Linda Maye Adams's Blog

The Art of Writing When Everything Feels Broken

Our world is in chaos. Two diplomats were shot to death in downtown DC. Violent protests, constant disruption. The air itself feels heavy with uncertainty. For creatives, this chaos can be suffocating. Writing—once an escape, a passion—now feels like an uphill battle against distraction and mental exhaustion.

I’ve struggled with writer’s block over the years, but this has been different. It’s the sheer volume of noise. Not the physical noise, but the noise from anger and fear.

Creativity thrives in safety, but how do you find safety when everything around you feels like a rope bridge on a windy day?

Over the past year, I’ve had to learn how to write despite the chaos, not wait for it to pass. I’ve had to redefine definitions of productivity and rethink my writing process. I’ve also had to discover how to nurture my creativity when it feels impossible. This cannot be about forcing words onto the page—it’s about survival as a creator.

I hate the discussion on writer’s block because it’s often presented as “your fault.” You let the inner critic dictate to you. You should be able to come up with ideas. You should be able to type the first word and everything flows out.

No one teaches you how to be creative in a chaotic environment like this. No one teaches you how to coax your creativity to bloom like rose-pink primrose. In some situations like a big life event, you must stop until the situation passes; in others, it’s not changing soon, so you adapt.

So I’ve been learning as I go along.

Managing External Chaos

A lot of chaos comes from external sources. Activists are noisy and aggressive on social media. They live and breathe screaming, “The sky is falling” every minute they can. Unfollow them. You can tell who they are because this is all they talk about, and they also insult the other side. There is absolutely no sense in having all this toxicity right in your face. Better to look at cute Jack Russell terrier pictures (and once you do, the algorithm gives you more. Win-win.).

Adapting to Chaos without losing yourself

There’s a temptation to want to plow ahead and ignore the problems. I’ve been guilty of this, adapting to the problem, then the next problem and then next. Suddenly everything stops working. You must step back, thinking through what your options are, and try them out. This is also likely to be dynamic because the outside world keeps shifting, along with your reactions.

Reimagine Productivity

The writing community has a history of encouraging extreme productivity levels. Writers discuss production goals or streaks to keep the pace, some using dictation to produce even more. We tracked and measured. But we’re not computers cycling to another algorithm. Creativity needs to be treated gently, like yellow Black-Eyed Susan flowers growing, not like a machine that runs non-stop.

This one’s been the hardest for me because of the culture in writing. I cringed every time I caught sight of the word count tracker (placed by the tool so I would always see it), advertising my lack of progress. There’s been some push back with “slow productivity” discussions, but that’s often framed as if writing fast means the book is garbage. Sorry, but you can’t insult people to prove your point.

Reframing Writing Goals

Pairing with the productivity culture, writers also are encouraged to have word count goals or finishing a book within a specified time frame, such as a novel every six weeks. I was always terrible with word count goals; they seemed more of a way to make you feel guilty for not getting enough done. But I had to rethink the actual project I was working on. Did I need to work on a novel now? A novel is a big project. Even if I broke it down into scenes or chapters, it’s still a big project. So I decided to work on short stories for now.

This might not be an easy decision. A little voice in the back of my mind nags, saying, “But you’re not finishing the novel.” That’s the productivity writing culture talking. Sometimes the muse needs an entirely different direction. Soil needs crop rotation to stay healthy. Why not the muse?

Use Creativity Shortcuts

This pairs with writing short stories. Use the shortcut so you’re not starting from scratch. Essentially, you’re letting something else do the heavy lifting in one place for your muse.

Look for anthology calls on specific topics. The anthology is giving you a starting place for your muse to work with.Use an existing series and characters for the story. Since you’re doing this, you’re not inventing a character from scratch. Nor are you having to hunt down names, which is always a pain to do.Use an existing world for the setting. If you’re writing a story with a urban setting, use the place you live.Add Thinking Time

This is another idea that gets lost in the productivity culture. Productivity is about producing the next word, because that can be measured. Thinking can’t. Thinking is every bit as valuable a tool as the keyboard. It gives your muse time to water and feed the ideas.

Now the controversial one…

Use Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Writers demonize AI. But it’s a tool that’s not going away. It’s up to you how you use it. Yes, some people feed it an idea and some details and generate a complete story. But that’s not the only use.

You can use it to come up with ideas.

Non-writers think of writing as 1) Come up with a fantastic idea 2) Somehow that turns into a bestselling story. Whereas that first idea gets the story started, and then your muse has many, many more during the writing. That fun rabbit trail? An idea. That new direction for the character? An idea. A backstory for the antagonist? An idea.

AI helps with that. Not create the ideas for you, but be a partner in the writing. AI can help you brainstorm the ideas, but you are the one who decides what idea to use, what parts not use, and what direction to take it. You may even look at what AI gives you and decide, “Naw,” and then your muse pops up with one because AI gave it a nudge.

I started using an AI fiction tool after I attended an AI presentation at a writing conference. The results you get depend on what you put into it. If you plug in a general idea like “Generate a story about a murder in a restaurant. Main character female, a restaurant owner”–you’ll get generic results. If you plug in your series character name and background, genre, add the world building setting, and the subject prompt from the call, the results are much more interesting.

I did this with a science fiction story I wrote, specifying also that it could be on a planet or a space station. The ideas I received were all stellar enough for a novel. I still spent several weeks thinking about what I wanted to use and how. I didn’t use the exact idea; the AI simply gave me a starting point, and a helpful hand–one of the anthology requirement topics was not a strong point for me.

After that, I used it throughout the writing process. My primary use was every time I got stuck. Sometimes I got stuck with the five senses. Though I was told this skill would improve in time, I get stuck a lot here. Most of the time, I just needed the suggestions to jar me out of it. But I was also surprised at how often I got stuck–about every 200 words. Can you imagine trying to write in a chaotic environment when you frequently get stuck?

The story still took a lot of time to write. A writer said it took them a month to write a short story and another saying, “What took you so long?” I started this story in February and finished it in April. As I got into April, I was concerned about meeting the anthology deadline. I had to remind myself that missing didn’t matter; there were other places I could send it. I did finish it in time and am working on two more with the expectation I might not finish those in time.

Dealing with chaos and creativity is very much of a learning process. It isn’t about mastering the perfect system—it’s about learning what works for you and to keep evolving your process. Your stories may take longer to write and the muse may need extra nurturing. But writing, like survival, is about persistence. It’s about finding ways to move forward, even when the world feels mired in mud.

