Writing Tip: Cutting extraneous words during editing

I know i will be up to this part of editing soon. (Well probably a month or two away)

Rachel Gardiner recommends that before submitting or publishing your manuscript it could be in your best interest to do another round of edits and cut 10 words per page.

How?

Look for -ly words. Are they necessary?
So too for -ing words

cut out passive voice - 'was', 'were' and 'that'

shorten description

shorten internal monologue or show thoughts and feelings through dialogue or action.

repetitive telling what the reader already knows.

And, carefully considering a big list of overused words:
about, actually, almost, like, appears, approximately, basically, close to, even, eventually, exactly, finally, just, just then, kind of, nearly, practically, really, seems, simply, somehow, somewhat, sort of, suddenly, truly, utterly, were.


I don't know what my overused words are - well, actually i think i use 'hoped' too much!

What are your best editing tips, or overused words?

Editing

So a few posts ago i asked for help with Editing. Where to start?

One of my writer friends suggested i load my story to my kindle to have a read through first, looking for flow and any major mistakes/flow problems. This is working a treat. I have noted about 170 parts that need either tiny tweaks or major rewrite or even deletion and i'm only 3/4 of the way through!

Another writer suggested i scrap the whole first draft and start again! Apparently this worked wonders for her story. I for one, am too afraid to! But after doing lots of research for 'when' and 'where' i'm going to set my story (it is currently in fantasy land!), i'm going to try and majorly edit to fit and failing that - *gulp* - i'll start over!

Another writer, Jackie Ashendon replied with the following:

Good question. Okay, what I do is first read over the whole thing before I do anything. Then I always do the big things first - characters and conflict since both drive the plot. Are your characters consistent? Does the internal conflict work? Have you gone deep enough with it? Are their motivations clear? Have the h/h got clearly defined character arcs?

Once you're good with that, then look at each scene. Do the scenes move the plot/conflict along or are they just filler? Or do you need to add more, etc, etc.

After I do that kind of stuff, then POV fixes, language, grammar etc is next and that's usually the easy fixes. I know some people advise doing the small things first but there's kind of no point fixing POV in a scene if you actually don't need the scene at all.

I think a combination of all this makes sense to me.
I've already noticed that my hero's GMC is seriously lacking - so that will be the first thing i work on, Oh and he seriously needs to alpha up! I can't believe i wrote him so wussy!
Then i'll take a deeper look at my heroine's GMC - just to make sure my h&h clash and meld with the right things!

So thanks for the advice everyone, i feel i am better equipped at tackling this edit :)

Does anyone approach their edits differently?

Learning my craft

I love learning my craft. KM Weiland's blog is always a great source for craft.

I found this post about Character Arc and how for your story to resonate with readers, you character needs to go through a moral or emotional change, a growth from beginning of the story to the end.

Have a read here!

I will be looking more carefully for small, but important changes to my characters as i work through my WIP's.

Editing Rules

I may not be writing at the moment, but i am following everyone. And, i have been thinking about writing again so that is a positive step!
My headaches are stacks better, i think mostly due to the 3x per week visit to the chiropractor, but it could be because of the new medication too :)

Nathan Bransford has a wonderful post on his blog about editing commandments. Editing someone else's book that is! Have a read, it is very good to be reminded if you already knew them and good reading if you didn't.

Happy writing everyone!

Digging Deeper

I'm talking about characters.
Yep, to make our readers enjoy our stories, to fall in love with our characters, we have to make them believable, real. 3D characters are what gives life to your work and makes it memorable.

Disney is great for giving us lasting themes to pull apart and use for our characters. Time-worn but loveable themes like Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella are used over and over again.
I watched The Princess and the Frog for about the fifth time on Saturday night with my kids and it struck me why i like it so much.
Sure it's got the jaunty music, a handsome prince and some comedic secondary characters. But what really got me was the message behind Tiana, the lead. She is a hard-working girl, doing everything she can to achieve her dream. There is no waiting for Prince Charming, she's taking life by the reins and getting herself her dream, all by herself.
However, this is where we discover, with the help of the catchy song by the Cajun Priestess Mama Odie, that in order for Tiana to realise her real dream (that being something that she didn't know she's always wanted!), she has to dig deeper.

How is this relevant to our writing? To your characters?
To make your characters 3D, lovable, believable and root-worthy (get your mind out of the gutter!) they need to walk onto that first page with a dream, or with something that they want with a passion. As the story progresses, they clash with other characters or they are forced by excellent plot devices to realise that their dream is deeper than they realised (but that we, the knowing reader always suspected!), and this gives them that 3-dimensionality that keeps readers turning the pages.

