Tag: self-editing

blog, Pat Aitcheson writes, writing, writing process

How To Make Your Writing Shine

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person-731148_1280
Free Photos via pixabay

You did the thing and now you have a completed first draft. You’re a writer. You have written. Congratulations are in order.

Now the hard work really begins, because you have to edit and polish your story. Getting a story out is like mining gemstones— difficult, dirty work. And what you bring to the surface is probably not a thing of beauty, yet.

But it has potential. If you can strip away the dull bits and hone the good bits, you might just have something brilliant. Here are ten ways to make your work shine.

1. Strengthen Your Storyline

What’s the central drive of your narrative? What differentiates it from the next story and the others that came before it? If you’re writing about a married woman who is unhappy with her life, you’d better have a unique take on that.

Maybe she finds out her husband is a spy. Maybe they’re both secret assassins but he’s her latest target. Give the story a twist, otherwise there’s nothing to hold the reader’s attention.

Sometimes what you’re writing is an anecdote rather than a story, and that isn’t always enough to hold a reader. An anecdote stays in one place but a story moves.The characters are changed in some way by the events.

Make sure your story has a start, middle, and end. Follow genre conventions, even if you leave some loose threads for the next book. A romance must end with the main characters together, at least for the moment. A mystery must be solved.

2. Fix Your Pacing

Readers have multiple media competing for shortening attention spans. It’s vital to hook their attention and hold it.

  • Starting too early kills the pace. We don’t care about the trip to work, it’s what happened at the office that matters.
  • Failure to raise the stakes as time goes on can cause readers to lose interest.
  • Too much action without an actual plot leaves your reader wondering why any of it matters.

To correct these try the following.

  • Follow the screenwriters’ rule: get in late and leave early. Write the interesting part where a situation develops or characters interact, and leave the rest out.
  • Check that your characters are facing larger challenges as a consequence of their earlier choices. Making their life difficult is more interesting.
  • Starting in the middle of things is good advice, but we need to care about the characters first. A huge battle only matters when the readers are invested, so spend time establishing who the players are and why they act as they do.

3. Make Words Count

Don’t let your love of words get in the way of your story. Less is more when you’re writing for the reader and not yourself. An overly detailed description can stop a story in its tracks.

Trust your reader. Give each character one or two interesting features without describing everything and you’ll inject more life into them than a list ever could. Let the reader fill in some details in her head; that’s one of the joys of reading.

Tighten up your prose by removing crutch words.

This tool helps you find and destroy clichés.

4. Let The Reader Do Some Work

Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
Anton Chekhov

Telling robs significant moments of their power.

When the cop finds the third body, don’t say he was angry.

Describe his actions so readers can work out what he feels. Show him walking away, throwing his latex gloves on the ground; gripping the steering wheel, his stomach churning; drinking his third whisky while ignoring his team playing on the screen above the bar.

Telling is essential of course. Telling summarises action and gets us from one scene to the next. Rather than describing the cop’s uneventful drive home, skip to him fumbling with his front door key. Instead of walking us through every hour of his restless night, he wakes bleary-eyed.

Give your pivotal and climactic scenes the page time they deserve so the reader doesn’t feel shortchanged. Whenever you’re tempted to write a perception such as he thought, felt or knew something, stop. Find another way and let the reader do some work.

5. Make Dialogue Tags Pull A Double Shift

Many writers and editors advise that ‘said’ is the only dialogue tag you need. It’s the most versatile and tends to disappear when read. The dialogue should make the emotional tone clear.

There will be occasions where ‘said’ isn’t precise enough. Avoid adverbs such as quietly, loudly, angrily and so on. Use a stronger verb such as whispered, called, yelled, but consider whether you’re telling what you should be showing by actions.

You can get around overuse of ‘said’ and make your writing more varied by using action tags. They combine what was done with what was said, and by whom.

“Is this okay?” She held out the report.
He scanned it, then put it on the table. “I think it’s all there.”

The tag belongs on the same line as the dialogue. Getting this wrong is irritating and confusing for the reader, who can’t follow who is doing what.

If you have dialogue between two people, you can leave out some tags. Be sure your reader can follow who’s talking, either by using different speech patterns or by actions.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
 

6. Fix Your Point of View

Point of View (POV) ranges from the distant, omniscient third-person typical of fairy tales to the immediate, internal first-person typical of modern YA novels. For example:

Once upon a time in a land far, far away, a poor boy was making his way home. A great storm was brewing over the horizon.

My ragged shirt was no match for the rain and I shivered, already soaked to the skin.

Emma Darwin discusses the use of different POV here but you must make your choice and stick to it.

Imagine there is a camera stuck to your POV character’s head. It sees only what he sees. Therefore write what he sees and knows and nothing else. Things that happen outside his view can only be revealed in dialogue unless you’re writing in the omniscient 3rd person.

