Tips For Tightening Up Your Writing

Writers more than almost anyone else are prone to go mad around the new year. We promise to write this, edit that, finish this project, and finally get around to publishing that one secret story we've never put to paper before. By and large the madness passes by the time Valentine's Day rolls around, and we get back to business.

Some resolutions are well-meaning though. A few of them are even necessary. If you made a resolution to sharpen your stories by tightening up your prose, let me hand you a whetstone.

The metaphors are mixed, but you get the thrust of it I'm sure.

Tip #1: Take Out Unnecessary Words

The kingdom of the novel is full of swooping paths that lead through mountains and caves, round huge lakes and across the seas. You can write however much you want, but many writers use this freedom as an excuse to create loose prose hung with extraneous words like a gypsy fortune-teller's baubles. While the loose, flowy prose is interesting, even engaging, it's all too easy to trip on the excess.

One of the best ways to eliminate roundabout writing full of phrases like I reached out my hand to take it is to write short fiction. I highly recommend everyone write at least some short fiction before taking on a novel because it teaches you to trim the fat and get to the point. If you only have 3k or 5k words to tell your story in you learn really damn quickly to cut out adverbs you don't need, and to remove instances of words like that, just, up, down, and others.

Words. Do. Not. Bleed.

Every writer has words that keep showing up in text which could easily be removed. For instance say you wrote, Terese sat down on the chair, sighed quietly to herself, and put down her book on the side table. A tighter, smoother sentence would read, Terese sat, sighed, and laid her book on the side table.

One sentence doesn't make a lot of difference to your overall word count, but if you go through your entire manuscript and trim the fat you'll see thousands of words vanish. You'll also notice your writing style is punchier, and easier to read.

Tip #2: Ask What This Scene Is Showing Us

Imagine for a moment that you were making a movie. You need to ask what every camera angle, every action scene, and every word of dialogue is telling your audience. For instance if there was a 5-minute scene in the middle of Casablanca where Rick played solitaire after he got drunk in the bar what would we get out of that? Does it act as a setting for a monologue? It is a statement on how he's desperate to do absolutely anything but face his lover's return? Or is it a waste of 5 minutes that would be better spent focusing on an actual aspect of the drama that's going on in the story?

This is why we scrapped the scenes with Legolas's kid sister.

This is one thing that books and movies share; if a scene has no purpose you need to cut it.

It can be hard sometimes to figure out if a scene has purpose, or if you're faffing about. For instance, does that scene with your lead catching coffee with her mom show us important things about how she was raised and the sort of relationship she has with a female role model, or was it just stuffed in there as a way to eat up word count? Is the action scene where your detective takes down a team of three bank robbers a gratuitous shootout, or does it illustrate the sort of man he is when lives are on the line and he has to do his job?

These aren't always easy calls to make, but your job is to tell the story. Does the story benefit from following your teenage monster hunter through every high school class every day of the week, or should we just skip to the part where she's tracking a werewolf on Wednesday afternoon while ditching Spanish III?

Tip #3: Listen To Your Beta Readers, and Kill Your Darlings

They'll never feel a thing.

Every author has beta readers (here are the 5 types every author should have). These are the men and women you trust to tell you if you got your facts right, if your characters are going off the rails, and if you've got holes in your plot. For some reason though when beta readers tell authors they should really get rid of a certain scene they flip their collective shit. They couldn't possibly get rid of the spunky kid sister, or cut out the long reminiscence about the lead's first ever sexual encounter. It's special... and important... and...

And I've got news for you; your word babies are no exception to the rules of good writing. Stories are stories, and if you put in a scene, plot twist, character, etc. that isn't passing muster it's your job to drum it out.

That doesn't mean you should immediately cut out a scene that you feel strongly about. You need to talk with your betas (or editors, or both) about why they feel this thing should be removed. Does the scene repeat an important point that's already been mentioned and thus comes across as unnecessary repetition? Is it just fan service in the event it's a pointless shoot out, sex scene, etc.? Is it offensive, a common complaint with profanity, violence, rape scenes, and other elements? You might decide to keep a scene even if it's been suggested you should delete it, but make sure you're doing it to remain true to the story and not because you have an attachment to that particular piece of prose.

Tip #4: Avoid Metaphor Vomit

This one is a warning based on my personal experience. Writing a great metaphor is a satisfying experience, but metaphors are the spice of your prose. If you use them too much then pretty soon you have one big symbolic mess that is difficult to make any sense out of.

A few solid metaphors are good. Make sure they're spread out so you have plenty of normal, easy-to-read text between them.

Hopefully you found this week's Literary Mercenary helpful. Good hunting to my fellow authors in 2015, and if you'd like to help support me drop by my Patreon page and become a patron today! If you want to make sure you catch all of my updates then follow me on Facebook and Tumblr as well!

