Every good fiction editor knows that their job is based on how well the author that they are editing knows the fundamentals of good writing. That's not to say that every client you accept as a book editor should have the skills on par with a professional writer, but there are some fundamentals to good writing that should be constant throughout.
It's important to remember that the shortcomings that we face as either the writer or fiction editor come to us from all the way back in grammar school and no matter how hard most of us try to overcome these things, they still persist and crop up years later. Believe it or not, the absence of a teacher or parent who can stand over us to correct our mistakes can often be considered a shortcoming when it comes to correcting what's wrong with out writing.
It's unfortunate, but as we get older the feedback comes in less obvious ways. For instance, if a client rejects a proposal, we often assume that client has changed the scope of what they want and that our writing had little or nothing to do with the change of heart. In a similar way, if a publisher rejects a synopsis for our latest book, we might tend to blame the fiction editor and not even think to look at our writing skills as the possible culprit.
One of the first things that you can do if you ever want to be considered a professional writer is take a good look at the problems that crop up again and again in your prose. By looking at samples of past writing, we can see the origins of the problems that we are having today. Look for patterns so that you can polish your work before it ever gets to the point where it's seen by a manuscript editor.
It's very important to be organized as well. Ideas need to be presented in an orderly fashion and they need to follow a logical sequence or at least one that flows with a narrative structure. The good fiction editor will be able to help you with these issues but their job is generally not to rewrite the text for you, but rather to make sure to bring out the best in what you've done.
There are other tricks of the trade that any professional writer knows about and one of them is the need to cut down on the amount of repetition in your writing. When you've written your document in Word Format, you can always use the 'find' feature to look for the amount of times a word or phrase is repeated and generally a dozen repetitions on any single page can be considered too many.
I was recently struck by the fact that the top-ranking web pages on Google are consistently much better written than the vast majority of what one reads on the web. Yet traditional SEO wisdom has little to say about good writing. Does Google, the world's wealthiest media company, really only display web pages that meet arcane technical criteria? Does Google, like so many website owners, really get so caught up in the process of the algorithm that it misses the whole point?
Apparently not. Most Common On-the-Page Website Content Success Factors whatever the technical mechanism, Google is doing a pretty good job of identifying websites with good content and rewarding them with high rankings.
I looked at Google's top five pages for the five most searched-on keywords, as identified by Word Tracker on June 27, 2005. Typically, the top five pages receive an overwhelming majority of the traffic delivered by Google.
The web pages that contained written content (a small but significant portion were image galleries) all shared the following features:
Updating: frequent updating of content, at least once every few weeks, and more often, once a week or more.
Spelling and grammar: few or no errors. No page had more than three misspelled words or four grammatical errors. Note: spelling and grammar errors were identified by using Microsoft Word's check feature, and then ruling out words marked as misspellings that are either proper names or new words that are simply not in the dictionary. Does Google use Spell-Check? I can already hear the scoffing on the other side of this computer screen. Before you dismiss the idea completely, keep in mind that no one really does know what the 100 factors in Google's algorithm are. But whether the mechanism is Spell-Check or a better shot at link popularity thanks to great credibility, or something else entirely, the results remain the same.
Paragraphs: primarily brief (1-4 sentences). Few or no long blocks of text. Lists: both bulleted and numbered, form a large part of the text.
Sentence length: mostly brief (10 words or fewer). Medium-length and long sentences are sprinkled throughout the text rather than clumped together.
Contextual relevance: text contains numerous terms related to the keyword, as well as stem variations of the keyword. The page may contain the keyword itself few times or not at all.
SEO "Do's" and "Don'ts"
A hard look at the results slaughters a number of SEO bugbears and sacred cows.
Page Rank. The median Page Rank was 4. One page had a Page Rank of 0. Of course, this might simply be yet another demonstration that the little Page Rank number you get in your browser window is not what Google's alga is using. But if you're one of those people who attaches an overriding value to that little number, this is food for thought.
Frames. The top two web pages listed for the most searched-on keyword employ frames. Frames may still be a bad web design idea from a usability standpoint, and they may ruin your search engine rankings if your site's linking system depends on them. But there are worse ways you could shoot yourself in the foot.
JavaScript-formatted internal links. Most of the websites use JavaScript for their internal page links. Again, that's not the best web design practice, but there are worse things you could do. Keyword optimization. Except for two pages, keyword optimization was conspicuous by its absence. In more than half the web pages, the keyword did not appear more than three times, meaning a very low density. Many of the pages did not contain the keyword at all. That may just demonstrate the power of anchor text in inbound links. It also may demonstrate that Google takes a site's entire content into account when categorizing it and deciding what page to display.
Sub-headings. On most pages, sub-headings were either absent or in the form of images rather than text. That's a very bad design practice, and particularly cruel to blind users. But again, Google is more forgiving.
Links: Most of the web pages contained ten or more links; many contain over 30, in defiance of the SEO bugbears about "link popularity bleeding." Moreover, nearly all the pages contained a significant number of non-relevant links. On many pages, non-relevant links outnumbered relevant ones. Of course, it's not clear what benefit the website owners hope to get from placing irrelevant links on pages. It has been a proven way of lowering conversion rates and losing visitors. But Google doesn't seem to care if your website makes money.
Originality: a significant number of pages contained content copied from other websites. In all cases, the content was professionally written content apparently distributed on a free-reprint basis. Note: the reprint content did not consist of content feeds. However, no website consisted solely of free-reprint content. There was always at least a significant portion of original content, usually the majority of the page. Recommendations
Make sure a professional writer, or at least someone who can tell good writing from bad, is creating your site's content, particularly in the case of a search-engine optimization campaign. If you are an SEO, make sure you get a pro to do the content. A shocking number of SEOs write incredibly badly. I've even had clients whose websites got fewer conversions or page views after their SEOs got through with them, even when they got a sharp uptick in unique visitors. Most visitors simply hit the "back" button when confronted with the unpalatable text, so the increased traffic is just wasted bandwidth.
If you write your own content, make sure that it passes through the hands of a skilled copyeditor or writer before going online.
Update your content often. It's important both to add new pages and update existing pages. If you can't afford original content, use free-reprint content.
Distribute your content to other websites on a free-reprint basis. This will help your website get links in exchange for the right to publish the content. It will also help spread your message and enhance your visibility. Fears of a "duplicate content penalty" for free-reprint content (as opposed to duplication of content within a single website) are unjustified.
In short, if you have a mature website that is already indexed and getting traffic, you should consider making sure the bulk of your investment in your website is devoted to its content, rather than graphic design, old-school search-engine optimization, or linking campaigns.
Both Robert Starr & Manoj Saxena1 are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Robert Starr has sinced written about articles on various topics from Site promotion, Business Intelligence and Writing. Robert Starr is a professional writer/editor with several published books and a degree in journalism. He's brought 20 years of experience in the craft to his own on line writing/editing service. You can reach him at. Robert Starr's top article generates over 3600 views. to your Favourites.
Manoj Saxena1 has sinced written about articles on various topics from Cars, computers and the internet and Writing. About the author: Did you find this article useful? For more useful tips and hints, points to ponder and keep in mind, techniques, and insights pertaining to web design, do please browse for more information at our websites.. Manoj Saxena1's top article generates over 5400 views. to your Favourites.