If In Doubt Leave It Out
Did you get the free course on writing your own autobiography? It's
here:
Today's article is about how to make your writing more
professional-looking.
Keep Writing!
Rob Parnell
Your Success is My Concern
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You probably won't be surprised to
learn I read a lot of unpublished manuscripts. I also read a lot of published
work. Are there some glaring differences between the two? You betcha.
The fact is most beginning writers write too much. That's
okay for the first draft but when it comes to editing, you need to give that
delete key a thorough work out!
Good writing is about pacing, about
taking the reader on a journey and keeping in step with them along the
way.
If you get the pacing wrong, the
reader will stumble and begin to lose interest because it will seem you are more
interested in writing the words than telling the story or relaying the
information.
Here are some tips on how to cut
down on unnecessary verbiage!
The Art of
Description
With the advent of global
communication and visual media, we all know what most things and even most
places look like. It's no longer necessary to spend more than a couple of
sentences establishing what things are, where scenes are set, and what the
weather is like, if that's important for mood.
Many readers nowadays will actually
skip descriptive passages because they find them dull and interrupt the flow of
the text. So don't beat yourself up over getting all the details across - that's
what the reader's imagination is for!
Qualify
That
Sometimes we write scenes etc.,
we're not sure the reader will understand - so we add extra words to explain
ourselves, resulting in more confusion than clarity. For instance, look at this:
"With the divorce weighing on
his mind, and his fears about losing his job, John was having difficulty
deciding what to do with himself. Could he face going out, knowing that Pete
would probably spend the evening ribbing him over his inability to get along
with his boss and his problems with his estranged wife?"
Clearly this is clumsy and confusing
to read. Much better to remove the qualifiers and simplify:
"The divorce was weighing on his
mind. Did he want to go out? John wasn't sure. Pete would probably just want to
rib him."
In the above version, even though
the propositions are only loosely defined, the reader still gets it. You don't
always need to explain every little nuance to get a point or two across. Quite
the opposite in fact.
Room to
Breathe?
When you write you make a contract
with your reader, whom you must regard as your equal. Not someone who is slow to
understand and needs to be carefully led, shown everything, and generally talked
down to.
It's perfectly okay to leave out
obvious - and therefore redundant - details. You don't always have to explain
exactly who said what, what happened where, why, and for how long it
happened.
Too many writers clog up their
stories with unnecessary backstory, linking scenes, plot justifications and
long, complicated explanations of issues the reader already regards as
clear.
If you write with honesty and
intelligence, your reader knows what you mean. When you over explain, you insult
the reader. Don't do it.
Direction
Quite often writing suffers because
the reader doesn't know where you're going. They wonder why you're focusing on
certain characters and details - especially when you haven't first hinted at the
'point' of your story.
When you open a piece, you need a
big 'sign' that tells the reader you're going THIS WAY, so that the reader knows
what to expect along the way. You need to define your objectives - your purpose
- in some way on the first page.
For instance, if you're writing a
murder mystery, don't spend the first chapter following the protagonist around
doing her laundry. Get on with the story and as soon as you can, show us the
body!
Play By The
Rules
Especially in genre fiction, you
have to adhere to certain rules, because that's what the reader wants. Horror
stories need to be at least a little horrific, right from the start. Romance
requires that you have lovers at odds with each other by page two. Science
fiction and fantasy require the elements of their genres too.
Publishers often say that, though
many writers are good, they often write themselves outside of any given genre in
their desire to be different or original - thereby, alas, disqualifying
themselves from publication!
Of course it's important to be
original - but if you can do that within the confines your reader
expects, your chances of success skyrocket.
Focus
What you're looking for is sharp
writing that relays the facts. When you go back and edit for sense, go for
simplicity rather than exposition. If you waffle on about the intricacies of
conflicting thought processes or meander through long descriptions of the
countryside, you lose all sense of tension.
Pick up any popular novel. The best
ones have no words that are about writing. They're all about
story.
Speech
tags
Okay. Speech tags - you know: all
the he said, she cried, they exclaimed blah de blah. I'll keep this
advice simple and precise. Unless you're writing children's fiction, lose them.
As many as you can. It's the way of the modern writer.
The way to do this is to use other,
more subtle ways of suggesting who is saying what. It's easily done, it just
requires a little thought.
You can refer to character's actions
just before or after dialogue, or use different styles to suggest different
people.
Just as an experiment, try editing
out all of the speech tags from your next MS. I think you'll be surprised and...
master this technique and readers will love you for it!
Adverbs
Yep - we all know we're not supposed
to use them, especially after a speech tag. They really are mostly redundant and
add little to the story. Repeat to yourself three times before bedtime: I will
edit out every word that ends in 'ly'! (I just noticed there are three in this
paragraph - oops!)
Well, I could go on like this for
hours - 'do this, do that, don't do that' etc., - I take writing very seriously,
as I'm sure you've guessed. I hope these few tips will help you the next time
you edit your final draft.
The general rule, by the way, is
that at least 20% of your MS is probably surplus to requirements! And that goes
for all of us!
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Keep Writing!
rob@easywaytowrite.com
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