Skills 4 Writing

Verbs

2009-06-25T23:24:00.000-07:00

There are three things that make a sentence - Subject, Verb, Object.

An adjective can describe the Subject or the Object but an adverb can only describe a Verb.

This means, in any given sentence, there can be two adjectives and one adverb. But no-one ever writes: The sleek cat quietly sat on the fluffy mat.

Even if they did, the adjectives have more character than the adverb. 'Sleek' tells you a lot about the cat - you picture a thin, angular Siamese-type cat, definitely not a Persian. As well as the word having character, it shows you something about the cat's character.

Thin, angular Siamese-type cats would probably wear diamond collars, wouldn't they? Especially when they sit on fluffy mats. Fluffy can be luxurious or cheap and overdone but it tells you something, sets you [the reader] up for something.

So what does 'quietly sat' tell the reader?

Nothing.

What does: lounged, lolled, languished, or perched tell them?

Lots more!

I was at a two-day workshop recently led by Prof. Sam Ham from the States. It was about Thematic Communication - how to centre your writing or message around a theme and so change peoples behaviour or make them think.

He said that he had spent an entire night going through one of those big, thick dictionaries and wrote down every verb he could find in it. He said it was one of the most valuable resources he had. And that the majority of verbs start with the letter 'S'.

I challenge everyone to go through their dictionaries. Go - seek your verbs!

Workshops: no writer is an island

2009-04-19T18:27:00.000-07:00

I have just spent two days in workshops with the incredible, warm, wonderful, sharing and incredible [yes, I did say it twice and I meant to] Kathryn Heyman.

Kathryn is an Austalian author who flits between England and Australia and she was in Brisbane over the weekend. Knowing the calibre of the woman I spent the money, flew down and revelled in learning at the feet of a master!

OK, maybe the hyperbole is a bit much but it was all worth it.

It's important that writers have contact with other writers. You need to be mercenary about any opportunity to be involved with writers - that can be workshops, your State's writer's centre, a couple of people you met at a workshop who you think might be able to help you to critique your work [and you theirs] or just to have coffee and talk writing with and have them 'get' you.

This is almost as imperative as a writer having to read. No writer can function, grow or better their craft in a vacuum. You have to get it on the paper on your own but you need to have a community to support you when the loneliness and self-doubt is overwhelming.

Get out there and meet some other writers!!

How can I say this nicely...

2009-03-02T17:28:00.000-08:00

I've said this before, but please, please, please edit out your adverbs!

Adverbs are useless things that add no value to writing. They slow and frustrate the reader and are lifeless.

I read a ms for assessment recently [forgive me for that one] and one page of text [272 words] had 12 adverbs - one for every 22.5 words!

Most of these words were used in cliches or to describe how a character said something ie swiftly tetchily lightly casually blankly quickly cheekily firmly uselessly ominously helplessly frantically etc.

Please, as a reader I beg you, please be responsible with your editing and cut and cull as many as you can - one adverb per 2,000 words is a good ratio!!

Jennifer

Time as setting

2009-02-26T14:52:00.000-08:00

Beyond the physical there is a fourth dimension - time.

Time is a setting.

If you have the reader understand from the beginning of the story that it will take place over one day or three days you have laid out the 'landscape' for them.

If your story takes place over months or years you have to show the passage of time. Time influences things as much as where a character is in a physical space. You have to show a character moving through time like they move through a room.

Have the character doing things, small things, between the major incidents of the story. Things like making a cup of tea and sitting and watching while the sun sets, the room darkens and the undrunk tea goes cold.

Longer periods can be a sentence like: It rained off and on for the next three days or A week later Dad came home.

You can't jump from scene to scene without setting a timeframe if time has passed. That just confuses a reader and they will put your book down and never pick it up again.

Jennifer

PS: Yes, Margaret - this one's for you!!

How well do you know your World?

2009-02-25T14:44:00.001-08:00

A sense of place is important whether you're writing fantasy or not. No-one just lives in their head and so the reader has to see/hear/feel/taste/smell what the character does.

Writing without describing place is like giving a reader a play script with no stage directions - a lot of words in a void.

I've said before not to spoonfeed the reader, but you have to give enough so the reader is with you - and then don't change the rules!

Don't, in the first paragraph, describe a sleepy seaside village with images of narrow winding roads and kids playing cricket in the streets and then have your characters driving breakneck down an old industrial road.

