Category: editing

            Three weeks until San Diego ComicCon!

            As it happens. I’m actually a bit bogged down right now, trying to get everything set up for SDCC while also doing a ton of edits (and also trying to deal with a killer headache).  To be honest, I was half-thinking of skipping this week.

            Fortunately for all of us, Timothy Johnson stepped up and offered to scribble out some quick thoughts on editing as a tool for improving our writing.  Tim’s an editor based out of Washington, D.C., and he’s got a debut sci-fi/horror novel, Carrier, available right now from Permuted Press (go check it out).  All things said, he has a pretty good idea what he’s talking about.  You can find him regularly on Twitter or Facebook.

            Next week, I’ll be back to talk about sorting through feedback. For now, here’s Tim…

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            This post is not about commas. It’s not about mechanics or style. It’s not about verb conjugation or misplaced modifiers.

            I know many writers bemoan the editing process. I get it. It can seem unnecessary and even like a waste of time. But I promise you it’s not. Even though you wrote your story, it’s still a crudely formed lump of clay.

            So, I’m not going to get into the nuts and bolts of grammar. This post is about helping you, a writer, become better at writing. Through editing, you can take your writing to the next level. It’s about how you take the word stream of your writing process and turn it into a cyclical filtration system for distilling tight, compelling prose.

            It’s basically how to become a Brita filter for literature.

            If you came in here thinking, “Ugh, I don’t want to learn stuff. This is why I pay an editor to make my writing good,” stick around. As an editor, I can assure you I’m human, and that’s relevant because there’s a quality quotient that we can achieve based upon the work you present to us. That is to say, if you serve us crap, we might be able to make a crap casserole, but it’s still a crap casserole. Give us better ingredients to work with, and the end result will be better for it.

            So pick up your hammer and chisel, and let’s get to work.

            If you’re human, you probably say, “um,” more than any other word in a typical day. We say, “um,” when our brains search for the right word but our mouths want to keep going. Similarly, we have the same disconnect between our brains and our fingers, those overzealous bastards.

             Look out for “that,” “this/these/those,” and passive voice.

            “That” is simple. It’s the most overused word in the English language. If you see “that” in your writing, chances are it’s unnecessary and you can destroy it with zero regret.

            “This/these/those” are a little different. We often use “this/these/those” as demonstrative pronouns. That’s basically fancy grammar talk for “you know what I’m talking about, shut up.” And they’re perfectly acceptable, grammatically speaking. The problem is they’re vague, and if our objective is to get our language tight and compelling, they aren’t going to do the job.

           Find these (see what I did there?) and destroy them. Ask yourself what you’re actually writing about, and use a noun.

            Another stutter to look out for is passive voice. For many people, it can be difficult to recognize, and some will even argue it’s not that big of a deal. Well, to those people, I say it’s super popular in legal speak for a reason: passive voice is unclear and confusing.

            We often write passive voice because we have action-oriented minds. We consider more strongly the thing that is happening than the people who are performing the action. You get a pass as a human, but as a fiction writer, you don’t get to rest on your laurels. Writing active sentences will serve you better.

            To find your passive sentences, look for statements in which it isn’t clear who or what the subject is. Most times, you can find passive voice by looking for any form of the verb “be.”

            Let’s write a stupendously ridiculous example that combines all three of these brain stutters:

            “This is something that you are wanted to do.”

            Now, if we unsuck that, it becomes the following:

            “I want you to kill him.”

            See how this edited version is way more direct, clear, and powerful? If this stuff is a bit too abstract for you, let’s dial it back a bit.

            Generally, people write how they speak. There’s nothing wrong with that, but one of the points of thinking about your own writing critically is to construct storytelling prose that isn’t boring, mundane, everyday language as if you’re telling someone a story in a grocery store checkout line.

            You can certainly crank the wrench too far and edit the human quality out of your words, so the onus is on you to find a balance where your prose leaps off the page but still is identifiable as yours.

            “To be” is the worst offender of being weak. I mean, “to be” is the worst offender of weak language. “To be” verbs can signify passive language (see above), but most often, they mark an opportunity to do something more interesting. Find all instances of “be/been,” “is/are,” and “was/were,” and see what else you can do with those sentences other than pointing out that the subjects of those sentences exist.

            Beyond existential quandaries, however, authors tend to filter actions unnecessarily. For example, they may relate how the main character felt a bullet hit his arm, rather than writing, “The bullet tore through his arm.” Similarly, authors tend to explain how the main character watched as a comet flew through the atmosphere instead of writing, “The comet blazed across the night sky.”

            Unless your point is the character’s internal experience with these happenings, you are creating a buffer zone between me and the visceral experience. This is akin to pulling your punches in boxing. Are you trying to lose the fight for your reader’s attention? Find all instances of “feel/felt” and “watch/watched/see/saw.” Chances are, you can hack the first part of the sentence off, and nobody will miss it.

