Remember, readers have an easier time of visualizing what is there rather than what is removed.
In a recent edit:
As the youth spell turned back time, his hair changed to tar black and most wrinkles were removed from his face.
Recommended change:
…and a few wrinkles remained on his face.
Give your readers clear visualizations.
Don’t write: an object was missing from the desk.
Write: a cleared space in the dust indicated something was missing.
Your readers can’t see the missing object, but they can see the results of it missing.
Don’t write: John realized there was an invisible person in the room with him.
Write: John eyes said nothing was there, but his ears heard a shuffle.
(Okay, both the Write and Don’t Write suggested above have filtering problems…let’s try the invisibility unfiltered.)
Don’t write: The invisible lad tiptoed through the room.
Write: Little creaks crackled the wood flooring from the bedroom to where the cookies were cooling in the kitchen. John tracked the mischievous child with his ears.
If the readers (and the point of view character) can’t see it, tell us what they either can see or provide details through other senses. Stop giving descriptions like someone handing out rural driving directions. Have you ever gotten directions like “Turn at the barn that burned down last year.”? This is useless. It’s useless in writing too. Direct your readers better. Write what the Readers CAN experience.
(This suggestion does not help me, but it might help others. Learn as many techniques as you can if you are an editor, so you can meet your author where they are.)
I don’t have the bandwidth today to do a deep dive into this. I had been thinking about saving Filtering for a writing exercise, but I’m just done at the moment. No brain left, so here goes words to rip out of the manuscript.
First draft (or zero draft, however you count), you will write a lot of “he saw”, “I felt”, “she heard,” letting a reader know what the point of view (POV) character witnessed. You might even see a lot of this in my fiction writing here on the blog, since I post mostly flashes – which means first draft stuff.
Anyway, during the second draft these need to come out.
Don’t put a barrier between the reader and what is happening.
“I heard the engine coming down the track, the long whistle blowing.”
Well, the reader knows if something is happening, the POV is witnessing it, less needs to be said about the process of witnessing.
“Clicky-clack, the engine is coming down the track. The long whistle blowing it’s mournful cry.”
With which sentence do you hear the engine and whistle more clearly?
Get rid of the filter words.
And don’t just take my word for it – here is a vlog from Alyssa Matesic (Cut these words now) – start at 1:10:
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Okay, had a night’s sleep, now back to this editing rant. I’ve said a LOT about filtering words here on this blog over the years. Editing rants based on book reviews, slush reads, and so, so many edits, but part of this one was directed at me. Yes, all the editing and I still need to yell at myself about filtering words.
Recently, I wrote a four thousand plus word Flash to fill in a 2000-word flash hole in my 2024 line up called “Water Finds a Way” (9/29/2024). (I’ve been doing really good this year in cleaning up my backlog.)
The story was based on a dream I had that previous night. Very vivid – the water over the tiled pool room with a keystone design, the crawling up and down the missing stairs, seeing the approaching pirates through the magic window, the light house, the betrayal, the lightning flashing in the pool after I threw the clerical charm in there and seeing the silhouette of the monster in the waters. The challenge was to make that dream a reality on paper.
Problems with the story – time to developmentally edit myself:
(One) I chose to do it as first-person because that was how I dreamed it. Sometimes I dream in third person, but most of them are first person. Only the additions I did to make it into a full story instead of an action sequence from the middle of the story (there wasn’t a beginning or end, nothing to set it up and nothing to tie it up, I had been dropped into the story in media res), the backstory for the person operating the lighthouse, made them a less than interesting point-of-view from inside their head. They didn’t know where they had come from, nor did they have strong goals. And they didn’t have anyone to talk to so all the thinking was internal. Boring.
I need a different POV choice for the story. I think third person, where the lighthouse keeper talks to themselves could work, especially if I have one or two of the pirate crew be a second POV. Maybe the apprentice cleric; it would be interesting to compare two people caught up in situations where they are not allowed to leave. Situations which offer safety but at the cost of agency.