Tracking Backstory in NCIS

DC is one big party right as we roll into Monday. Last night in Sterling (about 30 minutes from me), there was a big firework show. Today, people are braving the poor weather…still rain, and a messy rain for a rally at the Capitol Arena and peacocking for the inaugural balls. Snow is coming as the afternoon temperatures drop,

For all that everyone is complaining about the change of the inauguration to indoors…well, you have to be here. Washington DC will be 14 degrees tomorrow. That doesn’t include windchill, which is supposed to put it in the single digits. Brr!

(I’m about 15 minutes away from downtown. As odd it sounds, because of landscape, DC is lot colder than my area, which will be 25. I looked up my work location, and that’s 38…all on the same day, and within 20 miles).

After I wrote my post about backstory, I thought about doing one on NCIS. It has such amazing backstory about Gibbs and most of the other characters (the men are developed better than the women). So I picked an episode that was airing and monitored only for Gibbs backstory.

The episode: Ravenous, Season 3, Episode 13.

Dog tags are are found in bear scat in the Shenandoah National Forest (for the record, we do have bears in Shenandoah, but that area is more rugged. They likely shot it somewhere in California.).

When I first saw this storyline, I thought they weren’t going to do a lot of backstory. It wasn’t focused around a Gibbs backstory storyline.

I was wrong. This is all the backstory that got mentioned, and this is just Gibbs.

Sniper: Gibbs was a sniper when he was in the military. He follows a track through the woods, noting that the killer used sniper techniques (actually hunting techniques, but sniper is an incorrect conclusion his backstory would provide),
Gibbs’ Rules: Tony and Ziva discuss Rule 8. The Rules were mentioned in the first episode, and it’s until Season 6 that the viewer finds out the origin of the rules.
Gibbs’ Wives: Abby is very upset that Gibbs appears to have forgotten her birthday. She’s frosty, explaining contraception to Gibbs, and he says, “I had a few wives.” (I think at this point in the series, everyone still thinks there were three wives, not four).
Marine Corps: Gibbs was a gunnery sergeant in the Marine Corps. A suspect in interrogation identifies Gibbs as having been in the Marines, because the suspect’s father was in the Marines. Later in the scene, the suspect calls Gibbs “Mr. Marine.” All this is opinion, since the suspect hadn’t liked the way his father treated him.
Sniper: Abby confronts Gibbs about forgetting her birthday. He tells he didn’t; he left her gift in her desk. But she’s been there all day and she never saw him. She looks, and yes, the gift is there. He sneaked past her. Gibbs sneaking up on people is used in nearly every episode (usually when someone doesn’t want him to overhear what they’re saying).
Sniper/Marine Corps: Gibbs uses his tracking skills to track a suspect through the woods. From other episodes, Gibbs does what the military calls “Land Navigation,” which uses the terrain to navigate.
Marine Corps: This one is probably a little more personal knowledge since I was in the military. After the ranger shoots the suspect, Gibbs barks out orders to his team. It’s a little bit louder than someone not in the military would speak, and it’s also more direct, also a Marine trait.
Marine Corps: Tony and McGee are carrying the injured suspect, and the ranger is walking with them. Suddenly the ranger attacks; he and Gibbs fight on the ground, down and dirty. Tony and McGee wrestle with dropping the injured man, but debate letting Gibbs handle it. Because it’s Marine thing. When I was in the military, we heard, “If a Marine can’t stir up trouble, there’s no trouble worth stirring up.”
Sniper: The ranger abandons his rifle with a scope and runs. Gibbs rolls over, grabs the rifle, sights, and shoots. He hits a running man in the backside.

What amazed me was how seamlessly this backstory was integrated into the main story. It was simply a natural part of the story. Each one, also, was a tag (a shortcut) to identify the character for the viewer.

Yet, many writers are taught to focus on plot as the big thing, and characters as a separate entity. They should both be tightly woven together so that if you tried to extract the character and his backstory, it would significantly diminish the story, or even break it.

When building the plot, think about how your character’s backstory relates to it. Weaving the backstory into the plot can make your story stand out.

Injecting Backstory into your Book (without ejecting the reader)

We are obviously losing writing knowledge. Influencer-writers cater to people writing their first novel, boiling down everything into step-by-step instructions. There’s little, actually, in fiction writing that’s step-by-step. At least if you want to be published, or keep readers.

Nora Roberts wrote on the value of reading and how it connects people. But to do that kind of book, many writers have to stop swimming in the shallow end of step-by-step instructions. So for 2025, I’m going to add topics about how to write, but these are for intermediate to advanced writer. We’ll see how it goes.

Onto today’s topic.

One of the first pieces of writing advice I received is “Delete your first 50 pages.” The writer assumed you would spend those pages mired in explaining the backstory of the characters.

The problem? Backstory is hard.

You have all these things you think the reader needs to know about the character. How do you add them? Where do you add them? How much? Summarize what the reader needs to know, then move onto the plot? Do a flashback to show a scene in the character’s past about that important relationship breakup? Try a dream sequence that’s like the flashback? Have two characters discuss what they should already know? (Known as “As you know, Bob.”) Write a prologue?

Yeah, backstory is hard.

Another issue is what Dean Wesley Smith calls “Being born on page one.” (1). There is no sense the character exists before the story starts. This is frustrating for readers; it makes it impossible for them to connect with the characters. Since readers read for characters and you have no story without characters, this is big problem.

My first novel was an amnesia story–the ultimate born on page one. I thought it would be easier to develop the character. Nope.

Check the box backstory doesn’t work very well, either. You’ve probably seen that in your reading. There’s a bit of backstory essential to the story, so we get a sentence or two…and that’s in, in an entire book.

Backstory is hard because it’s so important to the character and the story.

What is backstory?

Backstory is kind of complicated. Depending on your story, it can be many things. K.M Weiland has the basic definition of “whatever comes before the main story.” (2)

If you’re doing an epic fantasy, backstory might be a world-related event, such as a king ascending a throne. In science fiction, it might be a war that changed the political landscape to what it is in the story. A historical novel would feature the historical event.

However, most writers think of it has what happened in the character’s past. We’ll use that, since it applies to all genres.

Backstory makes the characters feel real to the reader.(3) It should be any of the following:

Memories. These don’t need to be over the top, or even related to the plot. A character goes to the beach and their feet sink into the sand, bringing up the memory of doing this as a child. That tells the reader the character may have grown up in an area with beaches.
Experiences. This is a wide area–literally can be anything. Character grew up in a divorced household and fears relationships; character was in the military and learned how to fire a gun; character was raised on California. Doesn’t have to be one event. Can be an accumulation of little events that affects who they are. Nor does it need to be a dramatic, big event. Depends on the writer, and the story.
Family, friends of the past. Never know when an old boyfriend or a long lost relative might come in handy. How many detective stories have been told with a character from the past coming for help?

