Tag Archives: editing

Rule #9 of 32 Simple Rules to the Writing the Best Novel Ever

Posted on July 2, 2013 | 12 comments

Writing_A_Great_Novel

I’m dissecting the article Hunting Down the Pleonasm, by Allen Guthrie, using it as a cattle prod to search for little nasties in my manuscript.  Yep, you can join in the fun, too.  Let’s take a looksee at topic #9

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?

This is one of my favorite simple rules.  One thing that bores me is when I read “Jessica walked into the bathroom.  The white toilet sat to her right.  The counter loomed before her, and a window let in the sunshine from the left.

“Ugh!  I just hate that.  However, she can walk over and close the window, check her acne in the mirror, and dust some cobwebs from behind the toilet, and then you have your setting dispersed in the action.  Get it?

Are you a “setting dumper?”  Go ahead, it’s okay to admit to it.  Now let’s grab one of those overly-described settings and make it active.  Let’s see how you do!

JenniFer_Eaton Sparkle__F

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Rule #6 of 32 Simple Rules to the Writing the Best Novel Ever

Posted on June 11, 2013 | 21 comments

Writing_A_Great_Novel

I’m dissecting the article Hunting Down the Pleonasm, by Allen Guthrie, using it as a cattle prod to search for little nasties in my manuscript.  Yep, you can join in the fun, too.  Let’s take a looksee at topic #6

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.

Ha! This made me think of the Total Transformation program.  I like the “no speeches at all” rule better, but there are times when one of our characters tends to get chatty, right?

Always always always break up a long amount of dialog with action, setting, or emotion.  Think of it.  If you are listening to someone for a long time, you shift your weight, right?  The speaker paces the floor, uses hand gestures.  The curtains blow around a window. Tons of things are happening all around your speaker.

Don’t count on your reader to make these things up themselves.  Show them. It will make your scene more real, and you won’t lose your reader and have them miss something important.

Oh, and while you’re at it… try to curb that speech down a little.  Less is more, I always say!

Try it!  Can you feel how much cleaner your speech reads just by adding a little action?

JenniFer_EatonF

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How do I always end up in messes like this?

Posted on May 31, 2013 | 27 comments

Okay, I know half of you want to just spit on me, and I have no right to be tense, stressed, or frustrated.  My problems are good problems to have … but how the heck did this just happen to me a SECOND time?

If you’ve been hanging out here for a while, you’ll remember that “Make Believe” and “For the Love of Christmas” released a day apart last year, and I had to do all of the editing simultaneously with two different publishers.

Well, this time around, I hoped I’d get a break.  But it was not meant to be.

The first round edits for “The First Day of the New Tomorrow” came in first (which surprised me) So, as I am readying to sit down with them… in come the edits for “Paper Wishes”.

Yes, this is the chance we take when we sign with two different publishers about a month apart.

“Okay,” I thought.  “No problem.”  Paper Wishes was already published, right?  All I needed to do initially is take out the words Astraea considered curses, which I did, so I should be good to go, right?

Ummm… no.

Yikes!

I have a little work to do to bring it more in line with what they want for a Christian novel.  Some things I expected (like taming down the make-out scene) but a few of the other things surprised me.  I’m going to need to think these changes over to keep the realistic tone of the story, but keep it within their strict, but understandable parameters.

In other words, YES, I have some work cut out for me.

The First Day of the New Tomorrow edits were topped with a nice note from the editor “Thank you for such a clean manuscript.”

Yay1!

But, as always, there are a few things in there that made me cringe.

One was a reference to “Ken Doll” which the editor changed to something else that made me think of blow up dolls.  Nope, can’t do that.  I quickly hopped over to Mattel’s web site and asked for formal permission to use “Ken Doll” (Which was a decent amount of paper work, but not impossible if you ever find that need.) Now I just have to wait for their approval.

So, yeah, busy week ahead of me here.  I’m a little stressed, but it’s a happy kind of stress.

It’s all good.

JenniFer_EatonF

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Rule #3 of 32 Simple Rules to the Writing the Best Novel Ever

Posted on May 22, 2013 | 20 comments

Writing_A_Great_Novel

I’m dissecting the article Hunting Down the Pleonasm, by Allen Guthrie, using it as a cattle prod to search for little nasties in my manuscript.  Yep, you can join in the fun, too.  Let’s take a looksee at topic #3

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’.

