Making the Cut: the most common mistakes fiction writers make and how to avoid them

By Trina Allen                                                       Home     Portfolio     Contact the Author

 

Consider yourself a surgeon with a scalpel in hand, ready to remove your patient’s cancer before it spreads throughout his body. You do not hesitate. You make the cut knowing that after surgery your patient will be healthier and live longer. Treat your writing like that patient. Don’t let it die! Make the cut and save your fiction from the cancer of overwriting.

In editing manuscripts, I see the same common mistakes: the cancers of passive voice, over describing and adverbs usage. Many writers would sooner cut off a body part than delete their words. But if you want to make the cut to publication, you will have to hit that delete key.

 

Cut the passive verbs!

Verbs come in two forms, active and passive. Make the active verb your friend. The subject of a passive verb is the victim of the action. Something is done to it. A wimpy, timid verb shows your reader you are afraid. Maybe because passive voice is found in educational, legal and scientific jargon, new writers think the passive voice makes them sound intellectual. It doesn’t. You might as well tattoo, “I’m an amateur. Would you please reject my work,” on your arm.

 

Bad — passive voice:

1.                  Ashley's first memories were of a small, dinky, two-bedroom trailer in Tucson, Arizona, where her life was begun.

2.                  The lawn was mowed and  trimmed.

3.                  The poetry reading will be at eight.

 

After the surgeon’s cut:  

1.                  Ashleigh remembered the trailer in Tucson, Arizona, where she lived as a child. With passive verbs cut, Ashley is remembering and living. She is no longer the passive victim of memories and her life.

2.                  Eric mowed and trimmed the lawn. Eric is in the sentence once the passive verb was is cut. The lawn is no longer the focus, Eric is.

3.                  The poetry reading is at eight. The poetry reading is central to the sentence now.

 

Cut adverbs at all costs!

To quote Stephen King from On Writing, “The adverb is not your friend.” When you use adverbs, those words that modify verbs, other adverbs or adjectives, you tell the reader that you are afraid you aren’t getting your meaning across, or that you don’t know how to express yourself clearly. You might as well write across your forehead in black marker, “Please, please reject my work. I don’t want to be published.”

Consider the sentence She fought fearlessly against depression. Does fearlessly need to be there? If you fight, doesn’t that imply fearlessness? Or this sentence, He walked softly. If we can’t tell from the narrative that came before how he is walking then you haven’t done a good job writing. Perk up your writing— put the scalpel to your adverbs.

 

Cut adverbs in dialogue tags. Keep dialogue attribution simple.

For God’s sake, avoid adverbs in dialogue tags! Please don’t mark yourself a beginner by putting your enemy the adverb in your dialogue attribution.

 

Bad:

1.                  “Oh yes, lovely,” Joyce mused quietly.

2.                  “You can’t hurt me,” Andy cried haughtily.

 

After the knife:

1.                  “Oh yes, lovely, Joyce said.

2.                  “You can’t hurt me,” Andy said.

Don’t try to strengthen dialogue attribution with muscle. The result is similar. Though the following sentences are better than those with adverbs in the dialogue tags, they still read like beginner writing. “Stop, or I’ll shoot,” Rezell yelled. “That’s tight, dude,” Adeshola shouted out. A simple Rezell said or Adeshola said would work as well. You show whether someone whispers softly, shouts, reassures, muses quietly, or yells loudly through your narration. The best form of dialogue attribution is said, as in Ashley said, he said, or said Stephen.

 

Make the cut. Be an underwriter.

Avoid long descriptions, especially in the beginning paragraphs. You don’t need to set the scene or introduce your characters in the first few paragraphs. If you try, you’ll bore the reader with details, and a bored reader stops reading. Give only enough details to let readers create their own sense of reality. Your readers have imagination. They can fill in the gaps. Your characters will come to life through dialogue as the story progresses. Don’t try to do it in one paragraph.

 

Bad:

Ashley's first memories were of a small, dinky, two-bedroom trailer in Tucson, Arizona, where her life was begun. Ashley was an exceptionally pretty child with emerald green eyes that had gold-specked centers. When she smiled, her face lit up, dimples decorated her cheeks. Her blond hair curled around her face in bouncing pale ringlets that shimmered like the sun. Ashley wore old clothes given her by relatives, or ones purchased at garage sales. Her mother was a traditional homemaker who washed their clothes in an old wringer washer and hung them to dry on a clothesline outside their trailer. Ashley didn't know it then, but that trailer was only twelve feet wide. The family lived on just loans and scholarships. That wasn't even enough to bring them to the minimalist poverty level. Ashley knew none of this. She just felt a sense of safety, well being, and happiness that comes from the love of caring parents, no matter what their financial status.

 

After the surgeon’s cut:

Ashleigh was a happy child with emerald eyes and blond curls. Although the family struggled to survive on her father’s scholarships, she didn’t mind the hand-me down clothes or the small trailer where she lived until she was five.

Although the second paragraph is not perfect, it is more concise. Your readers will thank you for not bogging them down with overly long descriptions.

Rejection is something that new writers (and old) live with. You can make rejection less likely to happen by welding that scalpel. Cut out the cancers of overwriting, passive voice and the overuse of adverbs and you’ll have a more marketable product.

 

Publication Information:

Education Articles. 2006. http://www.edarticle.com

 

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