Writing Tips

The Conclusion paragraph is a place where I see many writers struggling. Not to sound mean, but sometimes the conclusion sounds…lame. What do I mean by that? It sounds rushed and like the writer ran out of steam. Let’s look at some guidelines for writing a Conclusion of a devotion, blog post, or chapter. (Last…

Introductions and Conclusions are two places I often find need improvment in a manuscript. This post will be about Introductions and my next post will be about Conclusions. I’ll give you some guidelines for writing an Introduction, and these can work for devotion writing, blog posts, and chapters in nonfiction God-help (prescriptive) books. The introductory…

Today’s blog post will give you some tips for capitalizing words we commonly use in Christian writing. This is the guide that I use for my personal writing and when I’m editing for clients. Remember, however, there are different style guides that require various capitalization rules. (You can find an explanation of style guides here.)…

After writing a blog post last month about commas, I discovered many of you get as excited about punctuation rules as I do! It’s so important for professionalism to have a completely error-free, or “clean,” manuscript, and that includes making sure your punctuation is correct. So let’s look at some more comma rules. The serial…

You want a “clean,” error-free manuscript. And one step towards that is to check your punctuation. Today let’s learn a few rules about commas. Places you need a comma: After a short prepositional phrase at beginning of sentence So what’s a prepositional phrase? It’s a phrase that begins with a preposition, and a preposition is…

We learned in my last blog post one of the qualities of good, nonfiction Christian writing is focus. Focus is accomplished when our book title, subtitle, chapter titles, and chapter summaries are aimed toward one main point, like arrows flying toward a bullseye on a target. Another way to create focus in your writing is…

One of the best ways to grow as a writer and communicator? Attend a Conference! Proverbs 31 Ministries’ She Speaks Conference is coming up this summer, July 13th-14th. You’ll be able to attend virtually, and a small number of seats will be available in person in Charlotte, NC. I got my start as a speaker…

One of the main things I look for when I am copyediting and/or manuscript development editing, is this: focus. What do I mean by focus? Focus means your words have a target, and that target is the main paint of your book and your chapters. Focus is one of the main elements of good writing….