When I’m reading a good book, the story plays like a movie in my head. If a book drags or is poorly written, I become conscious of individual words, aware of sentences and paragraphs. Editing your manuscript streamlines the reader’s experience so they can read immersively instead of noticing words on the page. Unpolished writing yanks the reader out of the world of the book. They are not moving forward in the story. They’re seeing typos or noticing what they “should” be feeling. Or they’re just plain confused.