This avoids head-hopping, where the camera jumps from one person’s perception to another in the same scene. The character can’t see his own expression unless he’s looking in the mirror. So in his POV you can write that his face felt hot but not that he looked embarrassed, which is his companion’s observation.

It’s tempting to write something like, “I didn’t realise then that this storm would change my life.” That destroys both POV and pacing.

As the author, you know everything. Resist the impulse to give your plot points away, and leave the reader guessing. Unanswered questions make people turn the page.

7. Know The Time

Is your character’s story unfolding now or in the past? Use of present tense is more popular now, especially linked with first person POV. It gives the narrative immediacy and is immersive. You live the events with the narrator in real time.

Past tense remains the most familiar choice. We’re used to hearing about events that have already taken place.

Tense is not the same as POV.
You can write first person, present tense: I run to the store.
Or you can write first person, past tense: I ran to the store.

Shifting between past and present can be an effective stylistic device when used deliberately. However most writers prefer a consistent tense throughout. It’s easy to slip between present and past tenses, so careful editing is essential.

Find advice on managing tenses here.

8. Nurture Their Disbelief

It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.
Mark Twain

Fiction makes a contract between reader and writer. The reader agrees to treat the events as if they really happened by suspending their disbelief. The writer pledges to make the events seem believable. If not, the reader is pulled out of the story.

You’ve experienced a character doing something that makes you scratch your head or just say, “No way would that happen.” You know how frustrating that is.

Characters need to behave in ways consistent with the story and their motivations. As the all-seeing author, you might make them do something unexpected as long as it’s in line with the story’s resolution.

This means that you can add twists and surprises, but they must be foreshadowed in clues beforehand or explained by later events.

Your hard-boiled female detective is unlikely to foster orphaned kittens, because of the different demands of each activity. But if she does, there’d better be credible explanations of how and why.

Giving the protagonist exactly what they need out of nowhere is lazy writing. Known as Deus ex machina, this device introduces a new and pivotal item just in time to save the day. You can use coincidence to get characters into trouble, but they have to fight their way out.

Don’t make life too easy for the characters. Make it impossible to reach their goal, and the eventual victory will be sweeter.

9. Go Easy On Themes

Have you chosen a theme for your story or a symbolic motif? Be careful.

It’s okay that the weather mirrors your heroine’s mood. But it’s not okay if it’s always sunny when she’s happy, raining when she cries, stormy when she’s angry… you get the point.

Use a light hand with symbolism. Often theme only emerges when you read the complete story, and sometimes it’s clearer to other readers than to the writer. During editing, you can decide whether to add extra clues or tone it down.

Similarly, too much action in one scene can feel like being hit over the head repeatedly. Movies might get away with blowing things up every two minutes but most novels need some quieter space in between the action sequences.

Don’t go on so long that the reader gets bored. Show the aftermath and let the character’s development shine through. Strong language and strong emotion lose their power if overused, so add some contrast whether it’s a fight or a love scene.

10. Looks Do Matter

Your words must look good on screen or in print. Correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation are essential.

Whether you self-publish or aim to be traditionally published, make sure the work you send out looks professional. Nobody wants to read work that’s littered with errors. It gives the impression that the author doesn’t care.

You care, so fix your work. This 12 step self-editing checklist covers a range of tips and resources that will help you polish your drafts.

Finally, Get to The End

The secret is not following the right path, it’s following that right path to the end. Don’t quit, my friend, until you’ve arrived.
Toni Sorenson

Unfinished works linger in the back of your brain, slowly draining your energy. You feel anxious and guilty about them.

Do whatever you need to finish. If you can’t let go, that’s a sign. Complete your piece somehow. You can’t query half a novel or publish half an article.

Work on the issues above, or trash the piece and start fresh.

Let go of perfectionism because done is better than perfect. And once it’s done, it can be edited until it’s as close to perfect as you can get.

Go to it. Your readers are waiting.

blog, productivity, writing, writing process

How to Improve Your Writing Dramatically in Less Than 5 Minutes

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little tweaks, big results

tulips -yellow_keila-hotzel
Photo by Keila Hötzel on Unsplash

Good writing is good writing, but that doesn’t mean you can’t orchestrate it or tweak it.
John Travolta

Everyone’s a writer these days. Whether working on your novel or captioning your latest social media image, you’re writing every day.

How do you choose your words?

Do you always use the same few words, or are you a logophile who loves playing with shades of meaning?

Although it’s difficult to count the number of words in the English language, around 170,000 words are currently in use. An adult native speaker uses 20-35,000 words (source) depending on age, education, location and so on.

Yet you can improve your writing immediately by using fewer words. It might seem obvious to avoid long words, but what about small words?

Some small words reduce the flow and clarity of your writing. You might not notice them because they’re so common, they’re practically invisible. Before we look at them in more detail, make an exception for dialogue.

