My response to...

My response to: http://dreamersperch.blogspot.com.es/2012/11/from-nano-to-publication-editing-process.html

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I am a writer and an editor. When I first started writing I hated the thought of anyone messing around with my 'baby'. I self-published rather than be edited. I still have a very strong emotional attachment to that book so, even though now I cam see it has a few flaws and could probably be tightened up in a few places, I'd struggle to change it. However, what I have learned from writing and editing since, I think has improved my own writing tremendously. When I send stuff off to my editor, I look forward to getting it back as I know that any changes she suggests will only improve my book. Also, I have learned enough so that when I rigorously self-edit beforehand, there shouldn't be all that much she has to change.

I have discovered I suffer terribly from exclamation point-itis. I use far far too many! So she painlessly removes them for me, and my characters don't come across as quite so manic as they otherwise would.

As an editor, on the other hand, I have had some authors who are wonderful and some who defend every last cliché and adverb.

Those four rules in particular I would take issue with. It is not necessary to always write in US English, especially if one is a British writer and the book is set in Britain with British characters.

One POV - ridiculous!! Some of the best books I have ever read have multiple POVs. A single POV can be powerful if done well, but it is by no means necessary and can be detrimental and limiting.

And the tense used should be appropriate for the writing. The simple tense is not always correct or appropriate.

As for the adverb issue, there are many times where the writing IS improved by replacing a weak verb+adverb by a stronger verb. However, some adverbs are wonderful and help to set the scene beautifully. It all depends on context.

I do tend to strip out unnecessary dialogue tags, all those he saids and she saids, when one can tell perfectly well who is speaking, just get in the way and clutter up the work.

As an editor, if I read something and it pulls me out of the story, then it needs rewriting. The best writing draws you into the world the writer has created so much that you should not even be aware you are reading a book - you are there, in the story, with those characters.

An upright sea with slots in it

There are writers.

Then there are good writers

Then there are awesome writers.

  

A writer might write: “It was raining.”

A good writer might write: “It was raining on the night John died, falling relentlessly from the iron-grey sky like God Himself was weeping.”

But an awesome writer might write: “The sky rained dismal. It rained humdrum. It rained the kind of rain that is so much wetter than normal rain, the kind of rain that comes down in big drops and splats, the kind of rain that is merely an upright sea with slots in it.” ~ Sir Terry Pratchett, Truckers

It is not for a writer to decide how good a writer they themselves are. My writing has been described as many things from “terrible” at one end of the scale to “outstanding” at the other. I like to think of myself as a good writer with occasional moments of awesomeness, but that’s by the by.

What we must always do is strive to be better. Don’t settle for rain when you can have an upright sea with slots in it.

When I have my editing hat on, for the most part the authors I edit are happy to take the suggestions I offer. They accept that the changes I suggest make their writing better and shower me with gratitude and presents. Okay, I lied about the presents. But you never know, maybe one day someone will (hint hint!).

However, now and again I get the odd one who resists. They defend their clichés (“but that’s why I used it”) and their dull dialogue (“but that’s how people really speak”) and their hackneyed phrases (“but I read it in romance novels all the time so it must be okay”).

Don’t settle for being average. Don’t settle for being clichéd. Strive to make your writing different and original. Don’t use the same tired old phrases you read in other people’s romance novels, find a fresh new way to say what you want to say, a way that no one else has said it before. Don’t copy, create!

If you’re just a writer, try your best to improve, to make yourself a good writer. We all had to start somewhere. There are very many outstanding web pages with excellent tips on how to improve. Read them. Apply them. Don’t think you’re wonderful. You can always improve.

If you’re a good writer, the same applies. Don’t sit back and smirk and assume that your writing is perfect because you’ve got a publishing contract. You’ve been contracted because the acquisitions editor thinks your work can be turned into something saleable. But if your writing was perfect there would be no need for editors. Listen to your editor. Strive to be more than merely good. Go for awesome.

If you’re an awesome writer already, then you have the hardest job. You have a very high standard to maintain. Do you want to be a one hit wonder? If not, you have to maintain those standards of originality and freshness for book after book after book if you want to be the best you can be. You have to lead the field with all that achingly fresh new talent biting at your ankles.

