This Halloween, You Better Bring Your Reading Glasses, Because It's Time To Whack Out Word Crimes That

Hello, love. Do you have any advice on how to self-edit a short story after completing the first draft?

5 Tips for Editing a Short Story

1) Reconsider the First Paragraph

With short stories, it's even more important that the first paragraph starts off with a bang. You really don't want it to be exposition if you can avoid it. Instead, start when something is happening. In other words, start with action.

Exposition: The moon hung high in the star-speckled sky, turning the snow into a radiant white blanket.

Action: The girl crept out the door into the star-speckled night, leaving a trail of tiny footprints in the moonlit blanket of snow.

2) Consider Each Paragraph's Purpose

The limited length of short stories means it's all the more important for each paragraph to pull its weight. For each paragraph, ask yourself, "What is lost if I cut this paragraph? Will the reader still understand the story?" Get rid of paragraphs that don't need to be there.

3) Cut Unnecessary Details

In novels, we can take the time to add details that are only there to embellish the world or characters for the reader. In short stories, it's much more important for details to really matter.

4) Watch Out for Repetition

Make sure no details, ideas, actions, etc. are repeated unless they truly need to be. In a short story, you probably don't need to describe the main character's town as sleepy/charming/quiet more than once, for example.

5) Zap Some Adverbs and Adjectives

Adverbs and adjectives are one of those things we don't typically need...

With: The small girl crept quietly out the door into the cold, star-speckled night, carefully leaving a long trail of tiny footprints in the moonlit blanket of snow

Without: The girl crept out the door into the star-speckled night, leaving a trail of tiny footprints in the moonlit blanket of snow.

What I Zapped and Why:

Small - The reader will know she's small because her footsteps are later described as "tiny."

Quietly - The word "crept" already implies quiet.

Cold - She's walking in snow at night. It's obviously cold.

Carefully - Also implied by "crept."

Long - Not important, also somewhat implied by "trail." If she left a short trail that would be a noteworthy detail.

Best of luck with your editing!

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(Help) advice for people who have been writing for a long time and haven't seen improvements?

ok, so first of all have you REALLY not improved? most of the time when we are working on complex tasks, our ability to see what we are doing wrong grows more quickly than our skills, so there's this constant, growing awareness of what we aren't doing well. i suspect if you look back at your first stories, you will see that they are clumsier than your current work

BUT, it's frustrating. i get it. hoo boy do I get it.

SO... the advice you asked for.

sit down and do a really cold-blooded assessment of your work. ask a couple CPs to help if you can bear it. figure out several places you have a clear weakness.

common things people struggle with include:

mechanics (grammar, punctuation, how to format dialogue, etc.)

prose (how does it read on a line level)

engaging opening pages (do people reading the start want to keep going, does it set up promises for the rest of the book to pay off, do we know, as readers, what sort of story we're getting from the first page)

characters (do the people feel real, do they behave in the way people behave, are they well rounded with flaws and strengths, do their stupid decisions seem believable given their own set of issues)

pacing (does the story feel too slow to readers? does it seem to skip over important moments)

plotting/structure (does the middle sag, do things build up in a compelling way, do plot points come out of nowhere, are there too many moving pieces)

stakes (are there stakes? what is the main character's goal? what happens if they fail?)

theme/mood/vibe (do you have a vibe? is there an overarching theme?)

emotions (are your characters/is your plot emotionally engaging to the reader)

climax (does it stick the landing)

pick ONE (and only one) identified weakness to work on for the next 3-6 months. Google resources that talk about that thing. write or revise aiming to work on that thing. (if you ask for a specific one of these, I will put together a list of resources, but it might be a bit much on an already long post to include here)

shake up your working methods to see if that knocks skills loose from your brain in the learning process. if you usually outline, try just brain dumping onto the page, focusing on that thing. If you usually pants it, try outlining.

go back to beta readers and CPs and say "how does this story work FOR THIS ONE PARTICULAR THING." It's much easier to beta read a chapter for someone if you know the thing that they want you to focus on is "prose" or "emotions" than "just anything that jumps out at you."

good luck and have fun!

Controlling Your Pacing

                Pacing is one of my favourite things to pay attention to when reading or writing something. The pacing of a scene is literally how ‘fast’ or ‘slow’ a scene appears to be moving. Action scenes that spring the story from one place to another tend to go faster than introspective scenes or scenes that explore character dynamics.

                All of this is created through putting space and words between elements of the scene. What I mean by that is that readers interpret a passage of time between ‘things’ (actions, dialogue, gestures, etc.) on the page, and pacing is controlling that interpretation.

