Self-Editing for Fiction Writers – 5 Tips to Instantly Improve Your Fiction
Sometimes learning just a few more “tricks of the trade” can take your writing to a higher level.
Try these five easy tips to instantly improve your fiction.
Some of these will work for nonfiction, too.
1. Weed out modifiers.
Use strong verbs instead.
Modifiers are words like – very, much, fairly, really, just, so, some.
Don’t write “Jane ran very quickly to the store,” when you can write, “Jane raced to the store.”
Don’t write “Mark spoke very quietly to his brother,” when you can write “Mark whispered to his brother.”
Use strong verbs and you won’t need modifiers.
2. Look for compound verbs that tend to slow down the action and distance the reader from what is happening.
Change these compound verbs to simple verbs.
Here are some examples:
Mary HAD BEEN CLIMBING the tree.
Mary CLIMBED the tree.
John BEGAN TO SHOUT at me.
John SHOUTED at me.
Every day Jenny WOULD WASH her hair.
Jenny WASHED her hair daily.
Sandy STARTED TO SMILE.
Sandy SMILED.
3. Raise the stakes for your point-of-view character.
If your story seems to be lacking dramatic tension and rising action, that’s usually because things aren’t difficult enough for your main character.
Raise the stakes by making it more difficult for him to attain his goal, and give him more to lose if he fails to attain it.
You can also create a greater sense of urgency, and therefore more dramatic tension, by creating a tight deadline for your main character.
If he needs to raise some money for a big business deal, for example, give him just three days to get the money before the deal is no longer available.
4. Limit the number of sentences that begin with a participle phrase (a participle phrase contains a verb that ends in the letters -ing).
Here are a couple of sentences that begin with a participle phrase:
SKIPPING THROUGH THE FOREST, she found her brother.
RUNNING FOR COVER, he took a dive into the grass.
There isn’t anything wrong with using a participle phrase to begin a sentence.
But beginning writers tend to overuse them.
Look back over your story. If more than two or three sentences begin with a participle phrase, delete all but two of them.
5. Avoid over describing actions or characters in dialogue tags.
Dialogue tags are used to let the reader know who is speaking.
These tags can also include a short description of what the character is doing as he speaks.
But be careful.
Don’t overload the descriptive part of the tag.
Your writing will be stronger if you use short tags and describe what the speaker is doing in a separate sentence.
Here is dialogue with an overworked tag:
“Hand me that money,” John said angrily to Mary as she pulled a five dollar bill out of her purse and held it in front of him.
Here is a shorter, stronger tag with the description written in a separate sentence:
“Give me that!” John demanded. He snatched a five dollar bill from Mary’s hand.
Each time you write a story, go back over it with these five tips in mind and make any necessary changes.
If you do, you’ll instantly improve your fiction.
Try it!
Get more self-editing tips here!
Here’s another helpful resource: Self-Editing for Fiction Writers
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