Writing rules are less strict when writing dialogue. Most people don’t speak properly all the time. You can make your lines sound natural is by reading them out loud.

No doubt you’ve been advised to write the way you speak, but remember that written dialogue is natural speech, polished.

Reducing the frequency of these four common words will sharpen your prose, whether fiction or nonfiction. No words are completely excluded – just use them with purpose.

That’s That, That’s All

Good writing does not come from verbiage but from words.
Jeff Lindsay

“That” is a common word which you can often cut without losing the sense of your sentence.

This is the plate that she told me to wash. I can see that it’s dirty.

This is the plate she told me to wash. I can see it’s dirty.

The sentence is more direct if you reword it.

She told me to wash this dirty plate.

Try your sentence with and without that. Rewrite if needed.

The Thing Is…

I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.
Vladimir Nabokov

What is the thing you’re trying to convey? Using “thing”  is imprecise at best, and at worst pulls your reader out of the writing. If he’s scratching his head wondering what the thing is, you’ve lost him.  Find a better way to express your idea.

The thing is, we’ll never know the truth. He may or may not have a thing for kale.

We’ll never know the truth. He may or may not love kale.

Look for thing and either define it or remove it, unless you aim to mystify the reader.

What’s the thing we all strive for? Happiness.

What emotion do we all strive for? Happiness.

Parts Of Possession

Notice the small things. The rewards are inversely proportional.
Liz Vassey

This tiny word is absolutely essential – but not all the time. You can’t speak or write without using “of” and this leads to overuse through familiarity. Consider these four examples.

  1. Informal

It’s not that big of a problem or  

It’s not such a big problem or

It’s not a big problem

Which sounds better to you?

The first example sounds ‘different’ to my ear, since I speak and write British English. I can use the difference to make my American character more believable. But if my English character said that phrase it wouldn’t be authentic.

The cadences of speech spill into our written words, so think about the effect you want to produce. Ask yourself who is speaking, and what’s the context?

  1. Wordy

The roof of the house. The sleeve of his shirt. The golden colour of her hair or

The roof. The shirt sleeve. Her golden hair.

Sometimes we over-explain. The reader can follow along if the scene is clearly described, and you don’t have to assign every detail.

  1. Archaic

I present Achmael, Lord Protector of Blein, Archduke of Nimra, Third of his name… or
This is Achmael Blein III.

The first example sits well in a high fantasy story, while the second suits a more modern setting.

  1. Cliché

The end of the day. The blink of an eye. The dead of night. A thing of beauty.

Watch out for clichés – overused, tired descriptions and metaphors. Rewrite the phrase and make it your own.

What Was Going On?

No words are too good for the cutting-room floor, no idea so fine that it cannot be phrased more succinctly.”
Merilyn Simonds

Writers often use the word “was”  paired with a verb ending in -ing. It’s natural in storytelling to say something like this.

“So I was moving away, and all of a sudden there was a loud crash behind me.”

Writing aims for a more polished delivery, and the style varies with the desired effect. Replace all was/am/were plus -ing verbs with the simple past tense, which is shorter and more immediate. If adverbs clutter the sentence, choose a stronger verb.

Thus “I was walking slowly” becomes “I walked slowly” or better yet “I strolled” “I crept” or “I hobbled” according to need.

For the examples above, a possible rewrite is this.

What happened?

“I ran, startled by the crash of metal against metal behind me.”

Of This and That and Other Things

Four small words –  that, thing, of, was – are indispensable in the right place. You’ll tighten your prose by hunting them down, shining a bright light in their eyes, and asking them, “What do you think you’re doing here?”

Only let them stay if you get a definite answer to that question. If not, you know what you have to do. Your clarity is at stake.

blog, creativity, Pat Aitcheson writes, writing process

10 Common Writing Mistakes to Avoid

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Don’t settle for good when you could be better

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

 

So you want to write a short story or maybe even a novel. Your idea is ready, you have an outline, and you’re raring to go. Or you’ve finished a piece and you’re wondering if it’s good enough to release into the world.

You don’t want the editor or agent to pass on it because of errors you could and should have fixed before submission.

You also don’t want to give your reader any reason to put down your manuscript or click away from the page.

Just because you’ve read published work that wasn’t that good doesn’t mean your work should be sub par.

Here are ten common writing errors new writers make and how to correct them.

 

1. Weak Concepts Don’t Fly

What’s the central drive of your narrative? What differentiates it from the next story and the others that came before it? If you’re writing about a married woman who is unhappy with her life, you’d better have a unique take on that.

Maybe she finds out her husband is a spy. Maybe they’re both secret assassins but he’s her latest target. Give the story a twist, otherwise there’s nothing to hold the reader’s attention.

Sometimes you’re writing an anecdote rather than a story, and that isn’t enough to hold a reader. An anecdote stays in one place but a story moves. The characters are changed in some way by the events.