It is also part of a characters growth known as the character arc. Another excellent way to make our characters believable and real, but that may be ideal for another post!

Happy writing :)

Writing Tip: Characters Secrets

I've just read an awesome post by fellow kiwi as-yet-but-so-close unpublished author.
I love Jackie's blog, she is so honest and she gives the best tips that she has learnt on her very rocky journey!

This post is about the BIG secret that your characters have, what seems to be the surface conflict. Jackie describes it so wonderfully potentially being the thing that drives the story and character, but what would happen if you the author revealed the big secret earlier is in the story?
You them have room to explore the deeper issues associated with the big secret. Have a read of her post and tell me what you think!

I've recently begun editing my Price of Passion (Billie and Cooper) story. Billie has a secret, and it's not until the end that Cooper finds out, but i have always wondered what would happen if she told him near the beginning? It is a wonderful opportunity to explore their deeper conflicts!

What about you? Do your characters have secrets?

Keeping track of notes!

So, over the weekend i booted up the laptop and got ready to edit the story i wrote two years ago, The Price of Passion.
The problem with having it been so long ago that i wrote it, i had forgotten the real conflict of the characters, the real reason they did and said things and not the surface stuff.
I knew i had notes somewhere...

Not on the laptop. Um, maybe the USB?

No! Darn. Hmm okay, on the Mac then.

Yep there they are! So i dutifully copied the folders to the USB and put them on the laptop.
Only to realise i hadn't converted the documents to .doc and couldn't open them. Doh!

Back to the Mac, convert all files.

Back to the laptop, find what i wanted and then realise my time was up.

Time for preparing dinner.

*sigh*

So my big writing tip is to keep all your writing current and updated to all your devices, laptop, USB, home computer, iPad etc. It will save you your writing time when you have to go search for it!

It may be a good idea to copy and save documents at the end of each week. Or maybe even every day if you write a lot!
Besides, it's good to know you have ALL your writing stuff backed up multiple times just in case one of your devices goes capoot! (shock horror that that should ever happen!)

Happy New year!

Conflict or GMC

GMC?
I've heard this acronym a few times during my blog hopping.
Briefly it means Goal Motivation Conflict.

All our characters come to the story with their own backgrounds, battle scars and inner conflict.
Well, they should do anyway, to make your story and characters believable to your readers.

Kate Walker in her 12 point guide to Writing Romance (excellent book!) tells us that the most important element of conflict is internal, the stuff that goes on in the character's head, the stuff that gives reason to their thoughts and actions. As a writer we must use this internal conflict so show character growth, how they change in order to achieve their HEA.
Kate explains (p 43) that the emotions involved in the characters internal conflict, affect the character's thinking, but they are unaware of them.
The internal conflict comes out when the Hero and Heroine meet and clash, this forces them to each face their own fears or inner demons.

I realised after writing a good 5k of my Status Quo story that i didn't really have a good handle on my characters conflicts.
So using what i've picked up during my blog hopping i tried to break them down.

Goal: What the hero/ine wants
Motivation: Why they want it
Conflict: If the hero/ine wins the other loses.

For me (and i could be very, very wrong!), on examining my characters and some of the books i love, i've found two sets of GMC for each character. (I think this was brought about by the character questionnaire on Nicola Marsh's website!)
The first set is the clear goal and reason that we are given right at the beginning of the story - should be within the first few pages of meeting each of them.
Then as we read, we discover a deeper Goal and motivation - which to me is stemmed from the conflict of the first, but at a deeper layer.
Have i lost you?

Okay, a bit of behind the scenes look to hopefully help explain this!

So in my story Emma wants Matt. They have been best friends for ever and she has been in love with him for just about the same amount of time. But when they kissed on New Years, it was made plain to her that they were made for each other. He stirred her blood in a way no other man had come close to. And that's what she wants.
So Emma's initial GMC is
G: To have Matt,
M: She loves him and he stirs a passion in her she wants for life.
C: they are best friends and she could lose him by insisting on this.

Then as the story develops we learn that deep down Emma's goal is to love and be loved with a passion and foreverness otherwise missing in her life. Her motivation is from  how she felt in Matt's arms, how they are together doing mundane things. Her conflict, is that she may just not be good enough for the type of love and passion she desperately craves, after all her parents seemed to forget about her once they started their separate lives.

