Category Archives: Technique

Successful techniques for powerful writing

Technique

Editing to Streamline and Strengthen Your Story

I always try to edit my books to streamline and strengthen my prose. Here are my best techniques.

Set a goal

Maybe you really just want to tighten your story, so you don’t have a specific number goal. I think you should set one anyway. Hopefully you’ve learned how wordy you tend to be and how wordy your voice should be, so you can adjust your goal accordingly.

My goal was dictated by word count—I wanted the third book in the series to be close to the length of the first. That gave me 7000 words to cut over 300 pages, an average of 24 words per page (always round up; you can’t count cutting part of a word).

I wanted to give myself a cushion for smoothing rewrites and for pages that were already pretty tight, so I made my goal 30 words a page. When I move to the next page, I check the document word count and try to knock it down by 30. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can’t, sometimes I blow it away, but it gives me a specific goal to shoot for and stretch for rather than just cutting “some” words.

Highlight your weak, empty &/or echo words

I use a macro to do this, and I love it. I’ve set it up to color code “empty” words. Words that can often be cut entirely are “highlighted” in black, making them invisible. If the sentence reads just as well without it, I can cut that word. Sequencing words like before/after/while/as are in dark blue. A lot, a little, pretty, etc. are in another color. Suddenly, finally and slowly are flagged in red. The macro also turns several pronouns orange (text color) so I can make sure I’m using the strongest possible words. You might also highlight “because, “since” and “so that,” as telling flags. This doesn’t include the 60 words I track to monitor emotions, visceral reactions, body language and overused words I want to track by comparing the full sentences.

This does highlight a lot of things that I don’t need to highlight (because I haven’t gotten down the “whole words only” option yet), like “AS much AS” or “adJUSTment,” but because I’m going to be reading every page, it’s okay.

When I finish working with a page, I take out the highlighting and text color changes. Then if I scroll past it, I know it’s done.

Go page by page

Why go in random order? Sometimes it’s easy to start reading and following the story. This way, I can’t get sucked into the story and forget to edit closely. I use Random.org to randomize my page numbers.

The longer explanation of the process: I use Excel. I put “1” in A1 and fill the cells in a series to make a list of my page numbers, 1 to 300 or whatever. Then I have Random.org generate a list of random numbers, 1 to whatever (should be at least as high as your page count, but can be higher) in one column. I cut and paste that list into column B of the spreadsheet. I select both columns and sort the range by column B.

Why don’t I just use Random.org’s list? True random numbers will skip some digits and duplicate others, so some pages will be skipped. This way makes sure every page is on the list.

Of course, my page count goes down as I do this. If I cut a page off chapter 4, all the subsequent pages are shifted up, right? So sometimes, especially as I approach the last quarter of the edit, my random page has already been edited, I scroll until I can find one that still has those highlighted words from the previous step.

The actual editing

As I mentioned above, some of the first things I look at are empty, overused and commonly misused words.

Contractions

These are words that can be distilled, reduced or cut altogether without altering meaning.

  • Try to/and (technically it should be try to, not try and, but try and is very common in speech)
  • start to, begin to
  • Reach for
  • was going to >> would/will
  • to be able to >> could/can
  • at him, to her, for me, especially if there are only two people in the scene.
  • Now, right now (can be especially awkward in past tense)
  • Seems to, looks like >> well, does it?
  • And, and then, but. Do these clauses belong together? Do they HAVE to be together (choppiness is a valid reason to join them).
  • Of him, of it, of yours >> his X, its Y, your Z.
  • The _A_ to the _B__ >> B’s A
  • have to have >> need
  • figure out where/what Q is >> find Q
  • that
  • that is/are/was/were

Progressive & paraphrastic tenses

Stacked prepositions

Usually one of these is redundant.

  • Out of (from?)
  • Off of
  • down on (write it down on, sit down on)
  • over to
  • Rephrasing to avoid prepositions–I gave the book to him. I gave him the book.

Evil phrases

These empty phrases don’t mean anything and just pad the word count. They can usually be cut:

  • In order to >> to
  • The fact that (cut)
  • at this point

Null subjects

Null or dummy subjects are common in English, but they can create weak sentences:

  • There was/were, It was, Those/These were
  • There were four men in the room. Four men stood in/ringed the room.

