How To Write Magical Words: A Writer's Companion

by Unknown

  Revisions: Cutting Words

  Stuart Jaffe

  Today I’m going to give you some specifics about an important pass I always make sure to do—cutting out useless words. Of course, this is merely one approach and, as is all writing advice, merely one opinion. Mileage may vary.

  Whether we like to admit it or not, word count is an important part of writing. Too high or too low and your word count can have a severe impact on the salability of your work. Since most of my experience comes from writing short stories, the problem for me is often a case of too many words; however, everything I’m writing about today applies to novel writing as well. And the first point is that clear and concise are the key phrases to remember. More importantly (in my mind, at least) is that if I’m already well within the market’s preferred word count and I can knock-off even just ten, twenty, fifty or a hundred useless words, I then have the opportunity to fill that space back up with great details, depth of character, plugging up plot holes, etc. Or I can leave those words off, fill them in with nothing else, and just have a leaner piece of writing. In other words, by getting rid of extraneous wordage, I can better shape the work into what I really wanted it to be in the first place.

  Now, some specifics:

  Prepositional phrases

  First, not all prepositional phrases are bad and need to be replaced. In fact, a well-chosen prep-phrase can add a lot of flavor to your sentences. Also, in some instances and some genres, prep-phrases help create the proper tone—such as epic fantasy in which "the sword of the honest" may have a better ring than "the honest’s sword." However, often times a sentence can be re-ordered to avoid the prep-phrase, making the sentence cleaner and gaining you a word a two of free space.

  Original: Derek pulled the ladle from the bowl with green spots and poured himself a delicious helping of chicken soup into his bowl.

  Revised: Derek pulled the ladle from the green-spotted bowl and poured himself some delicious chicken soup. (-7 words)

  Of course, context is crucial in your decision process. I didn’t feel it was important to mention the receptacle he poured the soup into—in fact, most people will assume it was a bowl unless told otherwise. But if it had been a key issue, then I would have to re-work the sentence differently. Likewise, if the green-spotted bowl is not important we could rewrite it further:

  Revision 2: Derek poured himself some delicious chicken soup. (-15 words)

  Obviously, this last revision lacks any real beauty as far as a sentence goes but it does get across the idea clearly. And frankly, does the reader need a beautiful sentence about pouring soup? If the story says YES, then this is the type of extreme cut that can make the room for more valuable writing. After all, I just gutted out fifteen words. I could now write an entire sentence that tells us something about Derek.

  Revision 3: Derek poured himself some delicious chicken soup, but he tasted little of it—he couldn’t stop thinking of Sarah. (still -2 words off the original).

  Was Doing

  Practically any time you come across this construction of the word was with a verb ending in -ing, you can be more direct by cutting out was and just using the past tense of the verb. This one can save you literally over a hundred words depending on your writing style.

  Ex: The boy was running downtown.

  Revised: The boy ran downtown. (-1 word)

  Similarly, avoid having your characters "begin" to do things. Just do them.

  Ex: As the night chilled, Mark began to build a fire.

  Revised: As the night chilled, Mark built a fire. (-2 words)

  Little changes like this add up over the course of an entire manuscript. You’ll be blown away by how many words you can cut in order to tighten your work.

  Almost

  Or nearly or barely or whatever vagueness you wish to employ. There are numerous reasons to avoid this construction and word count is among those reasons.

  Ex: The bullet slammed into his chest, almost ripping a hole into his heart.

  Rather than tell us what almost happened but really didn’t, let’s cut some words and fill them back in with what did happen, creating a more exciting, more visual sentence.

  Revised: The bullet slammed into his chest, nicking his heart. (-4 words)

  Obviously, context is important here. If in the story the heart shouldn’t be touched at all then forget the heart and tell us what the bullet did hit.

  Revision 2: The bullet slammed him backward, snapping a rib in two. (-3 words)

  Notice here that by being specific about the rib, I no longer needed to mention the bullet hitting the chest and could replace that prep-phrase with something offering more detail.

  These are just basic examples, but this is the kind of line by line, word by word editing I will do with the purpose of tightening my prose. The benefits are enormous. Your work will be clearer, read smoother, and take up less manuscript space, thus opening great opportunities for development of the important aspects of storytelling—character, plot, description, etc. And notice that the examples provided were simple sentences. If you don’t want to kill too many of your darlings, then clean up the simple sentences so there’s room for all those precious words you have used elsewhere. Without any change to your concept, these revisions will improve your writing tenfold (maybe more!) and make your work that much better. Good luck!

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  Emily Leverett

  Now I’ve got a question. How do you (and all the Magical Words writers if they like) deal with the past perfect tense? The "had [verbed]"? It’s for events that happened before the past events . . . and so I’m not sure how it can work in narration. I’ve used but, I’m not certain if it is a good idea. "She had come that evening wanting a conversation, a real connection, but she found a bloody body instead." (I dunno, I just made that up as an example.) I’m just curious what you folks think about that tense.