Make sure your story has a start, middle, and end. Follow genre conventions, even if you leave some loose threads for the next book. A romance must end with the main characters together, at least for the moment. A mystery must be solved.

2. Poor Pacing is a Drag

Readers have multiple media competing for shortening attention spans. It’s vital to hook their attention and hold it.

  • Starting too early kills the pace. We don’t care about the journey to work, it’s what happened at the office that matters.
  • Failure to raise the stakes as time goes on can cause readers to lose interest.
  • Too much action without actual plot leaves your reader wondering why any of it matters.

To correct these try the following.

  • Follow the screenwriters’ rule: get in late and leave early. Write the interesting part where a situation develops or characters interact, and leave the rest out.  
  • Check that your characters are facing larger challenges as a consequence of their earlier choices. Making their life difficult is more interesting.
  • Starting in the middle of things is good advice, but we need to care about the characters first. A huge battle only matters when the readers are invested, so spend time establishing who the players are and why they act as they do.

3. Overwriting Weighs a Story Down

Don’t let your love of words get in the way of your story. Less is more when you’re writing for the reader and not yourself. An overly detailed description can stop a story in its tracks.

Trust your reader. Give each character one or two interesting features without describing everything and you’ll inject more life into them than a list ever could. Let the reader fill in some details in her head; that’s one of the joys of reading.

Tighten up your prose by removing crutch words.

This tool helps you find and destroy clichés.

4. Telling not Showing

Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
Anton Chekhov

Telling robs significant moments of their power.

When the cop finds the third body, don’t say he was angry.

Describe his actions so we can work out what he feels. Show him walking away, throwing his latex gloves on the ground; gripping the steering wheel, his stomach churning; drinking his third whisky, ignoring his team playing on the screen above the bar.

Telling is essential of course. Telling summarises action and gets us from one scene to the next. Rather than describing the cop’s uneventful drive home, jump to him fumbling with his front door key. Instead of walking us through every hour of his restless night, he wakes bleary-eyed.

Give your pivotal and climactic scenes the page time they deserve so the reader doesn’t feel shortchanged. Whenever you’re tempted to write a perception such as he thought, felt or knew something, stop. Find another way and let the reader do some work.

5. Dialogue Tag Troubles

Dialogue tags are a frequent source of errors new writers make.

Many writers and editors advise that ‘said’ is the only dialogue tag you need. It’s the most versatile and tends to disappear when read. The dialogue should make the emotional tone clear.

There will be occasions where ‘said’ isn’t precise enough. Avoid adverbs such as quietly, loudly, angrily and so on. Use a stronger verb such as whispered, called, yelled, but consider whether you’re telling what you should be showing by actions.

You can get around overuse of ‘said’ and make your writing more varied by using action tags.

“Is this okay?” She held out the report.
He scanned it, then put it on the table. “I think it’s all there.”

Notice that the tag is on the same line as the dialogue it belongs to. Getting this wrong is irritating and confusing for the reader, who can’t follow who is doing what.

If you have dialogue between two people, you can leave out some tags. Be sure your reader can follow, either by using different speech patterns or by actions.

6. Point of View Problems

Point of View (POV) ranges from the distant, omniscient third person typical of fairy tales to the immediate, internal first person typical of modern YA novels. For example:

Once upon a time in a land far, far away, a poor boy was making his way home. A great storm was brewing over the horizon.

My ragged shirt was no match for the rain and I shivered, already soaked to the skin.

Emma Darwin discusses the use of different POV here but you must make your choice and stick to it.

Imagine there is a camera stuck to your POV character’s head. It sees only what he sees. Therefore write what he sees and knows and nothing else.  Things that happen outside his view can only be revealed in dialogue unless you’re writing in the omniscient 3rd person.

This avoids head-hopping, where the camera jumps from one person’s perception to another in the same scene. The character can’t see his own expression unless he’s looking in the mirror. So you can write that his face felt hot but not that he looked embarrassed, which his companion can observe.

It’s tempting to write something like, “I didn’t realise then that this storm would change my life.” That destroys both POV and pacing. As the author, you know everything. Resist the impulse to give your plot points away, and leave the reader guessing.

7. What Time Is It?

Is your character’s story unfolding now or in the past? Use of present tense is more popular now, especially linked with first person POV. It gives the narrative immediacy and is immersive. You live the events with the narrator in real time.

Past tense remains the most familiar choice.

Tense is not the same as POV. You can write first person, present tense: I run to the store.

Or you can write first person, past tense: I ran to the store.

Shifting between past and present can be an effective stylistic device when used deliberately and with care. Be certain of your choice before you start. Rewriting a whole work is tedious and careful editing would be even more essential than usual.

Find advice on managing tenses here.

