• Watch for consistency errors in your story
• Six useful tips for self-editing your book
• Avoid using ALL CAPS in your writing
• Don’t smother writing with your red pen
Sometimes writers sabotage their own stories by ensuring every sentence is grammatically correct, as if they were turning it in to their middle school English teacher.
• What to look for when revising your manuscript
• Fix scene by employing black box analysis
One question a number of writers have when editing their novel or short story is if a scene succeeds or not. Sometimes they feel the scene lacks importance, yet they hesitate to cut or revise as it’s tightly written with crisp dialogue or rib-splitting humor. A solution for evaluating a scene’s importance is to employ a black box analysis.
• Learn some literary devices
• Read for a solution
• Use active voice
Verbs give sentences and books vibrancy. When too many of them in a story are passive or weak, the writing sounds drab.
• Cut begin fallacy
One way to tighten your writing is to eliminate the begin fallacy. This occurs when the writer introduces an action to the reader by saying “began to,” as in “My nerves began to calm.”
• Fat writing
Fat writing, a term coined by CSFW’s Sarah Smith, is “unnecessary and grandiose verbiage.” You may have heard writing instructors refer to it as “verdant greenery” or “purple prose.”
• Delete redundancies
A redundancy exists when the modifying words aren’t needed because they say exactly what the word being modified implies. For example, “rich heiress” is redundant as an heiress by definition is rich.
• Avoid pushbutton words
Sometimes rather than finding a truly evocative term, writers get lazy and use pushbutton words. Pushbutton words attempt to evoke an emotional response from readers without appealing to their critical faculties or intellect.
• Dump fuzzy words
Fuzzy words weaken your writing by giving an inexact, out-of-focus picture of the landscape or idea that you’re portraying. Examples of fuzzy words include almost, half- , very, really, seem, looked like, and felt.
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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.
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