Advice on Editing your own work

Happy New Year everyone.

I’m afraid I got caught up in festivities (chance would be a fine thing) and Steemit came a close second to my time scheduling.

A few more bits and pieces of advice to enable your writing to not only grab your reader’s attention/imagination, but to keep it too.

Filler words: Those unnecessary words used predominantly to bulk up your word count. Using them is cheating. You know it’s cheating and believe me, so will your readers.

As with Superfluous adjectives: CUT THEM OUT! If word count is so vital to your goal, write more, without the filler!

Example: The giant, large, big, hefty, massive, immense object… Choose one – maybe two - and lose the rest.

PLEASE don’t use ‘themselves’ and ‘himself/herself’- He, himself stood to gain… unnecessary, clumsy, needless - superfluous (see what I mean?)

My ‘go-to’ tip would ALWAYS be to re-read your work. If there’s time, record yourself as you read it out loud and listen to it played back. It really does help.

Be definite: ‘They’, ‘he’, ‘them’ – if there is more than one subject or group tell the reader which one you mean at any one time. A sentence can develop differently in the mind of the reader if they believe ‘they’ or ‘he’ is different to the one the writer meant and that can jolt the reader out of the story (that’s never good).

The big one for today would be this.

Avoid repeating any word/phrase that is unusual in our everyday language. ‘Atop’, ‘akin’, ‘irk’ for example. One or two in a manuscript/story, otherwise you’re in danger of the reader thinking ‘Oh, so THAT’S the word of the week, is it?’

More soon.