The Third Degree
Professional, inexpensive on-line appraisal to help you discover your writer’s voice.

Sometimes new writers need help discovering their unique writer’s voice before submitting a work for a major assessment or appraisal. The Third Degree takes just a small sample of a manuscript and concentrates on the author’s personal writing style or writer’s voice.

Rather than giving an exhaustive, detailed and expensive critique of an entire manuscript, we take say 3,000-5,000 words, and focus on aspects of style rather than structure. Using tracking changes in Microsoft Word software, editorial comments and suggested changes to the text are highlighted for the author to see clearly where improvements could be made. Carried over to the entire manuscript, these suggestions can result in major improvements in the work. (Download the PDF with samples of writing assessment here).

The process, completed on-line via email, is suitable for most forms of creative writing including stories, novels, memoirs, magazine articles, essays, blogs or journals.

An author can then return to subsequent drafts of their work confident that their writing voice is the best one for the job. Fees for a Third Degree appraisal start at $50.00 for a standard detailed report covering the following considerations:

- the choice of writing style (humorous, childlike, breezy, authoritative) - is it the best one for the project’s potential audience?

- the story’s point of view - is the narrator a character in the story or a detached observer? How much distance should the storyteller maintain from the events and characters in the story?

- would present tense bring a compelling immediacy to the work or would past tense be the better choice, gradually building dramatic tension as the story unfolds? - the choice of narrator’s voice - is the voice of the writer too opinionated? too flippant? too pushy? too cold? Is there too much slang? Could a change of voice introduce new insights and interests?- does the punctuation, syntax, spelling, formatting meet publishing standards?

- does the dialogue sound natural, convincing? Does it help the momentum of the story and the characterisations or is it just unnecessary padding?

- is the meaning of the writing clear and unambiguous? Are the underlying themes sufficiently illustrated?

- Is the pace of the story too fast or too slow? Is it appropriate for the genre? Does it contribute to dramatic tension?

Download full information about the Third Degree including samples of on-line writing assessment here.