These elements should form the character’s opinions and judgements of the world. These opinions are what makes the story unique and holds the reader. Writer’s Digest says backstory “It might well be the most important part of your characterization.” (4)

Backstory gives you a tapestry to work with throughout your entire book. It can also be applied to all characters, including sidekicks, supporting characters, and opposing characters.

Should you use character questionnaires, biographies, or interviews?

Sometimes it’s darn hard to come up with what you need for backstory. So many writers advise using their method, providing templates like this one from Reedsy.

First, these are tools. If it works for you, go for it. If it doesn’t work, pass on it. Too many writer-influencers state “This the only way to do X” so they can sell you something.

Avoid templates from someone else. Yes, they have the impression of ease. You copy the template, paste into Word, then fill it in. Except that those items in the template are what that other writer needed to write. You might not need those same things.

Example:

Writer A: High in context on the Clifton strengths. The writer needs a profile of some kind to work out the character.
Writer B: A discovery writer who does better discovering the character as the story progresses. A character biography might spoil the joy of discovery.
Writer C: One way works fine, and then on a new book project, the writer needs to try a different option.

There’s no one way to do this. Come up with your own method. How you do it can change as well. You’re not going to get it wrong because *it’s what you need.

I typically let first contact with story create backstory, then do moving edits as the story and characters develop. But after reading an article by Phyllis A. Whitney (5), I needed thinking time about one character. She said to create biographies for all the characters, including dead characters. I realized immediately there was one character who never appears in story but was the catalyst for the events that happened. And I didn’t know anything about him except his name (oops).

So I wrote out random thoughts about who he was. I had a difficult time deciding anything about him. His role was political, but I found that he was getting polluted by the real life politics. So I decided to take him out and made him an unknown adversary (I suppose that’s another variation of born on page one). That exposed I was missing another event. But without a real person behind it, there was no motivation for the main character.

So I went back to more thinking. Gave the character a mentor who had poisoned him…and the mentor became the character mentioned in the story. I won’t refer to anything in my thinking notes because now I don’t need to.

Use the tools; don’t let the tools use you.

How much backstory goes into the first chapter?

Much of the advice about backstory is maddeningly vague. How much do you put in? How much is too much? How do you write it?

The problem is that it depends. This is why backstory is so hard.

But it’s clear that dumping it all into a prologue to “get it out of the way” or starting with a flashback in your opening chapter is not the answer.

This method was recommended by J. Scott Savage in an online writing class. If you have a chance to attend one, do it. His classes are very good and not wedded to specific tools or writing processes.

He proposes you ask ten questions about your beginning that the reader needs to know. Our tendency for backstory is that the reader needs to know all the backstory as it affects the entire book. Ten questions puts a magnifying glass on identifying exactly what you need for the beginning of the story.

Some of the questions will go to setting, as well as the story.

Example:

How do I show my character is a criminal defense lawyer?

From Michael Connelly’s book Gods of Guilt: Mickey, the main character, is in a court room actively defending a client who is a criminal.

Or take NCIS, which has an incredibly rich backstory for Gibbs that emerges over the first 6 seasons.

The fun of backstory is the reader discovering new pieces and wondering about them. You can see that across NCIS’s first six seasons. We find out:

He has rules her follows, known as Gibbs’ Rules–and no one knows where they came from (the viewer finds out and the characters never do).He was a sniper in the Marines (that was part of a storyline)His first wife and daughter were murdered by a drug dealer (an overarching season storyline)And a friendship was jeopardized because he lied to Ducky about having one more wife.

Yet–and this is for series writers–even after the 6th season wrapped, that backstory still came back in different ways.

This takes some thinking on your part. How do you involve it directly in a scene? How much do you include? Think of adding it how you would see it on TV. TV is limited to dialogue and what you see on the screen. You don’t have the ability to drop a paragraph of summary.

Ideally, you want backstory pieces that do double duty. They are both the history of the character, but they are part of the what is happening directly in the scene.

With each scene following, look for other opportunities to add a bit more backstory. In a shapeshifting romance I read, the lead female character was terrified of all relationships. That’s all we were told. Nothing in the narrative when it was her POV, where the reader could get hints even if the other characters. I found it maddening because there was no explanation, no intriguing hints. The author likely kept it a secret as a poor method of suspense. She sprang it fully about halfway. I stopped reading at that point.

Readers want to enjoy your characters and discover who they are as they go along. Use backstory to give them every opportunity.

(1) Smith, Dean Wesley. “Editing and Reading Observations… Part 10…,” Dean Wesley Smith Writings and Opinions. https://deanwesleysmith.com/editing-and-reading-observations-part-10/ February 6, 2024

(2) Weiland, K.M. “A Writer’s Comprehensive Guide to Backstory,” Helping Writers Become Authors https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/guide-to-backstory/ February 19, 2024

(3) Smith, Dean Wesley. Pop-Up #33 The “Born on Page One” Problem. https://wmg-publishing-workshops-and-lectures.teachable.com/courses/ Costs $150, but is worth watching if this is a problem area for you. This also has a small discussion of his signature Depth course.

(4) Kernan, Joanna. “12 Dos and Don’ts of Revealing Critical Backstory in a Novel,” Writer’s Digest https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-fiction/12-dos-and-donts-of-revealing-critical-backstory-in-a-novel May 14, 2022

(5) Whitney, Phyllis A. “Writing the Gothic Mystery,” Writer’s Handbook, edited by S.A. Burack. https://archive.org/details/writershandbooke0000bura Published 1973. (This is an easy article to pass by because the genre no longer exists. But the article has surprisingly still relevant information.)

Predictions of the new writing year

The end of the year is approaching, and we have a lot of disruption coming in the near year. That’ll be particularly true for where I live, near Washington DC. I’ve been seeing disruptions in the book industry in the last year, though they’ve been coming over the last few years. My futuristic is itching to make predictions!

The non-fiction magazine market is likely on its way out

The internet may be driving this change. Why spend $19.99 for a magazine of recipes if you can find an influencer’s site with recipes? I used to subscribe to one on Paleo. It had gluten free recipes (at the time, I had bought into the gluten free movement) and nutrition and health articles. They decided that it was better for the environment to go online. But once they did, they appeared to cut staff and the quality went down. They last a year after that.