So, tell me. Do you think i've completely missed the point, or overcomplicated it?
How do you work out your characters conflict and motivations?

Show, don't Tell. Not so easy is it?!

Well i learnt something during my blog hopping last week, largely propelled by Rach Writes post on physical telling, which then linked to another great post detailing it further.

Did you know there is something called Physical Telling? No?
It's where you add a physical reaction to your story when, usually what the character says should indicate what their possible, or even probable!, reaction is.

eg, "Did you know Jill's pregnant?" Sarah smirked.
My mouth could have hit the floor. "No! To who?"
(the mouth reference is the telling, where the dialogue following it is doing the showing.) 
I think what this has shown me (and it's probably not the best example!) is that it is often okay and acceptable to leave some things to the readers imagination.

It is also a good idea to balance your telling and showing through dialogue and interiority (didn't even know that was a word!) - or, internal dialogue. With the interiority you can't show, it's unnecessary as you are in the character's head anyway, so it's the perfect time for the telling!

I get confused with this showing and telling stuff, and i'm sure i'm not the only one. Do you have any showing/telling rules or lessons that you have come across and want to share? Please!

Research or not to research...

A writing tip; kind of!

Now, i'm not a huge fan of deep involved research.
I'm too impatient and just want to write the damn story and fix details later. But i will look up stuff if i know it's going to be quick and won't detract from my writing time.

Seriously, my drafts are littered with notes saying "research how to make bath salts", or "find out the history of...".

It's funny though, because i'm a stickler for detail, and perfection. It's taken a long time to let go and just write the first dirty draft without agonising over the correct word to describe. Yeah i have notes for those too :)

Because when i sit down to write, that's what i want to do. I don't want to get bogged down with trawling the internet for the exact right stuff. No, that would be called Research Time.

Recently i have spent the last two of my writing sessions in research mode. I sat down and told myself that if i want to get any further with my writing, i actually need to know a bit more information. So it was research time.
Guess what? I love it!
I got so involved that i've ended up with pages and pages of history relevant to my fictitious Principality, trade routes, flight paths, politics, pictures of villages, castles, roses... lots of stuff.

I have a friend who loves to research and we have always joked that she can do the research and i'll do the writing - for the both of us! But we both sat there on Friday and researched together. It was great bouncing off ideas (which of course sparked more research!), and i really think our writing is going to be the better for it.
Readers are sticklers for details too. I take that from my own personal experience as a reader ;)

Don't get me wrong, if i come across something that needs more research whilst during 'writing time', there is a note/comment in the ms. I'll go back to it during 'research time'.

My plan is that will help flesh out the story, without detracting from my creative flow. Because that's what the first draft is for, right? Getting the story down so you have something to work with later.

What are your thoughts on research? Do you find it encroaches on your writing time, how do you work around it? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

What's your brand?

Some of you may be asking, "A brand? Huh? I'm a writer!"
And i say, yes exactly!
Your writing is your brand, not your tag line.

Rachelle Gardiner, Literary Agent has an excellent post on Branding.
Simply;
1. Your brand is your genre
2. your book is more important than your platform.

Her advice, spend more time on your writing and your target audience, not your brand.

Check out her great post here for more details!

Writing Tip: Children in Romance

Do you have a favourite book that features an adorable child as a secondary character? Or maybe it's a precocious pre-schooler?
A man totally undone by a little baby is just so sexy - and i have heaps of photos of my own hero with our children to prove how much i love that :)

Loveliness aside - the children in your romance story should not be the focus of the story. They are only secondary characters and should not detract from the main story - the romance!
How about using them to further the romance? Having the H and h co-parent, or fight over one?

What do you think of children in a romance story?

My favourite one is from a historical romance by Julie Garwood, The Secret. This story is my all-time favourite and in this story, it starts with two little girls and how they meet. Both connect over a bee and one of the girls attempt to save the other from the bee. The language is so wonderful and totally childlike!
I really recommend you read it!
But aside from the children at the beginning, one of them is the heroine of the story - obviously older! So in this case, children as the main character really works.

In another, yes another Julie Garwood fav, Ransom, the main character Gillian saves a little boy. This further's her character. The child is the secondary character and his role is to show the main characters strengths, and quite possibly their weaknesses.

Mills and Boon have a great post on children in romance. Check it out, but don't forget to let me know what you think of children in romance novels and the roles they play.
Do you have children in your own story?