            Moving on, Stephen King wrote that the road to hell is paved in adverbs. He then continued to use adverbs, but I digress. What are adverbs? They are essentially any word that ends in “-ly.” So, “happily,” “dangerously,” “doggedly,” “grimly,” and on and on. You get the idea. These words are useful, but they signal a weak verb. Like adjectives, which modify nouns, adverbs modify verbs; however, unlike nouns, verbs have the power to imply additional information. In other words, we don’t need no stinkin’ adverbs.

            Find them and destroy them. While you’re at it, take care of “very,” “almost,” “about,” and the like. They indicate inexact language and have no place in tight, powerful fiction. If we don’t get the idea from the word you’re modifying, you’ve used the wrong word.

            Let’s keep going. I’m good. You good? Good.

            Gerunds. Gerunds are the verb form that ends in “-ing.” Generally, gerunds describe a process that is ongoing, and while there’s technically nothing wrong with them, many authors overuse them and use them incorrectly. Seek them out, and see if the regular form of the verb will suffice. For example, what’s the difference between, “The hobbits were dancing at the Prancing Pony,” and “The hobbits danced at the Prancing Pony”? Five letters and a space, and stronger prose.

            As a final language-strengthening tip, look for repetitive words. It can be jarring to a reader to see the same word twice in a short amount of space, but also variety is the spice of life. If you find you’ve used the same word twice in the same paragraph (even the same page, if you want to be as anal as I am), it’s an opportunity to edit and make your writing more interesting. Seize that chance. Your readers won’t thank you, but that’s the point. They’ll never know your writing was worse. They’ll just be impressed at how good it is.

            By employing these tips, I promise your work will read better. And, by editing your work, you will force yourself to think critically about your prose. You will slow yourself down, focusing on the small ideas instead of concerning yourself with the big ideas. The small ideas are extremely important, because only through those ideas do we, as readers, understand your big ideas.

            If you keep at it, eventually, you will recognize these weaknesses while you write, and you will discover better versions of your sentences with progressively less effort. It will become automatic and ingrained in your writing. By using these techniques to improve the writing you’ve already done, you will improve your future writing before you write it. More important, you’ll look back and realize that, on a fundamental level, you’ve become a better writer.

            Welcome back.  Glad to see you all survived the violent transition to 2016.

            I like to start the year by going over what this pile of rants is for and why I do it.  I think it’s good for any of you who’ve stumbled across this page.  It’s also good for me, to help stay focused on helpful tips and suggestions and, yes, the occasional rule.

            That’s more or less how this started, almost nine years ago now.  At the time, I was writing for a screenwriting magazine, and I’d see tons of articles and websites about tricks and gimmicks—the sort of stuff you worry about after writing.  I’d guess at least two-thirds of writing articles, even in our own magazine, fell into this category.  Stuff like how to get an agent or manager, how to aggressively network, how to arrange book signings, that sort of thing.  Most of which seemed like… well, like it was skipping a few steps.

            And some of these folks were asking to be paid for their pearls of so-called wisdom.  

            So, I went to my editor with a few spec columns about… writing.  Some basic things I’d written up based on my own years of many failures and a few successes (or, as some folks call it, experience).  And the columns were rejected.  A few months later I went to another editor, he passed them up the chain, and they were rejected again.  Those three columns became the first posts here.  I’d tossed them up just so it felt like I’d done something with them.  I thought they were fairly well written and made some good points—I didn’t want them to languish on my computer.  Maybe in the tiny, limited space that was the internet somebody would stumble across them and find them useful.

            (Bonus fact. Maybe a year after I started posting here full time somebody pointed out Thoth-Amon was also the evil sorcerer in the Conan books and comics.  Completely slipped my mind when I picked the name for the site.  I just went with it because Thoth was the Egyptian god of writing)

            Anyway, as I worked my way further into the life of a full-time writer, I was exposed to more and more people’s work.  I read scripts for a couple different contests and got a bunch of exposure to it (reading 400+ pages a day will do that to you).  And it struck me that I kept seeing the same basic mistakes.  Often to wince-inducing levels.

            Okay, so this is just my own experience, but at this point my experience is pretty broad so I feel good about saying it…

            Most aspiring writers fall into one of two camps.  Some think writing and storytelling are mechanical, quantifiable processes that can be broken down into solid rules and formulas.  These are the folks who will use Syd Field as proof that their screenplay is perfect and quote the MLA Handbook to explain why their novel deserves to be published  

            Both of these groups are usually wrong, for the record.

            Note that I said “usually.”  Most folks think it’s all-or-nothing.  You have to be on one extreme or another.  The truth is that it’s more of a middle ground.

            Y’see, Timmy, there are correct and incorrect things in writing. I have to know how to spell (me—not my spellchecker).  I have to understand grammar.  I need to have a sense of pacing.  If I’m writing a script, I’ve got to know the current accepted format.  As a writer, I can’t ignore any of these requirements, because these are things I can get wrong and I’ll be judged on them. 