The Writer Magazine, which has been around since the 1800s, finally announced they were switching to online. I felt a sense of foreboding when I read that. The site’s still up but hasn’t been touched in almost two years.

The writing magazines never recovered from the internet. Their audience was beginners, and influencers focused on capturing the beginner market. A monthly magazine couldn’t compete with influencers who posted advice every single day. Writer’s Digest is competing with online video courses.

What this means for writers:

The biggest issue is the skills we’re taught as writers. Influencers address complex skills in a 500 word blog post of bulleted lists. Or sell a two hour video on “How to write a novel” (likely teaching their method of outlining). Many influencers proclaim expertise without actually having the knowledge.

I love that indie opened the doors for writers. Publishers moved at a glacial pace to change and was reluctant to risk much of anything for something new. But indie has caused writers to skip some important steps, leading to my next prediction.

The book market is going to compress

I’ve been seeing the changes for this over the last few years. Having a gatekeeper forced people to learn new skills to improve as a writer. It was a joy for me as a reader to find a series where the author kept getting better and better.

I’m not seeing that with indie books. As a reader, it frustrates me. I can’t even trust Book Bub recommendations as much any more.

Jennifer Brinn reported picking up a greyhound mystery (she has two greyhounds and a Corgi) https://jennifer-brinn.com/about-the-author/. The first chapter started with the character dreaming, then waking up and wandering around the bedroom, describing it. Then the character took the greyhound for a walk and described the neighborhood. That would have never gotten past a gatekeeper, but the author indie published it. This kind of thing makes readers not trust writers.

The indie movement has focused nearly entirely on production goals and marketing. I went to my first 20Books conference, and most of the sessions were on writing more or how to game the algorithms. That later shifted to more general marketing, but still worked on production goals. When craft is discussed, it’s usually about selling tools (see my next point).

The result is writers with a hundred or more books that are…well, superficial. I like urban fantasy, but some of the changes are disturbing. I read an urban fantasy that was a romance with a god. There was a meet-cute, but no conflict or suspense to make the romance satisfying. They just met, fell in love, and wandered to the end of the story. No world for the fantasy side. I’m expecting this genre to suddenly stop selling because this is so prevalent.

The authors are learning to write lots of words, but not tell good stories.

What this means for writers:

Don’t put all your eggs in one genre. People tend to do this when they’re successful. If readers suddenly lose interest in a genre–I think this will happen with urban fantasy–then you’re scrambling to find something else, fast. Not a good place to be in.

Work on your writing skills. The areas to focus on:

Suspense. Try the Internet Archive for older books on writing mystery. While this might not be your genre, there is lots of information you’ll be able to use. Suspense has been missing from a lot of the books I’ve been reading.Setting. In most of the books I’m reading, setting is an afterthought. Make deliberate choices about the setting and use it to build your characters. Character emotions. This has also been lacking in many of the books. You need setting to create the emotions. AI and technology is making us stupider

Technology has been coming more and more into writing. Then AI hit. Last time I went to 20Books, there were vendors selling AI tools and apps. Of course, we also have ProWritingAId. When I run a check, I’m always checking ignore because the machine does not know what I am trying to say. If it makes a suggestion that I see as valid, I make my own change, which may not be what the tool suggested.

Yet, I wouldn’t find it hard to believe that writers were simply clicking yes to everything the tool recommends without actually participating. I’m always in a battle with the false audits. The tool tells me I shouldn’t use big and should choose gigantic or enormous instead. These words are NOT interchangeable as the tool suggests. Each has different meaning. Sigh.

In fact, the AI has become intrusive–and that’s just in the grammar checking. The tools suggest it would be so much better if you changed your sentence to this. And it’s a shockingly bland choice. The tools are making us give up our agency.

How many people don’t know how to eat properly because they’ve relied on an app to tell them how to eat?

How many people could navigate if their GPS failed?

How many writers don’t know how to create a story because they’ve allowed AI to plot it for them?

What this means for writers:

The tools become a distraction that consumes time you could spend writing (especially true if you have a day job and write in the evenings). Own your agency and defend it like you’re in a castle with a moat and drawbridge. Big business wants 100% of data.

A lot of disruption is coming.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the disruption, you’re not alone. I’m #4 Adaptability, and Adaptability loves change. Even my Adaptability thinks there’s too much change, and much too fast. Pull back where you can, and remember that you control your own pace, not everything else.

What are your predictions?

Turn Off AI in Microsoft Word

Recently, a writer passed along post that Microsoft had added an unannounced change called “Connected Experiences” that allowed AI to scan your documents. This is likely the post that started it:

The descriptions of what the tool does seem rather…vague. I’m less than warm and fuzzy (an expression from my father) about AI scanning a story I’m writing. At work, a senior manager reported that if you put something in AI, it would absorb that item into its ecosystem. A business book I read stated that the goal of Big Data was to have 100% or nearly 100% of all data.

I suspect Microsoft will get some pushback on it. But you can turn it off. Take it slow. Microsoft pretty well buried it, so you’ll have to look carefully for some of the next steps. (Took me three tries and I wrote this instruction for my future self. Upgrades may turn it back on without telling me.)

Click FILE > OPTIONSOn the left menu, click TRUST CENTER.Click the TRUST CENTER SETTINGS button (it’s not obvious)On the left menu, click PRIVACY OPTIONS, then click the PRIVACY SETTINGS button.Scroll down to Connected Experiences and deselect all the settings.

An Abundance of Editing Tips (Part 1)

Editing tips are often given as a list of ten, with the usual suspects: eliminate adverbs, eliminate passive voice, etc. Writers refer to Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style to use for editing. Not sure how that’s helpful; it’s for non-fiction.

Non-fiction is a different animal than non-fiction. That’s like feeding a dog people food. You won’t get the result you expect, will miss problem areas, and may create other problems.

First, here’s a definition of editing. Trimming words to:

Meet a word count requirementMake the story clearer for the readerUse it to hide other things from the reader in plain sightMake the story betterImprove your writing for the next bookThe Rules

What follows are not black and white rules to follow. Everything is at the writer’s prerogative. You may want to leave extra words to slow the pacing. Or an excited character may blurt out run-on sentences. Or taking out the words changes the meaning of the sentence.

Decide about every single change. AI concerns me because some people let the tool decide. AI does not know what you intended.

Onward!

Things readers can figure out

This comes from J. Scott Savage. I took an online class from him and was surprised how much I learned. I immediately went to my story after the class and found places to edit for this.