8. You’re Unbelievable

It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.
Mark Twain

Fiction makes a contract between reader and writer. The reader agrees to treat the events as if they really happened by suspending their disbelief. The writer pledges to make the events seem believable. If not, the reader is pulled out of the story.

You’ve experienced a character doing something that makes you scratch your head or just say, “No way would that happen.” You know how frustrating that is.  

Characters need to behave in ways consistent with the story and their motivations. As the all-seeing author, you might make them do something unexpected as long as it’s in line with the story’s resolution.

This means that you can add twists and surprises, but they must be foreshadowed in clues beforehand or explained by later events. Your hard-boiled female detective is unlikely to foster orphaned kittens, because of the different demands of each activity. But if she does, there’d better be credible explanations of how and why.

Having the protagonist get exactly what they need out of nowhere is lazy writing. Known as Deus ex machina, this device introduces a new and pivotal item just in time to save the day. You can use coincidence to get characters into trouble, but they have to fight their way out.

Don’t make life too easy for the characters. Make it impossible to reach their goal, and the eventual victory will be sweeter.

9. It’s All Too Much

Have you chosen a theme for your story or a symbolic motif? Be careful.

It’s okay that the weather mirrors your heroine’s mood. But it’s not okay if it’s always sunny when she’s happy, raining when she cries, stormy when she’s angry… you get the point.

Use a light hand with symbolism. Often theme only emerges when you read the complete story, and sometimes it’s clearer to other readers than to the writer. During editing, you can decide whether to add extra clues or tone it down.

Similarly, too much action in one scene can feel like being hit over the head repeatedly. Movies might get away with blowing things up every two minutes but most novels need some quieter space in between the action sequences.

Don’t go on so long that the reader gets bored. Show the aftermath and let the character’s development shine through. Strong language and strong emotion lose their power if overused, so add some contrast whether it’s a fight or a love scene.

10. Not Looking Good

Your words must look good on screen or in print. Correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation are essential.

Whether you self-publish or aim to be traditionally published, make sure the work you send out looks professional. Nobody wants to read work that’s littered with errors, giving the impression that the author doesn’t care.

You care, so fix your work. This 12 step self-editing checklist covers a range of tips and resources that will help you polish your drafts.

Re:fiction article on self-editing
refiction.com/articles/self-editing-checklist/

Finally, Get To The End

The secret is not following the right path, it’s following that right path to the end. Don’t quit, my friend, until you’ve arrived.
Toni Sorenson

Unfinished works linger in the back of your brain, slowly draining your energy. You feel anxious and guilty about them.

Do whatever you need to finish. If you can’t let go, that’s a sign. Complete your piece somehow. You can’t query half a novel or publish half an article.

Eliminate as many of the issues above as you can, or trash the piece and start fresh.

Let go of perfectionism because done is better than perfect. And once it’s done, it can be edited until it’s as close to perfect as you can get.

Go to it. Your readers are waiting.

Please leave your comment below and I’ll reply.

blog, writing process

Remove crutch words to make your prose stronger

pataitcheson22
muscles-lineart_OpenClipart-Vectors
OpenClipart-Vectors via pixabay

When editing your work you’ll find words that crop up over and over, but add no value to the prose. These are crutch words and removing them will strengthen your prose.

When speaking, crutch words give us time to think. They’re used as filler or emphasis.

Filler words in speech

• Well
• So
• Actually
• Honestly
• Really
• Definitely
• Anyway

In writing we tend to use the same words and phrases repeatedly. They slow down or dilute what we’re trying to say. When writing dialogue, a few of these words give a natural feel. They should still be used sparingly, because written dialogue is natural speech, but polished.

A word frequency counter like this one  identifies which words appear most often in your writing. Try it with a piece of your writing from one or two years ago.

You can use the ‘find’ function in a word processor, or use a printout and red pen, editor-style. Sometimes the word can be removed. Other times the sentence will need re-writing.

Like all editing rules, this is a guideline. You don’t need to remove every one of the words on the list. You’re looking at each instance critically and making a conscious decision to keep, change or cut. Some are adverbs, which as we know must be used with care.

Overused words

• Certainly
• Probably
• Basically
• Virtually
• Slightly
• Rather
• Quite
• Very
• A bit
• Almost
• Just
• As though
• Somehow
• Seems/seemed
• Shrugged
• Smiled
• Laughed
• Looked
• Started to
• Began to

Don’t forget two little words that can often be cut without losing the meaning of the sentence.

  • But
  • And

You will find that taking out a proportion of the crutch words/phrases allows your writing to speak more directly. And that is the aim of every writer.

On being asked how he created his magnificent sculpture of David, Michelangelo is reputed to have said, “Simple. I cut away everything that wasn’t David.”

blog, Pat Aitcheson writes, writing process

How to edit your writing, part 4

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person-731148_1280
unsplash via pixabay

And on with part 4 of editing your writing.

part 3 here
part 2 here 
part 1 here

All the following are suggestions. You are the author, you are in charge of your words. Feel free to disagree, just make your choices conscious ones.

