Make Your Story an Easy Read

[Dennis]

Tips from 'Being Author':
http://bit.ly/2jKy0T7

[Carole]

Good article.

[Anna]

Some good tips but I do wonder about this cutting everything down to how a business article should read, i.e. short and to the point. Thrillers need to be fast paced but not all genres.

Just sayin'.

[Amy]

Anna Faversham wrote: "Some good tips but I do wonder about this cutting everything down to how a business article should read, i.e. short and to the point. Thrillers need to be fast paced but not all genres.

Just sayin'."

Oh agreed. I once read a book that was so sparse it read like a shopping list. I'm not in favour of a total adverb cull. I'll take out as many instances of "that" as I can without trashing the fluidity of the sentence. I'll cull the majority of the words I overuse when I'm talking in the real world. I will not write a shopping list. If it reads OK when I read it out loud I deem it OK.

[Anna]

I also have to watch out for 'had' and 'could'.

I cut, cut, cut, but no more than that! Oops... there's a 'that'.

[C.L.]

The Hemingway app is great for screening this sort of thing.