if those details—who is present, how much time has passed, and where we are—stretch beyond your first two paragraphs, pause and ask yourself why.

Fans of yours will often jump at this opportunity, making it a great way to speed up the otherwise long process of finding beta readers.

try to avoid chapters that all have the same emotional impact one after another. Regardless of what that emotional impact is, this can cause your story to feel monotonous and emotionally flat.

story’s tense. This is one of the harder parts of proofreading, because tense switching is very easy to overlook.

All too often authors become so entrenched in their own stories that, while they can see how it’s all supposed to connect, they forget to make sure their readers can too.

you don’t actually want your written dialog to perfectly match spoken language—after all, you’d end up with a whole lot of ums, uhs, and awkward pauses if you did!

incorrect grammar, missing punctuation, typos, tense switching, passive voice, and more. Fortunately, these are all things a spell checker or proofreading software can help you with, but even with those tools by your side this is still a slow and tedious process. Imagine having to read your entire manuscript, remaining laser focused on every

Unfortunately, as with hiring any professional, this will come with an investment of both time and money. You may not be able to justify that,

On the one hand, many believe good storytelling is something that can only be achieved through a magical stroke of genius, not something you can study and learn from books and teachers. At the same time though, those writers also think the secret to perfect prose is mastering English grammar and memorizing their thesaurus.