(Two) I just pounded out that 4,300 word story over a six-hour day with just one meal break. The ending got cut short by the need to sleep. Everything got tied up quickly, where the impact of the rope goal was just set up. The final two paragraphs would be better as two more pages.
(Three) With the quick write-up without a break, so many filter words were used. What I saw in the story needed to be written out – saw, felt, heard, believed, thought. The whole things need a rewrite to remove the filter words. I need to change description into immersion. Rip the barriers away!
(Four) The magic window, which was WAY COOL in the dream, does not work in the created story. It is a Darling and needs to be killed. Unless I can find a way to keep it. (My precious!)
(Five) I would like this to be a saleable length, so 10k. I had rushed things just to finish the blog in one day and fill a slot, but it is over 4k words already. That is some serious wordage. With a rewrite filling in the rushed descriptions, even with removing filter words, it should easily hit 6k and adding the second POV (Cleo) and a scene or two setting up stuff before the pirates arrived at the lighthouse – let’s see, them on boat where the pirate asks for payment as they race the storm to the mainland and another with them walking up from the pier (instead of the action just being watched from the window), and maybe a third of them loading onto the lifeboats should add another 2k easy. Fixing the ending would add at least another 1k, so doable at 9k without a problem. The final one thousand words can be adding a flash or two at the end, a couple good ones. Have to make it worth 99 cents.
***
Now the question is do I want to do this. Part of me wants to do a WRITING EXERCISE of fixing the filter words. The story can be so much better. But the publisher-selling part of me knows this isn’t in my normal wheelhouse and won’t sell well if at all and that is a lot of words and commitment for a mediocre product. Third part of me, the one part of a new writer’s group is going your goal was to outline a book for sale before the next meeting, this will do it. So here we are. What will happen tomorrow?
If I do rewrite it, I would put PART of the second draft into a Sunday post – equal to the Amazon first 10% rule. After which I would need to continue with the third and fourth draft cleanups for publication. It will be a whole week process. Hmm.
I recently read a book where nearly every chapter ended with the point of view (POV) character asking themselves a question. What’s up with that?
I think the problem is they were told to end chapters on a mini “cliffhanger” to keep the reader moving forward, making the book unputdownable (yes, a word). John Hartness (recent book release of Eternal Winter in his Bubba series)) and Jason Gilbert (Three Dog Knight, which I edited) are masters of this technique; fortunately they write shorter books so you can survive the unputdownable structure and, maybe, get enough sleep that night to work the next day. But why didn’t a pleasure-read book work if this is a valid techinque?
Well, the cliffhanger can work different ways, sometimes it is a beat break within a battle. Sometimes it is a climax of a scene, emotionally or physically, then a switch to a different POV character. Writers master getting the scene to the point where everything is in place, then break to a different stakes in the next chapter. That one gets to the high stakes, then switch back to the original POV character or situation. Then the cruel-writers resolve the problem they had ended on but before they return to the second issues, they raise the rollercoaster back to the edge and leave us hanging again. Rinse and repeat for the second plotline. No sleep at all, but what a ride. Why didn’t this ride work for me?
The other big way to end, rather than continuing action, is with a question. The way to do this is have the POV character be asked a question or ask someone else a question, encapsulating either what had just happened or bringing up something that had been left by the wayside. “Did that seem too easy to you?”; “Should Billy have been here by now?” Both sorts of question interchanges have the reader freezing for a moment going, “oh no!”, and jumping into the next chapter to find the answer. Why doesn’t the character asking themselves a question work?
If the book had been a literary book, with layers of self-reflection, it might have worked, but the book was a middlegrade action-adventure. Asking questions like “What should I do next?” and “Should I return home to find out what happened to my family or continue on my quest?” doesn’t create tension for genre. These are internal questions and slow down the action. Self-reflection is fine to figure things out, but a self-reflection question, even “Should I take a boat down the Rapids of Death?”, at the end of a chapter to create a cliffhanger actually pulls a reader back from the edge and leaves them questioning why is the character questioning themselves instead of acting. Literary is self-reflection; genre books are action. Why ask yourself a question?