                For example,

“Georgia sat on the couch, “wow it sure is hot in here,” she said. “It sure is,” Henry agreed, sitting next to her.”

                This sentence is just about the actions with some breaking dialogue, but it goes pretty quickly through what’s happening.

                Whereas, if we were to intentionally pace this scene, it may look like this:

“Georgia swiped at her brow, wandering over to sink into the couch. “It sure is hot in here,” she said, peering up at Henry through the wisps of her bangs. He nodded weakly, his entire body sagging from the heat. Crossing the room to collapse next to her, he added dryly, “it sure is.”

                It’s not perfect, but you can get a sense of the time between things happening. The added detail between the two characters talking conveys maybe a minute between sentences, which might be accurate for two people dogged down by a heat wave.

                To speed things up, we want less space between elements:

“Adam slammed open the door with his shoulder, letting it bounce off the concrete wall behind him. “Everyone out!” He shouted. A crack in the roof snapped above them.”

                The added (or subtracted) elements of a scene that control your pacing is the sights/sounds/feelings/smells/maybe tastes of a place. When we’re anxiously rushing to get out of the house we may not acknowledge that the kitchen smells like the bread our roommate baked that morning, or that there are smudges on the window from when the dog climbed up on the couch. However, when we have a second to contemplate, we’re going to notice these things, and it would be appropriate to write them in.

                Another important element to controlling pacing is your character’s thoughts or acknowledgement of feelings.

                For example:

“Adam slammed open the door with his shoulder, it bounced off the concrete wall behind him. He winced, his mother’s high voice ringing in his head, chiding him for damaging the walls even though he knew the building was coming down on top of them. How long would he live with her constantly in his mind? He tried to wave away the memory. “Everyone out!” He shouted.”

                That slows down the scene quite a bit, yeah? And maybe that’s what you wanted in that moment. Play around with the details and pacing in your scenes, you might be surprised how much can change.

                Good luck!

Your narrator and each of your characters should sound different from one another (unless your story is in the first person and one of the characters is actually telling the story!). Remember that no two people speak in exactly the same way, so if all your characters sound identical to your narrator, it will pull the reader out of the story.

Every person has distinct vocal habits or “go-to’s,” words or phrases they use often, and giving your characters their own vocal “go-to’s” can help lend them some realism and make it easier to tell them apart from one another. Here’s a little hint: we use these “go-to’s” even more often when we’re distracted or not fully paying attention to the conversation and what we’re saying.

People sometimes stumble over their words. Let your characters stutter, or repeat themselves, or forget what they were about to say, or even ramble sometimes, especially if they are feeling flustered or overwhelmed in the scene. This will add realism to your dialogue, and make your characters seem more real to your readers!

Just like in real life, the situation should affect how your character speaks. For example, if a character has just gotten a big, unpleasant surprise, they probably won’t be in the right frame of mind to make a calm, articulate speech. Think about what’s happening and how it will affect what your character says and the way that they say it.

Most people speak differently depending on who they are talking to. For example, you probably wouldn’t talk to your boss the same way you would talk to a friend! Think about your character’s relationship to the person they’re talking to, and how they feel about that person, and let that come out in their dialogue.

Descriptive verbs (like “exclaimed” or “demanded” instead of “said”) are a great way to breathe some life into your dialogue, because they give the reader more information, telling us not just what the character said but how they said it. On the other hand, when used too often, or incorrectly, descriptive verbs can pull the reader right out of the story (for example, using “demanded” when the character isn’t making any kind of demand in their dialogue).

how to stay motivated as a writer

reread your old writing

reread the scenes you’re most proud of

write something silly. it doesn’t need to be logical, or something you in your story. write something dumb

compare your old writing to your current writing. seeing how much you’ve improved can be very motivating

create AUs for your stories! explore storylines that otherwise never would make it into the story, but you would like to play around with

choose one of your least favorite scenes and rewrite it

act out your scenes

read old comments from people praising your work

create a playlist for your wip

team up with a friend, create AUs for each other’s stories

create playlists for your characters

draw your ocs/make memes of your ocs

draw/make memes of your friend’s ocs

don’t push yourself to get back into writing the thing that made you stop in the first place, you can always write something else!

write what you want to write, no matter how cliché it might be. it's okay

take a break, focus on another hobby of yours. consume other sources of media, or take a walk to clear your head

no need to write in chronological order if it isn’t working for you!

read bad reviews of books/movies/tv-shows. you will start appreciating your own writing more

create a new storyline, or introduce a new character! anything that helps bring something fresh into your story. could even be a completely new wip!

