Find Your Own Revision Strategy - Part 3

Craft Issues - Style & Readability - Craft has more to do with your use of paragraphs, sentences, and words and less with larger issues of your story. This is where you'll look for aesthetics, grammar, and listening to the flow of words the way you'd listen to music. Look for awkward phrasing, tired sentence flow, and repetitious word choice.

Paragraph Procession - How long should your paragraph be? This is a common topic of conversation among writers. Each paragraph should address a new topic. Each time a topic changes, begin a new paragraph. For example, your character walks into a room and looks around, which could be one paragraph. Then he hears a noise in another room, and goes to check it out, you would begin a new paragraph. A paragraph should be at least three lines. Too long of a paragraph can drag a story out, whereas, too many short paragraphs can make a story feel choppy.

Remove Empty Words - An example would be the to be verbs (is, are, was, were). They add nothing to your story. Remove them. You may have to rewrite, but it'll be worth the work. Here's an example of some to be verbs and how you can remove them:
John was a very handsome man. He was tall with green eyes and brown hair and liked to swing on Grandpa's rope swing.
A better way to write this sentence could be:
Tall as a Kurgan Warrior, John pumped Grandpa's rope swing clear to the top branches, his brown hair flying, green eyes bright with laughter.

Use Active Voice - Using active voice will give readers stronger images of the scenes. It will also do wonders for your prose. The cat grabbed the toy mouse is active voice. The toy mouse was grabbed by the cat would be passive voice.

​Beware of Your Tenses - Be careful not to switch from past to present tense as the tension builds in a scene. Most fiction genres are told in past tense, whether in first-person or third-person point of view. The story comes to life. Present tense seems to annoy readers.

Watch Out for the "inglys" - Those Pesky Adverbs - There isn't anything wrong with adverbs. They do serve a purpose when used properly as long as they enrich the meaning of an adjective such as velvety blue dress. Marie said angrily, tells us her mood. But showing more lets the readers figure out for themselves that Mare is angry. Example, "Go fly a kite." Marie glared at Sarah. There's no question of Marie's emotional state.

Be Specific - Don't Use a Generic Placeholder - You want to bring readers so completely into your world that they'll forget they're reading words. It's much harder for readers to lose themselves in a generic "basement" than in a "shadowy, freezing cellar that smells of mildew." Be descriptive. Explain the type of lunch your character grabbed on her way to the beach. Don't just say she grabbed a lunch, tell your readers she grabbed a pear and a handful of cashews. Mimic real life!

Don't Date Your Story - Try to use references to current culture sparingly because your book will be on the bookshelves 10 or 20 years from now. It may be tempting to reference the hot new band or sports car, just remember cultural icons and fads come and go.

Speak the Language - Be sure to use the correct jargon if your character is a lawyer, doctor, member of the military, etc. No matter what genre you write in, you need to speak the right language through your characters. Example, The doctor made a fast, deep slash down the middle of her abdomen, from her rib cage to her pubis, and then grabbed retractors and pulled her open.

Be Consistent - This is vital for any story. You need to be sure you keep things consistent, such as point of view, how your characters look and what they're wearing. You don't want to have a character that wears glasses in one chapter to suddenly develop 20/20 vision without them (i.e., awakened in the middle of the night and not having your character reach for their glasses to see).

I hope these tips in Parts 1-3 have helped you create your own revision strategy. And remember...Keep on Writing!

source: Long Ridge Writers Group