A Polishing Till It Shines Checklist from Mia Marlowe

Today I have the pleasure of welcoming author Mia Marlowe to talk to us about polishing your manuscript. For all of you doing NaNoWriMo, this checklist of things to look for after you've finished your draft is going to be especially indispensable.

And if that wasn't enough, Mia is giving away an ARC of SINS OF THE HIGHLANDER to a lucky commenter! (open internationally) So be sure to leave your email address in the comments.


Now, over to Mia...

    Polishing Till it Shines

The manuscript is finished. Now what? Time to revise andpolish. And let me encourage you to be brutal. This is your last chance to makethe story as good as it possibly can be before you start submitting it. Youonly get one chance to impress an agent or editor. Make it count.

Start with the beginning. Does your opening sentence raise aquestion in the reader's mind, something to hook them into reading on? If not,work on it until it does.

Is your first chapter bogged down with back-story? Slash itnow. Hit the ground running and don't look back. You need to know what's comebefore. Your readers only need the barest hint. Don’t include more backstorythan is necessary for readers to understand well enough to continue. Keepingyour reader slightly off balance, wondering why something is happening or why acharacter is reacting in an unusual manner is a good way to keep the pagesturning. And that is your goal.

I often tell my husband he married a hooker. No, this isn’t TrueConfessions! ;-) I'm talking about writing hooks. These are tiny tantalizingbits of information that create a path for your readers. If you work it right,you can literally pull your reader forward through your story.  This is what keeps readers up nights.

Check your prose. Are you using passive voice? Hope not.Lots of helping verbs? Weak. Circle every word ending in "ly" and cutthem till there's no more than one or two per page. Use descriptive verbs andnouns instead of adjectives and adverbs.

Read your story aloud. You'll hear the echoes of over-usedwords your eyes may miss. Any sentence you have to take a breath to finish istoo long. Cut it in half.

Look at your pages. How much white space is there? Are you tooheavy on narrative and too light on dialogue? Do you need the tags on yourdialogue or can you tell who's talking based on their speech patterns? Do allyour characters sound alike?

Can you smell your scenes? Have you engaged all the senses orare you relying merely on visual? Your reader wants to walk in the heroine'sshoes. Give her enough to know where she is and how to feel about it.

Are you sticking with one point of view per scene or are youpopping in and out of your character's heads so much you'll give your readerswhiplash?

Do your characters have similar sounding names? Tolkien mayhave gotten away with Eowen and Eomer, but most readers prefer not to have towork that hard. Do your character's names start with the same letter? For thesake of clarity, change one of them now.

Use the spell checker. I mistrust the grammar checker, butthe spell check is my friend.
  
When your story is polished till you're sick of it, turn it overto someone whose judgment you trust--generally not a relative or someone whowants to continue to sleep with you. Don't be defensive. Prepare yourself forrequests for revisions. If you don't develop the hide of a rhinoceros, yourstay in Writerland will be painful and brief. Accept their comments andconsider them carefully. You didn't come down the mountain with the storycarved in stone. Revise if you find you agree with them.

Once you're satisfied your manuscript sparkles, do yourhomework. Don't send it to an editor or agent who doesn't handle your brand ofromance. Choose your targets carefully. Why set yourself up for a 'no?'

Print it up. Say a prayer. Submit and start working on thenext one. Don't even think about contacting them for a response before threemonths. Good luck and Happy Writing!



What special trick do you use tomake sure your final manuscript is the best version of the story of yourheart?



Mia Marlowe writes historical romance for Kensingtonand Sourcebooks. A classically trained soprano, she calls her adventurous,sensual stories a cross between Grand Opera and Gilbert & Sullivan…withsex!  Her Touch of a Thief(May 2011) received a rare starred review fromPublishers Weekly and January 2012 will see the release of her firstcollaborative novel with New York Times bestseller Connie Mason,Sins of theHighlander. Check out her blog at MiaMarlowe.com for RedPencil Thursday. Mia does an online critique of the first 500 words for anintrepid volunteer each week. She loves to connect with other writers andreaders and hopes you’ll join her on Facebookand Twitter.

