My colleague, Robert Runté, and I read and edit a lot of manuscripts in the course of a year. We often see the same mistakes cropping up. I thought it might be of interest to share my observations through a series of articles. At the top of my list of writing faux pas is lack of research. In any written work, the richness of the story is partly due to the depth of research, and…
“What is Canadian literature? What is a Canadian novel? I am not going to be so foolhardy as to attempt to define these terms; many have wandered into this wilderness—and returned, what else but bewildered if they were honest, or with simplistic or outdated notions if they were naive; this is hardly surprising—the country is changing around us even as we speak, stirring up a host of conflicting ideas and interests, and to look for…
Five River Publishing’s Senior Editor, Robert Runté, has a chapter in the newly released Writing After Retirement: Tips by Successful Retired Writers [edited by Christine Redman-Waldeyer and Carole Smallwood. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press (Imprint of UK’s Rowman & Littlefield)]. His Chapter is “Estate Planning for Authors” which hopefully will help authors plan how they want their literary legacy handled after they’re gone…. The other 26 chapters in the collection are filled with tips on how…
Formatting the manuscript So now you’ve edited and honed your manuscript into the best possible work you can. And you’re ready to submit. Here at Five Rivers we’re big on less is more. So, pay attention to our submission requirements, which are: email only, no hard copy submissions DOC or RTF format Times New Roman 12 point typeface double-spaced 1” margins Do not under any circumstances use any of Word’s built-in formatting for chapters, headers,…
Punctuation Issues: use of single quotes, double quotes and italics, 5R house style, dialogue, proper suffix for adverbs Quotation marks and italics I’m going to delve into purely Five Rivers house style. We have an aversion here to the overuse of quotation marks and italics to create emphasis on a word. If you’ve written your sentence or scene well, emphasis will be implied without any additional gimmick by way of quotation marks or italics. Again…