Don't make it worse by having your characters escape from the police by hiding in a bat-infested cave on said industrial road and describing vegetation, dust etc but never, ever mentioning a building, factory, workshop or chainlink fence.

Readers live in the real world predominantly through vision and a sense of space. You have to activate their inner eye and have them orientate themselves in the space you create.

Draw a map. Draw the interior of the house/shop/school and then place that house in a street, that street in a town etc. Know for sure where everything is and how to get there. Check back on it if you have to.

This applies to everyday fiction as well as fantasy. Make sure your reader can picture it - not with beautiful, meandering language but concretely with solid images.

Jennifer

PS: The sky was indigo silk is both beautiful and concrete [and brief].

Don't forget your head...

2009-02-24T15:38:00.000-08:00

Points of view [POV] are many and varied. The most popular are First Person and limited Third Person.

First Person is the narrator telling the story as the character 'I' - 'I did this and then I noticed that. '

Limited Third Person is similar to First Person. The narrator is constantly looking over the main character's shoulder and telling the story they see from there only.

Neither POV can tell about things that the protagonist doesn't see.

Then there's Multiple Third person. This is used to tell the story by looking over the shoulders of several different characters . Usually each character is given a different chapter or the change in viewpoint is signalled to the reader by a physical break in the text on the page.

The modern reader is familiar with any of the above, but use them wisely.

Don't Head-Hop.

Head-hopping is telling the reader what one character is thinking and feeling and then in the next sentence telling us what the other character in the scene is thinking and feeling.

This can be confusing for the reader and is not an obvious flaw to a beginner writer who wants to tell everything about everyone and thinks it builds richness to the writing. Less is more - always!

Solution? Imagine your book is a reality TV Show where a camera is strapped to a motorbike helmet that your character cannot take off. Decide who is going to wear that helmet, then write what you see.

Jennifer

Roadblocks

2009-02-23T16:17:00.000-08:00

"Just Keep Writing" sounds easy enough, doesn't it? But we all hit roadblocks eventually.

What to do?

Most stories are linear and chronological. That doesn't mean they were created the same way.

If a scene isn't working or a character isn't talking to you that doesn't mean you should ignore the others whispering in your ear or keeping you up late at night.

The writing can happen however it happens. I often write scenes as they appeal to me. This helps to invigorate me to go back to the others that have stalled.

What not to do?

Don't try to convince yourself that you have to write the book the way it will be read.

The start of the story you read is rarely where an author started writing. Often the first several thousand words of a draft are never read by anyone but the author. Sometimes those first several thousand are woven into the story later where they fit better.

It's OK to:

jump all over the shop when you're first getting it down,
blend/weave all the bits together in the editing process,
move stuff around even if you've written it in a logical, linear and chronological order - it might add suspense and tension and make a better book.

It's all in the editing. The most work ever done on a book is the sorting out after it's written - so don't sweat the small stuff - and that first writing, the first draft, is actually the small stuff!

Jennifer

The thing about poetry...

2009-02-19T15:36:00.000-08:00

The thing about poetry, with all its need for metaphors and brevity, is that studying it makes you read and write differently.

In poetry there is no room for 'mighta, sorta, kinda like' writing. It has to use strong, immediate and evocative language - even the use of similies is limited because the words 'like a...' are two too many.

So in your own writing/editing:

Don't quantify!

Nothing should ever be 'very' or 'nearly' or anything else wimpy. Even worse is 'very nearly'. If someone 'runs very quickly' [another double naughty] surely they could sprint, bolt or race. Think about your words.

Don't give them room to move!

To make something stronger in a reader's mind, things either are or they aren't.

There is strength and immediacy in a good metaphor - the sky is not LIKE indigo silk, it IS indigo silk...

Don't underestimate the intellgence of your reader!

Don't spoonfeed your reader. A lighter touch is better. Once you have it in your reader's mind that the sky is indigo silk, you don't have to expand. You don't have to add that it was a little lighter at the horizon or a bit darker or anything else. They get the picture.

Do... keep writing. It will all come out in the editing.

Jennifer

Cringe Editing

2009-02-16T15:09:00.000-08:00

I completed my degree as a mature-aged student and graduated the year I turned 40.

Being 'older' gives you a different perspective and attitude to studies. It also influences your subject choices - I did a semester each of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English translations and could never explain to anyone who asked how that was going to help me.