Remember to leave a comment and your email if you want to be entered to win the ARC!

Thanks, Mia, for stopping by!

“...a sexy, sizzling tale that is sure to have readers begging for more!" –Jo Davis, author of I SPY A DARK OBSESSION

CRASH INTO YOU is now available for pre-order!
Read an excerpt here.

All content copyright of the author. Please ask permission before re-printing or re-posting. Fair use quotations and links do no require prior consent of the author. ©Roni Loren 2009-2011 |Copyright Statement|

You've Got Rhythm, But Does Your Story?

 

As I wade through my editing for MELT INTO YOU, I'm discovering that one of the big things I pay attention to when doing my read through is cadence, or the rhythm of the words. I think it was Margie Lawson's workshop where I first heard this term used in relation to writing.

 

We all know about voice and style, but cadence is more the way the words sound in your head as your read them. It's the flow and the music of the prose. It's why I may use a one-word incomplete sentence somewhere instead of something longer. Part of that is my style, but a lot of it has to do with making sure the rhythm works.

And one of the best ways to see if your story has good cadence or rhythm is to read it aloud. A lot of times when we read our own work in our head, our brain naturally skims. Hell, we've written it, we know what's there and what's coming. But this can hurt you because you may be missing places where a reader with fresh eyes may stumble on a sentence. Even in our heads we need places in prose to "take a breath" while we're reading.

Maybe your crit partners point this out, but most likely it's such a subtle thing that many will intuitively feel the little stumble but not really get hit over the head enough to mark it down and bring it to your attention.

So I literally sit in my office and read passages of my book out loud. Pretend you're the narrator doing the audiobook. Does it flow? Does the scene sound how you want it too--pretty, ethereal, hard and fast-paced, sensual, etc?

Not every scene is going to have the same cadence, nor do you want it to. If they're in the middle of the car chase, the words better not read like poetry. So know what your intention is and then see if the rhythm of the words fits what you were going for.

So here are my opening lines of my prologue in my draft. (And yes, I know, a prologue! *gasp* But well, it's there. I like it. Sara or my editor may cut it, which is fine, but for now, this is how the book opens.)

 

Most of the time temptation climbs onto your lap and straddles you, demands you deal with it immediately. Give in or deprive yourself. Choose your adventure.
Jace’s general stance: deprivation was overrated.
But he’d never faced this kind of temptation. The kind that seeped into your skin so slowly you didn’t even notice until you were soaked with it, saturated. To the point that every thought, every breath seemed to be laced with the desire for that thing you shouldn’t have.  
            And right now that thing was nibbling flecks of purple polish off her fingernails.

 

So okay, see where you'd take the breaths (hint: breaths happen at commas and periods)? And we're in a dude's head so the thoughts start off short and to the point, but then he gets wrapped up with how much this is getting to him. If you read it aloud hopefully it flows. It did when I went through it.

But do you see where I'm going with the cadence thing? Do you think about this when you're going through your work? Do you read it aloud either to yourself or to a writer's group?


Also, because I forgot to announce on Friday with all  of Blogger's problems, the winner of Elana Johnson's Possession (ARC) is MayDay_Aura! (I'll be emailing the winner.) Thanks for all of you who commented and entered! :)

Wordiness:The Post in Which I Discuss Reduction of the Aforementioned

 

I'm a wordy girl. In school, the teachers used to tell us the minimum amount of pages required for a paper. While others were trying to figure out what font would fill the maximum amount of space (Courier New, btw), I would be trying to get my paper under fifteen pages. So I know I have to watch this tendency when I'm writing.

The terrific resources on the RWA site helped me out again. Here are some things to help cut the fluff out of your manuscript.

1. Eliminate and remove redundancy.
Fluffy: She sobbed and tears fell from her eyes as she watched him walk away.

Sleek: Tears fell from her eyes as he walked away.

2. Delete intensifiers that don't intensify.
F: Generally, Mary kept her very deepest emotions hidden.

S: Mary kept her deepest emotions hidden.
(or even better: Mary hid her deepest emotions.)

