PET PEEVES IN EDITING: Use that FIND feature

I imagine we all have pet peeves when it comes to fiction. Those niggling habits writers have that trip us up, waste words, and mince meanings. If enough of them distract, we are tempted to repurpose the book for kindling.


When editing my clients' work, I tend to run into certain bugaboos quite often.


Some of them require an ear for Tense (and manipulating it as needed for backstory), Point of View (the blinders that keep that horse from seeing what’s behind him), underuse of contractions, telling when showing would be more powerful, etc.


Luckily, others are less nuanced and can be addressed easily with our word programs’ search/find features.


Search and destroy:

When you‘ve placed these two words -- and then (side by side). Pick one or the other. You don’t need both.

Qualifiers deflate prose. Examples: began to, begin, started to, start, a bit of, a little of, seemed to, what appeared to be, maybe, almost, decided to, plan to, any (as in: Note any changes you make.), all of (as in: I'm too old for all of this.)

Frequently used throwaway words that weaken the prose such as: just, oh, anyway, well, fairly, seems, though, very, really, many, a lot, so, and of these (as in: several of the boys)

Passive construction: watch for forms of “to be” paired with gerunds. Simple past tense is better, more active, more engaging. “She is holding” versus “She holds”

Vague and less vivid words like:
sit (how about “plop” or “eased down into” or “collapsed into”)
walked (strolled, marched, traipsed, sauntered) and run, went down, went over, moved, laugh, look…

!!!!!! Use exclamation marks only when absolutely necessary. Good dialogue or narrative already conveys the urgency or excitement

Suddenly and immediately. Most of the time they aren’t necessary. Let the thing happen, the context will let us know it happened suddenly.

Unnecessary qualifiers weaken the prose. Let them be or do instead of “start to be” or “begin to do” something: watch for “began” and “started”

Unnecessary wordiness (like redundancies and phrases that can be simplified without changing meaning) Ex: "down below" becomes "below"

Unnecessary attributions of thoughts, beliefs, etc. If we are solidly in POV we assume those thoughts etc. are those of the POV character. Ex: I thought, He felt, I believed

“THAT” can often be eliminated. If a sentence can read just fine without it, take it out.

Fancy dialogue tags. “Said” is typically the best dialogue tag – others like hissed, addressed formally, argued, etc. call attention to themselves and slow the read. Good dialogue doesn’t need description – unless it is unclear in context that something is said sarcastically. Even "said" can be replaced with an action of the character. "Don't you dare." John grabbed his beer can and sqeezed it into a crumple of aluminum.

Make use of the FIND feature and you’ll clean up many editors’ pet peeves and will help your reader continue moving forward.

Inkpot wishes you good editing.

Gratitude

I’m grateful for my sisters…who have helped me never give up. Today I review my submission spread sheets - those that query agents and publishers, those that approach directors and producers, and those that offer fiction and nonfiction to magazines. I find 200 + entries detailing what I sent, why I chose to send to that person, and when I can expect to hear back.

Occassionally good news arrives. I record acceptances and requests for fulls, etc. More often my work is praised but not a fit, close but not there, doesn't fit with the exact needs at this time...Writers know this drill.

The one change I’ve recently made to my attitude about it was inspired by Sister Folio. Instead of typing in Rejected … I now type Declined . Feels less permanent, less personal, less negative. I’m grateful after all these years that I’ve finally learned to be kinder to myself in this small way.

My sisters inspire me every day. In uncountable ways.

Someday I’ll be published to a wide audience and I’ll be able to use these spread sheets to demonstrate to other aspiring writers that it takes hard and focused work and unending perseverance. I am grateful for my gifts. That includes the small ones and the greatest ones: Folio, Nib, and Storm Petrel.

Love and gratitude spilling from the Inkpot.

The magical fellowship of writers

The Sisters of the Quill share the magical fellowship of writers. We’ve been knit together by more than a decade of shared writing and experience and friendship into a tight and beautiful weave. A special atmosphere descends on our group, wherever and whenever we meet, a sacred trust. When we’re together and writing, or even talking about writing, all things seem possible. A writing fellowship feels a little like walking into church: the moment you enter, you see only the purest and best intentions of your fellows. Together you are free, emboldened and strengthened to strive wholeheartedly toward the goal.

This miracle repeats itself to some degree at every writing conference, be it Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers or Pikes Peak. It’s wondrously present in every workshop at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. One summer my mother, daughters and I had the unbeatable experience of feeling it together. Miraculously, it eliminated our generational differences and reduced us to a common denominator: we were writers.

Once I had a remarkable experience with complete strangers that seems to confirm we writers share a certain understanding. It was an Algonkian Pitch Conference at a place called the Roundhouse in Western Massachusetts. Three stories high, this teepee-shaped log building had “niches” instead of beds; we crawled into them like squirrels into treeholes. Isolated together in remotest countryside, sock- or slipper-footed by house rules with the owner’s new puppies frolicking at our feet, we had entered a magical kingdom. It even snowed.

On a surface level, we completed writing assignments and honed our novel pitches to present them to top agents on the last day. But it was like a sauce at a great French restaurant: magically more than the sum of its parts. I’ll never be sure what added the crackle of energy to the air. No doubt many elements contributed, including the setting and our shared intense motivation. Some of it was brilliant organizer Michael Neff’s expertise in teaching and facilitating, and his own extraordinary passion for helping us get our novels published. The poetry group sharing the facility also added to the feeling of intense creative stimulation. But over the course of two or three days our disparate group of a dozen or so novelists—doctors, secretaries, stay-at-home moms, executives, full-time intellectuals, and a retired military officer—became connected spirit to spirit.

Miraculously, we could only see the best in one another. We genuinely cared as much for one another’s novels as for ourselves. It seemed we all felt the magic and understood this was a moment set apart in time. Though we would compete for the agents’ nod on the last day, there was not the least hint of competitiveness. If most of us had completed our writing exercises and honed our pitch for the day, but one writer was still struggling at midnight, we all stayed up to brainstorm. (I think the poets were up all night, every night.) We felt a strange sort of high, though no substances were involved. It was the pure joy of being constantly inundated in one another’s most focused creativity, the best we had to give. There was no attitude separating literary and commercial writers; we were writers, and that was all.

Writers, I cherish our mysterious and precious fellowship.

- Storm Petrel