But I loved it and learnt a lot about grammar and current English as well as reading [and translating] Beowulf [and others] in its original language

I also did two semesters of Creative Writing. The lecturer and tutor focused a lot on poetry - writing and reading. Other students weren't happy and complained but I could see we were being taught:

Careful and thoughtful word choice
Rhythm and flow
Brevity - making each word count
Style - there are many, many ways to write a poem
Clarity of thought and purpose

In our tutorials the writer being critiqued would read their work aloud, the rest of the group would listen and then give verbal feedback.

I think it's more important to hear someone else read your work aloud to you than it is to read your own work.

I remember another student reading his poetry and putting stresses and emphasis on words that didn't seem natural. When I read it in my head [and aloud] it didn't work, didn't fit - but when he read it he forced it to fit. Others in the group read it like me. He didn't change anything because in his mind it was right - but it wouldn't have worked out in the big wide world.

If you're part of a critique group, have someone else read your work aloud to the group. As well as hearing what they stumble over it lets you pick up a pen and cringe- edit - every time you cringe there's obviously something there that needs work.

Jennifer

Passive vs Active

2009-02-15T19:04:00.000-08:00

Passive writing will kill your book!

Passive [indirect] writing is very wordy writing. It's easily identified by the words 'will be', 'been', 'being', 'was' and 'by', eg The boy was bitten by the dog.

Active voice or writing is direct eg The dog bit the boy.

Another way to tell indirect or passive writing is the use of imperfect past tense - the almost constant use of words ending in 'ing' eg:

The heavens opened and the light shower that had been trickling down turned to pelting rain, hammering the corrugated roof of the dilapidated building. The old seat, positioned on the pier and looking out to the bay, gradually appeared through the murky light. Rover was standing next to it. A figure was sitting silently on the bench stroking the dog’s soggy ears. Suspicion was Harry's first instinct; however, the fact that Rover was allowing the man to stroke him gave Harry some feeling of security.

Imperfect past tense will kill writing faster than cliches, overdone humour and adjectives up to your armpits - look for this basic mistake before you edit for Point of View, Voice, dangling participles [although this can be the reason for them!] or anything else.

The rewritten piece:
The sky opened and the rain now hammered on the corrugated iron roof. An old seat that faced the bay could be seen in the murky light. Rover stood beside it and the figure on the bench stoked the dog's soggy ears. Harry was suspicious but the fact that Rover allowed this gave him some security.

Still not great, but notice how the second piece is more immediate .

And 85 words [8 'ing' words that weren't nouns] versus 56 words [no 'ing' words] makes it an improvement for that fact only.

Oh, and there were 2 'ly' words in those 85 original words - ratio of 1:42.5

If the first piece above was your first draft - that's OK, keep writing. It'll all come out in the editing. But don't think the first piece will pass as polished work.

Jennifer

A Challenge

2009-02-12T16:47:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about the NaNoWriMo thingy.

Not something I could do as I live in the Southern Hemisphere and November just doesn't fit as downtime.

So I challenged a couple of friends of mine to do it with me in February. Not smart - it's the shortest month of the year!

But we all agreed to do something to push up our output. Some have been more successful than others and are managing some pretty good word counts.

Not so me. Life has seriously gotten in the way of my ambitions, however, I have managed 500 words a day.

The extra little twist I've challenged myself with though, is to finish each daily little 500 word output on a cliffhanger a la Days of Our Lives.

The cliffhanger can be good or bad but has to be at a higher level of tension than when the piece first started. So over 1500 words you should get the ooh, aah, ooh, aah, ooh thing happening with your readers.

1st 500 - build to an ooh,
2nd 500 - resolve [aah] and then build to another [higher] ooh,
3rd 500 - resolve [aah] and then build to another ooh.

See how it works? Try it yourself. If you're stuck with any of your writing just put your characters into an unfamiliar situation and see what happens by constantly challenging them for 1500 - 2000 words.

Jennifer

Scoresheets

2009-02-11T21:33:00.000-08:00

Last year I was a judge for a YA writers competition for the second year in a row.

It's always an interesting thing to do. The contestants each submitted 3,000 words to be judged. What struck me, to the point that I started keeping a scoresheet, was the number of adverbs and adjectives some writers used and that they were either not aware of them or hadn't polished their work well enough.

