seen from United States
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The Study Stops Time
Artist: François-Guillaume Ménageot (French, 1744–1816)
Date: 1780
Medium: Oil on canvas
Collection: Louvre Museum, Paris, France
Head Hopping (POV Violations)
The Problem: The reader is confused about whose head they are in, breaking immersion.
How to Identify: In a single scene, are we hearing thoughts from Character A and Character B? Unless you are writing omniscient (which is rare in modern fiction), this is an error.
The Solution: I perform a strict POV check. I flag every instance where the narrative slips so you can maintain deep, immersive POV
And the Prayer of Faith Shall Save the Sick
Artist: John Frederick Lewis (English, 1804-1876)
Date: 1872
Medium: Oil on panel
Collection: Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, United States
Description
Painted twenty years after John Frederick Lewis returned to London after a decade in Cairo, this picture’s title is a quotation from the Epistle of St. James in the New Testament, yet the work apparently depicts a Muslim man reading from the Koran. The cross-cultural ambiguity is complicated further by the close resemblance of the reclining sick woman to Lewis’s wife, Marianne; furthermore, the cross-legged reader appears to be a self-portrait of the artist. A panel on the wall bears a relief of the ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor, and above this is a quotation from the Koran: “We have embraced the faith, so forgive us.” Lewis’s paintings often point out convergences between the cultures of the Middle East and of Victorian Britain, and this sympathetic scene of Muslim piety, bearing a biblical title, may have reminded British viewers of the importance of understanding religious differences and challenging orientalist stereotypes.
A first draft’s only job is to exist.
Not to be brilliant. Not to be publishable. Not to impress anyone.
If you’re waiting to feel “ready” before you write, you’ll wait forever. Write messy. Write awkward. Write sentences you’ll delete later.
That’s not failure that’s craft.
Perfection is edited. Stories are discovered. Let yourself discover yours
Pacing Issues in Action Scenes
The Problem: Your fight scene or chase sequence feels boring or confusing, despite high stakes.
How to Identify: Look at sentence length. If your high-octane fight scene is full of complex, compound sentences with 4 commas each, the pacing is too slow.
The Solution: I review the "beats" of your action. I help you vary sentence structure to mimic the heartbeat of the scene, ensuring the reader is breathless.
Pacing Issues in Action Scenes
The Problem: Your fight scene or chase sequence feels boring or confusing, despite high stakes.
How to Identify: Look at sentence length. If your high-octane fight scene is full of complex, compound sentences with 4 commas each, the pacing is too slow.
The Solution: I review the "beats" of your action. I help you vary sentence structure to mimic the heartbeat of the scene, ensuring the reader is breathless.
Writing isn’t hard because you’re bad at it. It’s hard because you care.
You’re shaping thoughts into meaning. You’re asking your brain to build worlds, emotions, and logic at the same time. Of course it’s heavy sometimes.
Hard doesn’t mean stop. Hard means stretch.
You’re growing muscles you didn’t have before.
Why ‘I’ll fix it later’ rarely works
Small issues compound.
Beta readers help you address structural problems early, before they become full rewrites.
Why plot holes aren’t always logical errors
Many plot holes are actually missing bridges information that exists in the author’s head but not on the page.
Beta readers flag those gaps so readers don’t feel stupid or lost.