            On the other hand, there is no “right” way to start your writing day or to develop a character.  There’s only the way that’s right for me and my story.  Or you and your story.  Or her and her story.  This is the Golden Rule that I’ve mentioned here once or thrice.  If I ask twenty different writers about their method, I’m going to get twenty different answers.  And all of these answers are valid, because all of these methods work for that writer. 

            But that still doesn’t mean I can ignore every convention or rule I don’t like. I need to understand the rules if I want to break them successfully. Yeah, maybe there are ten or twenty people who broke the rules and succeeded… but there are hundreds of thousands, probably millions, who broke the rules and failed miserably.

            And that’s what I try to do here.  Talk about writing.  Not the after-the-fact-stuff, just writing.  I talk about rules that we need to learn and follow (until we’ve got the experience to bend or break them).  I try to offer some various tips and suggestions I’ve heard over the years that may (or may not) help out when it comes to crafting a story.

            I have a few topics on deck for the weeks ahead.  Author visibility.  Action.  Inside jokes.  Stakes.  Motives.  A few others.  And if there’s something that’s been gnawing at you that you’d like me to blab about, let me know down in the comments.  I’ve been doing this for a while—there aren’t many topics I haven’t had a painful learning experience with, and I’m always willing to share.

            Oh, also… if you happen to live in the southern California area, I’d like to recommend the Writers Coffeehouse.  It’s a monthly meeting of writers of all types and levels to talk about… well, writing.  All aspects from first ideas and editing to pitching and marketing.  It’s free, it’s fun, and it’s open to everyone.  Jonathan Maberry (author of the Joe Ledger series, the Rot & Ruin series, and many others) brought it with him when he moved to the San Diego area, and he hosts a Coffeehouse the first Sunday of every month at the Mysterious Galaxybookstore. And starting this month, on the 24th, I’m going to be hosting one here in Los Angeles at Dark Delicacies.

            So check that out if you’re in the area.

            Next time, I’d like to talk about lanterns.

            Until then… go write.

            Just a quick post this week.

            I wanted to talk about repetition.  Repetition can be a powerful tool.   It is amazing when used correctly.

            But sometimes it indicates a problem.  A tool being used incorrectly.  Perhaps always repeating the same words.   Or always using the same phrasing.  Or very similar sentence structure. And this is when repetition fails.  Because now it weakens the story.  Or the post, in this case.

            Do you see what I mean?

            All these sentences have six words.  No more or less in each.  The words are all different lengths. The structure of each sentence varies.  But you still feel the rhythm. Six words repeating over and over.  The pacing feels a bit unnatural.  And then I start watching it.  I stop reading the story normally.  I end up auditing each line. I count up the repeating words

            This is when repetition means boring.
            And my readers hate boring.

            Okay, that’s enough of that.  Did the last sentence seem to slam the point home a bit in your mind?  Especially at the end?  Look again—the last sentence only has five words.  It’s different.  It stands out.

            I’ve also seen people who repeat the same opening for every sentence.  I’ve also seen people who repeat the same structure for every sentence.  I’ve also seen people who repeat the same opening and structure for each sentence.  I’ve also seen people who repeat the same trick again and again and expect it to have the same impact.

            But it’s not just the blatant stuff. Repetition can creep into my writing a bunch of ways.  I may be using the same word a lot.  We all have a phrase or a term we latch onto and have to go rooting out of our manuscripts.  Or maybe someone’s name.  It might even be the way I present information. 

            I spend a lot of time trying to weed out of much of that as I can. Even something as simple as dialogue descriptors—I hate looking at a page and seeing a chorus of Wakko said, Dot said, Yakko said, Wakko said, Phoebe said.  Not that there’s anything wrong with said—it’s a borderline-invisible word.  But this structure of name-said-dialogue, name-said-dialogue, name-said-dialogue, name-said dialogue… it’s just boring as hell.

            D’you notice that one? The fourth repetition is just too much, isn’t it.  You get the point, I don’t need to keep pounding you with it.

            And it’s so easy to break up that sort of thing. Name-said-dialogue.  Dialogue-name-said.  Dialogue-said-name.  Really, if everything’s working right, I probably don’t even need descriptors past a certain point.

            Y’see, Timmy, that’s the thing about repetition.  It can be a powerful form of writing.  It’s writing at level eight or nine.  But we’ve talked about this before—what happens when everything’s set up at nine or ten?
            It’s dull.  It’s monotone.  It’s true for my story, but it’s also true for my writing itself.  If I try to make every page, every paragraph, every single six-word sentence a piece of dialed-up-to–ten Pulitzer-winning literature, my writing is going to get boring really fast.

            D’you catch that?  Repetition for emphasis.  At the end. Where I want to score the big points.

            I don’t need to be scared of repetition.  I just shouldn’t be wasting it when I don’t really need it.

            Next time…

            Well, I’ll be honest.  This time next week I’ll be moderating a couple panels at New York Comic Con and doing a couple of signings.  So next week will probably be a few photo tips.  But hopefully you all know that sort of thing’s the exception, not the rule.

            And if you’re attending NYCC and you have some time, please stop by and say “hello.”

            Until then… go write.