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Well-meaning advice from your peers can sometimes interfere with your own style and voice.) Make sure the person you choose understands and likes the genre of your book. Don't talk to him about the book. Don't tell him about your concerns or your favorite scenes or your plot twists. Pretend he's a reader who bought the book right off the store shelves. You might be surprised at what you find out.

Start with the big picture and work down to the details. As your objective third party is reading the book, you should read the book, too. Read it straight through and make notes about everything that catches your attention. (Now's the time to decide what critique-group suggestions you want to include in your re-writes.) When you get the manuscript and comments from your reader, you're ready to start re-writing. Start with the big picture and work down to the details. Save nitpickiness (grammar, word choices, awkward phrases) for the last re-write. Fix your plot, characterization, pacing, and so forth before worrying about word choices and sentence structure. When you're ready to attack the little stuff, keep a dictionary, thesaurus, and style guide on hand. Read chapter one at a time and look for consistency, bad grammar, word usage, and so forth. After reading one chapter all the way through, go back and read one page at time. Read each page paragraph by paragraph then sentence by sentence.

Use good reference materials. An excellent online resource for both dictionary and thesaurus can be found at Reference.com. Get an online subscription to the ultimate writer's guide, The Chicago Manual of Style. (Sign up for the free trial.) Also, check out the grammar and punctuation guides written by Lynne Truss, especially Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

Learn more about this author, Michele Bardsley.
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