Action, dialog, interaction, raising stakes. All these are genre tools to pull the reader through the book and make it unputdownable. Asking questions through dialog is fine. Asking questions of yourself is fine as a place to slow down and contemplate, to have a breather for the reader before returning to the rollercoaster. But using self-reflection questions (which slow things down) as the tension technique to pull the reader through to the next chapter doesn’t work. Do you got that?
Good. Go forth and write something that is unputdownable.
Hey y’all visiting for the A-to-Z challenge, welcome and salutations. One of my jobs is being an editor of genre fiction, both a developmental editor and a copy editor. Once a month in this blog, I go off on rants about what I see a lot of – so writers know what editors see a lot of and know to NOT DO THAT.
Today’s rant: Likeability.
Your characters need to be likeable or at least sympathetic.
If you are writing a romance, the romantic leads NEED to be likeable. Mysteries can break the likeability rule as it helps reader think anyone could have been the killer, but please, for romances, at the very least, make the leads likeable.
And to pull likeability off, some of the following things need to happen:
One: The First Impression cannot be a negative one. Just like meeting people in real life, first impressions with fictional characters need to be positive. Don’t have your character kick a puppy, or whine, or betray their friends or any of that before we see something we like about them first. Strangely, you can have the positive first interaction, and then do a flashback where they kick the puppy, and the reader will be more likely to forgive them or make excuses because they know the person is a “good guy”. Do likeable things first.
Two: For a Point of View character that will be around for a while (like in a series), make sure they are entertaining enough that the audience wants to hang with them for multiple books. Do they make a reader laugh, make them think, or make them feel comfortable? No one wants to hang with people they don’t like.
Three: Create a connection (empathy) with the reader (before anything bad happens) in two of the following five ways: Likeable, Sympathy, Jeopardy, Power, or Humor (this list was suggested by Darynda Jones way back in 2014 on Magical Words). Likeable is not telling us everyone likes them, it is showing us people like them. Make them a nice character. Sympathy is a understanding what the character is going through, stuff like a parent recently died or getting yelled at by the boss. Jeopardy is something is a problem, they are late with their rent (through no fault of their own), they just got kidnapped. Power can be used to make a bad guy more connectable; everyone loves a person with power. Humor – snark is a wonderful thing.
Make your characters someone that people want to spend time with.
AVOID THE FOLLOWING (ALL EXAMPLES FROM BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS)
Don’t have the character be an impulsive, lazy, backstabbing thief to friends and family, before they are exiled. The developmental recommendation is start with the exile (jeopardy) and their skill at breaking into buildings outside the community to get the food needed (power), THEN backtrack to them stealing from family and friends, lying about the stealing, stealing impulsively when they decide they are hungry. I hated that main character so much for all the damage they did in that first chapter before their exile. The author needed to switch the first two chapters. Yes, the main character was a teenager learning how to be a better person as the character growth arc for the book, but the reader needed the YA protagonist to not need a slapping when they first meet them.
Don’t treat profanity and vulgarity as humor. Unrelenting cursing is not witty dialog; Reservoir Dogs worked because of the meaning of what they said, not the words used. Shock-value is a power-play, not humor. Witty dialog takes work. Humor isn’t easy. Yes, profanity and vulgarity can be used in a humorous way, but focus on the HUMOR, not the expletives. If you want to be funny, be fucking funny not just fucked up.
Don’t have us meet our anti-hero while he is being more anti- than hero. Don’t have us meet him promising to kill someone after bribing someone else, then blowing up the bar which the other characters we have already met are performing at, before we see the first little bit of the hero side. Once the impression of “a-hole” has been set, it isn’t going anywhere.
Don’t have a reader read the chapter title of “Ask Me If I Care” and have them answer “You know, I don’t” and close the book.
Make your characters likeable.
Comment below on a book where the likability of the characters made you either (1) stop reading or (2) keep reading even though you didn’t enjoy the plot, you just like the characters.
