16 August 2021
Things to pay attention to:
- Telling details: One telling detail is preferable to many details
- Embodiment. Emotions and actions work best when embodied: gaze, gesture, posture, proprioception, proxemics
- Scenes. Scenes should vary in length, and be interleaved with summaries. This gives rhythm and weighting. Think of a scene as a spotlight.
- Language: avoid ‘to be’s. Avoid “is” “are” “have” etc. and limit use of adjectives.
“To be” is the weakest verb. Not “He is tall” but “He smacked his head on the door frame” - Language: avoid distancing: Avoid habitually using filtering/distancing language such as “I noticed,” “I heard,” “I saw,”
(That said, sometimes you may want to use it to distance yourself, as when you are uncomfortable and don’t want to be in it.) - Language: avoid adverbs. Use actions and embodiment rather than adverbs:
“Yeah,” she said, stroking his bare arm, “that’s what I heard.” vs. “Yeah,” she said gently, “that’s what I heard.” - Support reader inference. There is something about readers being able to figure something out on their own that is very rewarding.
- Revising Tricks: Print it out in a different font. Read it out loud and notice where you stumble, speed up, lag, etc. Replace “to be’s”