One piece of writing had 29 adverbs in 3,000 words - an average of one per hundred! It doesn't seem a lot but can be distracting if everything is 'beautifully', 'wonderfully', 'awfully' etc.

How to stop yourself making the same mistake [or at least recognising if you do it]:

Choose five of your favourite authors and five different books.
Select five pages from each of those books and count how many adverbs and adjectives are in those five pages.
Keep a list or scoresheet.
Choose five pages of your own writing and see how your score compares!

How to fix this if it's a problem for you:

Look at the verb or noun the adverb or adjective is describing

Make that verb or noun stonger, clearer
Play with calling a sound a taste or a sight a sound!

And write - just keep writing. All of the above can be fixed in the editing.

Jennifer

Just Write

2009-02-10T15:35:00.000-08:00

I'm reading the Gotham Writers' Workshop Writing Fiction: The Practical Guide From New York's Acclaimed Creative Writing School. What a title - it says it all!

Anyway, I was reading about Plot - what it is, what it isn't, plot vs story arch etc - when I realised how intimidating it must be for someone who wants to write, is insecure and lacks confidence and then buys themselves a 'how to write a book' book.

A piece of advice - don't do it! Just write!

All that other stuff comes with the editing. Plot is usually there if there's a story to tell. When you edit you get to think about all the other stuff because you start to think about how to make the story better.

If you just write and end up with 50,000 words, by the time you finish editing you'll have 80,000 words. Editing isn't all about getting rid of stuff - it's about making the stuff you have better.

So - just write!

Jennifer

Meeting with a Mentor

2009-02-08T17:17:00.000-08:00

Even though I mentor others, I also take advantage of meeting with the 'great and infuential' when I can, and I did so last week.

I made a very basic mistake. I had found out about the opportunity at the last minute and was lucky enough to get the very last spot available. Then I started making mistakes.

The biggest mistake: NOT HAVING SPECIFIC QUESTIONS TO ASK!

I thought he would give me incisive and direct feedback and criticism of the 20 pages I submitted to be read - not so. He had a lot of people to meet, a lot of stuff to read and so his feedback matched that. He liked my story. He was able to point to specific things he liked, but they were the same things that other people liked.

I did myself no favours by not having questions to ask!

When you have an opportunity to meet with anyone who will help your writing, always have questions ready to ask. We are all busy people and your mentor [or whoever] might have more than one piece of writing to consider.

Be specific in your questions:

Did the voice work?
Do you feel the start is strong?
Is the ending an effective ending, etc?
What are my strengths/weaknesses?
What hints can you give me for getting an agent?
Do you have any names of people you think would be interested in my work and,
Can I use/drop your name?

Be mercenary - you have paid the money so there is no shame in getting your pound of flesh.

Jennifer

Doorways - Metaphors and Similies

2009-02-04T19:56:00.000-08:00

I've just finished Joanne Harris' 'Runemarks'. [Check out her webpage here]

I noticed - maybe it was obvious or maybe I was reading as a writer - the use of metaphor and simile.

All of the metaphors and similes were direct references back to the world that the protaganist would know and only that world. So anything new that she experienced was compared to something from her previous frame of reference.

Sounds obvious, doesn't it? And really necessary when you're creating fantasy fiction, but you'd be surprised how many writers don't do it. These writers might not use similes from our contemporary 'real' world but they're not so careful about living within their character's frames of reference.

Something to think about when you're doing the hard slog of editing!

Jennifer

Useful Things

2008-11-06T16:14:00.000-08:00

There are several things that are useful to a writer.

They are, in no particular order:

A library card - I can't afford to buy all the books I want/need to read. I don't suppose too many of us can.

A desk of your own - you need to be able to get to it whenever you want.

Writing implements - whatever form these may take. I still write with pen and paper - usually in bed late at night when the story won't leave me alone and the only way I can get to sleep is to get it out of my head and into a notebook. Everything ends up on the computer though.

Time - grab it when and where you can.

And Lists - lists of books to read, ideas for other stories, character's names etc.

My favourite list/collection, and one I recommend every writer starts, is favourite first lines.

I came across the best first line the other day. It's from The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney by Suzanne Harper:

"It was three minutes past midnight, and the dead wouldn't leave me alone. "

If you don't want to keep reading after that you have no imagination.