Sometimes I read something so awesome that it makes me weep to think I can never ever be as good as that. But then if I gave in to that attitude I might as well not write another word. Something keeps me going. And just now and again I read something I wrote and think, “Actually, you know, that’s not bad.”

And maybe, just maybe, one day I’ll be awesome, too.

Five fiction mistakes that spell rejection: No. 5 - No Point

Fiction Mistakes that Spell Rejection

by Moira Allen

No Point


Editors — and readers — aren't just looking for great action and strong characters. They also want a sense of "why." Why should I read this? Why did you write it?

"This is not to say every work should address an Aesopish moral or a grand theme, but rather every story should contain at its core a reason to be," says Max Keele. "In fact, that is my single personal demand from a story: That it add up to something. That it shock me, scare me, unnerve me, make me think, or cry, or vomit. Something."

Ellen Datlow of SciFi.com says she reads far too many stories with no apparent reason for being. "I have no idea why the writer bothered to write the story — no passion, no unusual take on the subject, dull, unbelievable characters. A story has to have something special to make me want to buy it."

A story without a point tends to be "flat," according to Rhonna Robbins-Sponaas. "If we come away with the peculiar feeling that we don't really know why we've just read what we've read, or our first thought is that the washer has finished and the clothes are ready to be put in the dryer, then the writer hasn't conveyed the 'why' of the story as strongly as she could have and should have."

The solution? "Were I to tell a writer one thing, I'd tell her to go back and be certain what her story is, then be sure that she's answered the 'why' of the story so that the reader comes away from the experience with as much a sense of its importance as the writer had," says Robbins-Sponaas. Brown and English of Stickman Review urge writers to, "Write sincerely. Write stories about those things that matter the most to you. If you're writing about something you don't really care about, it'll be obvious to your readers, and they won't care either."

Five fiction mistakes that spell rejection: No. 4 - Poor Plots

Fiction Mistakes that Spell Rejection

by Moira Allen

Poor Plots

Editors complained of two basic plot problems: Trite, hackneyed plots, or no plot. Ian Randall Strock says many of his rejections are the result of "the author sending me a really old, lame idea that's been done to death for decades, and the author hasn't done anything new with it." Many felt too many writers were deriving their plots from television rather than real life. "We don't want last week's Buffy plot," says Diane Walton.

David Ingle of The Georgia Review says at best, only ten stories in a thousand that cross his desk manage to escape "the doldrums of convention." The most beautiful prose in the world, he notes, can't compensate for stock characters and plots. "My main gripe is with the so-called 'domestic' story -- stories of bad childhoods, bad parents, abusive or straying spouses." He asks writers to make their stories stand out from the pile on the editor's desk. "Instead of another divorce story narrated by a despondent spouse, how about one narrated by the couple's favorite chair?"

While some stories have bad plots, others have no plot. "One I received was about a woman shopping for a hat. That was it," bemoans Paul Taylor of Cenotaph. Alejandro Gutierrez of Conversely complains of "stories that just begin and end with nothing important happening or being resolved by the main characters." Some plotless stories ramble from one event to another; others are a hodgepodge of action with no emotional content to involve the readers.

The solution? Ironically, most editors felt the way to resolve "plotless" or "hackneyed" stories was to focus on characters. If the characters are believable, with interesting goals and motivations, their interactions will drive the plot. "Most of the ideas for stories have already been used; it's up to the writer to put a new spin on it to make it fresh," says David Felts. "If the characters are real enough then a recycled plot can work, because if the character is new, the story is too."

Daily tip: good usage vs. common usage #6 - Adduce, deduce, induce.

adduce; deduce; induce.

To adduce is to give as a reason, offer as a proof, or cite as an example, e.g. as evidence of reliability, she adduced her four years of steady volunteer work as a nurse’s aide.

Deduce and induce are opposite processes.

To deduce is to reason from general principles to specific conclusions, or to draw a specific conclusion from general bases e.g. from these clues about who committed the crime, one deduces that the butler did it.

To induce is to form a general principle based on specific observations e.g. after years of studying ravens, the researchers induced a few of their social habits.

Exterminating adverbs

The adverb is a perfectly respectable English construct, when speaking, writing instructions, or anywhere else where it doesn't really matter. I know if I'm urging my daughters to get ready in the morning, I am very likely to utter the word, "Quickly." I'm not going to stand there for half an hour searching for le mot juste while the bus leaves without us.

