Pimping the words
Eliminating unnecessary words and launching an author website – it's all go, go, go
Fillers and filters and crutches
One of my key tasks with the novel in its current phase is to tighten it up and ensure that the language is crisp and concise without sounding like it has been written by… well, an AI, I suppose.
To this end, I have four searches that I run on the scenes in my novel.
The first is to spot generic verbs. You know: ask, bring, close, leave, walk – all those boring and overused words. Among its many writing tools, the excellent Writers Helping Writers site has a list of them and some alternatives that will bring your writing to life.
Once I have run through a scene in the novel and pimped up the verbs, I then search for filtering words – the ones that put distance between your reader and your story, or put a filter between them. These are verbs like watched, heard, looked, remembered. I eliminate these – bam, bam, bam – GONE!
Number three is for crutch words – the ones that authors tend to fall back on but that make your writing sound cliched. Glance, smile, shrug, breathe, imagine, stand, and all those “was/were” + “-ing” combos.
And the final search that I run is the big one. The scary one. It’s for filler words. I have a list of more than a hundred of these. Really, definitely, possibly, behind, above, around, somewhat, just, only... My scenes turn yellow when I run this search. Now, I know I am not going to be able to get rid of all these, but it is useful to see them highlighted on the screen and to consider whether they are necessary every single time.
These four searches have been invaluable, both in tightening up my writing and in cutting unnecessary words. And what’s not to love about that?
What I've been up to recently
As you might guess from this newsletter coming to you late, June was a busy month.
The problem is that I was juggling so many different plates, pots, pans, and pickling jars that I cannot really remember what I did during the month. Work, I am certain. But on what exactly? Hmmm…
I know that I got less done on the novel than I’d been hoping for, but I am still plugging away at the new version of it, implementing the excellent feedback that I’m getting from other authors and generally trying to polish it.
Most recently, that has meant working on the first third of the book – the part that has seen the most love, anyway. The real work comes soon when I start tackling the latter part of the novel. I am somewhat apprehensive about reading through those words. All I can remember towards the end of the first draft was slapping words down on the page haphazardly so as just to finish the damn thing. I knew that psychologically I need that, to be able to say that the first draft was done, rather than sitting and carefully fine-tuning each sentence.
So that is the task ahead of me now.
In other news, I am writing a couple of pages for my new author website, which has been built for me by the amazing Jenny Theolin – facilitator, learning consultant, designer, photographer (you name it, and Jenny can do it).
Here’s a little sneak peek of the site:
I am beyond pleased with the site, as you can imagine. All that’s left is to finish off the text on a couple of the pages and then I can send her out into the world.
What I've been reading and watching recently
The Morning Gift - Eva Ibbotson: My main question when I finished this book was why I hadn’t read it before. Followed closely by how long I would need to wait before reading it again. This is one of those books that I felt had been written just for me. It tells the story of Ruth, who marries young professor Quin in order to escape from Vienna in 1938. They both decide they shall tell no one of their marriage and simply dissolve it once they are in England. But life isn’t quite that simple… Please, if you haven’t read this book before, do so. It was charming and terribly funny and filled to the brim with wonderful characters, and… and… and can you tell how much I adored it?
Goodnight From London - Jennifer Robson: An impeccably researched story set in England during the Second World War. I enjoyed this story of ambitious journalist Ruby, who finds herself reporting back to the States on life in London during the war. This one was a good, pacy read, although I felt the last 20% suddenly took quite a different turn and that the ending somewhat fizzled out.
Killers of the Flower Moon: Oil, Money, Murder and the Birth of the FBI - David Grann: I read this after seeing reports of the upcoming Martin Scorsese film. This was a fascinating dive into crimes that I knew nothing about among the Osage Native American tribe in the 1920s. I felt that the author was trying a little too hard to emulate Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, but the story is so incredible that I sped through the book regardless.
On the watching front, I had a bit of a victory and both of the boys have started to watch Band of Brothers with us. Even more surprisingly, I persuaded the younger first, and he then talked his older brother round into watching it.
Their verdict is that it is good, not as horrid as the start of Saving Private Ryan, and that they are happy to watch more.
Until the next time,
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