NaNoWriMo is finished, but you aren’t. This four-part series covers what you need to do next. The first blog tackled the initial steps of revision. The second focused on editing on a larger scale. Now we’re going small, moving on to the sentence level.
Sentence Level:
There are a host of elements to check at the sentence level.
POV
If you aren’t careful, it’s easy to switch POV in the middle of a paragraph or sentence. It happens easily. One moment you’re writing from your main character’s point of view and the next you mention something only an omniscient narrator would know or, worse, you jump heads and speak from another character’s point of view and then pop back. Read your story with POV in mind. Mark whenever you change POV and decide whether it works to enhance the story or diminishes it. If you do change POV, is it clear to the reader? Is it happening at the end of a chapter or section? Help your readers keep track of who’s head they are in.
Tenses
This is another remarkably easy thing to mess up. If you are writing in simple past, make sure to stick to that tense. Don’t mix in present or future. Watch tense changes both at the macro and micro level. There are times when tense changes make sense. Mark when it happens in your work and decide whether it suits or if it is a mistake.
Grammar
At the sentence level, look for run on, clunky or poorly written sentences, While you’re at it, look for never-ending paragraphs. Evaluate each sentence for ways to make it stronger and clearer. Pull out your grammar books, consult Grammar Girl, do what you must to clean up grammar issues. When in doubt, look it up. Same holds true for spelling too. Don’t rely on spellcheck alone.
Seek Out Weasel Words
Eliminate all useless words used for filler. Weasel words are vague and do nothing to enhance the writing. They can obscure your meaning and confuse your reader. At the least, they indicate lazy writing. Leave them out.
Find and Change the Top 10 Words
This might sound like strange advice, but all writers have their go-to words. They are the words or phrases they use too often. Seek them out and find alternatives. You don’t want to bore your readers by saying the same line of dialogue every two minutes. Some writing programs, like Scrivener, list your word frequency and allow you to search for each use. Consider each sentence and use to see if there is a stronger word to use. If the word is a weasel word (mentioned in the previous entry), eliminate it and move on.
Find and Eliminate Filter Words
Filter words serve no purpose except to distance your reader from your narrator. Filters words describe what your character is doing when no description is necessary. For example:
She watched Harry cross the room.
He smelled the skunk before he saw him.
She felt cold and rubbed her arms.
Each of these examples would be stronger without the filter words watched, smelled and felt.
Harry crossed the room.
The skunk’s smell hit them before his striped back and tail popped out from behind the bush.
She shivered and rubbed her arms.
Eliminate Big Words
Before you start yelling, let me finish. Eliminate big words when there is no reason for them. If there is a simpler way to say something, use that instead. Big words for the sake of being big can make your writing appear stilted or pompous or even supercilious (see? I could have said forced or self-important and it would have read better).
Eliminate Redundancies
Look for unintended duplications—those double words your fingers created when your mind was full of words desperate to find the page. It it. You you. We’ve all seen them in published books. But look for redundancies in ideas too. If you have covered a topic already, there’s no reason to hit your reader over the head with it. (Yep, eliminate those clichés too.)
Remove Most Uses of the Word That
The word “that” is not necessary in most cases. Try eliminating it whenever you see it pop up. If the sentence still works, move on. There are instances where “that” is important. Keep those. If the sentence doesn’t make sense without it, that’s a clue to keep it. (See what I did there?)
Remove Extra Spaces and Weird Formatting Issues
The days of needing a double space behind a period are gone. Kerning is embedded in word processing programs these days. You don’t need to help it out. All you are doing with those extra spaces is making work for some poor editor or proofreader down the road. Kill all weird formatting issues and extra spaces.
Look for Telling and Showing in Your Writing
Despite the “Show, don’t tell” rule, there are times when telling fits. Mark when you switch to telling and decide whether the sentence would read better if it was switched to showing instead. Only use telling when it serves your story better than showing.
Avoid the Negative
Don’t tell your reader what is not happening, unless there is a clear reason to do so. It is better to focus on showing what is. The only reason to bring up what is not happening is for the purpose of contrast. Use this technique sparingly. It can be effective in small doses.
Pay Attention to Your Adjectives
I am not a writer who wants you to seek out and destroy all adjectives in your writing, but I do agree there are often better words to use that eliminate the need for them. Pay attention to when you use them and look for alternatives. If none exist, move on, but be aware of how you use adjectives and pare back as much as possible.
Pare Down Stage Direction Too
There are better ways to describe your characters moving within the scene than by using stage directions. He walked across the room. She picked up the phone. Look for more imaginative ways to convey the same action. These two examples tell your reader what is happening instead of showing him stomping out of the room or her pulling back from the ringing phone and the conversation about to happen. Rewrite stage directions into action.
Change Clichés
Clichés are those overused phrases we all know. Her lips were red as a rose. He was quaking like a leaf. Opposites attract. Don’t rely on clichés to paint a picture for your reader. It’s trite and makes for a weak reading experience. Rewrite them. Also look for cliché situations.
Stop Explaining Everything
Your readers are intelligent people. They can pick up what you’re putting down. (Yes, that’s an intentional cliché.) Give them enough for their imagination to take over and then stop. Move on.
Clean Up Your Attributions
A string of “he said” and “she said” is tiresome, especially when you can change most of those attributions into action. If it’s clear who’s speaking, leave the attribution out altogether. If it’s not, have the character who is speaking do something as they say the line. It could be as simple as, “He did what?” She slammed the door and focused on not dropping the phone.
Add Specifics
Don’t talk about the birds chirping, talk about the harsh call of the blue jay. Instead of saying she pulled up in a red car, say she rolled up in classic Jeep Wrangler with the top down. Pick details that add to and reveal more of your character. Specifics bring your manuscript to life, but only when meaningful.
Beef Up Your Settings
Unless you are one of those authors who excel in setting, you will need to boost your setting description during revision. Add in the five senses. Look at how to describe the setting in a way that reveals how your character feels about the location and the people who inhabit it. Make your setting work for you on a deeper level. Look for opportunities to add depth to your scenes and characters through description.
Spellcheck
This one should be habit, but you’d be surprised how often spelling errors make it through. Always, always, always proof your work. Then run it through spellcheck as a backup measure. You don’t want an agent or editor turning you away because of unnecessary errors.
The next and final installment in this series will focus on general advice for preparing your book, including a section on preparing the manuscript itself.