Those of you who frequent the ramblings of my blog, or the newsletter, know that I’m almost finished with revisions of my first novel, “A Ransom of Flames”. Yes, I know, I’ve been saying that for a while now. It’s amazing how a teething baby can interfere with the writing schedule. But laments aside, the plan is still to publish this month. I went through all of my editor’s comments and now I’m doing a final read through to tighten up sentences and make everything as crisp as I can.
So, every writer has a few twitches when it comes to their prose. You know, that handful of words they tend to use over and over and over, unaware the mania is even happening.
A few of my own:
- People meeting each other’s gazes–A little goes a long way. I had to take out a bunch of these. Seriously, it’s like I had them in staring contests.
- WAY too much of the word “about”: Hands gripped “about” a weapon. Belts “about” the waist”. Cloaks “about” shoulders. Good GOD, already. Make it stop!
- Tendency to…trail off dialogue sentences. Again, some of this is okay but I was…stretching it. I’ve mentioned this about a book I reviewed some time ago. Apparently noticing it while reading doesn’t mean it’ll be noticed while writing. *face turns red* Thank goodness for…revisions.
Publication will be a bit later in March than I thought, but better a small delay than rushing things out before they’re ready. Of course, a couple of weeks ago I took a short detour from revisions to start a Science-Fiction/Dystopia short story series titled “Insurrection”. The beginning installments will be published in the next few weeks. Constant rewrites started to drive me bananas. I had to break ground on something new.
Those of you who subscribe to the newsletter will get the first story of the series for free in the next edition. Not signed up? You can do so here
The cover of Book One:
For now, it’s back to the revisions. I’m starting to understand why authors say they are sick to death of their book by the time it goes to publication. This will be my sixth time through.
What about you fellow authors out there? Any writer ticks you notice frequently in your manuscripts? What tricks do you use to find them/get rid of them?
Author of speculative fiction 
Yes, one of the tricks is to read it out loud. Another is to leave it all for a period of time so I don’t want to vomit or skim read it.
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That’s a good one! Setting it aside to get distance (read: perspective) is definitely a trick to use.
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My list of words is longer and includes that, should, quickly, also, had, okay, so, well
They are quirks of your writing and like everything in life a little goes a long way. Before I do a hard copy edit, I search out all my words and rewrite if possible. The search feature in most word processing helps speed this process. In Word it tells you how many occurrences of each word as you search for it. I’m never surprised when my count for some of these words is in the hundreds.
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Word is helpful for finding the repeat offenders. I just love (not) when I search a word and it comes back that there are too many to list. Erm…
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Upon rereading my text, I find that I overuse the words some and someone. So I look at the context and make myself get more specific. And, since I grew up reading older English mysteries (cozies), I was influenced early on to use too many commas in a sentence, a practice pretty much frowned on these days–that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!
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I hear you on those! I have to zap a lot of “something”s out of my first drafts too. And yes, it’s funny how different countries have such varying rules for the comma. I still haven’t figured out how the Dutch toss them into their sentences.
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Mine include.. overuse of the word “was”, “seemingly” and “thought”. I love to read the “filler” words lists on craft websites.. I was surprised to see just how bad my writing really was at times. Ahhh the joy of eternal learning.
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I agree, learning the craft never ends. There’s something great about that though. It means it’ll never get boring. And “was” is one of mine too, forcing me to restructure sentences upon revision. The list goes on and on, right?
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Haha I just read the scolding article Stephen King wrote about “ly” words.. Spent all night plucking those weeds.
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Those ‘ly’ words are the siren song of writing!
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I read King’s book on writing and remember the “ly” mention. I think King might have secretly intended this remark for Dean Coonz’ books which rely heavily on adverbs. I have noticed, too, that most creative writing courses want more and more adjectives and adverbs to the extent that the story line often gets lost, and “taut” writing is pretty much frowned on.
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That’s a good point. I think some of this is a matter of preference. Taking out adverbs/adjectives would make a book seem austere, while including too many makes it cluttered. Personally, I think these do add luster to a story when in the right places. If they’re tacked on to the end of tons of dialogue tags, that’s when I think King’s rule applies for sure.
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Upon some more revisions.. and complete neuroticness-writing was so much easier with my first novel and I was completely naive- I’ve found and love using the “word it out” program.. it lets you copy and paste your manuscript and then picks out your most frequently used words and gives you a word count on how many times you’ve used them. I find it helpful for seeking out anything that you’ve subconsciously picked as a favorite word and used too much.
And John, yes I also agree good point, I noticed some instances where I could have made the flow more concrete and tight, yet lacked the heart to murder all my “ly” darlings, it just seemed to sharpen the sentences too much.
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