  Faith Hunter

  Emily, just my thoughts, and you did ask for our thoughts on it . . . (grins)

  Your example is a mini flashback.

  Let’s look first at a big flashback: rule of thumb for me—for big scenic flashback—is two hads, followed by a return to whatever tense is used in the novel.

  Ex: We had been walking home from school, and the car had pulled up beside us. The passenger rolled down the window.

  Then after the big, scenic FB is done, two hads and a return to the tense.

  For mini flashbacks the way you did it works for me. Stuart may have other thoughts, but that’s the way I do it.

  Stuart Jaffe

  Emily, nothing wrong with using past perfect. I find if I write in first person POV it comes up more often. The thing you have to be careful with is the whole showing vs. telling. Past perfect can easily slip you into too much telling. The only other thing I can think of off the top of my head is that you need to make sure you have the grammar of it correct. If you don’t know which verbs get the "had" and which don’t, look it up. Otherwise, you’ll be revising yourself silly trying to fix it all so that it makes proper sense.

  Writers’ Crutches: Words

  Faith Hunter

  We all have crutches in our lives, things we do that help us get through the day. Actions, habits, favorite foods, coffee or tea for that caffeine high, harder liquids for some of us, that pill at bedtime, calls to mom or dad, and much more can be our crutches. Some are dangerous; some are more like tics, OC habits that we see no need to break. I’m addicted to tea. As long as I have my tea I can write anywhere anytime. But when we bring crutches into our writing, into the flow of the words themselves, that quickly presents a problem.

  A case in point: I was reading a mass-market paperback by a well-known writer, someone new to me, a book recommended by my local bookseller. By page twenty, the writer had used the word "smirk" five times. Five times. By doing so, he had cheated me by taking the easy way out in describing the reactions of his characters. Cheated me by telling me the reactions in five letters over and over again.
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  "Smirk" is a word that is seldom used in daily life, so when we read it, it stands out, as opposed to: is, or, if, of, that, and, the, what, etc., which are words that we use a lot more, but disappear from the page when we read them. Some words do that; others do not (like smirk). I had to put the novel down and I’ll never read another book by that writer. He was lazy. He used a crutch. He doesn’t deserve my money or my time. The story was good but the execution was poor. He was telling me, not showing me, and on that very basic level, his work was amateurish. The writer didn’t do his job. The editor didn’t do his job. I paid the price. And yes, it really ticks me off when this happens. More so when I do it myself. Much more so.

  Yes, I have writing crutches, too. In one novel long ago, I used the word "passed" over one-hundred-seventy times, or roughly one time every other page. One of my beta readers caught it; I scanned and replaced all but thirtyish of them. I tend to use the words "smile" and "grin" a lot. And "flicked," as in, "He flicked off the light." There are other words that I scan and change before my editor sees my manuscript. Fortunately, I have an editor who takes the time to see my work on many levels, and she usually catches what I miss.

  One of my writer friends admits to overuse of the word "just," which seems like a Southernism to me, and odd for her, as she isn’t Southern and doesn’t use it in her speech. "Really" is another word she scans for.

  Other words that are overused by writers are sardonic (which is a kind of insulting smirk, right?) dark/shadowed/bloody, etc. (in dark fantasy) sexy/ hot/buff/pounding, etc. (in romance novels).

  Well, you get the point, (she said with a smirk).

  Anyone here want to share a word crutch?

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  C.E. Murphy

  "Actually." "Apparently." "Smiled/laughed/grinned." "Elevated eyebrows." "Gaze"—and damn but that’s a hard one to work around. "Looked up." "Turned back." Oh yes, we are painfully aware—but perhaps not aware enough—of our shortcomings . . . :-)

  Axisor

  "Just" and "really" I use all the time and I’ve been living in MO for twenty-four out of the twenty-five years of my life. I was under the impression that it was a generation thing. (I previously had some witty statement that used those words, too.)

  My other crutches: suddenly, seemed, clearly, evidently, apparently (which those last three could also be used to describe my addiction to adverbs) as well as those words like "that" and "too" and ellipses and em-dashes.

  I also have a stock description per story (one: they almost all have green eyes, another black . . .) but I have always wondered why most books have eye color for every character and I barely ever notice it in people I meet in real life.

  More Writers’ Crutches: Style

  Faith Hunter

  The two most common errors in any writer’s work are:

  1. Telling instead of showing, and

  2. Passive writing.

  Sometimes, it’s almost invisible to us, an insidious way of writing that creeps up and takes over and suddenly it’s everywhere, in every paragraph, in every chapter. And rewriting to get rid of it is a PITA. On a good day, we’ll say, "I’d never do that. I don’t have to look for it." On a bad day, we reread our work and, dang if it isn’t there.

