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I'm trying to put together a master checklist for revisions, things I need to remember to look for and fix while I'm editing. Most of this relates to language use and the actual writing mechanics, not the storytelling.
Here is what I have so far:
- Senses (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting)
- Showing vs. telling
- Active vs. passive voice
- Tighten sentences
- Eliminate redundancies
- Info dump/too much backstory
- Emotion
- Body language and nonverbal communication
- Consistent details (hair and eye color, etc)
- Varied sentence structure (does every sentence in a paragraph start with "he said"?)
- Word repetition - I downloaded ywriter which gives you a list of the words you used and how often
- Setting
- Description
- Too many "ly," "ing" or adverbs
- Eliminate most dialogue tags
- Mixing tenses
Do you have anything to add?
5 comments:
I think you have it covered, but after our speaker last night at the meeting you might want to not take out all those ings,lys, and passive. If it make the story move forward and work... Remember the only rule: Move the reader with emotion.
I never take out all of the ings, lys and passive - but I find that I use them too much and I can strengthen a lot of it by rewriting. But I always leave them in. One thing I never eliminate is fragments. I love fragment sentences. I think they read snappy and help the pace.
A tool I'm trying to figure out how to use is a macro. I can set it to highlight all instances of "that," "was," "is," "ly" and "ing" words. Then I can look at each to see if it works or if it should be changed. If I don't highlight them, I tend to skip over them while reading.
You are so far ahead of the game, you don't even realize it.
I knew NONE of that when I wrote my first book. It never would have occurred to me to check for those things.
Your CP - I'm sure - can't wait to read your chapters. ;)
This is a great post! I love your list. I use the macro's frequently in my writing and find them to be a great help. I need to do a search and see if anyone has written a macro for finding look-alike words--this is one of my biggest problems--choose/chose eclectic/electric etc. I like your list and I plan to come back to it :) Thanks!
Thanks Eli :-) I feel confident about knowing what to look for before the editing, but when I sit down to do it I wig out, feeling like I don't know how to fix it to where it should be. Practice, practice, practice.
Bethany, I found one earlier. I believe it was on Charlotte Dillon's articles page. I'll try to find it again and send it to you.
Thanks Amanda! Now to put it to use...
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