The topic of eliminating unnecessary words has been covered before. Many times in many places by many, many astute writers.
Still, when I get to the down-and-dirty revision stage of a book, I'm surprised all over again at how many overused words I, well, overuse.
I'm working my way though A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die. I searched first for words Donald Maass enjoined us to replace: "felt, gasp, fear, terror." I looked at each character, mostly farmer Cam Flaherty, and made sure that was what she was feeling, and then made sure I showed it in the cleanest, clearest way possible rather than describing the feeling in words. I eliminated a LOT of "felt"s. I didn't find many "terror" instances, and I think all the "gasp"s are gone now.
Then I looked for "stare" in its various noun and verb permutations. Oh, my. Lots of people were staring, sometimes many times within a scene. Revised that one, just getting rid of the verb in quite a few cases. People can just "look" or can fix their eyes on something. Or you can assume if two folks are standing face to face they are mostly likely making eye contact.
Did you know you can eliminate dozens of occurrences of "that?" Yes, you can. The esteemed and insightful Ramona deFelice Long discussed this recently.
Tonight's exercise involves "just." I, and other speakers of English, legitimately use it as a minimizer: "It was probably just an object left long ago." As an intensifier: "The three of them had just made the noon deadline." As a time indicator: "She had just locked the back door." And so on.
I've found that I use "just" instead of searching for alternatives, for more precise or more colorful ways of saying what I or my characters say or do.
In the minimizer case, how about rewording or removing it? ""It was probably [only] an object left long ago."
In the intensifier case, how about rewording? "The three of them had barely made the noon deadline."
Same with the time indicator: "She had locked the back door not a minute earlier."
See? Those three examples occurred on one page of my manuscript. I have some hours of revision left on just that word alone.
I have more to search for, but these are a good start.
What's your favorite overused word when you revise? What are the kinds of unnecessary words you notice when you're reading? And if you feel like challenging me on this, I might just have to stare you down (after I gasp in terror...).
I finished the first draft of A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die! That's a big milestone. The deadline for turning the manuscript in is September 1. Sounds like I'm way ahead, right?
Wrong. Those little words "first draft" are significant. That means, in the words of writer Anne Lamott, from her book Bird by Bird, that I was able to finish the "shitty" first draft. Now the real work begins.
When I write the first draft, I occasionally type [CHECK THIS] or [CAN A GUN SHOOT OFF A LOCK?]. It's so I don't pause in the creative flow to go exploring the internets or books in search of an answer. I might not be back for an hour if I start that kind of process.
Now's the time to catch up with all those. I spent Saturday morning making a note of all those comments in square brackets on a piece of paper. No, on two pieces of paper. I have more than 40 items to check out. Groan. I started by ticking off the easy ones: Make the chief of police more suspicious at the farmers' market. Does Lucinda know about the sabotage? Make Kryzanski have a slight accent. Give Cam a chipped left incisor. What do you call a wooden plank lock on a barn door?
The hard ones remain. I made some progress on one of them, and now need to rewrite one of the most important scenes in the book. Did you know that gasoline is no good as an accelerent for arson? Did you know you can't shoot a lock off with a handgun? Yep, nope. Things are not as they appear in the movies. Mix that gas with motor oil or diesel and, sure, you can drizzle it around an old barn and light it on fire. Get a hunting rifle and a deer slug and, sure, you can break a padlock or shoot out a bolt lock.
And then there's the advice we got from Donald Maass at the workshop in mid-April. One of the big takeaways I got was, "What's the one thing your protagonist has always feared would happen? Make it happen. Then make it worse. Then make it worse again." So I'm working on that. Once you keep that mantra in the back of your mind, you start to write differently. Even that scene I need to rewrite based on the advice I got from a long-time firefighter and arson specialist -- I wrote that after the workshop and had already worked in some of that "make it worse" approach.
After all those changes are in, I'll let the book sit fallow for a few weeks. Then it's time to jump in and look at pacing, at the timing of suspense scenes, at the logic (for example, "No! She can't suspect the chef BEFORE he drops that clue..."). Solicit a read from a few sharp-eyed fellow writer-editors. Revise some more. Print it out and read it aloud. Do my own edit. Hone the first sentence and the last sentence.
Because I want to deliver the very best book I can to the actual editor at the publishing company. I want to give this book, the first in the series, my best effort.
If you hear me running around screaming toward the end of August, not to worry!
Writers, what's your post-first-draft process? Readers, can you tell when a book hasn't gone through the whole process?
In the intensifier case, how about rewording? "The three of them had barely made the noon deadline."
