Category: Writing Exercise

Editing Rant: Suddenly, A New Year

Erin Penn 1 Comment

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Suddenly, A New Year for Editing Rants

Happy New Year. Are you Finally ready to look over your 2016 NaNo manuscript? You know it Eventually had to happen; it shouldn’t Suddenly be hitting you. The change of year should be a time shift, and you should be Starting to change your writing focus, Finally. A new Beginning and all that.

With thriller, mystery, and major choreography (fight or sex scenes), time is a driving focus. Adverbs are used to express time more than any other part of speech. As such, the normal drill of removing adverbs from the manuscript runs into a snag. Without the pulsing time adverbs, the ticking clock starts winding down.

On the other hand, I have a reason for my Time Adverb Editing Rant.

Finally, Suddenly, Eventually, … Please, please do not use more than one on a page. Certainly not two or three times in a paragraph.

Why?

“Finally” is … I don’t know … FINAL. Use it too much and the reader starts wondering if it ever is going to end.

(Gif from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Movie 1992))

“Suddenly” is SUDDEN; too many and you get whiplash. etc.

Yes, the manuscript I edited had two “finally”s in the same paragraph. I dislike seeing more than one per chapter.

And often the feeling of “suddenly” can be much more effectively shown in the manuscript than using the word “suddenly”. About half the time the word “sudden” is used, the action wasn’t very sudden at all.

EDITING EXERCISE: Search on the words “Start”, “Begin”, “Final”, “Sudden”, and “Eventual” in your present work-in-progress (WIP) (this search will also return the words ending in “-ly” and “-ing”). How close together do these appear in your document?

Other Cool Blogs: Magical Words October 30, 2012

Erin Penn

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The Play’s the Thing

“Dialogue – live it, learn it, write it”, a blog posting by John G. Hartness on Magical Words.

Why to writers write? “because they have something to say”. How do writers say it? “through characters”.  How do characters say stuff? “through dialogue.”

Where can you find dialogue? In plays.                                                         

Takeaway advice to become a better writer, read plays. See the full blog here: http://www.magicalwords.net/really-i-mean-it/dialogue-live-it-learn-it-write-it/

Bonus advice for editing – Read all dialogue out loud after you have completed your WIP to make certain everything scans. I find this very useful to make certain each character sounds unique.

WRITING EXERCISE: Read a scene from a MODERN play or screenplay (not musical) no more than 20 years old (yeah, you may need to go looking). What makes the conversation feel real?

Writing Exercise: Unexpected Consequences

Erin Penn

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First Step, Initial Worldbuilding – Second Step, Unintended Consequences

Basically one part of worldbuilding is taking the change made in the world and parse it out to additional layers. Only when a writer commits to the consequences of those first choices does the world become real.

Example: Punk cuts off arm and replaces with cyber arm. We know the back muscles will also need replacement for the strength modification and likely the leg bones to support any additional weight carried. It will need to be charged, lets say solar thread replaced hair, plus a nighttime recharge against a wall. Yea – change and then additional change.

One step further, I had a friend with a missing body part – her daily calorie count was about 300 less than one would expect for someone her size (and she was small) – so her calorie count needed to hover about 1,200 except for special days. Not a diet to lose weight, but the meat missing from her body mass that no longer needed to be repaired, heated or function required her to take in less energy producing products or gain weight quickly. So this huge cyber punk guy guy with the cyber arm, replaced bones and adjusted muscles likely eats like a bird! … Oh, and additional question with 3 out of 4 of his limbs missing natural long bones – how is his body making all the blood necessary – is it necessary with the missing body parts – does he make more than he needs now?

WRITING EXERCISE: Okay – so for your present work – come up with one unexpected consequence and explain it below. Now you don’t want to do this all the time because you can spend forever on worldbuilding, but having one or two of these takes you beyond – well, the dude can fly, the wand makes magic. 

Other Cool Blogs: Quick and Dirty Tips November 5, 2015

Erin Penn

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Fighting Fresh

December and about halfway through the holiday season. Ready to kill anyone yet? Ready to kill anyone in new, interesting, and creative ways? How about just maim a little? Or fight …

… yeah, fighting is not just a supposition is it? Is at least a fresh battle or is it just the same old, same old?

How about in your writing? Is your fighting fresh or a cookie-cutter? No, not between you and the story (the struggle is real, believe me, I know) – I am talking about what is happening in the story.

September C. Fawkes shares “How to Write a Fight Scene.” Between backstory, character, and plot, action scenes drive the pace. Writing a good fight scene is essential and I hope this post gives you a new tool for the tool chest.

Again the post is here: http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/how-to-write-a-fight-scene

WRITING EXERCISE: Take one of your present sources of tension and one of the locations you have been in the last 24 hours. Think about what is unique about the tension and the location and write a fight scene between your present WIP Main Character and an equivalent tension source of between 50 and 500 words.

READING EXERCISE: From your present read-in-progress (RIP), find the most recent fight scene. What made it a unique scene? What did the location or the characters bring to the table which made the scene more than just another verbal argument or physical fight?

Other Cool Blogs: Magical Words March 6, 2013

Erin Penn

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To Review or Not To Review

Happy holidays. What is on your wish list?

Mine is Books. Lots and lots of books.

The question is what do you do after you read them? Most writers and editors, if you are also in the business, will say put them on your shelf and move on. But writers NEED reviews; Amazon algorithms to sell their products are run on reviews. Other distributors use similar means of deciding what to advertise. If you don’t write a review for the book you love, you doing a disservice to the author and other readers.

And if you provide a good review on the good books, is it honest to avoid creating reviews on the bad books? What is the author “returns the favor” by giving you a bad review too? In the small business of publishing, the author can easily find out who you are.

Faith Hunter (and lots of commentators) on Magical Words provides the “Dos and Don’ts of Reviewing”. You should definitely read the comment section. Again the link is here: http://www.magicalwords.net/faith-hunter/dos-and-donts-of-reviewing/

As for me, a couple years ago I started requiring myself to review every book I completed. I used the technique to learn what I liked about books, try to pinpoint the problems with books, and figure out where the errors started from (writing, editing, etc). I hoped it would make me a better writer. You can find my reviews on Amazon and Goodreads and I copied some of the best to the blog in 2016 and think I will continue the practice in 2017.

WRITING EXERCISE: Go back to one of your old stories, at least five years old if possible, and write a review about it based on you reading it today.

READING EXERCISE: Write a review for the most recent book you finished reading.