Category Archives: Writing Tips

Today’s Writing Tip

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Describing your main character can be a challenge. However, having your protagonist assess himself in the mirror is one of the most unoriginal ways to describe his or her appearance. If you must use the mirror, at least throw some action in. For example, “She caught a glimpse of herself in the hallway mirror and realized her blond was in desperate need of [whatever].” Another common but generally effective way, at least for hair color, is “She tossed her chestnut hair over her shoulder.” In other words, this is another example of “show, don’t tell.”

Be more creative. Note how other authors do it and when you encounter a great description, study and emulate it. It’s a challenge, but important. If you absolutely can’t do so in an original way, that’s better than not having it at all. How many books have you read where at some point you realized you had absolutely no idea what the characters looked like? I like to be told, though some authors believe the reader wants to imagine them as they will.

They’re my characters, so I prefer to convey that to the reader.

Today’s Writing Tip

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Another thing to watch for when you get to your second draft is showing as opposed to telling. Some narrative is always required, but often it can be said in a more interesting way that engages your reader.

For example, saying “He was angry” is telling. Saying “His eyes bore into his opponent like steel rods, fists clenched and trembling at his side” shows it. Note how the second version renders the emotion in a more relatable manner. It also contains imagery. In fact, of the IDEAS described in yesterday’s Tip, it includes imagery, emotion, action, and suspense. If it were included in the midst of dialog, it would cover that, too. See how much more effective that is?

 

Today’s Writing Tip

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I don’t know about you, but my first drafts tend to be unbalanced. This, of course, depends on your natural style. There may have too much or too little of certain elements. My first drafts tend to be heavy on action and dialog. I’ve often envied screenwriters, who can do just that and let producers and directors worry about the rest.

However, for your story to be the best it can be, it needs to incorporate more. Don’t interrupt the creative flow by worrying about it during your first draft. For your second draft, however, one way to assess what you have is by checking how your IDEAS are presented.

As you’ve probably guessed, that’s an acronym for: Imagery; Dialog; Emotion; Action; Suspense.

Read each scene and check to make sure it has some of each. Imagery could have been established earlier, which is fine. Not every scene will have dialog, and that is fine, too. However, too much description or exposition gets boring, so if that’s the case see if you can convert any of it into a conversation. Emotion is essential. If there’s no feeling behind it, is it even necessary? Action goes without saying, even if it’s mental action, and of course suspense, without which your reader may not bother to turn the page.

Today’s Writing Tip

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Economy of words makes your message stronger. Using too many that are extraneous distract and dilute it. This is why adverbs, adjectives, and prepositional phrases often add extra bulk that should be trimmed. Being too wordy indicates lack of skill and trouble expressing what you want to say. When you’re talking aloud you can get away with fumbling around a bit, but not in print.

On the other hand, people who talk too much are usually annoying. Thus, by extension, it can be pretty grating when an author takes too long to say something. Readers are not the most patient people out there. Everyone these days is pretty busy and doesn’t want to waste their time with someone beating around the bush.

If you can say the same thing with less words, do so. Start by zapping adverbs by using a better verb, then see if those prepositional phrases really add anything to the story other than word count. Some writers have a tendency to add a prepositional phrase on the end of a sentence that is totally redundant. Make sure you’re not one of them.

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Never underestimate the importance of moving your reader emotionally. This is an important element if you want your readers to remember your work.  Think about it. Which books, or more specifically novels, do you remember the best? Most likely the ones where you really got into the characters and vicariously felt what they were going through. For nonfiction, you’re most likely to remember the ones where you learned something and were thus stimulated intellectually.

I typically judge a story’s impact by whether it makes me laugh or cry. However, having strong imagery or a very original premise also grab my attention. However, my very favorite stories always go back to the “laugh or cry” criteria.

Did you know that there are neurons in your heart? You store memories there as well. Wouldn’t you like your readers to have your work in their heart as well as their head?

