Harsh but fair – tips for making your fiction writing better than ever. 1
These tips are fast and furious. Don’t take them personally if they apply to you. Constructive criticism is sometimes hard to hear, especially if it’s about work you love and believe is perfect.
Believe me on this one point: It hurts because you know, deep down that it’s true.
Rather than allowing yourself to be upset, hurt or damaged by criticism, take it another way. Criticism is invaluable, immeasurable, worth more than money.
I say that because once money is spent, it’s gone. Critique, if listened to and actually heeded, can be used time after time to improve your skills in writing. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Listen. What I’m about to share with you is writer’s gold. If you recognise in your own work, traits that I list here, don’t get angry, upset or snippy, get practicing and lose the bad habits.
Do yourself and your writing a HUGE favour and your readers and characters will thank you for it.
Learn with me because I know there are some things in here that I should/shouldn’t be doing and I need to improve too!
Pictures from Google Free To Use Image search
For my background, check out these other tips.
Dialogue
I like dialogue. I like writing it, making it up in my head, listening to people as they speak (in my head and not).
The advice I’m going to give you now will upset some people, but bear with me.
Don’t use anything but ‘said’ for your dialogue. Whether your character grumbles, whines, argues or lies, they are speaking - saying it. Use the rest of your writing to show how they say it.
“Stop doing that,” she asserted.
“Stop doing that,” she said in clipped tones. Her trembling fist gripped the poker, knuckles whitened, elbow bent.
When you write dialogue, the characters must stand out with their own voice. By adding a verb into the mix, you’re telling the audience (the reader) what they should be figuring out for themselves, from your great descriptions of the action.
Don’t sell your characters short. If you’ve made them well, they will stand on their own two feet. If you haven’t made them well, you know who to blame – go and make them able to stand up for themselves!
And then… Please… please, please PLEASE! don’t use an adverb to further modify ‘said’.
“Certainly stop doing that!” she asserted sternly.
As before, show, describe actions, put the reader right there in the room confronting the woman brandishing the poker.
Show the reader that she’s on the verge of using the poker to bash in the head of the person doing whatever it is she doesn’t like.
Show the mouth set in grim determination, a thin bloodless line, lips all-but disappeared.
Show the muscles in her jawline contracting as she grits her teeth, and for the sake of your future readership, SHOW her narrowed eyes as she raises the poker in the final act before crashing it down upon the forehead of that person.
It reads a hell of a lot better than, “Stop doing that,” she asserted, sternly.
When writing dialogue, don't forget to show who is speaking - ESPECIALLY if there are more than two characters in the conversation.
While I’m on the subject of dialogue, please don’t send your readers off to Youtube to find out how your characters pronounce things in their dialect. Write the words in correct English and describe your characters as speaking in their dialect.
“That’s clazee,” he said.
“That’s crazy,” he said, his thick Scouse accent made the word distorted to her ears. More used to the proper English of Oxford, she heard the Scouse lilt and cringed.
Eee, bai gum, tha knows.
The words MUST flow to keep your readers engaged.
You’ve heard-tell of the book that was ‘read in one sitting’? That’s because the reader just couldn’t bear to put down the book.
If you write such a tale, you’ve done well.
Keeping the reader ‘in the zone’ is what you’re aiming for. Sending the reader off to grab a dictionary because they don’t know quite how that character enunciated that last sentence isn’t keeping the reader in the story.
The more breaks you give the reader, the less engaged they are in the story.
You’re a storyteller… keep them there, on the edge of their seat, hanging on your every word.
Appreciate with you, need to passionate with myself, all time stay to positive in own-self,
Hmmm. How about the the non-spoken?
She nodded in response,
He shook his head no,
Her lips moved, but produced no sound as she stared at him in disbelief.
I'm curious if you have a uniform example for when the character doesn't "say" anything.
All bets are off ;)
Imagine me with an overly wrinkled forehead, squinting my eyes at your reply. :P
Buy yourself some better glasses :)
But I don't have any to begin with!
Wait. Maybe that's the real problem here.
I am learning information I couldn't find before. I even learn answers for questions that I didn't know I had. I am very thankful for your articles.
Do I understand you right if I changed 'Stop it' she shouted from the top of her lungs to 'Stop it' she said. Her voice was louder then normal and the vibration of anger was heard by everybody in the room.?
Personally, I'd do something a little different for a shouted exclamation.
"Stop it!" is enough, the exclamation mark tells the reader it's shouted, rather than spoken. The rest of the punctuation in your story helps to tell the tale too.
Thats so much more simple, thank you. Punctuation is for me a very hard concept to grasp so every little hint is helpful.
Often times the worst mistakes in writing are missed opportunities. There's so much you can do with dialogue, and it's a shame to see the writer resort to literally describing things instead of using the character's words themselves to set the scene. Pretty solid advice here—keep it up!
I am a reader, not a writer, and this one line sums up everything she tried to say from a readers point of view.
A break forced on your readers, is a commercial, the story needs to flow or I just can not see it, and when I as a reader say can not see it I mean that literally. I see stories as I read, and commercials in an otherwise nice story really really suck. They are why I do not watch TV, or go to the movies, I buy the dvd, or the book.
For the aspiring Author/Storyteller, heed her advice in this. Show us through the words, don't tell us with a word.
Writing is much different on the inside than it is from the outside. I think that in reality it boils down to the ability to communicate oneself the way you want to be heard- the barrier is finding the words to plant the same feeling in the reader that you’re trying to convey...all with a sense of honesty.
Great advice -such a tricky thing to get right.
Every time I read one of your tip posts, I am learning a better way to write. Thanks, @michelle.gent!
All the tips and suggestions that you have provided in this article are very useful and helpful for us.
I am with you on the every point.
Your each and every sentence encourage me to improve my writing skills.
Thank you so much for your opinions.
These great tips are helpful.
They can really be of great assistance to every author and aspiring writers.
Thanks for sharing this.