In writing as an art form (or a craft, if you prefer), we can be a little more leisurely. We can take the time to search for just that right word, or phrase, or sentence, or paragraph, that puts across exactly what we want to say in a far more beautiful/exciting/dramatic/erotic* manner than simply peppering our work with lazy adverbs.

*delete as appropriate

And if you don't believe me, here is what Stephen King has to say on the subject.

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In his book, On Writing, prolific fiction writer Stephen King argues for simplicity in writing. Here he attacks the adverb:

The other piece of advice I want to give you ... is this: The adverb is not your friend.

Adverbs, you will remember, ... are words that modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. They're the ones that usually end in -ly. Adverbs, like the passive voice, seem to have been created with the timid writer in mind. ... With adverbs, the writer usually tells us he or she is afraid he/she isn't expressing himself/herself clearly, that he or she is not getting the point or the picture across.

Consider the sentence He closed the door firmly. It's by no means a terrible sentence (at least it's got an active verb going for it), but ask yourself if firmly really has to be there. You can argue that it expresses a degree of difference between He closed the door and He slammed the door, and you'll get no argument from me . . . but what about context? What about all the enlightening (not to say emotionally moving) prose which came before He closed the door firmly? Shouldn't this tell us how he closed the door? And if the foregoing prose does tell us, isn't firmly an extra word? Isn't it redundant?

Someone out there is now accusing me of being tiresome and anal-retentive. I deny it. I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops. To put it another way, they're like dandelions. If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique. If you fail to root it out, however, you find five the next day . . . fifty the day after that . . . and then, my brothers and sisters, your lawn is totally, completely, and profligately covered with dandelions. By then you see them for the weeds they really are, but by then it's-GASP!!-too late.

I can be a good sport about adverbs, though. Yes I can. With one exception: dialogue attribution. I insist that you use the adverb in dialogue attribution only in the rarest and most special of occasions . . . and not even then, if you can avoid it. Just to make sure we all know what we're talking about, examine these three sentences:

"Put it down!" she shouted.
"Give it back," he pleaded, "it's mine."
"Don't be such a fool, Jekyll," Utterson said.

In these sentences, shouted, pleaded, and said are verbs of dialogue attribution. Now look at these dubious revisions:

"Put it down!" she shouted menacingly.
"Give it back," he pleaded abjectly, "it's mine."
"Don't be such a fool, Jekyll," Utterson said contemptuously.

The three latter sentences are all weaker than the three former ones, and most readers will see why immediately. "Don't be such a fool, Jekyll," Utterson said contemptu­ously is the best of the lot; it is only a cliché, while the other two are actively ludicrous. Such dialogue attributions are sometimes known as 'Swifties,' after Tom Swift, the brave inventor-hero in a series of boys' adventure novels written by Victor Appleton II. Appleton was fond of such sentences as "Do your worst!" Tom cried bravely and "My father helped with the equations," Tom said modestly. When I was a teenager there was a party-game based on one's ability to create witty (or half-witty) Swifties. "You got a nice butt, lady," he said cheekily is one I remember; another is "I'm the plumber," he said, with a flush. (In this case the mod­ifier is an adverbial phrase.) ...

Some writers try to evade the no-adverb rule by shooting the attribution verb full of steroids. The result is familiar to any reader of pulp fiction or paperback originals:

"Put down the gun, Utterson!" Jekyll grated.
"Never stop kissing me!" Shayna gasped.
"You damned tease!" Bill jerked out.

Don't do these things. Please oh please. The best form of dialogue attribution is said, as in he said, she said, Bill said, Monica said.

Author: Stephen King  
Title: On Writing
Publisher: Scribner
Date: Copyright 2000 by Stephen King
Pages: 124-127

Daily tip: good usage vs. common usage #2 - ability, capability, capacity

There are many words which are commonly confused with each other and which may have similar, overlapping, or even opposite meanings. Three such words are: ability, capability and capacity.

Ability refers to a person’s physical or mental skill or power to achieve something, e.g. the ability to ride a bicycle.

Capability refers more generally to power or ability, e.g. she has the capability to play soccer professionally, or to the quality of being able to use or be used in a certain way, e.g. a jet with long-distance-flight capability.

Capacity refers especially to a vessel’s ability to hold or contain something, e.g. a high-capacity fuel tank. However, used figuratively, capacity refers to a person’s physical or mental power to learn, e.g. an astounding capacity for mathematics.

