More Favorite Things

No, this is not another rant about agents. These favorite things are mine and mine alone, although all writers have them. I’m talking about over used words, phrases, and constructions. Everyone is guilty.

I’m back into editing that last novel. It’s not my fault. See, there were all those holidays. I started another book. And I had some other money making work to do. All big fat juicy excuses. So now here I am again.

In a nutshell here is my editing process. I first read it over for big hunks: obvious mistakes, errors in continuity, dumb conversations, unneeded paragraphs, additions that perhaps were in my head but never made it to the page. Then I read it again for grammar, spelling (no, spell check doesn’t get them all), and punctuation.

Then comes my absolute favorite part, searching for overuse. I begin with what every author should look for, such as “to be” verbs. Sometimes was is just a was as Freud would say, but often you could use a more interesting verb. But you can’t go too crazy, especially with conversations or if you are writing in first person. No one says “I ambled to the grocery store.” Another look-see for any writer is too many descriptors. For example, sometimes “slightly” is needed, such as “she turned her head slightly and at that moment I knew a gun was in her pocket,” but most times you can safely eliminate those sorts of adjectives.

So I do that. Then I come to my personal favorites. Because I use first person a lot, I’m especially fond of human action words instead of conversations: smiled, nodded, frowned, bit her lip, shrugged, crossed arms, and the like are all overused by yours truly. A sprinkling of them, fine, but when my characters are constantly head bobbing and crossing and uncrossing their arms it can be distracting, not to mention messy from all those bitten lips. So I search for those. Sometimes a nod conveys so much; too embarrassed or overcome to speak, or simply the natural flow of conversation. We humans use lots of non verbal communication. However…I’ve noticed that sometimes a nod is a lazy way out when a conversation would have worked much better.

And after all of that I get to look for my favorite punctuations and sentence constructions, because I have them too. Sigh. It’s hard work, but very necessary. Favorite words and sentences take your readers out of the story.

And so contemplating the above paragraphs, your heroine bit her lip, slightly stretched, and got back to work. She frowned. Editing was not fun. But necessary. She smiled and nodded to herself. Soon the book would be finished...