The ending is crucial in providing a satisfying reading experience.

World Building and Setting: Is your setting described in appropriate detail? Is the world you’ve created for your characters vivid, interesting, and believable?īeginnings, Middles, and Endings: The opening of your story or novel is crucial in getting the attention of an agent, editor, or reader. Style: Is your writing style effective? Is it exciting to the reader? Point of View: Are you telling your story through the eyes of the right character(s)? Is your POV consistent?Ĭharacterization: Are your characters well-rounded, sympathetic, compelling, and believable?ĭialog: Is your dialog interesting? Does it help build characterization and move the story along? Pacing: Does your story move along at a good pace, or is it dragging (or leaving your readers behind)? Plot: Is your work strongly plotted? Are there some holes you might need to fill? The Story Premise: Is the idea/concept of your story original, compelling and marketable? If not, how can it be improved? In short, all that nit-picky stuff you need to take care of before you send your manuscript out. Manuscript Basics: Your formatting, punctuation, grammar competency, dialog tags, spelling, etc. * current faculty member in Seton Hill University’s MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction * former editor for the professional fiction magazines HMS Beagle and Strange Horizons * former director of the Context Writing Workshops * graduate of the the Goddard Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program I have considerable experience in providing constructive feedback to fiction writers. * Nonfiction manuscripts aimed at general or technical audiences * Paranormal fiction (but keep in mind that I am not a romance reader) * Other genre fiction such as mysteries or plot-driven mainstream fiction

* Speculative fiction: writing that falls somewhere in the realm of science fiction, fantasy, or horror I offer professional critiques and developmental editing of short stories, novellas, novels, and nonfiction manuscripts.

Seducing Professor Coyle by Darien Cox