by Alycia W. Morales @AlyciaMorales

As an editor, I’ve seen quite a bit. Here are the things that make my Top 10 Things That Scare Me When Editing list.

1. She was mad and thought she would go to the graveyard. The moon was shining. He jumped out from behind a tombstone. She jumped and screamed. Please tell me you can show me the story. Because telling it is so … boring. I could sleep in that graveyard.
2. Am I in her head? How’d she get in his head? Whose head are we in now? Wait. What? Who thought that? It’s pretty scary when characters can suddenly read each others’ minds like they have a sixth sense or something.
3. I can’t share the sentences, they’re so frightful. It’s all over the place, their grammar. And oh my punctuation? Complete sentences. They exist not. Or they run on and on and on as if spiraling into a black hole for sure, there must be a program out there they can consult before attempting to put thoughts on paper. Do they think that way too? I hear not bad grammar in their conversation. Why on paper? WHY?
4. Repetition. Repetition. Repetition. Should I say it again? Repetition. It sounds like that shrieking noise used in B-rate movies when the knife comes down. Just kill me now. (Cue blood squirt.)
5. She put on her long, black, silky, flowing dress before donning her thick, orange, long-haired wig. Then she applied her green, brilliant eye shadow and her thick, red, fire-engine-colored lipstick. Just the description alone would scare the trick-or-readers.
6. His fearful eyes roamed to and fro. I don’t know about you, but I’d probably pee myself if I was walking along and found eyeballs roaming to and fro. Especially if they looked fearful. I’d wonder what they were running from. Or looking for…
7. Somewhere ahead of her, a scream jolted Diana out of her thoughts. So … somewhere up ahead of where she is, Diana’s jolted out of her thoughts. How was she inside her thoughts in the first place? I’m imagining an out-of-body experience here. Spooky.
8. The serial comma is missing! Jane enjoys cooking her family and her dog. That makes for a tasty meal, wouldn’t you say?
9. FLASHBACK! I think a lot of novelists wish their characters had time machines. It would be so much easier to portray why the character is the way he is if he could travel back to that moment in time when…
10. Nothing is scarier than a character with no arc. How can one go through life–or 365 pages–without changing one. little. bit? We all know someone like this. They are the same person they were five, ten, twenty years ago. They never grow up. They never outgrow their issues. They are the people who we try to avoid. Which means we probably don’t want to see them in a book.

What are some of the scariest things you’ve seen or written?

Alycia Morales is a freelance editor and writer. Her work has been featured in numerous magazines and several compilation books. Thanks to her mad editing skills, her clients have won multiple awards in several national contests. In addition, she’s the prior Conference Assistant for the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference. Alycia is currently working on a nonfiction project while characters are running around in her mind waiting to be released into children’s books and novels. Surviving the Year of Firsts: A Mom’s Guide to Grieving Child Loss released on September 17, 2024.

When she isn’t busy writing, editing, and reading, Alycia enjoys spending time with her husband taking hikes in the Blue Ridge Mountains of the Carolinas or running off to the beach with friends. She loves coffee, sweet tea, crafting, and watching crime shows.

Alycia can be found at alyciawmorales.com. She hangs out on Facebook and Instagram.