Make it Sparkle! Seven Steps to Polish Your
Work
By Maggie Toussaint
The big day finally arrives. You type “The
End” on your work-in-progress. Take the time to celebrate that success. Many
people talk about writing a book, but few persevere. So, go ahead and enjoy
that feeling of accomplishment.
Then roll up your sleeves because it’s time
to get back to work. Writing that first draft is only the beginning of having a
publishable manuscript. To polish your piece you must look at your work objectively.
This may sound daunting for a novel-length manuscript but breaking the analysis
into smaller sections works well.
1. STORY MOVEMENT. Whether you review one
chapter or multiple chapters at a time, the first element to check for is story
movement. In romance novels, both the hero and the heroine need to have goals,
motivation, and conflict, and these should be internal and external. Make sure
the characters change and grow as a result of the plot events. Fine-tune the
pacing and heighten the tension.
2. STORY LOGIC. After you smooth out movement
inconsistencies, examine your story logic within each scene. Verify that the
events you’ve written about make sense. Can your hero really catch a galloping
horse when he’s on foot? Did the objects in the scene stay put or move about as
you wanted them to? Is your heroine furious about being slighted or is she
merely irritated?
3. SETTING. A mistake many beginning
writers make is in impersonally describing the setting. Instead, have your POV
character react to the setting. Let the wind blow through her hair and the
giant raindrops pelt against her skin. Write your setting as a sensory
experience and you will hook your reader.
4. NARRATIVE. Writers want to tell all, to
let readers see how intimately we know our characters. But narrative can be
overdone. Take a harsh look at your narrative passages. Is there anything that
can be moved into dialogue and action? Can your narrative sections be condensed?
Make it so. Study published books in your target market. If the balance of
narrative-to-dialogue in your book isn’t the same, make those adjustments.
5. DIALOGUE. Your dialogue should reflect
the essence of your characters. It should flow naturally without sounding
stilted. A good way to check for this is to highlight the dialogue and only
read the highlighted text out loud. To ensure you have a distinct voice for
each character, you may choose to read one character’s dialogue at a time. Use
dialect sparingly.
6. SHOWING. How many times have you heard
“show don’t tell?” Incorporate sensory responses to the setting and emotional
responses to events in an action-reaction pattern, and you won’t hear that
criticism again.
7. WORDSMITHING. Lastly, word choice
matters. Get rid of filler words like felt, seemed, just, and really. Cull
overused –ly words. Use the “Find” feature of your word processing software to
locate the useless words and eliminate them. Incorporate action verbs for weaker
verbs. Every “was” that you can change into an active verb will add to the
immediacy of your story. Check for overused character tags. If you have the
hero’s eyebrows waggling on pages 1,3 and 5, we’re going to think he’s Groucho
Marx. Vary what you say and how you say it.
If you polish your work, it will sparkle
with freshness and originality. Your voice will ring true in that elusive
editorial ear. Take the time to improve that first draft. It will be time well
spent.
--
MURDER
IN THE BUFF
By Maggie Toussaint
Blackmail photographs of Molly’s father and
several town leaders cavorting with a nudist have a new meaning when the woman
is murdered. Reporter Molly Darter is on the case, trying to save her dad and
rebuild her life after she caught her husband kissing her sister.
The
digital mystery is available now!
Buy it here:
A
scientist by training, a romanticist at heart, Maggie Toussaint loves to solve
puzzles. She writes cozy mystery and romantic suspense books, one of which won
Best Romantic Suspense in the 2007 National Readers Choice Awards. She has four
published romantic supsense books and four mysteries, including her campy cozy
from Muse It Up Publishing, MURDER IN THE BUFF. Visit her at www.maggietoussaint.com and http://mudpiesandmagnolias.blogspot.com/
.
2 comments:
Thanks for the great advice! A search and find is definitely in my immediate future. :)
Excellent. Every writer should have this. Thanks, Maggie!
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