Five fiction mistakes that spell rejection: No. 3 - Undeveloped Characters

Fiction Mistakes that Spell Rejection

by Moira Allen

3: Undeveloped Characters

Your story may begin with an interesting idea (e.g., “What would happen if?”), but the characters keep people reading. Most editors agreed they look for stories driven by interesting, believable characters. “Could you imagine the movie Gladiator without the scene where Maximus loses his family?” asks Doyle Wilmoth Jr. “Gladiator has action, but we also have a character that moves us deeply. Someone we want to cheer for.”

Problems with characters include:

Characters the reader won’t care about. “It is especially bad news when the protagonist is someone with no redeeming social value, because we have to care about what happens to someone in the story, or why bother to read it?” says Diane Walton.

Characters who do not grow or learn. Several editors complained of “cardboard” characters whose motivations were unclear, or who simply reacted to story events rather than being the source of the story’s plot or conflict. “Ultimately the main character must decide his or her own fate; it can’t be decided for them,” says David Felts, former editor of Maelstrom Speculative Fiction and current editor of SFReader.com. Skylar Burns of Ancient Paths notes that “an even greater problem is the character that undergoes a rapid and unrealistic transformation in a very short span of prose.” Marcia Preston of Byline notes that too many stories feature characters who lack any apparent goal, or a compelling reason to want a particular goal — a flaw that results in stories with no significant conflict.

Stereotypes. “Why can’t a rich business man be kind and compassionate? Why are unemployed men always lazy and sit around in their vests swigging out of cans? Why can’t one or two learn Latin or take up line-dancing?” asks Sally Zigmond of QWF Magazine. Rhonna Robbins-Sponaas of Net Author notes that when a character is a stereotype, the story often needs a complete rewrite to turn the character into a living, breathing, three dimensional being.

The solution? “Know your characters, particularly the narrator,” suggests Victoria Esposito-Shea of HandHeldCrime. You don’t have to give the reader every detail of your character’s history, but you should know the history yourself. “That’s where voice is going to come from, and should also drive the plot to a large degree.”

“Remember that each person on this planet is an individual, possessing a separate combination of traits that distinguish him or her from everyone else,” says Bill Glose of Virginia Adversaria. “Be specific. Instead of saying, ‘The bar patron was obnoxious,’ say, ‘The skin around his mouth glowed, gin blossoms reddening his puffy cheeks and seeping into the overlapping chins. When he spoke, his speech was slurred and the words had an edge to them.’” Glose recommends using action to illustrate a character’s traits.

Daily tip: good usage vs. common usage #1 - a, an

Many words are used in every day language which are perfectly adequate for purpose, i.e. they get across the meaning of what we want to say without being technically correct.

But, when writing, or editing, especially in narrative, we really need to be technically correct as far as is possible. In dialogue, grammatical errors and dialect are fine, if that is how your character speaks. But in narrative, we have to be more careful.

Dictionaries are not always reliable, as they reflect common usage rather than correct usage. As language evolves constantly, it is a fact that, when enough people get it wrong, it will inevitably become 'right'. Be that as it may, at this point in time, our writing must reflect what is currently 'right'.

This is the first in a series of daily tips on good usage vs. common usage.

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A; an.

We were all taught at school to use 'a' before a consonant and 'an' before a vowel. So, such constructs as "a cow" and "an elephant" pose no problems. But what do we do when a word begins with, for example, a vowel, but sounds as if it begins with a consonant, and vice versa?

We go with the sound of the word, not the spelling, as the a/an difference undoubtedly evolved for ease of speech.

So, use the indefinite article 'a' before any word beginning with a consonant sound e.g. "a utopian dream". Use 'an' before any word beginning with a vowel sound e.g. "an officer", "an honorary degree".

The word "historical" and its variations cause missteps, but since the 'h' in these words is pronounced, it takes an 'a' e.g. "an hour-long talk at a historical society".

Likewise, an initialism (whose letters are sounded out) may be paired with one article while an acronym (which is pronounced as a word) beginning with the same letter is paired with the other e.g. "an HTML website for a HUD program".

