New Writers Boo Boos

At times I wonder how many band-aids it would take to cover one writer with all the writing boo boos he or she makes. An odd visual, but clearly a funny picture to visualize. As an editor I do have a few of these boo boos to mention and beware of when drafting your manuscript:

Passive Voice and Stuff

The only thing passive voice successfully does is to remove a reader’s connection to the storyline and/or the character. A writer cannot eliminate passive voice entirely, but a good proportion of it. Delete ‘was’ for one thing from your sentences. Yes, it takes time to reword sentences, but in the long run you will build stronger sentences with more clarity and visualization.

Choosing the right words to paint a picture is another area to improve your writing. For instance, and I’ve used this example hundreds of times:

A dog ran after him
A Doberman ran after him.

The first doesn’t give the full scope of the ‘fear factor’ in the person running. Replace ‘dog’ with ‘Doberman’ and now a visual of the ferocious animal chasing this person becomes clearer. (Apologies to all the Doberman owners for using them as an example.)

‘Walk’ is another word I find quite often in manuscripts I edit. Depending on the character’s situation, ‘walk’ doesn’t always give you the right picture to fit the situation at the moment. Someone who is being chased won’t ‘walk fast’ – first off you’re using two words where ‘ran’ tells the same thing. So choosing the right words to give a better image is one important step editors look at while going over your manuscript.

Another area some writers are weak in is…here, let’s see if you can guess:

“Hey, what’s up?”
“Nothing, what’s up with you?”
“Nothing, same old thing just a different day.”
“What’s in the plans for today?”
“What do you want to do?”
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…

Yep, you guessed it – DIALOGUE. Although we actually do have conversations like the example above, in fiction it’s boring, tearfully boring. More than that, it doesn’t move the plot forward. We break up narrative passages and use dialogue to reveal something in the character’s personality, their actions and reactions to situations, to reveal part of the plot or inner/exterior conflicts. Place the above dialogue in your book and not only will the reader put it down you risk them tearing up the pages for toilet paper. Okay, bit of an exaggeration but you get my drift. Remove idle chit-chat – no room for it in any manuscript.

YOUR TURN: What other areas have you discovered over the several drafts you've edited that made your manuscript read 'dull'?