Unnecessary subjects

This is very dependent on the genre and voice, but you might be able to get away with cutting unnecessary subjects, such as in dialogue. “Are you going to the party?” in real life might end up “You going?” or “Going to the party?”

Redundancy

  • Nodded his head up and down
  • shook his head no
  • the driver in the front seat (obviously they sat in a seat)
  • the smile on his face (where else do you smile?)

Semantically empty phrases

This is one of my favorite places to cut. I have a tendency to have a lot of commentary, shades of meaning, hints of backstory. That can be great, but it can also really start to weigh down the story. I try to look critically at a lot of these phrases. Can readers infer that if someone’s holding the elevator for the POV character, it’s “for me to catch up” (and cut those 5 words)? Do we need all of the info in “We weren’t planning on a Russian side trip when we packed, so our heavy winter gear is back home” or will “We didn’t pack for a Russian side trip” convey the message and the humor a lot better? (With 11 fewer words.)

One word or two

Use a dictionary you trust (I use Merriam-Webster Online) and check to see if you’ve got your words right. Is back seat one word or two? Back up? As a verb, adjective or noun?

POWER writing

This edit isn’t just to make the book shorter. I’m doing it to make the book stronger. Following Margie Lawson’s advice, I’m adding rhetorical devices and power words. I’m tweaking the cadence, moving words to more powerful positions and creating more vivid imagery. I have lists of rhetorical devices on my screen, chosen by what effect I’m going for in the scene.

Sometimes this adds words, sometimes it takes them away. To go back to my above example, I decided “side trip” was weak, and settled on “detour” instead—cutting another word and ending the paragraph on the more powerful alternative.

What do you think? What ways have you found to streamline and strengthen your writing?

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Technique, News & Contests

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Photo credits: character arc logo—Ruth and Dave

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Technique

7 Red Flags of Telling

Show, don’t tell: even in our narration, we want to show as much as we can, but sometimes we slip into a habit of telling when we could be showing. Now, these red flags of telling are all words and phrases that are red flag tellingperfectly find, but in certain uses, they distance our reader from the character and the story. If we avoid these phrases, we can deepen our character’s voice and draw the reader into the story even more!

That’s why

Bringing up the past always made her angry. That’s why George had stopped asking.

How is this telling? Here, we’re simply conveying information the reader should know, right? The voice is pretty good, right?

Somewhat, yes. No matter what we do with a memory or backstory, it’ll be on the telling end of the spectrum, but here this memory is actually a dramatic event (anger is useful for drama!). If it’s significant enough to convey to the reader, we can make it more specific and vivid to show both more about both characters.

This phrase is especially weird because there’s a tense shift: “that is why George had stopped asking.” It should be that was why, which doesn’t flow as well anyway. Bomb that sucker! We can make this better by showing in both sentences, giving an example of this woman’s reaction to show her anger, and then digging into George’s (wry) voice to bring his character to life:

FIX: The last time he’d brought up Panama, she’d slapped him. He’d learned not to ask.

Since

Janice had to work seventy hours a week, since she needed the fifty grand for her lawyer.

How is this telling? Again, we’ve got a double whammy of telling in both clauses here, and the voice is pretty flat. I mean, if this is detective noir and Janice is the client or the victim, it might work, but the “since” is still a problem.

“Since” here tells the reader a motivation, a reason why the character is doing something. When I come across this usage, I always feel like narrator is literally delivering an aside, taking a break from depicting the story to lean over and whisper some information to me that I’ll need. It interrupts the narrative.

At the very least, this is a good opportunity to punch up the voice.

(“Since” can occasionally be a problem if it’s talking about time, but in general, “Janice had worked seventy hours a week since 1972” is fine.)

FIX: Janice pulled in seventy hours a week. Lawyers didn’t come cheap.

Because

She needed the money because her husband robbed her blind.

How is this telling? Just like with since, this is another instance of the narrator (not the character) interrupting to talk directly to the reader and explain something. There’s almost always a way to have the character do this naturally through his/her thoughts, and that will show the character’s voice, too, making them feel more well rounded.