This time, a few thoughts on beginnings, middles, and ends.

Where do I begin?

Screenwriters are told to get in as late as possible. This means starting close to the action, but not without some context. Sure, we want to see some of the protagonist’s ordinary life. We don’t want a blow by blow account of how she gets up, showers, has breakfast, and goes to work. Writers are also advised to begin ‘in media res’ or in the middle of things. Action is a great opener, but being dropped in the middle of a battle when we don’t know who is fighting or why, is a mistake. We don’t care about the characters yet.

Prologues are sometimes used as a way to get round this problem of where to start. A little explanation, and then we can drop into the fight in chapter one. While prologues can be done well, the usual advice is to avoid them. Try writing the prologue, then seeing if you can cut it later, sprinkling the information through the story.

The first chapter is your chance to sell the reader on investing their time in your story. Literary agents have a number of pet peeves. Some are listed here on Writer Unboxed, which is useful reading. But think of yourself as a reader. Don’t you feel cheated by any of the following?

  • ‘it was all a dream’ then the character wakes up
  • nothing is really happening, plot is stalling
  • description and exposition rather than action
  • lots of characters introduced, with no context
  • character and place names that are (a) too similar or (b) unpronounceable

Make the first chapter count. Show the reader enough to make them curious, to wonder what happened next. That’s the goal of storytelling. Hook the reader with a flavour of your story, your Big Idea, and get them to turn the page.

Successful novelists may not follow these rules, but remember this. Every trad published author wrote a first novel, that had to interest an agent enough to read on. Every self published author has to get the public to read on. When you’re mega-successful, then you can relax. Until then, polish your opening, get feedback, and make it shine.

The soggy middle

Many writers talk about hitting a wall, five chapters in, 30,000 words in, wherever. The initial shine has worn off and the story is far from its end. Some jump ship at this point and chase the next shiny idea. I wrote about why it is vital to keep going and finish your stuff. Having a strong outline certainly helps, but plotters are not immune from an attack of the blahs.

I don’t like the term writer’s block. I think there are times when writing is easier, and times when we experience resistance. When we hit resistance, it’s time to use some different techniques. They might also help with NaNoWriMo, which is currently ongoing. (I’m not participating this year, but that is for a different post.)

Remember that it’s not necessary to write chronologically. For some writers, writing as a jigsaw puzzle works better, but in that case a clear idea of the story structure is needed – just like the picture on the puzzle box.

What to do when the story comes to a grinding halt? Some things that have worked for me, and some I haven’t tried yet, are listed below. I didn’t invent these.

  • Start writing that scene you’re avoiding. Promise yourself a little treat at 500 words.
  • Write all the backstory you have on your characters, starting with the protagonist.
  • Interview a secondary character about the protagonist.
  • Interview the antagonist. What do they think of the protagonist?
  • Write the end and work your way back.
  • Write a scene you are looking forward to, then write towards it.
  • Pantsers – try outlining, no matter how sparse. Think about the bones of the story.
  • Plotters – try asking the characters where to go next. Let go a little.
  • Write something else – an opinion piece, a poem. Bonus points if it is about a character.
  • Different creation- bake a cake, paint, draw, photograph something.
  • Get moving. Walk, run, garden, clean.
  • Try free-writing, like the morning pages from The Artist’s Way.
  • Use the ‘why?’ technique. Ask yourself why you have got stuck, write down the answer. Then ask ‘why?’ with that answer. Keep asking why, until you reach the heart of the matter. This works for life stuff too. About four or five cycles will usually be enough.
    • Why am I stuck? because I don’t know how to put Mary in the forest
    • why does she need to be there? because she needs to meet a witch
    • why does she need to meet the witch? because she needs a spell of invisibility
    • why does she need the spell? it will allow her to free her sister (the main story thread)
    • why can’t she get the spell from someone else? hmmm… hadn’t thought of that. How about, she has to sell the jewellery her mother left her, and buy the spell from the scary warlock in her village (who I can write as another interesting character). But while sneaking through the forest she is confronted by the witch, who can see her because she taught the original spell to the warlock, so they could meet in secret when they were lovers?? Now, there’s a bigger story to be told.

That’s one way past the resistance, opening up more possibilities by creating your way through.

sunset-1331088_1280
marcoreyesgt via pixabay

And that’s a wrap

Endings can be simple, or tricky. You want to leave the reader with a good feeling. You want the reader to miss the characters when they turn the last page, and tell others about the story.

Plot twist is one of the most difficult, but memorable endings if you can pull it off. Misdirection is the key, making the wrong answer plausible, and the correct answer understandable. This can be satisfying and prompt re-readings to spot the clues. You will need to examine your story carefully, to make sure that the clues and red herrings are in order. It’s easy to lose track through re-writing.