I love the first lines from Before I Die by Jenny Downham, even though it's actually two lines:

“I wish I had a boyfriend. I wish he lived in the wardrobe on a coat hanger.”

Start your own and keep them in a journal, in a drawer, in your desk. They can provoke all sorts of thinking when you are stalled, but they are also just great one-line poems.

Jennifer

DESCRIPTIVE PASSAGES - Can there be too much of a good thing?

2008-11-05T19:29:00.000-08:00

There are two schools of thought -
1. Literary is good, and
2. Literary is boring and bad.

These two schools of thought usually marry up to two schools of readers - those who like dense descriptive works and those who like fast-paced page turners with minimal description.

[Dictionary definition of Literary: characterised by an excessive or affected display of learning. Mostly used by writers and readers to mean weighty, descriptive and introspective prose].

I sit somewhere in the middle. I love rich metaphors and clever similes, I love to be transported to another time or place by a well-turned phrase, but - the fastest way to lose a reader is make it hard for them to read or make them feel like they're stupid.

So how do you do it, make it enough without it being like a meal overdosed with chillies - all burn and no taste?

Everytime there's a pivotal or highly charged [searing] emotional moment - good or bad - try to bring ALL the senses into it but especially smell. This will slow the story and bring the reader's attention into focus. This is also the time when you can use metaphors and easily get away with it [if they are good ones and not cliches] and the rest of the story can keep moving forward quickly.

1. Describe something small that's in the space or being observed ie: the seeds or stuff that drops from dying flowers in a vase.

2. Describe something huge ie: a church spire out a window, a gum tree you can see through a window and the sound of the branches reaching down and scraping on the tin roof.

3. Describe something unexpected in the space - this can be something sinister, something portenteuos that could be relevant later, something joyous and spirit-lifting or something that reveals character that the reader wasn't aware of previously: ie a bottle of metallic blue fingernail polish in an 89-year old woman's bathroom cabinet

This year I was very successful and a winner in the richest short story competition in Australia. In my [winning] short story every time the boy was with his father there were smells associated with that time. Even after the father had left I had the boy smelling the letter the father had sent hoping to smell the tobacco that might have transferred from the father's hands when he sealed and sent it.

Even things/smells that you might not think are important will be - in this same story I described how the boy would walk down the railway line to where his father worked - past the guinea grass that smelt fresh and green and the molasses grass that clung to his clothes.

I was talking to the editor of the book the story was published in, Roseanne Fitzgibbon, [who was also one of the judges] and she said that in the preliminary judging meetings one of the judges reacted strongly to the description of the smell of the guinea grass - she said it had placed her right there, at that place in the story.

The rest of the judges were southerners and didn't even know what guinea grass was but it had impacted tremendously on that one judge.

So be aware of even the smallest things.

But mostly make it count, put description in the parts of the story where you want an emotional connection between the reader and the characters. Something written wholly in clever metaphors and similes is hard to read, it's hard to tell what's important and it's draining - like wading through treacle.

Stories have to move, the reader should be desperate to turn the pages - save your best writing for, edit your best writing into, the most emotional, pivotal, searing moments.

Jennifer

Four Things You Can Do Today to Take Your Novel to the Next Level

2008-10-30T21:00:00.001-07:00

I mentioned writing in the last editing post, so I am going to share a piece written by Jason Sitzes. All copyright to him of course.

Four Things You Can Do Today to Take Your Novel to the Next Level
Jason S Sitzes

First, let's look at the process of getting a novel written.

Breaking it down: a mainstream novel is made up of about 80,000 to 100,000 words. If you write 250 to 400 words per page double spaced (depending on the size paper you're using) you're looking at 150 to 250 scenes total for your novel. Some write in very small scenes, others in larger scenes, but work with me here. There is a way to whittle a novel down into bites.

If you can write a scene a day, you can finish a novel in a year. Easily. So why does it take many of us years to complete our first book? And looking ahead: once we reach publication we are expected to publish a book a year. Preparation and execution of the first novel was a luxury. Your ensuing novels require a streamlined approach.

Novels would be easy to write if it were only a matter of arranging all those words into a cohesive narrative. But you know it's much more than that -- and it's much harder than you can imagine unless you've done it successfully. I propose there are four elements you can look for right now, today, that can help you through the writing of those 150 or more scenes. And these four things will help you write a better novel the first time or the twentieth time.