We tend to add more detail than the story needs. Some may come from not adding enough detail. Another writer comments on the lack of detail, so we add more. Then we have sentences that don’t add value.

Example:

The commander turned to the three men. “Man the North Fort post. Move out.”

The three men saluted. “Yes, sir.”

Light flashed as they ducked out of the tent flap.

The commander scowled in thought. “We’ll also have to…”

The middle two sentences are probably unnecessary. The commander told them to leave in dialogue, and then the exposition told the reader a second time. If you took out the two sentences, you might have to add another to transition. But the two sentences are 15 words. If you’re cutting for word count, that’s a good chunk that doesn’t involve taking out scenes.

The first time I looked for these, I was surprised at how many there were. Most were single sentences where I’d gone a step too far. I also found that some changes made me clarify what I’d written.

Most notably, AI can’t flag this editing problem. You have to read for content and figure out what the scene needs.

Things you left out

Right along with the above, look for places where you didn’t finish the follow-through. We’re writing and our thoughts are jumping ahead—and then we skip something. We think we put it in there and it’s not.

Example: You have three characters in a scene. One of them vanishes, like Chuck Cunningham on Happy Days. He’s in the scene in the beginning and disappears by the end without leaving the room.

Some will be easy to fix; add an extra sentence, reword an existing sentence, or take out something out. Others are more challenging, like figuring if you needed that character in the scene, or all. If you’re not sure what you need to do, mark it and move on. Give yourself time to think about it.

Tautologies

I first saw this word in Writer’s Digest many years ago. It’s a form or repetition, caused by using two words that mean the same thing. Examples:

Free gift. It’s not hard to find this one. Shows up in every commercial, seems like. When I typed the phrase, ProWritingAid flagged it as redundant.Old and decrepit. From a young adult book I read. PWA flagged this.Three a.m. in the morning. A.M means “before noon,” so it’s morning. PWA didn’t flag this.The crowd gathered close together. The entire sentence states the same thing twice. PWA didn’t flag this one either.

Tautology is a literary device used in poetry with intent. No one addresses it much for fiction, though. TK Publishing has a good discussion along with more example. A good tool to learn because the repetitions are often common use, making them hard to spot.

Repetitions of Information

Repetition is a huge topic, so I’m breaking it down into the biggest one first. I’ve seen a lot of the more common ones, like repeating phrases, repeating words, and repeating pronouns. (I intentionally used a literary device there.) But nothing on information.

Information is anything directly related to the story that you put in more than you should. You might be writing along and realize you need to plant a knife in a scene. So you have your character take it out of the desk. A few paragraphs later, you forget you did that, and you have the character take it out of the desk again. Or it could happen again later in the book.

For these, you look at both repetitions. Is one better for the story than the other? Or do you need to do something different?

When I worked with a cowriter, he flagged an information sentence, stating that something wasn’t right with it. Then he typed another sentence after it that said the same thing, albeit differently. I deleted the old sentence, and he objected because he liked that one, too. That’s a sign that maybe neither is doing the job and more thinking is required.

Information repetition can also show up in descriptions. This issue can be created by tags, which are shortcuts for readers. Like when you read J.D. Robb’s In Death series. Eve Dallas is always described as having a cap of deer hair and cop eyes. That’s a series shortcut for the character, but it doesn’t get repeated later in the story. If you find one of those in your story, it’s an easy cut, though you should revisit the first one and see if it should be updated.

Repetitions of “looked” and other character actions

This type of repetition is pervasive. Characters look at each other, nod (or nod their heads, which is extra words), or shrug (or shrug their shoulders, also extra words).

One time I used Microsoft Word to search to replace look with a highlighted look and was horrified. I had eight on one page! Two instances occurred in the same paragraph.

This is how you run a highlighted search and replace:

On the Home tab, select the highlighter icon, then pick your color. Then click the icon to turn it off.On the Home tab, click on Editing and select Replace.Type your word in both the Find and Replace fields.Make sure you click in the Replace field.Click the Format button and then Highlight. You should see “Highlight” on the replace field.Then run the search.

A handy feature is that Word tells you how many it replaced when it finishes. You might be horrified.

In one book I read, the author was evidently told she used smiled too much. So replaced smiled with smirked. Uh, not the same thing. So not the same thing.

Why do writers have characters looking, nodding, and shrugging?

This shows up because of setting issues:

You haven’t done enough with the setting, so the character has nothing to interact with. The nods and looks show up when you’re trying to avoid talking heads or using dialogue tags.The setting you picked is too generic.  5 Editors Tackle the 12 Fatal Flaws of Fiction Writing noted that a lot of writers used Starbucks for a setting. Starbucks is not an active setting. A couple of small tables and the coffee. So what? Your characters can’t do much more than look and nod.

In The Secrets of Story, Matt Bird suggests picking settings that provide your characters with more opportunities to be active. Like a kitchen.

This part of editing is likely to leave you with more words, but they’ll be better than looking, nodding, shrugging, turning, smiling, etc.

Hopefully this has been of help. I’ll have more in the next installment.

Problems with Using Movies for Fiction Instruction

This topic was inspired by a class I took on Point of View. What caught my interest was “movie POV.” That’s my term, not the instructor’s; if he researched the term, he would have never used it.

Movies examples are frequently used to instruct fiction writers. If it’s a popular film, people are likely to have seen it; not everyone will have read Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, or The Da Vinci Code (all of which have had movies made from them).

But there are problems comparing movies to novels.

Time

Both movies and TV are limited by time. We’ve seen TV shows that ran short and had to fill time. An episode of Charlie’s Angels ran so short they did an encore of a dancing scene, which was exactly the same scene.

Others that run too long are cut to make them fit into the time. It also can:

Leave another scene referencing it hanging.End abruptly, skipping the validation.Diminish fan favorite characters.Drop “unnecessary” scenes that would develop the characters.Flubs in continuity.

Closeups

Movies and TV use a lot of closeups. This makes it easier to trim than a scene with a camera following the actors. This makes it easier for a writer to have “talking heads” in a novel and leave out the setting. You don’t see that much of it in a film with all the closeups!  

Stereotypes

To combat the time constraint, films and TV use stereotypes as a shortcut. You see those so often that you know the guy with the big nose is a villain without the movie or TV show having to tell you. But it leads to unfortunate stereotypes.

Cliches

Hollywood is the land of cliches. They will take one type of story or character and do it to death. The amnesia storyline…the character losing his sight…lead character getting poisoned…

(Says she who started with an amnesia story for a first novel.)

