Mark McLaughlin's Blog: Revenge of the B-Movie Monster - Posts Tagged "writing-tips"

by Mark McLaughlin

Many lists of writing tips will tell you: Don’t try to be a perfectionist. Just get the words out of your head and onto the page. If you can, you’re doing great!

A perky, anyone-can-do-it tip like that may sound wonderful, but it has a serious downside. Certainly, it’s important to be able to share all your great ideas and get those words typed into a document. But, you should still try to be a perfectionist, editing your work until it is the best it can be. Don’t sign off on the work before it’s really finished.

After all, one expects all professionals to strive to be perfectionists. No one wants to hear their accountant say, “That’s close enough! Those figures are probably okay.” No one wants to be the patient of a heart surgeon who says, “That’ll do for now. Just sew her up so we can move on to the next patient!”

A lot of people think writing is easy, and anyone can do the job. Sure, most people can do it, but not all can do it well. It takes time, talent and dedication to develop any skill to an effective, professional level.

I’ve worked with many interns with different employers over the years, and there would be times when I’d ask an intern to edit his or her work – and the intern would say that edits weren’t necessary, because they’d finished writing the project. As far as they were concerned, their work was done. They didn’t see any reason to spend more time with it.

Apparently, somewhere along the line, they’d fallen under the impression that once they’d stopped typing, the work was “good enough.” I assure you, they didn’t get that impression from me. I would then explain in detail what needed to be fixed, and happily, they would always agree that the edits would approve the work.

With all that in mind, you may be wondering what you can do to improve the quality of your work. Here are 15 tips to get you started. These tips were created with the process of writing stories in mind, but many can also help with writing in general, whether the work in question is fiction or nonfiction.

1. Realize that perfection is impossible, but strive for it anyway. If you assume that what you are doing is the absolute best, how can you ever improve?

2. Don’t describe your fictional world down to the last detail. People tend to skim over excess descriptive text. Do your best to describe any person, place or thing quickly and accurately. Cover the most crucial details first and work in smaller details later, if necessary.

3. When characters have something to say, stick with ‘said’ – not enthused, declared, exclaimed, or worst of all, ejaculated. ‘Replied’ (if a character is answering a question) and ‘stated’ can work, but use them sparingly.

4. Avoid using adverbs with ‘said,’ like ‘he said angrily.’ The mood of the speaker should be made clear by the words being said.

5. The word ‘that’ is often overused. Do a search in Word on ‘that’ and take out uses of the word that can be removed without hurting the flow of the sentence.

6. The word ‘got’ is overused, too, in a generic/multipurpose way. ‘She got out of the car,’ ‘he got some groceries’ … see what I mean? Try to use a more specific word.

7. Make sure a character’s vocabulary is appropriate for their age, upbringing and educational level. A character’s voice defines them. For example, a very young child who isn’t academically gifted probably wouldn’t use words like ‘macabre,’ ‘poignant’ and ‘problematic.’

8. This one is closely related to the previous tip. Make sure your characters have different vocabularies and idioms, since they are unique individuals. It can help to read your stories aloud to yourself, to make sure your characters have different voices.

9. Stick with one point of view in a short story. It shouldn’t shift during the narrative. Otherwise, the reader can become confused, trying to figure out who is telling the story.

10. Don’t introduce new characters late in the story. It’s lazy writing, to have a new character step into a story at the last minute to straighten out matters and bring about a satisfactory ending.

11. If you use an acronym, don’t assume that every reader will be familiar with it. In news releases, spell out what the letters stand for on the first mention of the acronym. In fiction, try to avoid acronyms unless they are extremely well-known, like CPR or DVD.

12. Minor characters don’t need a lot of description. For example, if a waiter comes to the restaurant table on page 11 and is only in the story for one paragraph, we don’t need to know that he grew up in rural Vermont and is now attending night classes so he can become a lawyer someday.

13. Don’t fall in love with your own writing. If you write something clever in a story and then decide that this passage should be cut out, don’t hesitate to remove it. Perhaps you can use that clever wordage in a different story someday.

14. As I mentioned earlier, don’t assume the work is finished the minute you type the last word. That’s only your first draft. You’ll want to go over it again, and perhaps a second or third time, to make sure you haven’t overlooked anything.

15. Don’t depend on self-publishing – especially if you are a new writer. If professional editors never see your work, you will never benefit from their guidance. I have worked in self-publishing, but only after years of working with many editors and developing a substantial readership.

Remember, with each story, you are creating a fictional universe. Work hard to create a believable, entertaining universe that readers will want to visit again and again.