Check One
The first check is to make sure you've started your novel in the correct moment and in a compelling fashion. I direct and teach a workshop, Writers Retreat Workshop (WRW), founded by author Gary Provost. Gary used the word 'system' to describe the condition under which your characters live at the moment the story begins. The 'system' is the protagonist's reality -- that is, the status quo; what they expect everything will be when they wake up each morning. The moment that system is broken, when the status quo is shattered -- the moment everything changes -- is the inciting incident. That is the moment your novel begins, when the protagonist is changed, challenged, and confronted with a goal or need in her life.

Check to see when your story begins. Is it a day or so before the system is busted? The moment it's busted? Or shortly after the status quo is changed forever? If you can pinpoint that moment near the beginning of the novel then you've started in a solid place.

Check Two
The second element to examine is the human connection. Publishers want to know what it is about this novel that will matter to readers.

So what if a woman finds a map to a treasure that will set her and her children free from the abuse of her spouse, and along the way to that treasure she falls in love with a swashbuckler, befriends a wallaby named Boxer who teaches her patience and serenity, and her children join her in the outback where she finds the only treasure she ever really needed was freedom? So what? Why do I care? What about her life, her journey, her inner struggle speaks to me? What in her misery speaks to me?

I can't personally relate to abuse, but I can relate to making bad choices, of being unable to stand up for myself, or the inability to take action because of fear. Build your novel upon universal elements and you'll grab more interest from readers.

Check Three
A third check is to see how concise your idea is. Can you tell the concept of your story in 75 words or fewer? If not, you may not know your story. You might have a general idea of your story, "My protagonist wants to find himself." Most characters do want to "find themselves", or find love, find a murderer, stop a criminal. What's original about your approach? Try to whittle the external and internal conflicts for your protagonist into around75 words.

If, after you do that, it's not a story concept you'd pick up at a bookstore, or a movie premise you'd be first in line to see… what aspect of the story is weak? The entire premise? Or does your main character need to want more, and must her failure to satisfy that 'want' come at greater cost?

Does it matter if a character never truly finds herself? Is that really what your story is about? If you can't create a 75 word hook that shows the internal goal, the external goal, the cost of failure and the universal human element that will compel readers, grab a sheet of paper and brainstorm how you can make the premise more compelling.

Check Four
Finally, go through your manuscript and look for anything resembling backstory. Backstory is when you stop the story to tell us something that happened in the character's past. Almost always, backstory stops the narrative cold. We don't move forward. The reader has to stop and go back in time. The longer you keep us in the past, the longer we're away from the story.
It is every writer's belief that their backstory is the exception to the "rule" that backstory doesn't work. But often, it doesn't work. Why? Because readers want to move forward. They want the story to unfold; they want to get closer to the resolution.

Your readers want the novel to become more tense, not to read paragraphs of 'back in time' learning information that you, the author, think they must know when in reality they don't need this information. The rare occasion backstory works is at the moment when the revelation of the past reveals a goldmine of story that moves our understanding to a new level. Understanding moves us forward, information for the sake of informing stops us dead in our tracks. Your story should never stop. Readers should be in constant motion.

Look for areas of backstory in your novel, highlighting paragraphs or pages. Read those sections and make sure the story moves forward through the revelation of the past. If you're only informing us, cut it. You don't need it.

Agents and publishers get hundreds of story ideas thrown at them every week. They listen for something they've never heard before, or an original angle on a familiar story. Work to:

develop a deeper 'bigger' premise
discover settings and scenarios that are unexpected or unusual, and
develop actions characters take that catch us (and you, the author) by surprise.

The more concisely you can present these elements, the more notice you'll get when marketing to agents, and the more readers you'll attract.

HOW TO SELF-EDIT Part 3 - Looking at the BIG picture

2008-10-29T18:37:00.000-07:00

In a way I have started my series of self-editing tips back-to-front but I find it's the small stuff that people tend to look at first and also find the hardest to do.

There's a story about how some famous author [whose name escapes me] would spend all morning putting one word in and then all afternoon taking it out again. When you first look at your own writing you have to be prepared to cut swathes of text out.

Taking a 500-word piece to 250-words [How to Self-Edit Part 2] is a good exercise in seeing what's not needed.

The best way to write is to just write. All the editing stuff happens after, and never ever during, the writing.

And now - Looking at the BIG picture!

