Author: Stephanie Orges

Stephanie is an award-winning copywriter, aspiring novelist, and barely passable ukulele player. Here, she offers writing prompts, tips, and moderate-to-deep philosophical discussions. You can also find her on and Pinterest.

Word search: the magic diet pill for novels

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 DailyWritingTips.com recently published a guest post I wrote called 3 Things the Novelist Can Learn from the Copywriter, roughly 1/3 of which was about brevity. Let’s expand on that!

Brevity is the soul of wit. The fewer the words, the harder they hit.

You’d be amazed how many unnecessary words are weighing down your manuscript, clogging up your sentences and tiring your readers. Fortunately, modern technology has given us an easy way to trim some of this grammar fat: word search!

How do you do a word search? In MS Word, click “Edit” then “Find…” and type in the word you are looking for. If you use a different program, try typing “word search” or “find and replace” into the “Help” search bar.

Got it? Here are eight examples of word calories you can cut:

1. Very

“Very” is a very evil word that sucks the power out of nearly every sentence it appears in. Just look at how very unnecessary “very” is in these sentences from a very old draft of my book:

It would very soon become the same for her.

She vaguely remembered seeing a very bright light coming at her.

He would have to decide very quickly how much he could tell her.

Very soon. Very bright. Very quickly. “Very” is overkill – modifying modifiers.

It would soon become the same for her.

She vaguely remembered seeing a bright light coming at her.

He would have to decide quickly how much he could tell her.

Do a word search in your novel or story for “very” and eliminate all that you can.

2. That

Not as bad as “very,” but still often unnecessary. Try eliminating this one as well.

3. By

“By” is a sign of passive voice, which should almost always be avoided which you should almost always avoid. (Except to preserve clarity or to break up a monotonously-active paragraph.) Search “by” and reword all you can.

      Passive: The ball was thrown over the fence by Billy.

      Active: Billy threw the ball over the fence.

4. –ly

Never use an adverb when the right verb works fine on its own. “Very” is just one example; most adverbs end in “ly.” Do a word search for “ly” and pay special attention to phrases like “walked quickly.” Search thesaurus.com for the root verb, “walk.” Keep clicking words within your results to find the right one. “Trotted” is descriptive enough to replace “walked quickly” – it sounds better, too.

5. In order to

Almost always cut “in order.”

6. The fact that

Depending on the context:

            “Owing/due to the fact that” – replace with “since” or “because”

            “In spite of the fact that” – replace with “though” or “although”

7. The question as to whether

Cut “the question as to”

8. The reason why is that

Replace with “because”

The Elements of Style by Strunk & White gives additional word-trimming advice (rule #17, p. 23-24). This book is the writer’s bible. If you don’t already own it, read it free here.

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5 Tips for Turning Your Short Story Into a Novel

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I already posted some tips on keeping your short story from turning into a novel, but what if you want to turn that literary appetizer into a five course meal? Here are five tips to get you all the way through desert.

1. Second-guess yourself.

Some stories just aren’t meant to be 300 pages long. Some are perfect at ten, or five, or even two pages. Ask yourself if you feel satisfied after reading it. If so, leave it short. But if you want to know what happens in the story next, move on to tip #2.

2. Write forward, not backward.

If you followed the advice from my last short story post, you wrote the climax of your would-be novel, and that scene became your short story. Logically, then, you should go back and expand on the parts that lead up to that scene, right? Wrong. If you are writing just to drag out the beginning, that’s all it will be – a drag. Instead, try picking up where you left off at the end of the short story. Ask yourself what happens next.

3. Treat each chapter as its own short story…

I got this advice from someone else; naturally I can’t remember who, but it stuck with me because the idea was intriguing. Imagine a book so tightly constructed that each chapter could stand alone. No extraneous plot exposition; no wasted words. It would be incredible.

4.      …But make them flow together.

No. 3 is great advice if you’re used to writing short fiction, but remember; you are writing a novel, not a collection of short stories. It needs to flow like a single story. If each chapter has buildup, backstory, climax, and conclusion, readers will feel full after only the first course and won’t want to keep reading. Experiment with the placement of your chapter breaks; try ending a chapter at its climax, and beginning the next chapter with the conclusion, cliffhanger style. Once you’ve accomplished that, it’s only a matter of flowing that conclusion into the next part of the story.

5. Read good books. [a.k.a. Writing Law #1]

Two books come to mind when I think of short stories transformed into novels, and they are both by Ray Bradbury. Each is a different take on the process:

The Martian Chronicles

Each chapter follows a different set of characters; each is complete in itself, but each is also a glimpse of a greater whole. Together, the chapters give us a “wide-shot” of the story – complete, because it shows us the big picture, yet less personal, because there is no single protagonist for us to follow throughout the whole story.

Dandelion Wine

Almost the opposite of The Martian Chronicles; although each chapter tells a story in itself, they all follow the same character, and all of the chapters serve a common purpose: the growth of the protagonist. We get a narrower, yet more personal perspective; a “close-up.”

Do these summaries seem vague? Read the books! You’ll learn far more than I could ever teach you in a blog post.

What Does “Hang a Lantern” Mean, and How Do I Use It in My Book?

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photo by Kabilan Subramanian

To hang a lantern (or “hang a lamp”) is to call attention to an inconsistency in the story by having a character notice the inconsistency. It’s the writer’s way of telling the reader “I did this on purpose; it’s not a mistake.”

Detective stories are rife with lanterns;

“That’s weird; blank doesn’t usually blank.”

“Oh, it’s probably just because of blank.”

Little did they know, it was actually blank!

There are three reasons to hang a lantern. We’ll use a sample story so we can explore each one.

