First of all, let me apologise for the tardiness of this post. Friday swung past me sooooo quickly that the day was over before I realised it. And, of course, yesterday was our trip to Quairading.
But, before I go any farther, I also have to let you all know that I am changing my posting day to Saturday. It might be early, it might be late, but Saturday it will be. The reason will become clear in a few weeks.
So, today is about an editing course I have been doing over the last couple of weeks. Wow! What an eye opener.
If any of my friends who are writers have not heard of a style sheet, I suggest looking them up and trialling them. I will be using them from now on. Especially with my sci fi and fantasy books. Yes, I’m talking about Delta Recoveries and Killion as well as my story about dragons and the Gold Coast.
Even if you keep lists of names, etc., which I do, using a style sheet puts them altogether along with how you want to work with certain words, when a number stops being written as a word and is a number only and things like that. Oh, and what you want to do with trademarks and other words like that.
Like, how many of you know that Windsurfer is a trademark but the generic term is sailboard? Not many people realise that. I’m not too sure myself about smartphones but I use it in the Consequences trilogy, Dark Dimension’s sequel and in both Delta Recoveries and the dragon book. So I’ll probably check some references and make sure that’s a generic term. Because I don’t care what brand is in use — if my readers see an “iPhone” or a “Samsung”, that’s fine. They’re pretty similar to each other these days.
So take a look at style sheets — they may even help those of you who create worlds to game in.
J A Duxbury's World 