Writing Tip: Sex scenes!

Yes i said SEX.
If you read romance, and i assume that you do, you know what you like to read and what you don't like to read - and again i'm assuming you don't like the porn version of sex scenes filled with all the dirty details.

You love Romance, which means sensuality in the sex scenes. You need to write more about the emotions and what is going on inside the characters head.

Here is a great post from the Mills and Boon website by Flo Nicoll last year for the New Voices comp, but no less relevant today! So, Let's Talk about Sex and remember the emotion, not the gritty details ;)

Introspection vs Dialogue

So, over the past few years i have come to realise what my writing style is, which is an essential part of your writing career, in my opinion.
I've also come to realisation that my style is not what i like to read in other books!
Weird huh?!

So, i really enjoy writing the characters internal thoughts and feelings and struggle quite a bit with dialogue.
When i read, i usually skim through this part and get right to the dialogue!

So, slowly i have been trying to write more dialogue and less introspection - which for me is very tricky!
However, i write the introspection first, as this comes naturally for me, then i take a step back and try to write the same stuff through dialogue, through both POV's until i feel it clicks.

Another way, is to write the entire scene using only dialogue - this way you need to try and get emotion and thoughts across through the characters voice first, then you can layer in a bit of introspection and what the character is doing, eg hand gestures, frowning etc.

All the writing advice out there has told me that more action through dialogue is more readable and more liked than the thoughts stuff - which i tend to agree with when i'm reading! It's something like 60% dialogue, 40% introspection.

Do you have difficulty writing dialogue? How do you combat it?

Writing Tips: Climatic scene mirroring the Opening scene?

Nicola Marsh went to the Romance Writers of Australia Conference and she has shared some of the things she learnt or heard.

During her blog post on writing style, ie, linear or scene writer, she gave this little gem:

In Bob Mayer's "POV & VOICE" session, he mentioned this:

"don't worry about the opening scene. Write the book. The climactic scene should mirror the opening scene therefore you can come back and write/rewrite the opening scene."

What do you think of that? Have you written the closing scene of any of your stories that mirrors the opening? 

I guess it's a way of showing closure, or that the characters have gone through a change from the beginning to that final scene. 

It is intriguing and i kind of like it! May have to try this for my Princess story as i can see a great conversation for that one ;)

To critique or not critique...

I've sent Billie and Cooper's story to my writing friend for feedback and she has been picking it apart. Line by line she is telling me where, as a reader she is lost, confused or if something just doesn't work.
Is it helping? Um, yes!

The way she has done it, with constructive feedback and even with examples of rewording, she is showing me where my weaknesses are and how i need to strengthen my story.
Mostly, it has to do with my characters. At the end of chapter 3 she has said there is nothing to make her love either character. Like, yes, but love with the driving need to keeping reading. No.

And that is the point. Every story needs to have compelling characters, something about them that makes you the reader relate or want to root for them.

So, after a bit of a sulk, i've gone back to the beginning and picked apart my characters and the story to make them stronger.

The best part? By helping me she has told me it has made her more aware of her own writing. She is learning from helping.
I found that critiquing Nicole's story that it made me think more about mine, the structure, characters, conflict, even the choice of words about my own writing.
Critiquing teaches you so much about yourself, both as a reader and a writer.

The challenge for the writer is to take the feedback, either made by someone else or by themselves while giving feedback on other writers work, and make their writing better for it!

So, this post could really be a writing tip. Take the time to critique someone else's writing - preferrably in the same genre that you write, but that isn't essential. It will help you become a better writer.

Writing Tip: Write a little every day

Yep, even a sentence. That way you are getting some words down, practicing your craft every day.
If you are a serious writer - and i bet you are! - writing something every day will help you develop better as a writer, not to mention getting your word count up, however slowly it may be!

Do you write a little every day?

Writing Tip: Writing to a method

I started my first novel Secrets and Lies by plotting it out. By the end of it i found that it was difficult to write because i was bored - i already knew how it was going to end and what happened next! So my subsequent novel, The Price of Passion i wrote follower the pantser method - writing by the seat of my pants and letting my characters lead me!

But, i think if you have a careful mix of the two, a general brief outline and maybe a few key scenes mapped out, this can help directionise your story whilst still giving you the chance to let your characters lead!

So, i'm testing this theory with the below method but being brief for my new single title - Suddenly Royal!. But i think it's well worth having a look at other methods and using them to your own writing style.