not writing every day doesn’t make you a bad writer. take a break if you feel like you need one

remind yourself to have fun. start writing and don’t focus too much of your attention on following ''the rules.'' you can get into the nitty-gritty when you're more familiarized with writing as an art. or don’t. it’s fiction, you make your own rules

get some rest. go to sleep, take a nap!

remember why you started. know that you deserve to tell the story you want to tell regardless of the skill you possess

Plotting, planning, writing Masterpost

This is my list of the plotting-related process, it’s constantly expanding and if anyone wants to have the german list, please message me. I’m gonna do the research ressources for various topics another time, promised. Plotting and planning your book

Acts in a story Common errors in english language

On writing a novel Writer’s world (A lot of information at once, but useful)

Worldbuilding Medieval city generator Medieval castles Norse Mythology The Edda translated to english Old german vocabulary pdf for creating names and such Greek gods / greek mythology: https://www.greekmythology.com/ http://www.ancient.eu/Greek_Mythology/ Questions for your world: https://pastebin.com/TUx9QzVq https://inkys-resources.tumblr.com/post/150627441064/world-building-june-prompts-2016 Kitchen stuff, dishes TIPPS AND TRICKS FOR WRITERS Starting a book How to kill a character Action writing National Novel Writing Month Website http://nanowrimo.org/ https://campnanowrimo.org/sign_in Flashbacks Metaphysics CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT Character sheet, extended version Whenever you have too many characters in one room: Off-screen things to do (This is very helpful) Avoiding word repetition (You may have to make the page a bit bigger due to the small letters) How to write a villain

FANDOMS Multifandom castle reviews playlist (GoT, LotR, HP etc.) How realistic are they, regarding architeture? etc. Harry Potter https://www.pottermore.com/ (Why this is totally not overhyped but rather very fucking helpful for fanfics: SO. MUCH. STUFF! Articles from JKR, cut-out pieces from the books that never appeared in them, details about a lot of characters and their backstory, an essay on wands and their meanings etc.) Harry Potter metas by Super Carlin Brothers. Very interesting indeed. http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page (This is a bit obvious, but you know, just to add it here) Marvel Cinematic Universe Timeline of all movies Most helpful MCU wikia http://de.marvel-filme.wikia.com/wiki/Marvel-Filme And to be honest watch Marvel’s Agents of S.h.i.e.l.d., there’s a lot more background information about SHIELD than you will ever get in the movies. Not to mention that the show is very good, the characters alone are. But that’s a story for another time. Sherlock BBC http://inevitably-johnlocked.tumblr.com/ http://kinklock.tumblr.com/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKUQWjx8aGnCmXgfAlqiuMg/playlists http://skulls-and-tea.tumblr.com/ Just to mention some blogs I find very interesting, regarding the topic and as infinetely nice people as well. To be continued… (Any recommendations and suggestions are welcomed)

Writer's Guide to Unreliable Narrators

Unreliable narrators are narrators who intentionally or subconsciously mislead the reader with their own bias and lies. I love nothing more than a narrator who deceives me. There is something incredibly charged about not being able to rely on your guide through a story. So how can we write them?

Determine What Kind of Unreliable Narrator your Narrator is.

There are five kinds of unreliable narrator we see in fiction, each with their own way of leading the audience astray.

The Unstable: This narrator is usually an unstable character with problems with grasping reality or having trouble accepting it so they bend it to their own tastes. Example: Arthur Fleck in Joker & Amy Elliot Dunne in Gone Girl

The Exaggerator: the one who spins fanciful lies to embellish the facts of the story around them. Usually they embellish it in such a way to make themselves look good.

The Child: Though children can be a font of truth, they often have a way of muddling facts and being confused by certain aspects of the story they are not versed in. Example. Bran in A Song of Ice and Fire & Scout Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird

The Biased: The biased Narrator is usually an outsider. They enter the world with preconceptions of the world and/or characters around them. Usually they get disabused of their biases by story's end but not always. Example Damen/Damianos of Akielos in The Captive Prince Trilogy

The Liar: The Liar is simply just a liar liar pants on fire. They twist the narrative and outwardly lie about their actions and the reactions of others. The liar is self-serving, usually narcissistic. Example Cersei Lannister from A Song of Ice and Fire.

How to Write Your Unreliable Narrator

The thing you must remember is that your audience immediately trusts your narrator, they have no other choice. It is a given. However, it is your job to break that trust.

Allow the narrator to outwardly lie. Let them spout half truths or full out lies in the narrative. The audience will take what your character says as the gosphel until slapped with a conflicting account or detail. It provides a wham to the story that becomes a turning point. Perhaps the best example of this is Amy Elliott Dunne in Gone Girl (I recommend). She introduces herself as a sweet housewife who loves her husband despite her fears over his temper. However, in the section of the book she narrates she quickly flips Nick's account of the events leading up to her disappearance, turning the audience on their head so fast none of us have a chance.

