Monday, April 18, 2022

Second Verse Same As The First

 


The next step is pretty easy. Just do what you just did the last time only a bit more carefully. With a bit more scrutiny. Maybe a bit more discrimination than the last time. 

You've hopefully scraped off the unwanted goop from your story. You now have the outline down. Read it over again and see if it makes sense, if it's what you want to say. If it is, then you're ready to proceed. If it doesn't make it yet, you may have to do some tweaking. It's your story so I can't make suggestions here. I repeat, it's your story. But what you are going to do next is to take that rough stone in front of you and smooth it down a bit. 

See if there are any words that don't feel comfortable. Look for better ones, words that really are a fit for what you are writing. See if there is still excess baggage in your sentences. Are you being repetitive? Instead of loading your story with adjectives are there some good action words you can use? 

Avoid the one of the biggest pratfalls of new writers, admiring your work too much. We new writers are discovering we have a gift for the printed word, and the more words the better. So the next thing you know, instead of saying what we have to say, we start adding and embellishing, like Whitney Houston trying the find the last few notes of a song. Pretty soon our nice phrase is weighted down my byzantine language until it sounds pretentious. And if it sounds pretentious it probably is. So please, look it over and read it like an outsider, someone who has never seen your draft. What's your impression? Are there places it gets weighed down with excess verbiage. Does it sound like the writer is trying to impress himself? Economy is sometimes the way to go.

You notice i haven't mentioned rules yet. They are coming. Just not yet. 




No comments:

Post a Comment

Still Here

                           Getting Things Ready For Prime Time You have a perfect right to wonder where I have been. In fact I would be thri...