FIX: Wasn’t enough that her jerk of a husband had robbed her blind, no, then he’d gone and run off with her assistant.

Side note: let’s put these two together and compare:

Janice had to work seventy hours a week, since she needed the fifty grand for her lawyer. She needed the money because her husband had robbed her blind. Janice pulled in seventy hours a week. Lawyers didn’t come cheap. Wasn’t enough that her jerk of a husband had robbed her blind, no, then he’d gone and run off with her assistant.

One of those is a news report. The other is a character.

So (that)

He grabbed the shovel so (that) he could defend them.

How is this telling? This one is sneakier, but it’s once again telling the reader about the characters’ motivations and reasoning instead of showing the character’s thought process. If the character is narrating, it distances the reader from his narration. If the character in the sentence isn’t narrating, then our narrator just read the character’s mind.

But if you’re writing a telepathy book, go for it.

FIX: He grabbed the shovel. No way would those zombies get his family.

To

She picked up the clipboard to swat him.

How is this telling? Okay, you know what? I’ll let this one slide, if it’s the POV character telling why s/he is doing something or it’s super obvious why the nonPOV character is doing something (but, then, if it’s super obvious, do we need to say it at all?). It’s a more minor example of the same thing we’ve looked at several times.

On the other hand, if we’re talking about an objective, as in this example, unless the character is interrupted, just have the character DO the second action.

FIX: She picked up the clipboard and swatted him.

Was

He was mad.

How is this telling? Are you seriously asking me this? This is quintessential telling instead of showing: informing the reader of a character’s emotional state. Emotions might be the trickiest thing to show instead of tell, especially if you’re trying to avoid clichés.

Was can be dangerous with more than just emotions and states, too. It rings pretty flat in description and characterization, especially when it’s repeated, and it’s a red flag for progressive tenses and sometimes passive voice. You cannot and should not eliminate “was” from your manuscript, but be careful with it!

Now, sometimes “He was mad” works as an understatement, or for a hit of humor after detailing exactly how the character knows the other person is angry.

FIX: He stared daggers at her. She could hear his teeth grinding from twenty feet away.

Felt

She felt sad.

How is this telling? Like was, this is straight up telling emotions.

FIX: Her heart collapsed in on itself like a black hole.

What’s the final verdict? You don’t have to avoid these words entirely, but as you’re editing your WIP, take a second look at these phrases to make sure you’re showing events and your character’s voice as much as you can!

“Red flags” photo by Rutger van Waveren

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Technique, News & Contests

Coming July 7: Gesture Crutches Webinar

Do you want to make your characters unique and avoid empty repetition and clichés? Sign up for my Gesture Crutches webinar, coming up JULY 7 at 8 PM MDT/5 PM PDT. The presentation will be followed by a live chat Q&A. The cost is $10.

gesture crutchesSmiling, nodding, laughing, sighing, frowning–they’re all the little gestures we use every day to convey meaning, and they can creep into every page of our writing. These overused actions quickly become flat clichés, sapping your story’s power. Come learn how to find these common “gesture crutches,” discover new strategies to fix them, and use the smallest gestures to personalize your characters.

To sign up, visit my online courses page!

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Technique

Does your story have a plot?

plot chainEvery story has events. Stuff happens. But a group of events happening to the same people doesn’t necessarily constitute a “plot.” For a story to have a plot, the events must be related through cause-and-effect and build to a climax.

Do stories have to have a climax?

If you’re using a linear story structure, the short answer is yes. If you’re using a linear chronology within your story, the answer is double yes.

plot chain labeled
Most stories use a linear structure as well as a linear timeline—the events of the story occur in chronological order.

However, events merely happening in order doesn’t make a plot. The events must also be linked by cause and effect. For example, as E.M. Forster said,

The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot.

That little phrase, “of grief,” makes a world of difference. Our brains might fill in the causal link between the events of the first “story,” but that’s actually a logical fallacy (one of my faves: post hoc ergo propter hoc, after this therefore because of this). There could be any number of reasons why a couple might die in succession: perhaps they both had the plague or were hit by falling rocks. (Heck, in this single-sentence story, we don’t even know if the events happened close together!)

