Happy June!
I’d like to share my TOP TEN WRITING ESSENTIALS list with you. Mainly because, in doing this, maybe I’ll remember to do them myself!
If I were kind, I would give you all ten today, right here in this post, but as I’m feeling like sort of a tease, I will give you only one at a time for the next ten posts.
The upside to this is that I’ll take the time to illustrate memorable stories with messages of utmost importance for each ‘essential’. (Okay… maybe they will just be interesting and helpful.) You may have heard some or all of these before, but you never know what gem you’ll take away from the list this time, so it’s worth a quick look-see. And pay attention…There may be a quiz!
I try to follow these TOP TEN WRITING ESSENTIALS , but sometimes it feels like I’m juggling tenpins. Some drop, some land on my head, others sail effortlessly into beautiful tosses and catches.
In any case…
Here’s NUMBER TEN:
REWRITE, REWRITE, REWRITE!
Writing is at least 50% editing. Don’t be afraid to cut sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and even characters! It may have taken you precious time and effort to create, but if it takes away from your story, just shake it off.
When it comes to physical ‘stuff’, I’m sort of a hord-a-saurus. I have a hard time throwing things out. Same thing with my writing. It’s hard to work diligently on something and then delete it. So instead of trashing it, I just file the unwanted section. I don’t throw it out completely. That helps the pack rat in me to relax. It’s not ‘goodbye’, just a reorganization. I can visit these ‘re-filed’ things anytime I want. Truth is, I never do. But it’s comforting to know I could.
The take-away point here is: ONLY THE VERY BEST SHOULD BE IN YOUR WORK. Be brutal. Your readers deserve and demand it. There are millions of other things they could be reading. Yours must be worthy of their attention.
My critique group friends actually cheered when I removed a character, named BobbyJo, from a story I’d been working on. (Nothing against the name BobbyJo. It’s a great name!) She was stealing the focus away from the main character, and, quite frankly, was annoying the readers. It was liberating when I deleted (or rather ‘re-filed’) her scenes. It was a much stronger story because poor BobbyJo wasn’t in it.
Case and point: I deleted well over 200 words from this post. Now aren’t you glad you didn’t have to read that drivel?
Rewriting is good.
Love your story.
Love your readers.
REWRITE, REWRITE, REWRITE!
Next post… NUMBER NINE…in just a few days…stay tuned!
Please tell a friend to check out this new blog you found!
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Happy reading!
One Response to “TOP TEN WRITING ESSENTIALS: NUMBER TEN (#10)”
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June 6th, 2011 at 8:31 pm
I was glad you got rid of Bobby Jo, she was driving me mad.
I heard pretty much the same thing about editing, except I heard it was like 90% edit/rewriting, but I can’t say for sure since I haven’t finished writing my book yet. Although in Kevin’s case, that percentage would be too high, I don’t think he needs too much rewrite.
I like your 10 list so far, I’m excited the see rest.