Allow the character to mislead your audience with the absence of details. Your story is one big chain, omit a link and the thing is useless & subject to the questioning you want to draw out of the audience. For example, Daenerys Targaryen believes wholeheartedly that the house with the red door is in Braavos. However, she vividly remembers a lemon tree outside her window and sunsine. But lemon trees cannot grow Braavos and it is notoriously damp and cold. #lemongate

Speak to your audience through the events of the story, bypassing the narrator to get through to the audience. Sometimes the best reveal that the narrator cannot be trusted is showing the audience evidence that they are either not seeing what's happening or they are ignoring it. For example in Captive Prince, it is almost explicitly suggested that the Regent molested his nephew Laurent as a child. If one ignores Damen's narration, the signs are there to see from Laurent's reaction to his Uncle's presence and in some of Laurent's words. Damen chalks this down to Laurent being a brat and the Regent just being a villain. He has to be told despite the audience realising or at least suspecting it from the second book onward.

Play off your secondary characters. Use the characters around your narrator to disprove their account if the story and completely flip the story on its head. Usually, I trust the secondary characters when it comes to Unreliable Narrators. For example, Cersei Lannister gets her own POV in a Feast of Crows. Up until this point she has been very mercurial in her reactions in the first few books, to the point where other characters and the audience are confused about who the real Cersei is: the shrewd polictian or the wine mom with way too much faith in herself and her spawn. In truth, Cersei is incredibly paranoid about those around her and she thinks herself the cleverest player in the game. However, from others such as Tyrion, Tywin, Littlefinger and the members of the Small Council (who yes, all have a touch of misgyny to their criticisms of Cersei but really most of their points have a point since she is mad as a box of frogs) we see that Cersei tends to make enemies out of allies, assume the worst in others and make political choices to spite others or to put her faith in those who offer her little more than flattery.

Character's life stories

So like any writing advice, this isn't a universal rule by any means, but I have found that when making characters for my longer form fiction, it's really important to understand their life story, even if it never directly shows up in the writing itself - even if the readers are never given enough clues to put it together.

Here's why.

At least when I was first learning how to create a character, I would pick out a mental picture of what they looked like, slapped a few goals, dreams, and morals on them, figured out two formative events and set them loose in the wild. And they were flat. Uniformly.

(Reasons why, other benefits to understanding your character's life stories, and a simple way to develop them all below the cut)

There were several reasons for my character's general wimpyness:

I didn't really know who they were, except for their surface level persona, which meant I had a really hard time understanding what made them choose the things they did.

If I don't know what their life was like, most of their choices are going to stem from like three events - that means there's not a lot of subconscious factors to work with, meaning they're going to be predictable in a bad way.

Whenever I did try to add some depth, there was nothing behind it, so that depth was lost to inconsistencies that weren't glaringly obvious but were enough that it felt unrealistic.

Beyond that, by fleshing out your character's backstories more fully, you'll also end up with insights into:

Worldbuilding - you don't necessarily need to flesh it out in full detail, but for characters to exist, they need somewhere to be, and that can help you understand parts of your world that aren't necessarily the main focus - it adds flavor, which will come through in your writing.

Timing - kinda like how if you have a map of the building your characters are in, it's easier to keep track of it and you don't have weird hallways that lead to nowhere or a room that's simultaneously in three different places. If you understand what was going on generally throughout your character's life, you can better tie their age to what happened and understand the effect the event might have had, or track when people could have met, or all sorts of things that, again, will help them seem more real.

Arcs - character creation is less about starting off with a character, and it's more about crafting an arc. If you just plop a flawed character into the book, it may work, but often the seeds for that arc will appear much earlier, and they may have even started on part of their arc (especially if they're a side character) - understanding what progress they've made or lost can keep them dynamic.

Relationships - if the characters have already met each other, it's useful to know what perceptions they had, what relationships they've built (or set fires to), and what headspace they were in while doing that compared to now.

So that's great and all, but how to... do all that?

1) What's the groundwork?

How old is your character now? This is important because you have that many years of life story. You don't have to figure out every year, but there is a difference between working with a 40something and a teenager.

What global events would have affected everyone (if any), and when did those happen? These will help with scaffolding, since you're going to want to address them.

What point are you trying to work toward? If your character has developed certain mannerisms, views on the world, etc, you may want to figure out sources for them.

2) Set up your timelines.