“Of grief” links the first and second events as cause and effect; it turns the two from coincident events into connected events. The next event occurs because of the previous one.

cadena rotaWithout this cause and effect link, the events of our story don’t build on one another. They don’t move a story forward. They’re just an account of people doing one thing, then another. At some point, a lack of cause-and-effect gets aggravating, since the events of the story don’t actually have logical relationships. They don’t have anything to do with one another except that they’re happening to the same characters.

Using cause and effect to build to a climax

Another integral part of any linear structure is the ultimate climax. Our plot events must be linked in cause-and-effect chains that build the intensity and stakes to the final, ultimate moment of confrontation between the protagonist and the antagonistic force (external, internal, natural, or any combination of the above).

Cape Disappointment is DisappointingI have read way too many stories that have a series of chronological events that may or may not be causally linked, but that never build to this ultimate moment of the climax. But the climax is indispensable in linear structure. It’s that moment that shows us what our characters are made of, what they’ve learned in our story, how they’ve grown. With the climax, we see the reason why every event in the story was significant. Without a climax, none of them are, and the story just sort of . . . stops. It’s the climax that ultimately gives our story meaning in a linear structure.

But my story jumps around in time.

Awesome! But a nonlinear timeline doesn’t exempt you from the requirements of telling a satisfying story with structure. The vast majority of stories use linear structure, even if they don’t use linear chronology.

Your jumping around in time narrative (time traveling or just nonlinear) can still build toward a climax. Movies like Memento and books such as the Mind Games series by Kiersten White play around with a linear timeline, interspersing scenes from the past. Those scenes from the past build tension and inform—but they don’t get in the way of building to a climax, the final confrontation.

Why structure

Good stories use structure; excellent stories use structure to their advantage. As brilliant author Jennifer Crusie puts it in a blog post that I’ve pondered for years:

Structure isn’t just a way to tell a story, it gives meaning to the story, it informs and intensifies the story, it says “This is what is important here, this is what you need to pay attention to.” Most of the time, most stories need linear structure[.]

Here’s a simple litmus test: if your story isn’t composed of events that are linked by cause-and-effect building to a final confrontation, you may not have a “plot.” Do you need one? If you want to sell commercial fiction and you aren’t a master of alternate story structures, usually.

The good news, however, is that you might be able to revise your way to one! Remember:the best way

Revision is your chance to make the events of your story make sense and carry significance for your character and your readers!

Photo credits: chain—Legozilla, broken chain—Javier, Cape Disappointment—Aaron, map image courtesy of The Journey 1972 (South America “addicted”), all via Flickr/CC

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Technique, News & Contests

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Technique

Do you “write” a second draft?

2 Comments

Because I don’t.

Don’t get me wrong. All of my books (well, that I want to publish, anyway) have a second draft. In fact, I just finished one. I think every book—yes, every.single.one—needs at least a second draft. (Mine have a bare minimum of seven.)

Draft

I just think the term “writing” a second draft is . . . odd. When we talk about “writing” the first draft, we mean pounding out those 70,000 brand new words (because my first drafts are almost always 70,000 words, strangely) one after the other. By that standard, it seems like “writing” a second draft would mean setting aside those words and starting over to write out 70,000 new ones. (Or more; my first 3-5 drafts grow up to 30%.) Possibly it might mean using those words as a guide, perhaps in another window of your program, as you start a fresh document, writing the book from scratch again.

Does anybody out there do that?

To be clear, I’m not really referring to the necessary restructuring a discovery writer/pantser might face after a first draft. I mean people who have a structurally okay-ish manuscript in need of lots of work, of course, as all first drafts are. DraftingDo we really just throw those words away?

That seems ridiculous to me.

Certainly, my manuscript changes drastically from the first draft to the second. Literally no scene is untouched. Some scenes may be restructured in major ways. Some, I realize, are missing altogether. A few (more than a few this time around) may be in the wrong place.

But I just can’t fathom the idea of starting over from scratch. Because even if you’ve written the novel once before, it seems to me you’re just going to end up with exactly what you had before: a messy first draft.

