In the past couple of weeks, we've talked about awkward wording, misused words, bland adjectives, misplace commas, and boring verbs. What else could possibly be wrong? Before you decide your book is perfect, let's try one final round of tweaking. 1.Passive voice always makes your writing weaker than it needs to be. If the subject is acted upon, the sentence is passive. One way to remedy the
situation is to let the object do the action. Examples: "The mailman was bitten by my dog."(Passive-the subject received the
action.) Change it to "My dog bit the mailman. (Active-the subject, my dog, did the action.) Do a search for any form of the verb "to be" (am, is, are, was, were, been) and eliminate it whenever possible. Remember, though, the use of a form of "to be" does not always make a sentence passive. Examples: My dog was biting the mailman. (Active-the subject did the action.)The verb is "was biting." you have to look at every instance to tell shich is whih.
2. White space – make sure you don’t have lengthy segments of narrative. Dialog
helps to keep up the pacing. Perhaps you give more description than is needed. Try staring at the page from across the room. Do you have enough white space to make the page look interesting? 3. Do your
chapters end with a hook? What about the opening line(s). Did you have a smooth
transition? 4. Did the
scene(s) move the story forward? 5. Don’t divulge
everything about a character, only what is necessary. 6. Is the dialog
natural? Too many tags?
Not enough? Search for said. Is it really necessary to identify the speaker? 7. Vary your
sentence structure. 8. Are you’re
consistent with the characters’ physical descriptions. Blue eyes can’t turn
brown in a later scene. 9. Do the stakes
increase as the story progresses? 10. Make sure your
twists and surprises are plausible. You have to have a reason to drop a dead
body from the ceiling, and the character better be someone pertinent to the
story. Tweaking your
work using the suggestions above will produce a tighter and more polished
manuscript. Are there more things to consider? You bet. I’ve only touched on a
few. Will you catch all the errors? No. Can anyone? No. Do your best. Watch for
what isn’t there--those often-omitted articles and prepositions. Let your
critique partners or friends proof your material. You can’t have enough eyes.
What you overlook, they might catch. It’s amazing how several people can read
the same chapter and each one find errors the others missed. Good luck and
happy writing. Remember, cleaning up your manuscript is just a matter of taking
out the trash. (Borrowed, in part, from http://www.sylviarochester.com) |