I find it's best to work with your main cast all at the same time on a common timeline. That way I can see how threads might interact with each other, and make sure that I'm not messing up the years or anything. It also means that when I set up global events, they all line up so I won't have issues with chronology.

Sticky notes and an open workspace are excellent for this. (set up each character going from left to right, and then across the top, set out the years). You can also do it pretty effectively with a spreadsheet, but I find working with things physically to be a nice change of pace.

3) Drop in all of your major life-changing events

You have your timelines set up. If you already know something happened to change any of your character's lives, drop them in. These are probably the most important bits, and you want to make sure they're accounted for.

Birth date (at least to the year)

Major changes in living arrangements

Moments that you already know rocked their world

Etc

A benefit to this is that you'll also see what time periods you have more worked out for which characters compared to others.

Also make sure that you drop in times when characters first meet. Since these are places where timelines converge, you want them to be consistant. If there are important exchanges or interactions after that, those go in too.

If they are not already accounted for, also put in their reaction to any global events you've set out. This is important because it's going to be some kind of common ground for all of your characters later (whether or not you use it), and it will be useful for comparing where everyone was at during a certain point in time.

4) Put in the other important stuff

In the beginning of this process, you figured out what kind of characters you were working toward having at the start of the book. Figure out what events would probably need to happen to make that work, and drop them into the timeline, if they're not already there.

5) Fill in the holes

So at this point, you've got all your important stuff in, but it's highly likely there are still pretty large gaps. My rule of thumb is that you want to have a general understanding of what they were doing at least once of every three years of their life. This will help flesh out their upbringing, or what they were doing in places that are less story-specific

These are the kinds of thins that aren't going to affect the story directly, but are going to influence what they reference, as well as give you a deeper insight into their psyche and experiences. It'll also help make sure that your understanding of who they are isn't bunched up at one point in their life but is more comprehensive.

A Few Tips On Writing Chapters

Give each chapter a descriptive title. 

Especially if you find yourself at sea when deciding how exactly to chop your story into pieces. Even if you don’t want to use chapter titles in your final draft, they’re of enormous use when you’re still figuring out exactly what the shape of your story is. By giving your chapter a descriptive title, you’re giving your chapter a focus and a particular story for your chapter to tell. 

Make sure each chapter has its own self contained narrative arc. 

This is not to say that every novel must be episodic, but that each section should have its own beginning, middle, and end. It should have set up, build up, and resolution. It should ask a question an implicit question at the beginning and provide a slightly more explicit answer at the end. 

Example: one chapter in my book is just 500 words. Two new characters drive into town, get out of a car, knock on a door, and they say their names. The beginning is the introduction of the mystery of these characters. It’s the question “who are these people?” As they drive, you see them and where they are going, which builds towards the answer. As a resolution, you get their names. 

You wouldn’t call this a “short story” by any means, but it does have a firm beginning, middle, end. It is a contained unit. 

A chapter break can–and sometimes should–come in the middle of a scene. 

Twists and cliffhangers can appear at the end of novels, so it would be silly to say you couldn’t end a chapter that way, too. Cliffhangers and twists are usually both a result of other plot points, and the cause of a new problem. Narratively, they function both as the ending of one thing and the beginning of another, so they make for great chapter breaks. Separating the scene at a cliffhanger is often better/cleaner than lumping the entire scene into one chapter. 

Example: Alex is warned to stay away from a dangerous cliff. Alex gets adventurous and wanders toward cliff. Alex falls off of cliff. Beginning. Middle. End. 

Alex is actually hanging from cliff! Alex figures out a way to get back to solid ground, struggles. Alex makes it back to solid ground. Beginning. Middle. End.

You want your readers to “just one more chapter!” their way through your book. Stuffing moments of high tension into the middle of chapters that resolve neatly won’t keep them turning pages.

Always end your chapters on a point of intrigue. 

Using points of tension to bookend chapters is important because chapter endings are usually where readers put a book down during a reading session. They’re very naturally places to close the cover and walk away. 

As a writer, you don’t want this. You absolutely don’t want to give your reader great places to put the book down, because you need them to pick the book up again as soon as possible. Not the next day, or the next week, (or never), but while they have a spare minute during their commute, or during their lunch break, or under their desk in class. 

You want to encourage this by taking that perfectly natural endpoint, that place they expect to be able to put the book down, and forcing them to take even a tiny peak at the next chapter. 

This doesn’t mean ending every chapter on a verifiable cliffhanger, but there has to be something. A character can solve a mystery. A new character can appear. There can be a moment of irony. A new idea. Just so long as it’s something that will make the reader think “I need to know what happens next.”