Avoid overuse of alternatives to \u201csaid\u201d (exclaimed, observed, cried, muttered). Minimize use of \u201csaid\u201d when possible, by using other methods to identify who is speaking.<\/p>\n
Avoid overuse of dashes, ellipses, em-dashes, and exclamation marks.<\/p>\n
For that matter, avoid overuse of anything (not to be confused with \u201cuse of.\u201d You can use these words, just don\u2019t abuse them). This includes overuse of the following words: that, had been, there were, seemed like, for a moment, suddenly, just, or whatever is your \u201ccrutch word\u201d of choice. Some word programs sort word use frequency to help you find your personal crutches.<\/p>\n
Avoid \u201cstarted to\u201d or \u201cbegan to\u201d unless the character won\u2019t get past the starting\/beginning. If he was starting to run, why not just say he ran?<\/p>\n
Avoid a character saying something \u201cto him\/her\u201d unless it needs to be clear that the character is specifically speaking to that one individual. If it\u2019s already apparent, such as there is nobody else in the area, then eliminate it.<\/p>\n
Eliminate \u201cfelt\u201d where possible. Weak: She felt tired. Better: She was tired. Best (show don\u2019t tell): Unable to stifle a yawn, she leaned against the wall and rested.<\/p>\n
Eliminate \u201ccould\u201d when paired with something like \u201ccould hear\u201d or \u201ccould see.\u201d Better is \u201cheard\u201d or \u201csaw.\u201d Best is to eliminate those and just describe it. Rather than \u201cShe could hear the train coming,\u201d use \u201cThe train\u2019s whistle signaled its arrival.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read your work aloud to look for inadvertent rhythms or patterns. The latter often happens when a writer gets into the habit of starting sentences in the same ways, such as with the ing-verb first (\u201cRaising his sword, George said\u2026\u201d followed by \u201cSwinging her hair, Mary said\u201d).<\/p>\n
Where possible, try to replace \u201cwas\u201d and \u201cwere\u201d sentences with a more active verb. For example, replace \u201cthe tree was standing\u201d with \u201cthe tree stood.\u201d<\/p>\n
Exchange weak verbs for stronger ones. For example, \u201cHe looked at her.\u201d The word \u201clook\u201d is nothing more than a stage direction. Did he gaze, glare, peer, stare, study, glance, gawk, blink at, glower, frown at, or gape at her? Any which are more specific for the reader.<\/p>\n
There is a constant controversy over how many adverbs are acceptable in today\u2019s writing, varying anywhere from none allowed on up to liberal use. I\u2019m somewhere in the middle. Sometimes an adverb is the best word for the sentence, but they can also be easy crutches for description. If you can show the action, then it\u2019s almost always better than just inserting the adverb.<\/p>\n
So this is a good place for the old \u201cshow versus tell\u201d reminder. Telling an audience is lazy writing and it keeps the reader at a distance from the story. But showing requires readers to interpret the story and brings them into the heart of the action. Readers love to discover subtleties and complexities in a story, but a writer robs them of this when they tell.<\/p>\n
A telling description might be the writer telling his readers, “Jane was a good person.” But showing is much richer, as the writer shows Jane helping others, giving to the poor, or engaged in whatever behaviors she defined as being good.<\/p>\n
Telling sentence: Jane was becoming angry.<\/p>\n
Showing sentence: Jane’s firsts curled into balls and her muscles tensed.<\/p>\n
Give variation to your sentence lengths. Again, reading your work aloud should help to find these.<\/p>\n
Know the difference between helpful details and distracting ones. It is too much detail for example, to write, \u201cHe stood up, smoothed his clothing, cleared his throat, smiled ever so slightly, and walked forward, beginning with his right foot.\u201d Choose the details that matter and leave the rest out.<\/p>\n
In first person writing, try to avoid \u201cI\u201d when possible. This can often be accomplished through some restructuring of the sentence (and has the advantage of getting rid of usually weak verbs). For example, \u201cI saw her run\u201d can become \u201cShe ran.\u201d Or \u201cI felt the sting\u201d can become \u201cIt stung.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since we\u2019re talking about point of view, keep control of whatever POV you have. The \u201cping-pong point of view,\u201d where an author jumps into heads whenever it is convenient for the writing, can become dizzying to a reader. Sure, some authors make it work for them, but all beginning writers should choose a POV and stick with it consistently.<\/p>\n
Poorly defined characters will kill a good story. Your main character must have easily defined A) goals; B) strengths; and C) weaknesses. A flawless character is boring and gives you nowhere to go in the story. Use a character chart to help develop these.<\/p>\n
