Book reviews by D.G. Kaye

Sunday Book Review – Polish Your Prose by Harmony Kent

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Welcome back to a new year of my Sunday Book Reviews. In this first review of the year I’m featuring my review for Harmony Kent’s – Polish Your Prose. This book is an invaluable guide book for every writer’s desktop to have nearby for both refreshing the seasoned writer and a must have for every new writer.

 

 

Blurb:

Polish Your Prose is a powerful new guide that gives essential editing tips for authors.

Lots of books have been written on the art of writing, and here—at last—is a guide that will teach you the essential techniques of editing your own book. This will help you turn a promising manuscript into a published novel. And, it does this without the jargon. You don’t need to know all the grammatical terms in order to make use of this book. You don’t need to know the definition of a split infinitive, a comma splice, or a ‘to be’ verb, as this manual explains these in detail in easy to understand terms, and a lively and engaging style.
Chapters on Passive Writing, Tense, Point of View, Dialogue, and other techniques take you through the same processes an editor would go through to polish and perfect your manuscript.

Good writing is nothing without good editing. Learn the secrets of good editing and writing with this essential author reference, which offers so much more for so much less.

Harmony Kent is an award winning author, and accomplished editor and proofreader. Her passion is helping Indie Authors to successfully achieve their goals and dreams.

New Apple Book Awards Top Medalist Winner 2015

“This book is a mine of useful information. It’s concise and easy to understand. You don’t have to wade through pages upon pages of chatter; Harmony Kent gets straight to the point. ” — Michelle Abbott, Romance Author

“If the complexities of grammar and punctuation sometimes confound you – this gem of a book is for you. This is a guide I’ll be dipping into over and over.”–Wendy Scott, Fantasy Author

 

My 5 Star Review:

A concise  writer’s guide written in simplicity with easy to refer to chapters, no filler babble in these bite-sized chapters to help hone your editing skills. This book succinctly covers chapters on all bibs and bobs of writing a clean and concise manuscript. However, this is not a book about how to write a book, but rather, a complete checklist on the dos and don’ts of writing clean, complete with easy to understand lessons with examples covering all the topics that make for better writing.

In this book Kent covers such topics as: show don’t tell, how to avoid head-hopping, weeding out adverbs and cliches, importance of staying in tense, use of contractions, dialogue tags, overuse of starting sentences with same pronouns, common stylistic and grammar issues, and more! Kent also adds good tips for proofreading, what to include when writing book reviews – and what not to, how to handle bad reviews, and once learning the rules – how they can be broken.

Polish Your Prose also includes added bonus charts on common word replacements from British to American English, and a list of commonly used words that are used incorrectly. Point of view use is also discussed and demonstrated with concise examples.

This book is a handy guide for writers on all levels. For the seasoned writer, it’s a wonderful refresher guide for those moments we are stumped while revising and editing. And for new writers, it’s a must have on every desktop.

Copyright
© D.G. Kaye and DGKayewriter.com, 2014 – 2021. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to D.G. Kaye

 

64 thoughts on “Sunday Book Review – Polish Your Prose by Harmony Kent”

  3. Thanks Debby and congratulations Harmony… I will share the review in the Cafe Update on 24th… I am sure it will be of great interest to all the writers in the group… hugs

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  8. This sounds really helpful, Deb. Thanks for sharing and for your review. I often google questions while editing to double check these things but having a whole book neatly arranged would really be a help! I’m adding it to my TBR right now.

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    1. Pleasure Carol. Then I’m sure you’ll thoroughly enjoy this book/guide, written in relaxed conversational style makes the book an easy read without a whole lot of embellishment. ❤

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  14. I think maybe the Universe is doing a little prompting of its own today dear Debby and I seem to keep being guiding into the arts of writing and how best to do it… I think maybe this year I will take Note, and given your enthusiastic review of this book, Maybe its one I should be adding to my own book shelves..

    Many thanks again Debby… Enjoy a beautiful day.. From a very stormy England.. ❤

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    2. Oh, Sue, you absolutely have to give writing and your creative side a go in that case! And I’m sure that Polish Your Prose (and its newer companion, Creative Solutions–which is all about inspiration and idea generation) will be uber useful. Best of luck with all your endeavours. 🙂

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    2. Yay! I’m doing my happy dance (and spilling my morning coffee in the process, lols!). Thanks so much, Pete. I’m sure it will become one of your go-to tools. All the best 🙂

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    2. I’m with you on the scary TBR. I’m in permanent hiding from mine, lol! Thanks for your support, John. I’m sure that Polish Your Prose will make a great addition to your shelves. All the best for 2020 🙂

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  21. This book sounds like a winner to me, as I’m in the editing stages of my travel memoir. It would be a great “check list” after my final, final draft is finished. 🙂

    Thanks for the review, Debby and congratulations on the publication, Harmony!

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