Easy Book Editing Tips For Memoir Writing

Are you writing your memoir or life story? Or writing someone else’s biography? Here are three really solid book editing tips to help polish your story.

Book editing tip 1: idioms

Idioms are a colloquial way of phrasing something.

‘ An idiom is a common word or phrase with a culturally understood meaning that differs from what its composite words’ denotations would suggest.’

Here are some examples of idioms:
‘Sick as a dog’
‘Out of the blue’
‘Barking up the wrong tree’

When writing memoir, it’s wise to limit your use of idioms. Although this really does depend on your intended readership and what language they use.

Using a lot of idioms takes away from the specificity of your stories if overused. And one of the keys to really interesting writing (both fiction and non fiction) is specificity, especially when it comes to including the details.

It also limits your audience and may make it difficult for those who have English as an additional language and speaks purely to Australian readers if your idioms are Australian. This can exclude a lot of readers.

The expression ‘show, don’t tell’ would be useful to learn more about to help you write the specifics. You may have included…