Eliminate clich\u00e9s. The general guide is that if you read it or saw it somewhere before, don\u2019t use it. There\u2019s a great website at http:\/\/cliche.theinfo.org\/ where you can enter your prose and it will identify the clich\u00e9s for you.<\/p>\n
Eliminate redundancy. It\u2019s an insult to your reader to repeat the same information over and over. Unless there\u2019s a need to reinforce a fact, consider having written it the first time as good enough, or find a different way to express it.<\/p>\n
Phony dialogue. Reading aloud helps catch this. A lot of times we write things that nobody, not even the character, would ever actually say.<\/p>\n
Info dumps. This happens when the reader needs to know a lot of information right away, so the author pushes \u201cpause\u201d on the story and dumps the information out. Readers hate it.<\/p>\n
Be careful as well on back story. If you must use it, put it as late into the story as you can so that the reader has had time to care enough about the character to want to know their back story.<\/p>\n
Be factually accurate. Don\u2019t put your characters in situations where they can\u2019t logically accomplish what you\u2019re asking them to do. Even though you won\u2019t always show it, characters must eat, sleep, and take bathroom breaks. Unless they are superhuman, they cannot accomplish superhuman feats. They are subject to their environment (can\u2019t see well in the dark, can\u2019t run fast over ice, etc)<\/p>\n
Avoid author intrusion. Occasionally I read a story where it\u2019s apparent the author has an ax to grind. So the author has his character give a political or religious statement outside the context of the plot, for example. Readers usually resent this, even if they agree with the author.<\/p>\n
Avoid too many lucky coincidences. One of my favorite books to read was Inkheart, because it seemed like every time the characters got into a bad situation, they needed just this one thing to work out and then everything would be okay. Only, it didn\u2019t work out and things just got worse. I loved it that they weren\u2019t lucky and didn\u2019t have these moments of, \u201cOh what a coincidence! The one exact thing I needed to have happen just did happen!\u201d<\/p>\n
Characters unconnected to their settings. Whatever place you define for your character, he must act within it. It\u2019s not enough to describe the setting at the beginning of the story and then let the character do whatever he wants with no connection to his environment.<\/p>\n
Remember that if they were writing the story, villains would consider themselves the hero. Your villain must be just as strongly motivated as your hero, and a great antagonist will be stronger than your hero, and likely to win.<\/p>\n
Speaking of villains, making them crazy isn’t a motive. That’s a copout for giving them a strong enough reason to act.<\/p>\n
Be careful on your time period! Research carefully to make sure the words, objects, and technologies you include exist in the time of your story.<\/p>\n
Revise. And revise and revise and revise. Learn to love revision, because this is where good writing becomes great.<\/p>\n
Reader Tip: When writing about a certain character\/story that has ties to real life ethnicities, religions, countries, races, and more, make sure that at least some piece of them matches up with that background. Such as their name,\u00a0backstory, appearance, or personality. Someone’s racial status, religion, country, and more are bound to affect them as a person, as well as their experiences. Someone who’s of a different race than most around them might experience receiving racist comments and such.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Have suggestions for more tips? Email me and I’ll add them in!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Avoid overuse of alternatives to \u201csaid\u201d (exclaimed, observed, cried, muttered). Minimize use of \u201csaid\u201d when possible, by using other methods to identify who is speaking. Avoid overuse of dashes, ellipses, em-dashes, and exclamation marks. For that matter, avoid overuse of anything (not to be confused with \u201cuse of.\u201d You can use these words, just don\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":27,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-93","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennielsen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/93","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennielsen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennielsen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennielsen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennielsen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/jennielsen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/93\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4053,"href":"https:\/\/jennielsen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/93\/revisions\/4053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennielsen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}