Avoid deus ex machina endings. Literally meaning ‘god from a machine’, it dates from the days of Greek tragedy. When there were too many problems to untangle at the end of a play, a god would descend from the sky and solve everything with a flick of his hand. The sudden discovery of a weapon, weakness, or other artefact that magically solves things breaks the contract with the reader, which is that you will repay their time with a properly satisfying story.

Circular endings can work, with the story retracing some element that was introduced at the start. It could be the same environment, the hero arrives back home but changed. For example, Frodo returns to the Shire. In The girl with all the gifts, the story opens and closes with Melanie, a classroom and Miss Justineau. The environment and characters, and their relationship, has changed.

Be sure that your ending follows genre conventions. A romance must end with happy ever after, even if it is qualified. Your story question must be answered. It’s best to tie up plot threads, though you might want to leave one open for the next book. Too many hanging questions breaks your reader contract, again. But it’s reasonable to leave some spaces for the reader to fill in, as long as they are not gaping plot holes.

Have someone else read the story. Ask where they got bored, or excited, or puzzled. It can tell you a lot about what is needed to improve the story.

Enjoyable stories leave you with the sense that characters have moved on and changed, even if they are going on to new adventures. And if you’ve done your job well, the reader is invested enough to follow your characters, and your writing, on into the future. That’s what we all want, isn’t it?

Writers want to tell you a story. And then, we hope we’ve earned the chance to tell you another.

blog, Pat Aitcheson writes, writing process

How to edit your writing, part 3

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image: unsplash via pixabay

And on with part 3 of thoughts and tips on self-editing.

All the following are suggestions. You are the author, you are in charge of your words. Feel free to disagree, just make your choices conscious ones.

Filter words

These words stand between the author and the reader, creating distance. If we want to deepen point-of-view, immersing the reader in the character’s mind and thoughts, these words should be cut away. Consider the following.

She started to run away from the man, and saw an alleyway coming up ahead. She ran into the alley, feeling her heart racing in her chest. She heard his footsteps behind her. She felt as if she could not escape, and deciding to stand her ground this time, she turned to face her attacker.

She ran from her attacker and ducked into an alley. Her heartbeat kept pace with the footsteps racing ever closer. He would find her, it was a dead end, no escape. She took a breath, and turned to face him. This time, she would stand her ground.

The words in italics describe the woman’s sensations and thoughts. The second example is not perfect, but we are much closer to the character and her reactions. It feels more immediate. Emma Darwin describes filtering very clearly in this post on her blog This itch of writing. Well worth a read.

Passive vs active voice

The boy was hit by the ball. (passive)
The ball hit the boy. (active)

Passive voice is disliked by modern writers. (passive)
Modern writers dislike passive voice. (active)

Passive voice uses the construction object-verb-subject. Sometimes it is the right choice, but usually starting with the subject, or active principle, sounds and reads better. As the examples show, active voice also gives a shorter, punchier sentence. Once again, the Hemingway app is your friend. You don’t have to accept all its suggestions, but they are often correct.

Reading aloud is the second way to find what works. Remember, the reader is essentially reading silently in their head. Anything that causes them to stumble, risks pulling them out of the story.

Flashbacks

If you have read craft books, or advice blogs, or lists of what not to do in stories, flashbacks are always mentioned. The truth is, writing rules are guidelines. You can do almost anything, as long as you do it well. That means you must know the rules, before you break them. A character muses, or remembers events from the past that have a direct bearing on the present. This is backstory, and it needs careful handling.The main thing is to take the reader with you. They must be certain of where and when the events took place. You can start with past perfect tense.

“She had not thought about that day in years.”

Then switch to simple past tense to describe the events.

“He looked so handsome in his tuxedo that night, and she couldn’t believe she was going to the prom as his date.”

At the end, signal that this past time is over.

“The telephone rang, pulling her from her daydream. She tore the photo in tiny pieces and dropped them in the bin, consigning them to the past where they belonged.”

A flashback should not be an information dump. Huge chunks of backstory are indigestible and stop the narrative flow. Find a way to work it into dialogue or action. Don’t let characters spend too much time introspecting either. It’s boring and rarely advances the action.

When two characters discuss the past they must avoid telling what the other should already know. But it’s a great opportunity to slip information (or misinformation) into the story, and show characters in action. Once again Emma Darwin goes into detail here.

Next time: beginnings, middles, and ends. See you there.

blog, writing process

How to edit your writing, part 2

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old-letters_jarmoluk
jarmoluk via pixabay

And on with part 2 of thoughts and tips on self-editing.

All the following are suggestions. You are the author, you are in charge of your words. Feel free to disagree, just make your choices conscious ones.

Crutch words

These words support our speech, giving us time to think. Actually, um, honestly, so, are all examples. You might find them when you write natural sounding dialogue. Good dialogue is not the same as natural speech. It’s natural speech, polished.