This one is a bit easier to swallow.  Everyone knows about adverbs, right?  But using them is sometimes a hard habit to break.  If you find your work laden with adverbs, here is my suggestion:

1.      Make a copy of your work and save the original “just in case”

2.      Go through a chapter and delete all the adverbs.  Resist the desire to look at the sentence at this point.  Just delete.  Using the search feature and looking for “ly” will help with this. Look for “very” while you are at it, and just delete.

3.      Done?  Good! Now go back and read your chapter.  Most likely, if you’ve written a strong scene, you will not even notice they are gone.

Here’s a one sentance example from “Optimal Red”:

His heart beat rapidly in his chest as the doors opened.

His heart pulsed as the doors opened.

Go ahead!  Give it a try?  How did it go?  Were you able to strengthen your manuscript just by deleting?  Did you need to add a little more emphasis to replace the missing word?  Where did you decide to leave an adverb for flavor?

JenniFer_EatonF

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Rule #1 of 32 Simple Rules to the Writing the Best Novel Ever

Posted on April 11, 2013 | 44 comments

One of the on-line writing groups I belong to has devoted several chat sessions to the article Hunting Down the Pleonasm, by Allen Guthrie. Unfortunately, my schedule has not allowed me to participate in any of the discussion thus far, but I did take the opportunity to read the article—and I’m so glad I did.

For the next several weeks, I’m going to dissect this article/essay and really think over each section.  Since I remember things better when I write them down, I figured I might as well post them up here as a series and discussion topic.  This way we can all chat, and maybe learn from each other as well.

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.  [Hunting Down the Pleonasm, by Allen Guthrie]

So let’s chat about number one, which defines that wacky word I’ve never heard of before…

1: Avoid pleonasms. A pleonasm is a word or phrase that 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 [Hunting Down the Pleonasm, by Allen Guthrie]

Now, I KNOW I don’t use “more or less” or “in any shape or form” because they would both set off my cliché alarm.  I have caught myself using “just” once in a while… but I’m not sure about the other two.  I’m going to go run a search on my nearly completed manuscript FIRE IN THE WOODS for these words.  You go take a look at yours, and let’s meet back here.

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Okay… Here’s the scoop.

There are 203 cases of “just” in my novel.  Probably too many for 270 pages, don’t you think?  It seems that most of them are in dialog, but let’s take a look at a few that aren’t:

Staying in the house was just too much to ask. This was the story of a lifetime. I just couldn’t let it slip by without getting something on film.

Okay, taken out of context the two “justs” next to each other scream at me. The second one will definitely go.  Now the first one… does the sentence sound fine without it?  Yes, of course it does, but I think the “just” in this case, is part of the teenage voice in the novel.  For now, I think the first one will stay—but knowing me it will start annoying me now, and get deleted eventually.

Here’s a “that” instance…

You promised that you wouldn’t let anything happen to me

Each switch up to “You promised you wouldn’t let anything happen to me”

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Here are my total counts:

Original appearances of “Just” = 203 (85% in dialog)

# After search/edit = 114 (mostly dialog)

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Original appearances of “Actually” = 22 (only 5 outside dialog)

# After search/edit = 21 (only 4 outside dialog)

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Original appearances of “That” = 448 (Yikes!)

# after search/edit = 395 – most in dialog, but only 63 could be removed without messing up the sentence. I will look at this again in the final read-through.

How’d you do?  What other words have you come across that can be deleted without changing the meaning of your sentence?

JenniFer_EatonF

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What the… Oh My Gosh, Oh No, Oh Crap, and whatever…

Posted on March 29, 2013 | 20 comments

Final edits can be maddening, can’t they? As I go through my list of overused words, I always find new things that make me giggle.

My current giggle-a-thon is coming in the form of teenage explicatives.  They sound perfectly right in-context. “Oh my gosh, you are not going to do that!”

Buy when I ran a search on “Oh” and my screen lit up with pretty highlights—I realized how many of my main character’s dialog lines start with the word “Oh”.  It’s funny really.

The good thing about using the search feature to ferret out these little problem is you can look at each instance outside of the frame of the narrative.  It’s much easier to edit when you are not getting “caught up” in the story.

So, at the moment I am in final edits for Fire in the Woods, and I am removing a good portion of the “Oh my gosh”, “Oh my God”, “Oh crap,” and of course, the every-so intrusive “umm”.

Of course, I am leaving in a few for color, but I’m trying to cut my repetition down to once every ten pages or more. (Quite a feat at times.)

How do you search and destroy over-used words and phrases?