Beyond the Purple: Dealing With Purple Prose in Your Fiction

Books are a unique kind of magic. They use words, sometimes written by people thousands of miles away and decades in their graves, to reach into the hearts and minds of readers to tell stories. The best books will run their fingers through the readers' minds, and play merry hell along their heart strings before grabbing hold of their collective guts and yanking. Good books do this by creating realism, using beautiful language, and many times through particularly vivid imagery.

Bad books, on the other hand, tend to fall victim to the disease of purple prose.

What is "Purple Prose"?

A three-lobed burning eye.

Generally speaking purple prose refers to a style of writing that is far too flowery and overdramatic. It's characterized by unnecessarily complex words, long running metaphors, and multiple spurts of description all in the same sentence. Purple prose, like pornography, is often tough to define. Most writers know it when they see it, though. So for that reason, here's an example.

"Jack stepped forward, punching Rob in the face."

This is normal prose. It's simple, straightforward, and it lets the reader know exactly what happened. It might be a little bland, but sometimes that's the sacrifice a story has to make to get the point across.

"Jack brought his right fist down, smashing Rob with a hammer-blow to the back of the head."

This is a little more vivid, and it gets the blood flowing. It's more specific as to the type of blow, where it landed, and the amount of force behind it. It's edging toward pulpy wording, but it's meant to excite the reader. This kind of language is typically good for action scenes.

"The blond giant snarled, the war cry of a lion, before swinging a mighty blow at his enemy that left his opponent staggering, reeling, blood spattering from his nose and mouth like a crimson rain."

Ummm... what? Because you read the previous two incarnations of this sentence you can take a guess what's happening. However, in this throbbing, turgid third sentence we have no names to describe who is doing what. There's entirely too much symbolism and description packed in, and the whole thing has become one big mess. That is typically what people mean when they're talking about purple prose.

Kill Your Darlings

With the strictest of prejudice.

Sir Arthur Quiller-Coach originally gave this fantastic, three-word piece of advice. It's since been repeated by William Faulkner, and it was the constant refrain of Stephen King's book "On Writing". These and other writers have fully endorsed pen monkeys the world over putting all of the pulsing purple prose they want on the page. Writers just need to delete it once they've gotten all that purple out of their systems. No matter how proud you are of a sentence, a turn of phrase, or a really great metaphor, you might still need to drown it in the Editorial River.

How Much Purple is Too Much?

Just give me a goddamn checklist already!

One person's purple prose is another's vivid imagery. It's why there are still arguments about whether authors like H.P. Lovecraft or Robert E. Howard were literary geniuses, or pulp-magazine hacks. As with so much else in writing it's largely up to the writer, the editor, and the beta readers to come to an understanding over how much purple is too much. It often comes down to personal style, the genre someone is writing in, and a dozen other factors.

That said, there are some things writers need to watch out for to make sure they don't bruise their language too badly.

#1: Does it Make Sense?

Whenever you finish writing something, leave it for a few days. A week if you have the time before a deadline. During that time start a different project, read a new book, watch a movie, and then come back to your story. It will shock you how many phrases or descriptions you used that were brilliant at the time, which completely snap the thread of your narrative and leave you asking "what the hell does that even mean?"

#2: Does it Fit With Everything Else?

Have you ever been reading a story or article, and right in the middle the writer gets really erudite for no reason? That happens a lot in purple prose. It feels like the author learned a new word, and wanted a chance to show off that he or she knew it. If you're writing about high school kids chances are you should use the word "backpack" or "messenger bag" instead of "valise". By the same token, if you've been using very straightforward prose for everything, don't start slapping a bunch of metaphors and similes down on the page.

#3: Does it Add Something?

Perhaps the most important question concerning pulsing prose is whether or not it adds to the story. In a fight scene or a love scene this kind of language might be used to increase a reader's pace, and to get the blood pumping. In a chase scene, or a confrontation with a squamous monstrosity, getting a little purple might churn readers' stomachs, or make sweat pop out on their foreheads. But if a writer is using this kind of language to describe getting ready for work in the morning, catching the city bus, or going out to get a newspaper then it can quickly become boring. Much like exclamation points, writers shouldn't go beyond the purple too often. Doing so will reduce the power this kind of prose possesses.


As always I hope that my readers found this installment of the Literary Mercenary helpful. If you want to plug in and follow all of my updates then drop by my Facebook or Tumblr pages. If you're curious about my own published work, stop on by my Goodreads page and show me some love. Lastly, if you'd like to support the Literary Mercenary then please share the blog with your friends and family. Or drop a few cents into the tip jar on the top right of the page. Or both. That would be good too.