The inconsistency: Jimmy is not at the Laundromat this Saturday morning – but it’s already been established that Jimmy goes to the Laundromat every Saturday morning. The lantern: Sarah notices Jimmy is not there.

  1.  To create intrigue by pointing out clues

Sarah was at the Laundromat until noon, but there was no sign of Jimmy. Odd.

      2.     To surprise the reader by cluing him in without him knowing it

Sarah scanned the room as she made her way to an idle washing machine, then tried to hide her disappointment when she realized that Jimmy wasn’t there. Of course; he’d mentioned that he might have to work today. She just hadn’t realized, until now, how much she had been looking forward to seeing his crooked grin as he wished her happy birthday. [Sarah returns home later only to discover that Jimmy has planned a surprise party]

    3.       To explain away a plot inconsistency

Sarah’s mind wandered as she watched her socks tumble round and round in the drier. Jimmy had had to work today – some hot project that couldn’t wait until Monday – so she was alone with her thoughts.

In the first example, there’s no explanation for Jimmy’s absence; Sarah simply wonders where he is, which makes us suspect something fishy is going on.

In the second example, Sarah dismisses his absence as nothing particularly out of the ordinary, but focuses on how much she misses him. The writer tricks us into thinking this scene exists only to establish Sarah’s growing feelings for Jimmy – so we are pleasantly surprised when we discover that Jimmy’s absence was actually a sign of his feelings for Sarah.

In the third example, the writer just wanted to give Sarah some time to think, so got Jimmy out of the way for a while with a simple excuse. The parenthetical statement acknowledges that he doesn’t usually work on Saturdays, but offers a plausible explanation for an exception to the rule. This both explains away the inconsistency and lets us know that it’s not important to the plot.

Lanterns are also useful in trilogies and series. Say you leave a plot question unanswered in book one, because you plan to reveal all in book two – but in the meantime, you don’t want your readers to accuse you of overlooking it. Hang a lantern on it; have a character ask himself (or another character) that question, then leave it. Your readers will simply expect the answer in the next book.

A Made-up Word That Will Add Depth to Your Characters

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Kramer bursting through Jerry’s door. Garfield kicking Odie off the table. Michael Scott turning an innocent statement into an innuendo by adding “that’s what she said!”

What do all these things have in common?

They are all arsidities!

What the heck is an arsidity?

  1. A word I made up.
  2. The phonetic spelling for the pronunciation of the acronym RCDT: Recurring Character Development Theme. This is a phrase, object, or quirk that bears significance to a certain character or characters, and appears more than once in a single piece of work.

Wait a second, isn’t that called a “motif”?

Yes and no. A motif is a type of arsidity. A motif represents something – for instance, the sound of footsteps in A Tale of Two Cities represents the oncoming troubles of the characters, particularly Carton’s fate. An arsidity doesn’t always represent something, and is not always “important” – it is just a detail that adds depth to your characters and soul to your story. Arsidities help make a story and its characters more lovable, meaningful, charming, or funny.

More examples of arsidities:

The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien) – “my precious”     

The Outsiders (Hinton) – “gallant” and “stay gold”

Ocean’s Eleven – Rusty, Brad Pitt’s character, is eating in almost every scene

Silence of the Lambs – Hannibal Lector never blinks

Star Trek – Spock’s famous “Live long and prosper” gesture; Bones’ “Damn it, Jim, I’m a doctor not a [fill in the blank]”

None of these arsidities are vital to the plots of these books, movies, and TV shows, but can you imagine them without their arsidities? What a dull world it would be!

Do you use arsidities in your novel? How have they enhanced your character development, world building, and voice?

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January Excerpt: Mardon Troupe

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Let's hope I practice what I preach.

It’s the end of the month, so I’m giving you an excerpt of real writing, instead of all that instructional stuff I usually post. This is the beginning of a book I haven’t technically started writing yet, and in the true spirit of BeKindRewrite, it will probably be scrapped and completely rewritten before it sees print. 

The book will be composed entirely of letters from Alexandre Barneby, assistant of Mardon Troupe, to an unidentified lady.

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The only thing you really need know about Mardon Troupe, is that he was an impossible man. To answer your last question; I don’t know for sure, for that was before I knew him. But let me put it this way. A butcher once asked me if it was true that Mardon Troupe had really survived a stampede of one hundred head of cattle, while carrying an open jar of antivenin, without spilling a drop. “Of course not,” I replied, “It was two hundred head of cattle.”

So you may assume your story of the dragon was true, but it probably had five heads instead of two. I think Troupe plays the stories down when he tells them.

Yes, Mardon Troupe was impossible. He never tired. We could be hiking through the jungle for three days, nonstop, without food, I on my knees, dragging myself with bloodied fingers, mumbling incoherently, half mad with exhaustion.

“Come on, Barnaby,” he’d say briskly, looking down at me, “life is too short to be wasted on dawdling and cheap wine.”

On the note of alcohol: no one could out-drink him. He could guzzle an entire barrel of rum and then win a tongue-twister contest against a perfectly sober elocution expert. He never even grew tipsy.

Food had the same effect on him. That is, none at all. He went some days eating constantly, alternately snacking and feasting, and never gained a pound. He went other days eating nothing at all, maybe for weeks even, and never lost a pound, never grew faint.

And I never saw him sleep. Oh, there were occasions when he would lean back, legs stretched out, arms folded, hat pulled over his eyes, snoring softly—but that does not mean he was sleeping. I have a strong suspicion that he only pretended to be sleeping to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations. Even when we took lodging for the night, he would stay up reading, or smoking, or watching the stars. I think his mind never slept; I doubt his body did either. If you say that is impossible—you are beginning to understand Mardon Troupe.