I decided to continue with this series because I see so much bad writing out there, browsing through excerpts from fellow Nanowrimo competitors. Please read more advice here.
Continuing on:
Seven, to avoid the revisions your editor will give you anyway, proofread your own work for weaknesses. Look for passive tense (remember E-Prime from Part I?)
A good hint at finding where your work might need strengthened is to simply do a search for the word "There" at the beginning of sentences. Set your Find&Replace to match case, and see how many times you start a sentence with that weak word. Chances are, it will also be a passive phrase. Same for "It." I give a 90% chance that you will look at all the sentences beginning with "There" and "It" and think to yourself "What the hell was that about?" Explain "It."
"There was a loud noise. It woke me up." This weak line can easily be spruced up to "A crashing sound in the driveway set the neighbor's dogs barking and forced me away from sweet dreams of kissing Sue."
I also go through and replace "was" just by habit. Not 100% removal, as I would if I followed E-Prime, but enough to seek out weaknesses. "It was cold" is a sentence first graders learn. Write like you at least attended high school! "The frost bit my nose like an angry cat and decorated my windows with Winter's lacy undergarments." Wohoo, see how you can make things sound great? It's so easy.
Eight, and here's a tough one... keep dialog free and flowing. Unless your character is a vampire from the 12th century and speaks very formal for a reason, chances are your character will be an average joe who uses slang and incomplete sentences. "I couldn't make it to the store. Damn Walmart. Always open my ass."
In a creative writing class, my fellow students severely criticized me because one of my characters didn't cuss enough. I thought they were nutters (I rarely cuss) until I read through the story years later and realized they were right. For the girl's personality, her use of profanity should be extreme to an almost comical level. I still don't like cussing, but I invent characters who are not necessarily reflections of myself.
Nine, make your characters so distinct in their speech, either with phrases they overuse, accents, or just by the way they present their opinions, their tone of voice and manners, that during long dialog passages you can avoid "he said/she said." I hate those. Read Section Three for more. At the very least, get creative. Come on, how many of us talk so dull in our lives that we simply "say" something? We gasp, shout, vent, whisper, expound, yip, tattle, tantalize, leer, jeer, peer. Avoid "he said" by telling us what he did.
"Never!" John's words echoed through the empty hall.
"Sorry, mate," Bill shrugged casually.
"I will never give in to you." His hand swiped out so hard it broke the vase. "I thought you were my friend."
"Just a messanger, y'know."
"You'll have to fight me."
"Look, mate, I ain't fightin' no one."
"Fight! I know you can!"
"Eh, it ain't my choice, y'know."
"Fight me, you coward!"
"Coward what now? Mate, I'm just here to tell you, y'know. It ain't nuttin' personal."
"You're all bastards, every one of you. You're all alike."
"Maybe so, mate, but I don't wanna kill you."
"Coward!"
Can you tell John from Bill? Of course you can! Anger on one side, aloof nonchalance on the other, a bit of an accent, that's all it takes. Make me see your dialog like a movie in my head.
Ten, and for this I will use alliteration to emphasize my point ... ahem ... please, people, punctuate properly. Thank you, thank you!
Seriously, though, punctuation goes inside quotes. I can't tell you how many emails I get that say, "It's a joke", he said, "get it"?
OMG people, did you drop out of 3rd grade? If you write like this, please do not shoot yourself when your editor turns you down after skimming the first page. Then again, if you write that bad, maybe you should voluntarily cleanse the gene pool. I have a revolver under the bed for you to use!
The only time I can think of offhand (and it's bloody early, so don't kill me on this) is when you use quotes outside of dialog. Example: What did John mean by "It'll be exciting"?
Of course, ideally you should use italics, but that's all I can come up with. Otherwise, quote are like condoms, they wrap around to protect. You don't want to catch a communicative disease, you know.
Happy writing, and rewriting, and rewriting....
No comments:
Post a Comment