JenniFer_EatonF

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Writing Madly to a Deadline, and then NOT submitting

Posted on March 6, 2013 | 31 comments

I recently jumped into the running for another anthology, which means writing to a tight deadline.  I tripped up my schedule for a few weeks, finalizing my novel for the Amazon Break Through Novel Contest, and was two-weeks behind schedule. I DID finish in time (barely), but now I sit here the day before the deadline, with a completed manuscript in my hands, second guessing myself.

Do I think it’s not good enough?  No.  The opposite.  It’s tight. It’s precise….

And if you could have seen the look on my son’s face after reading it— Dang.  I haven’t seen him this excited about something since finishing the Hunger Games (Not that mine is even remotely like the Hunger Games)

So what’s the problem?  Submit the dern thing!

Here’s my problem… It’s too long.  I did not make the word count.  I contacted the publisher, and they said they would consider it at the higher word count, but it definitely would have to be cut down by 1500 words for publication in the anthology (If it were chosen)

I searched for those 1500 words, and found a possible 500 to cut, but editing out those 500 would have affected the “mood” of the story.  And if another 1000 words were cut after that, the whole story would seem rushed.

If my son had said “Meh, it’s okay.  I’ve read better.” (Which he has done to me in the past) I would have sliced and diced the 1500 words out of the story and sent it in.

But he didn’t say that.  He asked for more.  My kid the voracious reader said:  “It was really great.  I’ve never read anything like that before.  When will you write another one?”

I thought about what those forced changes would do, and decided to take the creative high road.  I am passing on the anthology, and am now embarking on a search for a publisher of Young Adult Paranormal Short/Novellas.

Ugh!  I hate passing up an opportunity, but I think this particular story needs to find a more suitable home than the confines of an anthology.

I am all for editing… all stories need to be edited, but I don’t want to “cut” just for the sake of “cutting”.  I’d rather have words cut because they don’t belong there… not because there is a stipulation on word count.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation like this?

If not, do you think you’d submit anyway, or search for a new home?

_JenniFer____EatoN

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Write a Story With Me #32 – Janelle’s Choice with Shannon Christensen

Posted on February 25, 2013 | 3 comments

Last week the baby finally arrived, but it looks like Mommy is in big trouble!  Will she be okay?  Let’s find out!

Take it away Shannon!

32- Shannon Christensen

Janelle hesitated.

If she followed Morana’s instructions to get help, Natalia might live and the boy might grow up healthy, wealthy, and destructive. This baby could destroy them all – fairies and humans, regardless of Janelle’s help.

She considered this. The boy could turn out to be like Marci, and could be helpful to Janelle’s people. Then again, maybe not. If he were more like Bethany, then all the risks and sacrifices made by Marci, by Sian, by Janosc, by herself and so many others would be futile.

She did not have to help. She should not have helped earlier by bringing Morana. Certainly, the humans would not have helped a fairy mother. She could simply leave Natalia and the boy in Morana’s care and let luck or fate have her way.

Natalia moaned again and Morana pleaded.

Janelle watched.
As a mother, Janelle sympathized with the compulsion to care for an infant. As Marci’s friend, Janelle sympathized with the potential loss of a family member. As the new queen of the fairies, however, she understood that her own feelings were nothing compared to her peoples’ needs. She had accepted this when she ate the leaf. She had not expected to have to act so quickly on this new prioritization.

Janelle sighed. She would do what was best for the many, and not only the few.

“No.”

“But, you must!”

“No. I must not.” Janelle turned and flew away from the house for the last time.

Write a Story with Me is a group endeavor just for the fun of it.  A different writer adds a new 250 words each week.  It is the ultimate Flash Fiction Challenge!

If you’d like to sign up, come on over.  There’s always room for more!

Part One – Jennifer M. Eaton

Part Two – J. Keller Ford

Part Three – Susan Roebuck

Part Four – Elin Gregory

Part Five – Eileen Snyder

Part Six – Mikaela Wire

Part Seven — Vanessa Chapman

Part Eight — Ravena Guron

Part Nine – Vikki Thompson

Part Ten — Susan Rocan mywithershins

Part Eleven — Kate Johnston  AKA 4AMWriter

Part Twelve — Julie Catherine

Part Thirteen — Kai Damian

Part Fourteen — Richard Leonard

Part Fifteen — Sharon Manship

Part Sixteen – Shannon Blue Christensen

Part Seventeen — Bryn Jones

Part Eighteen — Jennifer M. Eaton

Part Nineteen — Shannon Burton

Part Twenty — J.Keller Ford

Part Twenty-One — Susan Roebuck

Part Twenty-Two — Elin Gregory

Part Twenty-Three — Aparnauteur

Part Twenty-Four — Vanessa Chapman

Part Twenty-Five — Ravena Guron

Part Twenty Six — Susan Rocan

Part Twenty Seven — Kate Johnson AKA 4AMWriter

Part Twenty Eight – Julie Catherine

Part Twenty Nine — Kai Damian

Part Thirty — Richard Leonard

Part Thirty-One — Sharon Manship

Part Thirty-Two — Shannon Christensen

Don’t forget to stop by next week to see what happens next.