Five fiction mistakes that spell rejection: No. 2 - Wordiness

Fiction Mistakes that Spell Rejection

by Moira Allen

2: Wordiness

Another pervasive problem editors cited was too many words. Many suggested that new writers learn to cut their stories by 10 to 50 percent. “The most obvious error we encounter in fiction is overwriting,” say Anthony Brown and Darrin English of Stickman Review. “Young writers, full of energy, throw everything and the kitchen sink into their work to impress editors.”

Excess verbiage can result from several fundamental writing errors.

Too many adjectives and adverbs. “When the yellow, round orb of the sun stealthily and smoothly creeps into the azure blue early morning sky, one may wonder why the sun didn’t simply rise; it would have saved a good deal of trouble for all concerned,” says Max Keele of Fiction Inferno. If you feel the need to modify every verb with an adverb (or two), or every noun with an adjective, chances are you’re not picking the right words. Look for strong nouns and stand alone verbs that convey your meaning without modification.

Using “big” words when simple ones would do. “To me, ‘ascended’ sounds inappropriate to describe a man walking up a few steps,” says Adam Golaski of New Genre. Seeking alternatives to “said” is another common error; too often, characters “expostulate” or “riposte.”

Too much detail or backstory. Many writers fall into the trap of adding too much detail or description.

“Describing the color and length of a protagonist’s hair is great if it’s relevant; otherwise it’s fluff you can cut,” says Don Muchow of Would That It Were. Diane Walton of ON SPEC deplores “long exposition ‘lumps’ that stop the action dead in its tracks, so one character can explain to another that their society has been operating in a certain way for centuries, or the long speech where the bad guy explains why he has to kill the good guy.”

The solution? Put your story aside for at least a week after writing it; then go back over it and search for “flab.”

“Every word has to do a job; if it’s goldbricking, out it goes,” says Robbie Matthews of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Hunt down those excess adverbs and adjectives. Look for stronger nouns and verbs. Set a goal of trimming your final draft by at least 10%.

Next time: Undeveloped characters

Five fiction mistakes that spell rejection: No. 1 - Bad Beginnings

I can’t remember where I sourced this from, probably one of the writing forums I go on, but I found a very interesting article written by Moira Allen, who is the editor of Writing-World.com. Over the next week or so I will be posting excerpts from it.


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Fiction Mistakes that Spell Rejection


by Moira Allen


Ask most fiction editors how to avoid rejection, and you’ll hear the same thing: Read the guidelines. Review the publication. Don’t send a science fiction story to a literary magazine, and vice versa. Don’t send a 10,000-word manuscript to a magazine that never publishes anything longer than 5,000 words. Spell check. Proofread. Check your grammar. Format your manuscript correctly. Be professional.


Failure to observe these basics, many editors say, accounts for more than 80% of all short fiction rejections. But what if you’ve done all that, and your stories are still coming back with polite, form rejection letters? I asked nearly 50 fiction editors — from traditional literary publications to flash fiction ezines — what types of problems resulted in the other 20% of rejections. These are the problems that plague stories that meet all the basic requirements, but still don’t quite “make the grade.”

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Bad Beginnings


“A story needs a beginning that grabs the reader and pulls him into the story,” says Lida Quillen of Twilight Times. If you can’t hook the editor with your opening line or first paragraph, the editor will assume it won’t hook the reader either. “You simply must grab me in those first few sentences,” says Ian Randall Strock of Artemis.


Dave Switzer of Challenging Destiny looks for “something new — something I haven’t seen before — on the first page. Something unique about the character or situation that makes me want to continue reading.”


One source of weak beginnings is “taking too long to cut to the chase,” according to Diane Walton of ON SPEC. “When the writer spends three pages explaining the entire history of the planet, we know we are in trouble.” Doyle Wilmoth Jr. of SpecFicWorld.com agrees, defining a slow-starting story as one in which “the writer feels that she/he needs to explain every little detail for the reader to understand.”


A story must do more than begin well; it must also fulfill the promise of that beginning. “Some new fiction writers create a very good beginning, but then do not fulfill the expectations of the reader,” says Lida Quillen. “As a writer, you want to raise the reader’s expectations, create a need to know what happens next and then satisfactorily fulfill that need.” Once you’ve “grabbed” the editor with your first sentence, your second has to keep him reading — right on to the end of the story.