Today’s Writing Tip

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Typos are an integral part of using a keyboard. I remember when I was at the peak of my typing performance and managed to do 96 wpm (words per minutes) with 3 errors on an IBM Selectric typewriter a long, long time ago. Correcting mistakes back then was a real pain, requiring in the REALLY old day, erasing them and hoping not to create a hole in the paper in the process, or white-out, which looked pretty tacky. Thank heaven those days are over! I remember having to retype pages and pages of manuscript due to some minor edits that changed the pagination. Yuck!

Since the advent of word processors, correcting errors has become a piece of cake. That makes it even more inexcusable not to do so. Typos really annoy readers, but they’re even more inevitable than they were in the old days because now there is less incentive to be precise than that funny, pink, circular eraser with the brush on one end or that little bottle.

Be aware of the ones you repeat most often. Transposing letters is tough to catch, but everyone probably has words they repeatedly misspell. I wish I have $1 for every time I typed “you” instead of “your”. I also tend to type “the” instead of “that” or “then”. When you’re aware of which ones you tend to mess up, you can usually make a quick check as you write or finish a given sentence to make sure it’s correct. These type of typos that a spellchecker won’t catch can really be a challenge, but trust me when I say your readers will indeed catch them. Hopefully your proofreader or editor will.

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A good grammar checker should pick up various mistakes a spellchecker doesn’t, including subject-verb agreement and using the wrong homonym. However, this is no guarantee, especially if you tend to write complex sentences.

Homonyms are seldom if ever picked up otherwise, so it’s best if you memorize them. The following meme is handy for their, there, and they’re.

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One homonym I’ve seen used incorrectly numerous times by different authors is shutter instead of shudder. A shutter is a panel to cover a window; shudder is what you do when you’re scared and can be either a noun or a verb. There are various lists of the most common ones available if you google “homonyms.”

Today’s Writing Tip

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Always spellcheck your work before sending it to beta readers or especially before uploading it to publish. Be sure to do so after completing each edit as well.  It’s really easy to get distracted and either not eliminate words or perhaps delete too many as you reword, streamline, and refine your sentences.

I don’t know about you, but my fingers have a mind of their own on the keyboard and don’t always do what my brain thinks. I will even catch myself from time to time typing a word phonetically for some reason.

In most cases, a grammar checker should find missing or misused words. But nothing beats a good proofreader or editor to make sure nothing was missed. And, believe me, it always is, no matter how many times you’ve been through it.

Today’s Writing Tip

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It’s as important to know when to end a story as it is to known where to begin it. Sometimes there are important ramifications that don’t show up in “story time” for a considerable length of time, such as years or even generations. However, it presents the final closure that makes it complete.

One way to wrap things up is with an epilogue. They well to cover “the rest of the story”, i.e, that which relates to the plot, but occurs a long time after the story officially ends. They can even involve minor characters, or in some cases, someone who wasn’t in the story at all.

Of course if you think you have enough story material to fill the gap, then you may have a potential series on your hands. Otherwise, epilogues offer an easy way out to tie up any loose ends.

Today’s Writing Tip

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Here are a few more notes on prologues. In some cases, even if it involves your main character, but it occurred a long time ago, then you might want to use a prologue.  Another way to handle past events is through flashbacks. A flashback can vary in length, but if it’s too long, the reader may get lost in space and time. Then again, some background information may be too comprehensive to cover in snippets.

If you’re unclear on such a situation, this is where your beta readers and author friends with whom you share your work can be of tremendous help. It may even send you back to the drawing board as far as your story is concerned. Are you starting it too late? Or is it something that could be covered later as a prequel?

The good news is that any plot with that much context or character with that much history is probably a great one. It may even become a series instead of a single book. I know first hand how that goes. My Star Trails Tetralogy didn’t start out as a four book series with a prequel and full-length side story, but that’s how it wound up. My current WIP was supposed to be a cozy mystery, but it quickly evolved into a not-so-cozy conspiracy thriller that will be long enough upon completion to split into a trilogy.

Once your characters come to life and start writing the story for you, there’s no telling where you might wind up.