My computer decided to throw a fit yesterday and I am still in the midst of fixing it. My files (including the notes for what was going to be Friday’s post) are currently being restored. So I’m sorry to say we will all have to wait until next week (or the week after) for the article about what to include in the first pages.
I fully expect Inspiration Monday to continue as usual, though my replies to comments, etc. will likely not be until late Monday.
Thank you for your patience!
Continued from last week’s Part One: The Forest
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photo by David Mellis
Now we move in for a close up, a focus more on the words and sentence structures than on the story itself. But let’s say you’ve got the grammar stuff down. How else do you clean up your prose?
1. Compare sentence and paragraph lengths.* Take a sample chunk of your manuscript—say, one to two pages—and, highlight each sentence in alternating colors. The first sentence blue, the second red, the third blue again and so on. Then, take a step back and look at it. There should be a variety of long and short sentences: if all your sentences are about the same length, that’s a sign of bad flow, and you’ll need to do some tweaking.
Bonus tip: Different parts of the story may require different types of flow. Intensify action scenes, like fights or chases, by using more short sentences.
Then, take a sample chapter and do the same thing, but highlighting paragraphs this time. There should be a variety of paragraph lengths.
2. Compare sentence starts.* Using the same samples outlined in #1, highlight the first word of every sentence and then compare them. This helps you ensure a variety of sentence structures. Be on the lookout for pronouns and names. I’ve often had four or five sentences in a row beginning with “She did such-and-such.” Yuck. It makes the prose choppy and repetitive. Rearrange a few of these sentences to improve flow.
3. Search and replace words you use too much. Create a word cloud of your manuscript on wordle.net. ** The biggest words are the ones you use the most (Wordle automatically filters out naturally common words like the and and). Your main character’s names will unavoidably be huge, but look out for others. My most recent test revealed “like” to be pretty big—a sign I may have too many similes. There’s no magic number for how many is too many, but try taking the two or three biggest words in your word cloud, and then searching your manuscript for them (the “Find” feature in MS Word). If you see a pattern emerging, work on editing out at least half.
4. Read aloud. This is what critique partners and writing groups or for: an excuse to read chunks of your writing out loud. Bonus if you can get one of them (who is good at reading aloud) to read it for you while you stand by with a red pen. This way you can make sure an objective reader will:
5. Commit to cutting words. You may be horrified at the idea of slicing phrases out of your so carefully crafted masterpiece. Don’t be. Force yourself to cut, say, 100 words per chapter. This doesn’t necessarily mean cutting whole paragraphs, or even whole sentences. Get crafty. See if you can find a word here or there that you can cut without sacrificing meaning. Here’s what will happen as a result:
If all that doesn’t convince you, I’ll appeal to Strunk & White to back me up: rule #17: Omit needless words. Here are examples of words you can cut.
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What editing tips have you picked up? Tell me in the comments!
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* I owe these two tips to my first writing teacher, Miss Judy. Thanks, Miss Judy, wherever you are!
** I owe this tip to Jubilare—pay her a visit; she’s got a new blog!
Today I recieved an email from Chris asking if I was alright. He said y’all were worried about me.
I was confused.
I mean, I know I was sort of…out for two weeks, thanks to work and going out of town, but I still posted InMon prompts, and I got back on the wagon last week with a post on How to kill your hero, and put up more prompts last Monday, and–
Wait. I didn’t?
Yes, it was one of those coulda-sworn-I-hit-the-publish-button-but-must-have-hit-the-save-draft-button-instead moments.
Argh!
I’m so sorry.
But since it’s Friday, I can’t very well post it NOW, can I?
So “best nightmare” will have to wait till Monday.
But later tonight I’ll have a regular post for you!
Again – I’m sorry if I scared you. And thank you, truly, for your concern.
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As I write this, it is Tuesday, I only got home from work (via grocery store) an hour ago, and if I don’t start towards bed now, I will be like the walking dead tomorrow, and tomorrow I have a lot to do.
In other words, if you’re reading this, I didn’t get a chance to write this Friday’s blog post. But you can read about why I love the Internet over at my work blog:
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Eat your heart out, sliced bread. I think we can all agree the Internet is ten times awesomer than you. Here are a few world-changing reasons why.
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Sorry, guys; the day job has been pushing late into the evening this week, and I’m out of town this weekend with spotty Internet access. So today’s post did not happen. But check back Monday for new InMon prompts!
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It seems that “mindstorm” is rather popular and I feel compelled to participate, though I wrote this many years ago, so this doesn’t really count, but it goes well and I wanted to share it.
In the distant years to come, a man overwhelmed with his emotions will look up to the sky, and whisper to himself in speculation;
“Is it the weather that affects ones emotions, or a gathering of feelings that influences the sun and the rain?”
Although he will be deep in sorrow, and pain, and anger, and hate, the sun will shine the brighter and the calm breeze will gently carry the soft clouds across the delicate blue sky. So he will come to the conclusion that it is not the dreary weather that makes him sad, but his sadness that brings the dark clouds. Yet in all his sadness, the storm will not come. He will think the sky is too far away to hear his cry of pain, his mass of anger is too deep within to be seen by the rays of the sun, and his hate too great to be tamed by the blue sky.
He will desire to be rid of his inner pain, and in his wanting to cast it out, he shall venture close to the heavens where the wind will touch his feelings, and know which clouds to bring. So he shall obtain a great basket and set upon it a giant balloon to lift him off the ground. And he will sit in the basket and ride it as the balloon carries him up into the heights where the air is cold.