3. Remove important sounding phrases that don't add to a sentence.
F: All things considered, she was thankful for the outcome.

S: She was thankful for the outcome.

4. Avoid starting sentences with expletives.

No, this doesn't mean curse words. An expletive according to Webster is : "a syllable, word, or phrase inserted to fill a vacancy without adding to the sense." That should tell us all we need to know. (it was, there are, etc)
F: It was his gaze that made her heart beat faster.

S: His gaze made her heart beat faster.
(Or better: His gaze made her heart pound.)
 

5. Use active instead of passive voice whenever you can.
F: The dishes were washed after dinner by my mother.

S: After dinner, my mother washed the dishes.

6. Reduce clauses to phrases, and reduce phrases to single words.
F: In the very near future, she would have to make a decision.

S: Soon, she would have to decide.
 

7. Remove adjective clauses where you can.
 
F: The girl who lived next door wore a dress that had pink stripes.

S: The girl next door wore a pink striped dress.
 

8. Turn prepositional phrases into one-word modifiers.
F: The captain of the football team always dated the prettiest of the cheerleaders.

S: The football team captain always dated the prettiest cheerleader.
 

9. Cut extraneous words or phrases.
F: We conducted an investigation regarding the murder.

S: We investigated the murder.
 

10. Remove cliches and euphemisms.
F: He had a sneaking suspicion his protests had fallen on deaf ears.

S: He suspected they had ignored his protests.
 

11. Weed out the "to be".
F: Sue found the children to be exhausting.

S: Sue found the children exhausting.
 

12. Avoid stating the obvious.
F: He sat down and realized it was already 6am in the morning.

S: He sat and realized it was already 6am.
 
*This a personal favorite of mine. I naturally write "stood up"--like where else can you stand but up? Grr. I do it all the time.

13. Delete meaningless adverbs.
F: She yelled at him loudly, then ran away quickly.

S: She yelled at him and ran.
 

The source that I pulled this from also has fantastic lists of

Redundant Phrases like

absolutely essential = essential

future plans = plans

Wordy Phrases

A lot of = many

Come to an end = end

And Cliches

sad but true (great Metallica song, but a cliche nonetheless)

give a damn

*This is a repost from October 2009

So are any of you wordy like me? Which of these do you find cropping up in your manuscript the most?

 

**Today's Theme Song**
"More Than Words" - Extreme
(player in sidebar--go ahead, take a listen)

 

Self-Editing Tips

This weekend I went to my monthly RWA meeting and had the privilege of hearing author Judi McCoy talk about self-editing.  (Check out her Dogwalker Mystery series here.)  Some of the tips we've already talked about on here, but the two that stood out for me were the following:

1.  Print out your manuscript to edit because you will miss things trying to edit on the computer
2.  Read your manuscript out loud or, even better, have a friend read it out loud to you.

I've done the first one at times, but honestly do most of my editing on the computer because I'm cheap (want to save ink and paper).  But perhaps, I need to take this advice. I definitely do find things in printed copies that I passed over time and time again on the electronic file.

 

The second one I've never done.  Occasionally, if I'm struggling with a paragraph or scene, I'll read some of it aloud. But I've never read the whole manuscript that way.  I could see how that would be extremely helpful because sometimes things just don't roll off the tongue and you can't catch it until you read it aloud.  Also, this is a great way to check the flow and naturalness of your dialogue.

So I think I'll try both of these when I finish my current WIP and see if it's helpful.

Now, a few quick things.  If you missed the Bad Boy Blogfest yesterday, you can check out my entry from Wanderlust here.  I'd love your opinion.  That page also as the link back to Tina Lynn's site to find all the entries for the fest.  They were super fun to read, so check them out.  :)

Also, the Beta Club queue has shortened to a month wait.  The next opening is July 27th.  So if you were considering sending something in, now would be a great time.  For details, you can click on the Free Critiques button at the top of this page.  :)

Alright, so what are some of your self-editing tips?  Do you print out your manuscript or edit it all on the computer?  Do you read it out loud?

**Today's Theme Song**
"Seek and Destroy" - Metallica
(player in sidebar, take a listen)