Danielle Ackley McPhail — TAG!  You are “It”

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Are you in the Central Jersey Area? Author’ Panel Saturday

Posted on February 20, 2013 | 8 comments

‘I’VE FINISHED MY FIRST DRAFT, NOW WHAT?’
Local authors share tips and information on getting published in today’s market (organized by the New Jersey Authors Network: http://www.njauthorsnetwork.com).

So you’ve finished the writing your book/story, or have you?

What (if any) revision work needs doing?


Where can you go for feedback?

How will you know when it’s ready to send out, and where should you try first?

Join New Jersey Authors, Jon Gibbs (moderator); Kristin Battestella; Karen Bostrom; Jennifer Eaton; Jim ‘JJ’ Lair, and Nicole Zoltack, for a fun, informative discussion on getting published in today’s market, and find out why typing ‘THE END’ is really just the beginning.

See you there for a great discussion!

JenniFer_Eaton Sparkle__F

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Critique Blog Hop #3 – 250 words from my YA Urban Fantasy

Posted on February 10, 2013 | 8 comments

Sunday_Snippets

Oh Yeah!  It’s the  Sunday Snippets Critique Blog Hop!

In this hop, participants post 250 words of their work in progress to be critiqued.  Then everyone hops around to critique others.  Don’t have a post of your own?  We’d love a critique anyway!  And next time you can sign up yourself (see below)

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Okay… Here’s mine.  This is the second 250 words of my new YA Urban Fantasy: “The First Day of the New Tomorrow”.  In the First 250 words, Maya is in the bathroom getting ready for school.  She put on her glasses, and her vision got blurry.

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“What the…” She grabbed the counter and pulled the metal frames from her face.  The room slipped into perfect crisp focus again.  Three slow breaths calmed her only slightly.

A ray of sunshine poked through the white lace curtain, landing on a towel beside the bathtub.  A spider web clung to the ceiling, holding more dust than forgotten prey.  Three nails popped through the wall near the door—all normal things, except she could see them clearly—just as clearly as she could see her glasses perched on the counter before her.

“Okayyy…”  She lifted the spectacles to her eyes, crinkling her nose as the world blurred before her. She stared at the lenses.  “Teenager’s eyesight clears up overnight.  News at eleven.”  She smiled and slipped the glasses into her pocket.  “I’m certainly not complaining.”

She trudged down the stairs and found her mother’s obligatory, “Don’t forget to eat breakfast” note fastened to the refrigerator door—as if she’d even look at the fridge if she weren’t already in breakfast mode.

Rifling past the food savers and soda cans, she sighed.  Would a few eggs be too much to ask for? She grabbed the milk and closed the door.  Cereal would have to do.  Spinning, she pursed her lips, seeing the nearly empty Cheerios container on the counter.  Great.  Eat breakfast, but I’m not leaving anything for you to eat.

She reopened the refrigerator and startled.  Three eggs lay beside last night’s spaghetti sauce, neatly balancing on the wired shelving.  How the heck could she have missed them before?

“Okay, eggs it is.”

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The Sunday Snippets Critique Blog Hop is on!

Want to join up? Click here for the rules, and leave a comment to have your name added to the list.  The more the merrier!swish swivel squiggle 2

Click on over to these great writers to check out and critique what they’ve posted!

http://mermaidssinging.wordpress.com/

http://caitlinsternwrites.wordpress.com/

http://ileandrayoung.com

http://wyrmflight.wordpress.com/

http://www.mandyevebarnett.com

http://womanbitesdog.wordpress.com/

http://jennykellerford.wordpress.com

https://jennifermeaton.com/

http://richardleonard.wordpress.com

http://jordannaeast.com

http://letscutthecrap.wordpress.com

http://threepiecebikini.blogspot.com/

http://itsjennythewren.wordpress.com/

http://writerscrash.blogspot.co.uk/

http://wehrismypen.wordpress.com

http://wordsbreathedupon.wordpress.com/blog/

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