Andrew Gulli of The Strand Magazine notes: “The writers I resent are those who hook you with first sentence then whole stories turn out to be boring. Often writers will write something with a beginning and ending. There is no middle.” Anne Simpson of Antigonish Review feels that “Generally speaking, a weak opening is more forgivable than a weak ending, but both should be strong for the story to work.”


Next time: Wordiness

The trials of thinking up original names

It's virtually impossible to create normal character names that haven't been used. I am sure there are loads of Linzi Hugheses and Michelle Hamiltons.

But one of the characters in my novel "Money Can't Buy Me Love" (coming out in September with Secret Cravings Publishing) is an obnoxious footballer who plays for Manchester United. Obviously he has to be fictional as I am going to have him do all sorts of distasteful things and he is not a very nice person.

I initially gave him the name of Shane Long as I thought of a hilarious play on words on his name, which you will have to read the book to find out. Came home, told my husband all about it, said, jokingly, “I hope there isn't a real footballer with the same name.”

My husband said, “Oh I think he plays for Reading.”

Obviously I thought he was kidding at first but played along and looked him up - and guess what!

So, then I decided on Sean Long, only to discover that he plays Rugby for Hull:

Next choice was Seamus Long - surely this one had to be available. But apparently Seamus Long plays football for Waterford United in Ireland:

So unless I went with Sherlock or Sheridan, or change it entirely and lose the joke, I decided to go with Shaun Long and hope that Sean Long doesn't sue me :o(

Sean - if you're reading this - sorry! It's not you - honest!!

Guidelines EVERY writer should read

I found these posted on http://www.absolutewrite.com/ - one of my favourite haunts and populated by a fab bunch of writers: published authors, wannabees, as well as some absolute beginners.

As an author and editor, I am always looking for ways to improve my writing and help others improve theirs. I’m  hoping these might prove useful tips.

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Allen Guthrie, an acquisition editor for Point Blank Press, wrote up a ‘white paper’ called ‘Hunting Down the Pleonasms’ that has become a cult classic. Guthrie gave Adventure Books of Seattle permission to reprint this document wherever we liked. It is a permanent download over at our main site, but I wanted to reproduce it here. It is very specific. Over at the AB site, it’s been downloaded hundreds of times, and I think every writer should post this on the wall near their computer.

‘Hunting Down the Pleonasms’

I can’t stress strongly enough that writing is subjective. We all strive for different goals. Consequently, we all need our own set of rules-and some of us don’t need rules at all! Personally, I like rules. If nothing else, it’s fun breaking them.

1: Avoid pleonasms. A pleonasm is a word or phrase which can be removed from a sentence without changing its meaning. For example, in “Hunting Down The Pleonasm”, ‘down’ is pleonastic. Cut it and the meaning of the sentence does not alter. Many words are used pleonastically: ‘just’, ‘that’ and ‘actually’ are three frequently-seen culprits (I actually just know that he’s the killer can be trimmed to I know he’s the killer), and phrases like ‘more or less’ and ‘in any shape or form’ are redundant.

2: Use oblique dialogue. Try to generate conflict at all times in your writing. Attempt the following experiment at home or work: spend the day refusing to answer your family and colleagues’ questions directly. Did you generate conflict? I bet you did. Apply that principle to your writing and your characters will respond likewise.

3: Use strong verbs in preference to adverbs. I won’t say avoid adverbs, period, because about once every fifty pages they’re okay! What’s not okay is to use an adverb as an excuse for failing to find the correct verb. To ‘walk slowly’ is much less effective than to ‘plod’ or ‘trudge’. To ‘connect strongly’ is much less effective than to ‘forge a connection’.

4: Cut adjectives where possible. See rule 3 (for ‘verb’ read ‘noun’).

5: Pairs of adjectives are exponentially worse than single adjectives. The ‘big, old’ man walked slowly towards the ‘tall, beautiful’ girl. When I read a sentence like that, I’m hoping he dies before he arrives at his destination. Mind you, that’s probably a cue for a ‘noisy, white’ ambulance to arrive. Wailingly, perhaps!

6: Keep speeches short. Any speech of more than three sentences should be broken up. Force your character to do something. Make him take note of his surroundings. Ground the reader. Create a sense of place.

7: If you find you’ve said the same thing more than once, choose the best and cut the rest. Frequently, I see the same idea presented several ways. It’s as if the writer is saying, “The first couple of images might not work, but the third one should do it. If not, maybe all three together will swing it.” The writer is repeating himself. Like this. This is a subtle form of pleonasm.