So, no, I don’t “write” a second or third or fourth draft of a novel. I revise, rewrite, edit and polish those drafts. But I only “write” the book (hopefully!) once.

Do you “write” a second draft?

Photo credits: DRAFT—Jeffrey Beall; garbage—Sebastien Wiertz

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Technique

Character sympathy study: Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice is a literary classic. But can you find the principles of character sympathy in a two-hundred-year-old novel? You can find the full text of Pride and Prejudice online with Project Gutenberg.

484px-Jane_Austen_coloured_versionA true Regency novel (the formal Regency period only lasted nine years until the Prince Regent ascended to the throne), Pride and Prejudice focuses heavily upon society and the social interactions of a wide circle of people. It’s written in omniscient POV, enabling the narrator to convey more information about all of the characters than any one of them would be privy to in the course of a story. Of course, with such a broad focus, it takes a while to really establish Elizabeth Bennet as the main protagonist of the story.

She’s introduced in the first chapter, which focuses on her parents discussing the arrival of Mr. Bingley, a “single man in possession of a good fortune” (who “must be in want of a wife”). Elizabeth’s father pretends he won’t go to meet their new neighbor, not even to improve the marriage prospects of his five daughters, and will send his wife to meet him instead. He says he’ll write a letter to go with her:

“I will send a few lines by you to assure him of my hearty consent to his marrying which ever he chuses of the girls; though I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzy.”

“I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit better than the others; and I am sure she is not half so handsome as Jane, nor half so good humoured as Lydia. But you are always giving her the preference.”

“They have none of them much to recommend them,” replied he; “they are all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters.”

Elizabeth is off-stage in the first chapter and only has three lines of dialogue in the second chapter, so our first real encounter with her character for a while is through her parents discussing her. In this direct characterization, we’re told she isn’t as pretty or as good humored as her sisters, but her father favors her because of her “quickness.” This wit, which we do get to see throughout the book, is probably her chief strength.

Elizabeth’s first real scene comes in chapter. Mr. Bingley has brought his friend, Mr. Darcy, to his estate and to a ball. At first, Darcy makes quite a stir (being rich, noble and handsome), but when the crowd sees how conceited he is, the tide of their favor turns against him. Especially Mrs. Bennet, after Mr. Bingley invited Mr. Darcy to dance with Elizabeth. Darcy “looked for a moment at Elizabeth, till catching her eye, he withdrew his own and coldly said, ‘She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.'” And he knows she can hear him.

She won’t allow herself to be crushed by the judgment of a man nobody likes anyway, of course. But this embarrassment at being slighted is the beginning of her struggles. More subtly, her struggles are woven throughout as we also get to see others’ harsh judgments of her and her family. This use of dramatic irony can be an advantage of omniscient POV.

Throughout the next few chapters, we see two defining features of Elizabeth: her wit and her prejudice. She’s quick to judge not only Darcy by Mr. Bingley and his sisters quite harshly. (While she’s off-scene, it does seem that this judgment, at least of the women, is justified). The prejudice sets up her character weakness (but that’s a post for another time!).

4066326120_1380d87422_mIn my model of character sympathy, to generate full reader identification, a character needs to have struggles, strengths and sacrifice. Elizabeth shows this last characteristic when her older sister takes ill while going for a short visit to the Bingleys and must stay there to convalesce. When word reaches them the next day, Elizabeth is concerned enough for her sister to walk the three miles to the Bingleys’ and stay there to care for her. The walk, she insists, is nothing, but the exertion puts her into a bit of disarray, especially to be seen by society people (who are already pretty conceited about how much better they are than all these country folk). But her sister’s welfare is more important to Elizabeth than anyone’s opinion.

Although we typically focus on establishing character sympathy at the beginning of a novel, these forces of character sympathy continue throughout Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth juggles her often-inappropriate mother and her own tendencies to let her wit run wild, and is embarrassed by Mr. Darcy even more, until she ultimately must sacrifice her own pride and admit her prejudice—and that she was wrong in her judgment.

What do you think? What else makes Elizabeth Bennet a sympathetic heroine?

Photo credits: University of Texas, Lily Monster via Flickr & CC

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