Go a week without...

Some stellar advice to tighten up your writing, and why I'm working on two novels simultaneously

Rather a good writing tip

Benjamin Dreyer, former Copy Chief at Random House, opens the first chapter of his excellent (and oh so witty) book about writing, Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style, with the following suggestion:

Go a week without writing

- very
- really
- rather
- quite
- in fact

He calls these words “Wan Intensifiers and Throat Clearers” and says a week of not writing them will make you a better writer.

I’ve been over and over my manuscript a number of times looking at different areas to improve, right down to the nitty gritty word level like this.

And yet, of the some 96,000 words in it, there are still:

• 22 counts of very

• 41 of really

• 8 of rather

• 39 of quite

• 11 counts of in fact

Oh dear. Although I did feel better after realising that even the most used of these (really) still only accounted for 0.043% of the words in the entire story, and that about half of the instances were in dialogue. (It’s just how my character speaks, alright?)

Seriously, though, eliminating words like these from your writing can make an enormous difference to the clarity of what you are saying.

Most of us write in a business setting rather than a more casual environment, which only makes it all the more important to be clear and concise.

So, why not give it a go and try to cut them out.

I promise, it really won’t be very painful. In fact, you might find that you quite like not using them and that your writing sounds rather better as a result. ;)

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What I’ve been up to recently

Freelance work spiked this month, so much of my focus has been on that rather than on either of the novels, but I have managed to… oh, you know… decide to change almost all the opening scenes and chapters in The Third Letter.

Some feedback I received last autumn was that the novel could be shorter, more compact. I’ve already taken it from 106,000 words to 98k, and even further to 96k, but what if I could get right-bang into the story much sooner? What if I amped up the inciting incident and made it a little more, well, inciting (and exciting)?

All these thoughts were swirling through my head after a workshop run by my hist fic bestie, the amazingly talented Rachel Blackmore. She knows what she’s talking about – her debut novel, COSTANZA, is being published this August by Renegade Books.

It didn’t take long for the “what if…?” and the “how about…?” to develop into a different opening for the novel. Eight pages of notes later, and I’m rewriting and trying to kill my darlings.

JK, I’d never do that.

“I don’t kill Darlings. I anesthetize them, stack their bodies in a box, and see if they’ll resurrect in another setting. In writing, there’s always a second chance.”

– E.B. Moore

Then, in the midst of all this furious scrawling of notes and typing of new lines, I had the stellar idea of also writing the opening scene of the new novel for submission to a competition. Because, why not?

Why not give myself an extra assignment in the middle of doing another mahoosive task?

Well, I had said that 2024 would be the year I entered as many competitions as I could…

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What I've been reading recently

Some hits and some misses this month:

The Vaster Wilds - Lauren Groff: I opened this book up not expecting to like it. A book about a girl who walks through nature? Not my thing. But how wrong I was. This is a beautifully lyrical story set in early 17th century New England that encompasses history and religion, human endurance and suffering, and redemption. Stunning!

Wait for Me - Santa Montefiore: While I hadn’t expected to like The Vaster Wilds, Wait for Me should have been something like my ideal read. Second World War setting? ✅ Love story? ✅ Emotional? ✅ Family secrets? ✅ But despite all this, I just couldn’t warm to this book. For a book that is described as “heartwarming” and “captivating”, I felt it lacked any depth of emotion. And the execution of the final part of the book didn’t seem much of a resolution.

Really Good, Actually - Monica Heisey: This is a book I would have devoured in my mid-twenties. In fact, I feel as if I have read this book – in different guises – a number of times already. If I hadn’t adored Meg Mason’s Sorrow & Bliss last year, perhaps I might have enjoyed this one more. But it didn’t capture me in the same way. This was a bittersweet read, but not as laugh-out-loud funny as the cover claimed, unfortunately.

These Old Shades - Georgette Heyer: This book was a gift from a fellow writer (in fact, the person who introduced me to Georgette Heyer in the first instance) and I loved it almost as much as Heyer’s Venetia. A romantic, funny, charming tale of love and feuds in mid-18th century France and England.

If you are interested in these titles or others I’ve mentioned before, you can find them in my shop* on Bookshop UK.

* affiliate link

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Until the next time,

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