Before you go back and re-read your novel, prepare for the task. You'll need 6 different coloured highlighters [more colours if you can get them]; a mind that doesn't acknowledge this is your writing - pretend it's someone else's so you can be hard and ruthless; lots of desk/bench/floor space; at least a day and a large pot of tea.

First - read the pages quickly and without judgement - skim. You're looking for and identifying the scenes. Put a mark at the top right hand corner of each page. Everytime there is a change of scene, change your highlighter colour. You'll run out of colours so the first green scene pages can be all numbered one, first pink scene is two etc [or work out a system that fits with the way you think]. Clip the pages together into their separate scenes.

Second - if you're a panster*, do up a list of all the scenes. Put in a few words to remind you what's happening in each scene. If you're a plotter**, you'll have already done this.

Third - look at the list. Is your first scene really, truly your first scene. Is it strong enough? Is it back story? Does it do anything for the story at all? Don't re-read the scene! Work off the list and your memory.

Why? Because, sure as eggs, you'll find some lovely turn of phrase or really clever metaphor that you'll want to keep. But you don't need to keep the whole scene just for that one phrase or metaphor.

Fourth - if you haven't lost at least 10 scenes you aren't trying hard enough.

Fifth - see if you can add suspense, foreshadow events and keep the reader turning pages by moving the scenes around. If things need to happen in a strictly chronological order skip this step.

Sixth - take the scenes you have left and go through them separately applying Parts 1 & 2 of How to Self-Edit.

Last - After you apply all the changes to your electronic copy print your novel again with each scene on different coloured paper - saves your highlighters. Then do steps 2 to 6 again.

Jennifer

PS: several more 'that's' bit the dust for this one too...
*Pantser = someone who writes by the seat of their pants.
** Plotter = someone who develops a plot and then writes to that.

HOW TO SELF-EDIT Part 2 - Using a cut-throat razor

2008-10-23T18:23:00.001-07:00

Find a piece of writing about 500 words long. It can be your own [best] or someone else's [this can be delicious and make you feel superior but it's not as good as your own writing].

Read it. Think about it. Apply Part 1 of 'How to Self-Edit - Get in touch with your Inner Bitch' if applicable.

Do a word count again.

Now reduce what's left to a 300-word piece - without changing the tone or sense of the story. You can do it. This is where you get to be miserably ruthless. Ask someone to help you if you can't do it on your own.

If you've managed that, you've done well.

Now take out the razor, put it to the strop, and cull the piece to 250 words. Make every word sing for its supper, dance for its dinner and justify itself. This is what they mean when they talk about making every word work. If one word can take the place of 2 or 3 - use it. Get rid of every redundant phrase. If you want repitition, something else has to pay for it with its life.

Now re-sharpen and oil your blade. Store carefully. You'll need it again.

Jennifer

HOW TO SELF-EDIT Part 1 - Get in touch with your Inner Bitch

2008-10-22T16:06:00.000-07:00

They call it 'Killing off your Darlings'. I call it Justified Homicide.

First, find your word, your pet word. We all have one. Mine is 'that', followed a fair way back by 'should'.

This is the first word you do a 'find' on, the first word you need to cull. You'll find this word is redundant - you can delete it and not have to change another word in the writing.

Your secondary words might mean the work needs to be massaged to get rid of them but it will be stronger and better.

Then you need to hunt down and consider the 'ly' and 'ing' words.

Some of the 'ly' words are noble beasts and worth keeping, most are mangy, weak, over-worked and near death anyway. It'll be a mercy killing.

The 'ing' words mean your work is passive. Passive is not good. It's like someone has taken your hand in their wet, limp one and is trying to convince you that telling you about the roller coaster ride is much better than actually going on it. It's weak, it's wimpy. You need to be hard and ruthless - this is your new mantra.

Deleting both 'ly' and 'ing' words means you have to find stronger verbs. You have to think about your work and eliminate the feeling that you 'might, kind-of-would' like someone to read and enjoy your work. Be hard and ruthless - you want to grab the reader's mind and trap them there. You can't do it with a frog handshake.

Start with this - find your word and murder it. Hunt down the ly and ing. Don't touch anything else until you have done that. Be hard and ruthless. You'll surprise yourself when you discover your word. You won't have even realised you had one.

At least 7 'that's' were sacrificed in writing the above.

Jennifer