[Guest Post]: How to Identify Your Writing Problems by ML Barrs, the author of Parallel Secrets

I have a new guest author on my blog. ML Barrs released her mystery novel Parallel Secrets last month. Today, she’s talking about her writing journey, problems she faced along the way, and useful tools she used to improve her manuscript.

How to Identify Your Writing Problems
ML Barrs

It pains me to admit that the first draft of my first published book was confusing. Parallel Secrets takes place during two periods of time almost a decade apart, involves almost a dozen characters and as many story lines, and features plenty of dialogue freely mixed in with internal narrative. I hopped from head-to-head, time-to-time, assuming readers would follow along. Surely they’d get what I meant.

My beta readers set me straight. In my experience, paying attention to feedback from direct and knowledgeable beta readers is the best way to identify overall story and structural deficiencies and missed opportunities.

Once I accepted that I needed to restructure, I got to work.

I do all my writing in Word. The program has great tools. I’d used Word for memos and reports for many years. It was a fairly seamless transition to writing a book, once I learned to use Headers and Navigation Panel to form a fluid outline. Those tools allowed me to easily move chapters around and to spot duplications and omissions.

‘Find and Replace’ is another of Word’s most valuable functions. F&R ruthlessly pointed out
many, many opportunities to improve my prose.

Parallel Secrets includes a fair amount of people talking while sitting around drinking various beverages—but I was shocked when I ran ‘Find and Replace’ for certain words like nodded, smiled, shrugged, etc. HUNDREDS of repetitions, sometimes multiples on the same page. The words that? Said? Like? Literally thousands of occurrences in my 85k document.

I looked at each one of those individual words and decided whether they were necessary or best for the job. Very often they weren’t. Whenever I could, I changed dialogue tags to actions. “…said Vicky” appeared in my first draft more than twelve hundred times. One pass through the manuscript easily brought that down to under eight hundred. I used the same technique to check timelines, settings, and character development. A search by name allowed me to review every occurrence of every person in the order they appeared. I found consistency errors, but more often found ways to add to character arcs.

This task forced me to examine my manuscript closely and critically, to tighten up parts and
expand others. The devil’s in the details, as the saying goes, and fixing a myriad of details
created a much stronger foundation on which to build the intricate and satisfying story that is Parallel Secrets.

About the Book

Genre: Mystery

Date Published: 25th September 2023

Publisher: The Wild Rose Press

After a young girl goes missing, former TV crime reporter Vicky Robeson joins the search with the help of her attractive new love interest. They take his RV to a tiny town in rural Missouri that’s filled with odd characters and darker secrets. But Vicky has secrets of her own. She believes this kidnapped girl may be linked to a case she reported on nine years ago, when a mystery child was found walking on levee, bloody and unable to speak. Back then, Vicky failed to follow up clues only she knew. Now, she has a chance to redeem herself. As she uncovers secrets, it becomes clear someone will kill to keep them hidden.

About the Author

ML Barrs ran TV newsrooms for years, guiding and managing the content and production of more than eight hours of live newscasts a day.
In her debut novel, Parallel Secrets, protagonist Vicky Robeson shares that kind of experience as well as the author’s passion for justice, especially when it comes to the safety and well-being of children and other vulnerable people.
ML Barrs grew up one of thirteen children—the first girl, with three older brothers—a birth order she believes shaped her essence by the time she was eight. A girl’s gotta be a bit pugnacious to get along in that environment. Amid the chaos of fourteen people living in a mobile home (not a double-wide), she turned fifteen, dropped out of school and ran away from home.
Being homeless, then working minimum wage jobs quickly grew old. She earned her GED and went to college, where she met and married the father of their two grown children. After a successful career as a television news director and general manager, she decided that what she really wanted to do is write mysteries. Parallel Secrets was published September 2023, and its sequel is in the works.

Contact Link

Website: http://www.mlbarrs.com

Purchase Link:

Giveaway

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