your stepdad ruined your life, you’ll need permission because that’s negative. Seems pretty easy, but when in doubt, always ask permission. I’ll mostly be talking about negative mentions in this blog post.

In this blog post, we’re going to talk about how to narrow your reader audience for nonfiction books.