He shall float amongst the clouds and plea for them to envelope his sorrow with joy. He will ride the wind and request it to blow away his pain and replace it with peace. He shall absorb the sunlight and beg it to shine through him, gaze upon his anger, and melt it into calmness. He will be roofed by the sky so blue, and shout at it to cover his hate with love. Then he shall sit and wait for the weather to take away his unwanted emotions and turn them into feelings of good. But in all his asking, they will not respond to him. The clouds, and the wind, and the sun, and the sky will do nothing to change him, and he will not know how to change them.
So he will weep in failure, and try not again. And his terrible emotions will consume him and bring him to utter turmoil. Then the sky, and all contained within it, shall be disturbed by his outcry. His deep sorrow will become dark clouds around him. His pain will burst forth from him and strike down and pierce the sky as lightning. His cries will howl as fierce winds of a tempest. His anger and hate shall roar and shake the ground as great thunder. His tears will pour from his eyes and rain down a monsoon of grief. At last he will spill his dreadful feelings, release his burden of emotions, and be a calm, peaceful break in the center of his devastating storm. With his wrath escaped, he will bring upon others a taste of what was his inner turbulence, to remind them of how much they miss the sky of a beautiful day. And he will no longer be human, weighed down with feelings, troubled with the things of mankind. No longer be called man, but thereafter be named Hurricane.
Everybody, especially those new to this blog, I strongly recommend finding time here and there to go back and read all the non-InMon posts, to benefit from the advice and to get a better understanding of what our purpose is here. There are rules and there are suggestions. Advice does not have to be taken (but usually should be), and rules should never be broken until you know and fully understand them. Without understanding the rules breaking them is just bad writing. Once you know the reason behind the rules, break them when appropriate, and never let suggestions write your stuff for you. If you take all advice completely literal, you will lose your style and your voice. Write what you write, but be smart about it, and make it the best possible.
Read the whole blog, it does a body (of work) good.
Musicians do it, so should we.
Snap, crackle, pop. It is important to properly maintain your tools regularly. Whether one writes with a pen(cil) or a keyboard, we must all take care of our hands. Some people think popping knuckles is bad for you, some are just uncomfortable doing it.
Do it anyway.
Chiropractors pop necks, backs, elbows, ankles, and all other joints, and you pay them for it. Writing for hours can be a big strain on the hands and fingers. Once my fingers got stuck in the pencil-grip position for several minutes after. It could happen to you.
Pop your knuckles
Stretch your fingers
Bend them behind the hand
Pull them gently out from your hand to extend them all the way from your wrist
Bend your wrists back
Bend your thumbs back
Extend your fingers in a wide stretch then bend them like claws, repeat that a lot.
Play with chinese medacine balls (they’re the little metal ones that jingle); this is for dexterity.
Put a rubber band around your fingers and thumb and move them in and out repeatedly to create and release tension in the band; this is for strength and stretching.
Massage your hands
Do the Mr. Miagi rub together for warming up.
Do these before/during/after long writing sessions and your hands and fingers with be happy and crampless.
Don’t let your hands get like this.
That is all.
Good day to you all. I am Tragic Pete. I will be assisting bekind with this blog, posting various tips, as well as a few of my own pieces of writing on occasion. Below is my most recent random thing; a sample, an introduction.
All the bits and pieces of the earth collide, combine, tear apart and reconnect repeatedly and continuously forming new and different bits out of the same elements. New grows old and becomes new again, disintegrate, rearrange, and converge into a bit that was not there before and yet has always been. All that I am in contact with becomes me, and I a part of it. I walk on the floor, I sit in a chair, I wear clothes and yet am naked, for my skin touches the cloth, the cloth touches the chair, the chair touches the floor and the floor is the ground where the earth is kept neatly out of sight. Everything touches everything else, molecules brush up against others that are not the same, but opposites attract and hold on to communicate what could be accomplished if electrons make the effort to produce and reproduce in a consummation of elemental harmony. I am therefore out of my body and into the earth. I am the wood of my desk, I am the circuits in the screen that displays words that are the fruit of my labor, my life’s work, an accomplishment of my brain to my fingers to the keys to the light that beams from the screen to my eyes that tell my brain I have written this, for here it is. I am what I write,what I write is what you read, what you read becomes a part of you. I am you.
Although my mom isn’t a writer, I owe a lot to her for making me one. She did this in five big ways:
She read to us
My mom reads like a fiend and she read to us all the time when we were little. Narnia, The Hobbit, The Just So Stories, A Wrinkle In Time, From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and countless others. She taught us to love stories – I can still remember how excited I was when I got into first grade and found out I was going to learn to read for myself.
She took us to the library
Every two weeks in the summer, she’d drive us to the library – not the tiny one up the street, but the big one that was a little farther off. I’d make a b-line for the YA section and grab anything that looked interesting, and take home a whole stack of books I could only hope would last me two weeks.
She home-schooled us
Most kids spend six hours a day in class and still have homework in the evening. They’re so busy cramming their heads with facts, they don’t have time to experiment with hobbies and figure out what they really want to do. When you’re home-schooled, you have a certain amount of work to do per day or week, and once you’re done with it, you’re free. On a good day, I could get everything done bynoon.
She made us amuse ourselves
You’d think with all that free time, we’d get bored. Well, sometimes we did. But every time we complained to Mom about it, she would say “You could always clean out the garage” or something to that effect, which meant we quickly learned not to depend on her for entertainment. Instead, we learned to amuse ourselves – which naturally lead to reading, which itself naturally led to writing (for two out of three of us).
She never told us we couldn’t
Although we understood that we had to lead productive lives and make real money, neither she nor my dad ever told us we couldn’t become writers (or a singer, which was what I wanted to be for most of my childhood). However, we also didn’t ask them to spend vast amounts of money to feed our hobbies; we didn’t ask them to buy us fancy computers or send us to expensive writer’s camps. I guess the message behind that is, if your kid really wants to do it, he’ll find a way with or without a big stack of money.
Happy Mother’s Day!