Movie POV

This is a one-dimensional POV because movies only have two forms of exposition: Sight and dialogue.

I’m reading a series now where a character was branded on her palm by her enemy. It’s a brief paragraph in the opening chapters of the series. A film? They’d have to show it happening in a flashback.

Sight can be used for unique aspects of the story. In the behind the scenes for NCIS, the production team discussed making sure viewers instantly got the visual images. You can see that all over the show—pictures of the victims and suspects; maps. In Kill Screen, a computer game is trying to breach the Pentagon’s firewalls. As the characters try to reach the servers, we get a visual “ticking clock.” It’s an image of the Pentagon surrounded by walls, each one disappearing as it’s breached.

That’s a good thing to study and to use it only of the five senses, not just sight. What’s going to get an instant impression?

Where it doesn’t work as well is foreshadowing. In the J.D. Robb books, Eve Dallas gets an inner ping on the villain. It’s subtle, done in the words themselves. So subtle, you don’t notice it and guess immediately the killer’s identity.

But in a film, it’s visual. An actor can show his suspicion of a person he encounters, but paired with closeups, it telegraphs the discovery. That’s probably why the villain is often shown committing the crime (better than the “feet” committing the crime though!).

Dialogue is the other way to convey exposition. This leads to “information dumps.” In one TV series, a character—who would have not needed to ask—said, “I don’t understand this mission. Can you explain it again?” Given it was a military setting, the question would have worked better from two seamen complaining about the mission’s extra work. But it would also have taken more time.

Movies and TV shows can still help with fiction writing. But it should also be paired with understanding of what movies can’t do that books can.

Unexpected Craft Resource

We all know how hard it is finding any information about writing that’s not basic-beginner, or one person’s “one true path” on how to write. So I was surprised when I found something useful at a more advanced level on, of all places, Writer’s Digest.

They have a number of videos for sale, and more importantly, bundles of videos (you want those if you can because you get more videos. If one isn’t useful, you’re likely to find something else that is). Even the bundles are very affordable (at least right now; I’m not sure if this is a sale or not).

The first to check out is World Building Foundations The Art of Restraint is the video I purchased the bundle for. That’s what I’m working on in my writing. The author spends a lot of time describing how George Lucas dealt with the technology in Star Wars, which was pretty interesting. In fact, I’m reading a series that’s followed a lot of the principles he describes.

Digestible World Building suggests certain types of scenes that are shortcuts to building the world. The editor also discusses tags (doesn’t call them tags). The thing that struck me as I watched this one was that without knowing Depth, it would be very hard to implement any of this in a meaningful way. No wonder I had trouble with world building! I was missing the foundation.

The second is Researching Your Fiction or Non-Fiction Book, also another bundle. I have not watched any videos in this yet. Again, a bunch of different videos, including researching to submit stories. I got this because research is always a good topic to learn about, especially when different viewpoints are presented.

Hiding Information in Plain Sight—Not Just For Mysteries

The last few weeks have been pretty crazy. I was supposed to travel to New Orleans for a work thing. Then Debby rolled. My flight was through Charlotte, North Carolina (the other layover location choice being Florida); the second leg was canceled before I left DC. I never got a new flight and drove a rental car home.

Disrupted my entire week. I felt like a stick floating in the Potomac at Great Falls. Then Debbie reached DC, and I worked overtime on Saturday and Sunda (only an hour, but it was like throwing a stone in a stream. It disrupted the flow).

I’ve been taking an online class on information flow. Disappointing—essentially a rehash of existing information. I got some out of J. Scott Savage’s recent course, and am taking another one in October with Carrie Vaughn (it’s for previous Odyssey attendees; otherwise, I would share).

The more I learn, the bigger the topic gets.

Probably the most visible example of it is when you read a mystery, get to the murderer reveal, and your reaction is, “Who’s that?”

That’s a botched information flow. The author didn’t want to make it obvious that Joe Villian was the murderer, so he made one appearance as an extra with dialogue.

The foundation for information flow is giving the reader the information without them knowing you’ve done it.

You never withhold information from the reader.

But you can hide it in plain sight.

I reread Harry Potter and Sorcerer’s Stone because J. K. Rowling is good at information flow. Professor Quirrell is the bad guy in the story, but she hides him in plain sight with sleight of hand. All the pieces are there, just waiting to be discovered.

Point of view is key to hiding information. If the POV character doesn’t know this thing is important, he’ll slide right on by it.

Quirrell first shows up at Diagon Alley when Harry ventures into the magic world for the first time. Quirrell is only described as a “nervous young man”—no purple turban. He’s unmemorable when Harry and the reader are being given so much shiny, new information. Harry’s a celebrity. All these strange people want to meet him. Harry sees broomsticks for sale (another piece of information flow). Hagrid gets Harry an owl. Harry gets his wand and discovers the only other wand with a feather from the same phoenix (information flow for book 2) was Voldemort’s.

These all, rightly, demand the readers’ attention. A nervous man? Not so much.

Next time Quirrell shows up, he’s wearing a purple turban. That turns into a character tag. Every time he’s on the page, that turban is mentioned. There’s a story about it that no one believes. The Wesley twins try to knock it off by throwing snowballs at the back of his head. Later, Harry will find that Voldemort’s face is on the back of Quirrell’s head.

Harry learns about a break-in at Gringotts on the day he visited and that the vault had the contents removed earlier in the day. Holy cow! That’s got to be the vault he visited! Big sleight of hand because we’re wondering what the mysterious package was, as are the characters, and no one notices that Quirrell was in the area on that day, or that he got his turban after the break in.

Harry discovers that Professor Snape hates him. Snape is standing next to Quirrell when Harry feels a sharp pain in his scar. Which, of course, is contact between him and Voldemort. But Harry sees Snape looking at him venomously, and Harry thinks it’s Snape. When Harry is nearly knocked off his broomstick, the other characters see Snape’s mouth moving in a spell and assume he’s the one cursing Harry because he hates Harry. Quirrell is standing next to him, so no one notices he’s the one cursing the broomstick.

The POV helps hide most of this. It stays in Harry’s head the entire time. He can only see Snape’s reaction to him and make assumptions—wrong assumptions.

That’s where movies do writers a disservice—especially since they’re used as primary examples for fiction. The time limits what the writers can do, so they show a lot for the viewer. So you’ll see scenes with the villains committing the crimes because they can’t show the information flow. Even the Harry Potter movie based on the book doesn’t work as well. Quirrell is wearing the purple turban in the first scene, but it misses out on all the scenes where Rowling draws attention to the turban in small ways.

