Dear Purposeful Prose,  I’m getting a lot of conflicting advice on this. I’m writing my first novel, and I promise it matters that I’m white and bisexual. My main character is based off of a friend of mine from Mexico, and she said that I could fictionalize her story if she could read it first. Two characters do drag and one of them is trans. I don’t fully understand the experiences of all of my characters, and I’m not claiming that I can, but I want to give good rep. I decid

Dear Purposeful Prose,  I know how to write, but how do you teach someone how to write or how to write better? People ask me for advice on writing sometimes, and I get stuck on how to give it without using a lot of jargon or trying to rush people through it. Do you have any tips? One of the most critical skills that an editor can consistently develop is quality of feedback. I know that the quality of my feedback has improved over time, and I’ve learned how to tailor my feedba

Dear Purposeful Prose, I’m confused about book banning. Some people say that it’s a good thing that books are banned because it keeps explicit content away from children. Other people say it’s harmful because information should always be easy to access. Isn’t all information easy to access? Even if a book is “banned”, it still gets sold in book stores, so what’s the point in saying it’s banned in the first place? Book banning is a little bit more complicated than some people