TEN STEPS TO THE SNOWFLAKE METHOD (courtesy of Nicole MacDonald at Damsel in a Dirty Dress)

Step One – Write a one-sentence summary of your novel.  The best summary sentence is one that includes a reference to the character who has the most to lose and the thing he or she wants most to win. 

Step Two – Expand your sentence into a full paragraph.  In this paragraph, you should include the story set-up, each disaster, and the ending.  You can decide the cause of each disaster, whether it is internally caused or brought on by external circumstances, and include those details as well.

Step Three – Next, your characters.  For each of your major characters, write a one page summary sheet that includes the following:

The character’s name

A one-sentence summary of the character’s storyline

The character’s motivation (what does he/she want abstractly?)

The character’s goal (what does he/she want concretely?)

The character’s conflict (what prevents him/her from reaching this goal?)

The character’s epiphany (what will he/she learn, how will he/she change?)

A one-paragraph summary of the character’s storyline

Step Four – Expand each sentence of your summary paragraph from step two into a full paragraph. All but the last paragraph should end in a disaster. The final paragraph should tell how the book ends.

At the completion of step four, you should have a fairly concise one-page skeleton of your novel.  (Don’t sweat it if it’s longer or shorter than one page.   The point is that you are taking your seed of a story from step one and growing and expanding it.)

Step Five – Write a one-page synopsis of the story from the point of view of each major character.  (For more minor characters, you may want to write a half a page.)  This step may seem tedious (and it can be time-consuming if you have a lot of major characters,) but it will really get you into the heads of the people who will give your story life.  You will begin to see where they agree and where they clash.  While plot is always important, honestly drawn characters are what make us lose ourselves in a novel.

Step Six – Take a fresh look at your one-page plot synopsis from step four and expand it into a four-page synopsis.  One way to approach this would be to expand each paragraph from step four into its own page.  This step gives you the chance to find the complexity in your story, discover new plot ideas that may have been inspired by your character explorations in step five, and weave in subplots.  By keeping it to four pages, you can also easily identify plot holes or problems with the story’s logic.

Step Seven – Expand your character summaries from step three into full-blown character charts.  Make sure that you not only know each character’s motivations and goals, but also the smaller details, such as the one thing they would grab before running from a burning house, or the person who has been the greatest influence on them.  This is the step where you make sure your characters are fully alive in your mind.

Step Eight – Take the expanded synopsis you created in step six and make a list of every scene that needs to be written to tell your story.  If you’re adept with spreadsheets, creating one for this task will allow you to use the columns for details such as setting and POV character.  For those of you who like to hold your writing in your hands, index cards will work just as well.

Step Nine – Using the scene list, write several pages of narrative for each scene.  If you choose to add in dialogue, that’s fine.  By the end of this step, you’ll have a miniature rough draft of your book.

Step Ten – Write your first draft!

Writing Tip: Writing Time

In this busy time of study, kids homework, sports, housework etc, one writing tip i'd picked up during blog hopping has been glaring at me.

It is essential for the development of your craft, and indeed your sanity if you're anything like me and have to write!, to block out days or mornings or what ever time you can get on your calendar, and STICK TO IT!

Let people know that your writing time is not a negotiable hobby, but is important to you.
At the moment i've found it hard to do this as unfortunately everything else has been more important.
But, a friend and i are now getting together one whole day a week, the kids play together and we sit at the table with our laptops and immerse ourselves in our writing. It's not enough time really, but it is better than none.

How do you carve out precious writing time during your busy lives??

Patience and a Writing tip

Um, okay. So i submitted The Price of Passion to embrace books and have patiently (read checked emails every day!) for the allotted 4-6 weeks for a reply. Yesterday was the end of 6 weeks....
Do i send an email and ask how they are going, will this garner an instant R? And if i do send an email WHAT DO I SAY?
I've always heard back within time frames so have never had this happen before! I'd love some advice.


Writing tip: Keep detailed notes.
Have you ever come across a story you are really enjoying and halfway through the hero has different coloured eyes?

I find it hard to keep track of small details like that, though not usually for the MC's!
On my christmas present laptop my husband installed microsoft office which has onenote. It has awesome pages and tabs great for organising my study notes, so i thought....why not use it for writing?
And it is fantastic! A new page for characters, plot etc, each with tabs within the page for different characters, key scenes....
It is making it so much easier to find things at a quick glance, rather than having to read through an entire word document for the bit I want!

So the tip this week, is to keep detailed notes that are quick to find!
Have a great day :)