  Mind you, there are times for the passive voice and for telling. Times when nothing else will work. But when we get into patterns, then it becomes a crutch. And crutches are weak writing, amateurish writing, and they can get our work canned. So I thought I’d toss in a few examples I’ve seen recently and ways around them, some doing double duty for scene anchoring, character development, or some other necessary device. I’m going to give the examples, and possible rewrites, and offer some explanations of what the changes accomplished that the original didn’t.

  Examples:

  She felt tears slide down her face.

  • Tears slid down her face. (Active.)

  • Tears burned a hot trail down her chapped face. (Emotional reaction used to remind reader of previous injury or previous tears.)

  • She didn’t know she was crying until tears dripped onto the backs of her hands and spattered onto the table. (Character development. Less showing, but more effective use of the more passive phrasing.)

  B. He spit out the blood and told him to go to hell. (This also has pronoun problems.)

  • Charles spit blood and a tooth, aiming for the sergeant. They fell short and Charles laughed, the sound breathy and defeated. "Go to hell." (Active. Characterization and/or development.)

  • Charles choked on his own blood. He coughed and spit, managing a breath. "Go to hell," he said. And his head snapped back from the force of the blow. (Active voice, characterization, followed by passive voice to indicate a change of mental status. Yes, we could have seen that from the original, but the writer didn’t make use of it. It was a lost opportunity.)

  • Charles spat his blood to the floor and whispered, "Go to hell." And braced himself for the next blow. (Ditto on voice and characterization.)

  C. Rachel put up her clothes and stared into the bathroom mirror. "So who am I?" she asked. She turned off the TV, and grabbed her purse and keys. It was time for a change. (The telling and the short, choppy transition of the emotional change are jarring.)

  • Rachel dropped the stack of clothes and stared into the bathroom mirror. "So who am I?" she asked. Her eyes stared back her, so like her mother’s eyes. Her mother who had died broke, but surrounded by the love of family. Unlike Betty, who was rich, but sad and alone. She sighed, knowing that she was going to regret this, and reached for her keys. (Character development and showing.)

  Revising Dialogue

  Stuart Jaffe

  Previously I’ve commented that the rules of dialogue are completely different from the rules of prose. This little statement means that revision strategies are also necessarily different. Clear and concise will not apply, for example, to a character who is ambiguous and verbose. Cutting down on prepositional phrases might make no sense if the speech pattern, dialect, or cultural background of a particular character requires such phrases. So what’s a writer to do? Well, the keys to revising dialogue are the same keys used to write dialogue in the first place—developing your ear, and understanding the character who is speaking.

  Since the words in between quotes are the literal reprinting of what was said, rules like grammar and punctuation often go out the window. It all depends on the type of character you are writing. A character like Gollum would sound horrible if he had to speak formally—"Excuse me, dear Frodo, but I require the ring which you bear. It is quite precious to me." Likewise, Paul Atreides would sound equally horrible if speaking in a guttural third-person—"Mmmmm, Paul wantses the spiiiiiice." Switch the two, however, and though Gollum’s grammar is horrendous and Paul’s a bit stiff, they fit their characters.

  So, the first and most important aspect of revising dialogue is to think about the characters once again. In fact, revising dialogue is a lot like creating a scene—think about the characters, what they want, how they plan to accomplish it, what stands in their way, etc. Then look closely at the words they use. Do the quotes fit with their goals? Do the quotes fit with their characters? Do the quotes fit the characters’ voices?

  At its best, this is all the advice one needs. Of course, none of us are ever the best, most perfect writers we would like to be. So, here are some practical basics to think about that will both clean up the flow of your dialogue as well as cut wasted words:

  Tag lines: You’ve heard it before, now hear it again. 99.99999% of the time the only tag line you need is "s/he said." Anything else is wasted words. Also, learn your pronoun rules so that you A) know when you need to bother with tags at all, and B) don’t confuse your reader by mixing pronouns.

  Utterances: Though a lot of real life speech is filled with um, well, so, y’see, y’know, etc., it does little for smooth-flowing, effective dialogue—unless such utterances are a specific character trait (and even then, it should be used sparingly
or else you risk annoying the reader). For most characters, however, these things tend to slow the pacing. Think of utterances like cayenne pepper—a little bit goes a long way.

  The Point: As in, get to it! This is another one of those situations where written dialogue does not mimic real speech. In a real conversation, we may talk for several minutes before we get to anything of substance. In a story, that’s a sure way to lose your audience. Look at the best writers and almost all their dialogue enters and exits at the key parts of the conversation. The rest of it is told (not shown).

  Ex: On the date, Bob and Jane talked for hours about their jobs, their pets, and their family. Then Bob leaned in and said, "You ever kill a man?"

  The first sentence tells about the unimportant gabbing they did. The quote tells us that something interesting is about to be discussed and we don’t want to miss any of it.