Exclamation Points. You know, EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!! When you need to shout, scream, yell, and LOUDTALK! - How many should you have in your novel? 100? 200? 400? How about 649? - Jon shares an uneasy moment while editing the novel he's working on,

Writing teachers everywhere say, "Write what you know." Forget if it's good advice—What do I even know? - In this show, the Js (writer Jon Armstrong and editor Juliet Ulman) talk about some examples of novels where maybe… just maybe the author didn't...

Shortbread. Denim. Parchment. Juliet and Jon paint pictures with color words. - They discuss Ingrid Sundberg's Color Thesaurus. It's usefulness and limitations. They read some lovely sentences and tackle the difficult issue of skin colors. -

Jon and Juliet discuss some of the fantastic on-line tools for researching slang through time (among other things): Historical Dictionaries and—cue the dramatic music—The Corpus. -   - Links from the show: - Urban Dictionary (http://www.

Ever had your novel come back from an editor? If you have, you will never forget. - Jon and Juliet break down the Seven Stages of Being Edited. And this showed is based on a blog post of the same name by editor Mike Pope.

Italic? What's the matter with italic? I use it everywhere! - Juliet and Jon discuss italic's use in novels and YA novels. We have a little anecdote, a little history, a little caution, and a little advice.

Beware! We cover all the letter-bombs... from F to N. - Juliet and Jon discuss the use of profanity in novels and its use for specific characters. We also consider the four types of profanity, strengths, weakness, and the cultural trends. -

Chapters. Novels are made from them. How long should they be? What to call them? - Juliet and Jon discuss chapters. How long should they be? What about chapter titles? - It turns out Jon had considered—at least for a time—the worst chapter name in...

You're over doing it. Aren't you? You're repeating yourself. Aren't you? - Every writer has a couple of favorite sentence structures that they use and use and use. Juliet and Jon explore the hazy, instinctive,

The M-dash is punctuation—it's that long dash. If you write—you probably use it often. But do you know the four main uses? Jon only knew only three and only used two. - Join us as we discuss the uses and misuses of Juliet's favorite punctuation mark.