This is where moving edits benefit the writer. You can go back in the story and add one sentence. You also might need to rethink what happens around the clue, like making something else stand out more.

Information flow is not just for a mystery. Use it and have fun with it.

More reading:

These are all for mystery. Evidently, like setting, everyone figures this doesn’t apply to all genres, even though it does.

The last few weeks have been pretty crazy. I was supposed to travel to New Orleans for a work thing. Then Debby rolled. My flight was through Charlotte, North Carolina (the other layover location choice being Florida); the second leg was canceled before I left DC. I never got a new flight and drove a rental car home.

Disrupted my entire week. I felt like a stick floating in the Potomac at Great Falls. Then Debbie reached DC, and I worked overtime on Saturday and Sunda (only an hour, but it was like throwing a stone in a stream. It disrupted the flow).

I’ve been taking an online class on information flow. Disappointing—essentially a rehash of existing information. I got some out of J. Scott Savage’s recent course, and am taking another one in October with Carrie Vaughn (it’s for previous Odyssey attendees; otherwise, I would share).

The more I learn, the bigger the topic gets.

Probably the most visible example of it is when you read a mystery, get to the murderer reveal, and your reaction is, “Who’s that?”

That’s a botched information flow. The author didn’t want to make it obvious that Joe Villian was the murderer, so he made one appearance as an extra with dialogue.

The foundation for information flow is giving the reader the information without them knowing you’ve done it.

You never withhold information from the reader.

But you can hide it in plain sight.

I reread Harry Potter and Sorcerer’s Stone because J. K. Rowling is good at information flow. Professor Quirrell is the bad guy in the story, but she hides him in plain sight with sleight of hand. All the pieces are there, just waiting to be discovered.

Point of view is key to hiding information. If the POV character doesn’t know this thing is important, he’ll slide right on by it.

Quirrell first shows up at Diagon Alley when Harry ventures into the magic world for the first time. Quirrell is only described as a “nervous young man”—no purple turban. He’s unmemorable when Harry and the reader are being given so much shiny, new information. Harry’s a celebrity. All these strange people want to meet him. Harry sees broomsticks for sale (another piece of information flow). Hagrid gets Harry an owl. Harry gets his wand and discovers the only other wand with a feather from the same phoenix (information flow for book 2) was Voldemort’s.

These all, rightly, demand the readers’ attention. A nervous man? Not so much.

Next time Quirrell shows up, he’s wearing a purple turban. That turns into a character tag. Every time he’s on the page, that turban is mentioned. There’s a story about it that no one believes. The Wesley twins try to knock it off by throwing snowballs at the back of his head. Later, Harry will find that Voldemort’s face is on the back of Quirrell’s head.

Harry learns about a break-in at Gringotts on the day he visited and that the vault had the contents removed earlier in the day. Holy cow! That’s got to be the vault he visited! Big sleight of hand because we’re wondering what the mysterious package was, as are the characters, and no one notices that Quirrell was in the area on that day, or that he got his turban after the break in.

Harry discovers that Professor Snape hates him. Snape is standing next to Quirrell when Harry feels a sharp pain in his scar. Which, of course, is contact between him and Voldemort. But Harry sees Snape looking at him venomously, and Harry thinks it’s Snape. When Harry is nearly knocked off his broomstick, the other characters see Snape’s mouth moving in a spell and assume he’s the one cursing Harry because he hates Harry. Quirrell is standing next to him, so no one notices he’s the one cursing the broomstick.

The POV helps hide most of this. It stays in Harry’s head the entire time. He can only see Snape’s reaction to him and make assumptions—wrong assumptions.

That’s where movies do writers a disservice—especially since they’re used as primary examples for fiction. The time limits what the writers can do, so they show a lot for the viewer. So you’ll see scenes with the villains committing the crimes because they can’t show the information flow. Even the Harry Potter movie based on the book doesn’t work as well. Quirrell is wearing the purple turban in the first scene, but it misses out on all the scenes where Rowling draws attention to the turban in small ways.

This is where moving edits benefit the writer. You can go back in the story and add one sentence. You also might need to rethink what happens around the clue, like making something else stand out more.

Information flow is not just for a mystery. Use it and have fun with it.

More reading:

These are all for mystery. Evidently, like setting, everyone figures this doesn’t apply to all genres, even though it does.

How to Keep Your Mystery Villain a Secret To Surprise Your Reader at The End. This is a good article that presents all the ways to hide clues. Even if you aren’t writing a mystery, you can use these in any genre.How to Create Clues and Red Herrings. If you give false clues, the reader expects them to be explained.The Ultimate Guide to Clues and Red Herrings. Slide on down to the section on obscuring clues.

Learning to Write Fiction in a World of Processed Information

This is a topic I’ve been thinking about for a while. Then, of course, intellection sometimes needs a lot of time to think.

With the internet, never before have we had such an abundance of information. When I was growing up, I went to the library and prowled through the single shelf of books on fiction writing. Today at Barnes and Noble, it’s still a single shelf.

But if I go to any of the online book sellers, I can find hundreds of ebooks on fiction writing. If I run a search on Google or Bing, I’ll find thousands of hits on fiction writing.

Instructors also teach online in videos. My county offers one writing class every season. Smithsonian Associates offered a four part writing class. Dean Wesley Smith has a stable of writing courses. Margie Lawson offers monthly courses.  Jonathan Maberry offers courses periodically. And of course, quite a few writers like James Patterson, Neil Gaiman, N.K. Jemisin, and Amy Tan are on Master Class. I could probably search Ted Talks and find something there.

But there are problems with having so much information “available.”

1. Just because an individual posts information about this topic doesn’t make them an expert. 

If I searched online for pantser vs. outliner, I would get a lot of writers explaining pantsing with great puzzlement, then explaining their outlining process. People who have tried pantsing will explain why they switched to outlining. Yet, many writers explain something they’ve never done.

There’s a lot of this out there. Not just in fiction writing. It’s everywhere. People are told they need to be influencers so they start blogging, filming, or podcasting. A few months ago I fired my fitness coach. I have reasonable knowledge of fitness (not an expert), so I popped online to find exercises. I’m not twenty. I’m at the age where some exercises doesn’t play well with the joints. Yet, I found very few sites where the “expert” understood that; they tended to treat everyone as if they were 20. I suppose that’s like outlining or productivity; you teach your process as if everyone can do it because it works for you.