8: Show, don’t tell. Much vaunted advice, yet rarely heeded. An example: expressing emotion indirectly. Is your preferred reader intelligent? Yes? Then treat them accordingly. Tears were streaming down Lila’s face. She was very sad. Can the second sentence be inferred from the first? In context, let’s hope so. So cut it. If you want to engage your readers, don’t explain everything to them. Show them what’s happening and allow their intelligence to do the rest. And there’s a bonus to this approach. Because movies, of necessity, show rather than tell, this approach to your writing will help when it’s time to begin work on the screenplay adaptation of your novel!

9: Describe the environment in ways that are pertinent to the story. And try to make such descriptions active. Instead of describing a book lying on a table, have your psycho-killer protagonist pick it up, glance at it and move it to the arm of the sofa. He needs something to do to break up those long speeches, right?

10: Don’t be cute. In the above example, your protagonist should not be named Si Coe.

11: Avoid sounding ‘writerly’. Better to dirty up your prose. When you sound like a writer, your voice has crept in and authorial intrusion is always unwelcome. In the best writing, the author is invisible.

12: Fix your Point Of View (POV). Make it clear whose head you’re in as early as possible. And stay there for the duration of the scene. Unless you’re already a highly successful published novelist, in which case you can do what you like. The reality is that although most readers aren’t necessarily clued up on the finer points of POV, they know what’s confusing and what isn’t.

13: Don’t confuse the reader. If you write something you think might be unclear, it is. Big time. Change it or cut it.

14: Use ‘said’ to carry dialogue. Sid Fleischman calls ‘said’, “the invisible word.”

15: Whilst it’s good to assume your reader is intelligent, never assume they’re psychic.

16: Start scenes late and leave them early.

17: When writing a novel, start with your characters in action. Fill in any necessary backstory as you go along.

18: Give your characters clear goals. Always. Every scene. And provide obstacles to those goals. Always. Every scene. If the POV character in a scene does not have a goal, provide one or cut the scene. If there is no obstacle, add one or cut the scene.

19: Don’t allow characters who are sexually attracted to one another the opportunity to get into bed unless at least one of them has a jealous partner.

20: Torture your protagonist. It’s not enough for him to be stuck up a tree. You must throw rocks at him while he figures out how to get down.

21: Use all five senses in your descriptions. Smell and touch are too often neglected.

22: Vary your sentence lengths. I tend to write short, and it’s amazing what a difference combing a couple of sentences can make.

23: Don’t allow your fictional characters to speak in sentences. Unless you want them to sound fictional.

24: Cut out filtering devices, wherever possible. ‘He felt’, ‘he thought’, ‘he observed’ are all filters. They distance the reader from the character.

25: Avoid unnecessary repetition of tense. For example: I’d gone to the hospital. They’d kept me waiting for hours. Eventually, I’d seen a doctor. Usually, the first sentence is sufficient to establish tense. I’d gone to the hospital. They kept me waiting for hours. Eventually, I saw a doctor.

26: When you finish your book, pinpoint the weakest scene and cut it. If necessary, replace it with a sentence or paragraph.

27: Don’t plant information. How is Donald, your son? I’m quite sure Donald’s father doesn’t need reminding who Donald is. Their relationship is mentioned purely to provide the reader with information.

28: If an opinion expressed through dialogue makes your POV character look like a jerk, allow him to think it rather than say it. He’ll express the same opinion, but seem like a lot less of a jerk.

29: Characters who smile and grin a lot come across as deranged fools. Sighing and shrugging are also actions to avoid. Eliminating smiles, sighs and shrugs is almost always an improvement. Smiling sadly is a capital offence.

30: Pronouns are big trouble for such little words. The most useful piece of information I ever encountered on the little blighters was this: pronouns refer to the nearest matching noun backwards. For example: John took the knife out of its sheath and stabbed Paul with it. Well, that’s good news for Paul. If you travel backwards from ‘it’, you’ll see that John has stabbed Paul with the sheath! Observing this rule leads to much clearer writing.

31: Spot the moment of maximum tension and hold it for as long as possible. Or as John D. MacDonald put it: “Freeze the action and shoot him later.”

32: If something works, forget about the rule that says it shouldn’t.

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