When we write, crutch words are those we use repeatedly, and often without being aware of them. I discovered that I use ‘but’ way too often, to start sentences and join clauses together. You can find them using a word frequency counter. Next, you need to search and destroy. Print the list, and highlight them individually in your document using the Find/Search function. Now you can consider each one separately, and decide if it stays or goes. Some more tips, such as using a word cloud generator, can be found in this post by Alyssa Hollingsworth.

If you cut out a proportion of and, that, when, but, and similar words, it will tighten your prose. It immediately becomes clearer.

Adverbs: friend or foe?

I read that when asked what she would change about the Harry Potter books, JK Rowling said she would remove all the adverbs. The first book in particular contains lots of adverbs that tell rather than showing. I am a huge JKR fan, and it’s interesting to see how her writing (and editing) evolved over the series.

It is an article of faith that adverbs should be killed off, but like all absolutes this is too extreme. Think of them as seasoning, to be added judiciously lest they overpower the whole. Often in rewriting, there is a better choice to be made.
‘Walked quickly’ can become strode, hurried, ran, or another word that conveys the exact meaning. When you can’t quite remember the word you want and the thesaurus isn’t helping, try this site for the word that’s on the tip of your tongue. Maybe English isn’t your first language, or it is but you’ve temporarily lost your words. This site is brilliant for those times.

Was/-ing

This is a favourite construction of mine, and maybe yours too. Perhaps this is because we naturally retell events this way, but good prose is more than natural dialogue.

While you need not banish was/-ing totally, minimising its use improves your prose. Consider the following examples – featuring adverbs (and a cliché for good measure).

She was walking slowly along the road, when suddenly he came into view.
She walked slowly along the road, and then saw him appear from nowhere.
She shuffled along, eyes scanning the road ahead. There was no time to hide when he stepped into her path.

Most times, the simple past tense, with or without a better choice of verb, will improve the text. If you overwrite and need to cut words, this is one good way to do it without losing the sense of your text. If you underwrite, better verb choice and more description might be needed. Search for ‘was’ and look critically at every instance.

Clichés

Overused phrases only hurt our brilliant prose. Be creative and find a new way to say it. This site allows you to paste your text and find any cliches that slipped in. At the end of the day, you know it makes sense.

Next time: filter words, passive voice, flashbacks. See you there.

 

blog, Pat Aitcheson writes, writing process

How to edit your writing, part 1

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senlay via pixabay

 

All writing is rewriting, and self-editing is integral to that process.

There are books available, and really good editors as well. I learned a lot from Morgen Bailey when she edited my novel, and I wanted to share some tips I picked up over the last year or two. I hope they will help you to edit your own work, because it’s an essential skill for every writer. I will split this into several posts with a few points in each, in no particular order.

Oh but I don’t need to edit, the publisher will do that for me

Well maybe, but if your work is littered with errors and things that need fixing, you’re not creating that first impression of a writer who knows what they’re doing. You may never have the chance to show what a great story you wrote. If you write short stories, or blog posts, or anything really, you are your own editor.

All the following are suggestions. You are the author, you are in charge of your words. Feel free to disagree, just make your choices conscious ones.

Read your work aloud

This is a great way to catch awkward dialogue, choppy prose and repeated words. More of them later. If you have a Mac, you already have text to speech. Go to System Preferences, open dictation&speech, and you can specify how your text is read. Play around with gender/speed/accent, choose the keyboard shortcut, and enjoy hearing your words. It is not as mechanical as you might think. While not perfect, how many of us can get another person to read our words?

If you read it aloud, and you trip over the words, the reader is doing the same in their head. Take notes. Rewrite till it flows.

Don’t trust the spellchecker

Homonyms can trip you up. These are words which sound the same but have different meanings, like hear/here, site/sight, red/read, write/right. Spellcheck won’t highlight them. If you are unsure about a spelling or meaning, you don’t know. Look it up.

Watch sentence length

In my first drafts particularly, I am inclined to write long, rambling sentences that go on and on, one action after another, explaining the events as I see them in a way that makes perfect sense to me because I’m writing it and I just need to get it all down before I lose my thread…

See what I mean?

Sometimes you want to use a longer sentence, and I certainly don’t mean that every sentence should be short. It can lead to choppiness. Be aware of the effect you want to create. Short sentences are punchy, great for blog posts, or action scenes. Longer sentences used skilfully create flow, slow things down, and build towards a climax.

“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length.

And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”

Gary Provost

The application Hemingway can be useful. I don’t always agree with it, but it highlights passive voice, long sentences, complex words, adverbs, and so on. It gives a reading grade, and we do well to pitch our words at a level that most of our readers find easy to manage. It’s a good starting point, and there’s a free version.

Next time: crutch words, adverbs, was/-ing, and clichés. See you there.