brenticus reviewed Self-editing for fiction writers by Renni Browne
None
4 stars
This was actually a lot more helpful than I expected it to be. There were tons of examples, both good and bad, for every point they wanted to make, and the advice ranged pretty well from choice of vocab to improving sentence structure to general plot development to developing characters and personal voice. It covered enough ground that I would be surprised that anyone who actually feels the need to read this type of book wouldn't get anything out of it.
A couple of especially notable good points: almost all of the examples are either from workshops they've run (and so they're stuff people have actually handed them to be edited) or from published books (and so have presumably done a good enough job to be published). This lends a bit of credibility and realism to the examples and advice; when they edit a bad example into a good one, …
This was actually a lot more helpful than I expected it to be. There were tons of examples, both good and bad, for every point they wanted to make, and the advice ranged pretty well from choice of vocab to improving sentence structure to general plot development to developing characters and personal voice. It covered enough ground that I would be surprised that anyone who actually feels the need to read this type of book wouldn't get anything out of it.
A couple of especially notable good points: almost all of the examples are either from workshops they've run (and so they're stuff people have actually handed them to be edited) or from published books (and so have presumably done a good enough job to be published). This lends a bit of credibility and realism to the examples and advice; when they edit a bad example into a good one, you can almost always see the improvement immediately. I also enjoyed the authors' voices breaking the advisory wall and rubbing your face in a problem now and then. I'm pretty sure I'm never putting italics or an exclamation point in something again!
Really, the only reason that I'm giving it only four stars is that there are some examples that take a bit too much effort to see the problem in and enough of the exercises felt strangely contrived that I quickly started skipping the questions at the end of each chapter. This was a seriously great book with plainly useful advice, it just could have used a bit more refinement in the supporting bits.