If any of the influencers is successful, everyone parrots what they say. This is particularly true with basic writing advice because it’s easy to write instructions for that. I’m taking an information flow class now and getting some of the same topic in another class, though that author didn’t call it that. What’s information flow? There is no simple explanation, no bulleted list of things you can check off. The topic is so big you could write a book on it. A blog post? No way.

2. Just because someone is published doesn’t mean they’re an expert.

This one’s tough. We see someone with three or four books out, and they must know more than we do. Unfortunately, that’s not always true. The old way of publishing forced writers to learn how to be better so they could get a book accepted. I’m now reading indie books where the author’s writing does not change from Book 1 to Book 20. As reader, one of the things I loved was when I got the next book and it was better than the last one. It’s the thing that makes me buy the entire In-Depth series, one right after another; or the entire Kate Daniels series. It’s also the thing that made me stop reading one urban fantasy author because the next bunch of books declined in quality.

One author wrote a sci-fi mystery series and decided to teach about genre. But I read the first book and it was clear—to a spec fiction reader—that she was writing two markets she didn’t understand. Science fiction needs a lot of world building, much more than she did; mystery needs a lot of cryptic clues (and delicate pairing with science fiction; mystery readers do not cross genres). A third genre took over the story, so it became a story that didn’t know what it wanted to be. But she was teaching genre.

So read their work before you invest money and time.

3. Just because they’re a multi-published or best selling author doesn’t mean they can teach.

There was a best selling writer I wanted to learn a skill from. He’s very good at it in his books, a master. He has an online class up. He’s also horrible. I hit a video on research—every writer always has something to say on what they do here. He was shockingly vague.

The challenge here is that some parts of writing are intuitive. Not everyone can explain how to do it. Yet, everyone is expected to do exactly that.

4. If they say “It’s easy” or “It’s that simple,” run in the other direction.

We want writing to be easy. We want someone to explain writing a book, boiled down to its simplest steps. We want the secret sauce when someone else says “It’s simple.”

Writing fiction is not simple.

Let me repeat that: Writing fiction is not simple.

Anyone who tells you it’s simple is marketing to you. We’re in a complicated world with too many things coming at us. People want simple. But if you picked fiction writing, you ain’t getting simple. At least not if you want to be published.

Beginner advice, as Tiago Forte says:

But beginner advice is also inherently limited. It’s a deliberate oversimplification, hiding or ignoring a lot of the complexity of the real world in order to make it easier for beginners to take action. It may not be true (as in, describing the full reality), but it is often useful (providing a clear next step).

He also notes that beginner advice tends to be one-size-fits-all. Which is where you end up with writers assuming that you must outline to write a novel.

I searched for “Is writing fiction simple?” to see what I would get. There were a lot of posts like 10 Steps to Write a Novel.  The steps attempted to make it look simple, when it was anything but. One included steps on fleshing out your idea, outlining (with substeps on how to outline), writing a draft, and revising. These are all things that could take an entire book to discuss!

But we also currently have a problem: Writers are learning how to be beginners and not learning how to transition to the next level. This is the real danger of “simple.” You don’t create books that keep readers buying the next one. The ending does sell the next book, but if the writing doesn’t engage the reader they wander away (this is where information flow comes in as well; botched flow can make a reader stop reading).

So what’s a writer supposed to do?

First, you always have to respect your own processes of writing. Process is NOT craft. Everyone starts duking it out not only about pantser vs. outliner, but the nuances of how to do it. Some don’t understand the difference between craft and process; others are marketing.

You also have to know where you are in this. For a while, I had to completely avoid any instructor who was an outliner because it would mess up my writing. Now I can separate it better. Still I was quite impressed to hear one of my instructors say that he had started out as a pantser but switched to outlines because of deadlines. Then he noted that, depending on what your process was, how you approached things would be different. Yes!

Ask questions. I ran across a closed community promoting itself as being for beginners and advanced writers. I was suspicious, so I emailed the writer in charge. He assured me that they would have material for advanced writers and that they had a seven day refund policy. He asked me what I was looking for and did not know what I was talking about. Given the seven day timeline, I signed up to poke around. Everything was what I’ll call “beginner advanced.” I asked for a refund after three days.

Do research the writer. See how many books they’ve published. Explore at least the sample chapters to see if they grab you. If you’re on the fence, take the least expensive option that works for you first to see if you want to invest more. 

If they teach beginner topics, they are beginners, even if they are professionally published. There’s a writer who won a major contest. He immediately started an academy for writers and has courses on Teachable. They’re basic topics like “how to get ideas” and “kill your darlings.”  An advanced writer is not going to teach beginners. Just not going to happen. There are too many beginners who will question him because it conflicts with the beginner advice. Or look for the secret sauce of being a best seller. They won’t actually be serious about writing.

However, one of the problems is that once you get past the basic level, there are few consistent terms for other skill levels. Depth, coined by Dean Wesley Smith, has been talked about in writing magazines since the 1940s. Never had a name. Now people also talk about Deep POV or Immersive POV.  Dean Wesley Smith also calls the actual ending of a story the “validation.” But it’s also listed as the denouement (often applied only to mystery), resolution, or epilogue.

So you almost have to stumble across the skill to even know it’s there.

These are a few to look for:

Tags and traits: Jim Butcher has talked about this in Superstars, and I believe it’s on his old blog posts. Deborah Chester discusses them in her books. Dean Wesley Smith has an online course as well. This is not an easy skill where you check off that your character has brown hair and bites her nails. These are used throughout the story and series and can include not only characters, but setting. Please, please do not have your character smirk or tuck her hair behind an ear. Spend a little time finding tags and traits that are unique.

Word Use: This is also one that you’ll have to do a lot of digging because it comes in from a variety of sources. Margie Lawson has a lecture packet on the topic. Dean Wesley Smith has classes on Power Words and Information Flow that both address word use. Anything more advanced on pacing may touch on it. You would need to understand Depth/Deep POV/Immersive POV to work the word use.

Pacing: Tough to find advanced information. Most of what’s available is “write short sentences” and seems applied only to action scenes. Pacing can be the length of your scenes and chapters. There are also parts of writing that are paced differently. For example, description is necessary, but you also have to make sure it’s paced properly by using many techniques include word use and the rule of three. Jonathan Maberry has an excellent class on pacing. Dean Wesley Smith has Pacing and Advanced Pacing. You can also study James Patterson and Dean Koontz.

It’s not enough to have abundant information available to us. It has to be good information, information that will actually help. The hard part is finding it.