The Catholic Writers Guild

How do you make your writing tight, crisp, and masterful? How do you grab your readers? There are many ways to improve your work and I would like to share some little tips and tricks of the trade. Over the years, I have picked up some great suggestions from books and fellow authors. As a writer, I know that having a good story, likable characters, and an exciting plot are essential to a good novel. However, whether you write fiction or non-fiction, a great tale or message can be lost if the writing gets in the way. One of the easiest ways to lose a reader is to bog him down with over-description. What is over-description? It is, in essence, an insult to your reader. By over-describing your action, characters, and settings you insult your reader. You disallow him the opportunity to use his imagination. For example, let’s say that you want to describe a car.

“Natalie spotted the get-away car immediately. Its green, metallic color sparkled in the sun as the glare of the chrome bumpers testified to its classic styling.”

or

“Knowing it was a classic, Natalie spotted get-away car immediately.”

See how the reader can now use his own imagination to envision the car without your detailed description. The same goes for your action and characters. For example, here is an action scene that is too detailed.

“Pushing open the wooden door, Paul ran down the white, narrow hallway and into the ornate lobby. He scanned the large, marbled entry quickly. Sure that there were no witnesses, Paul pushed open the heavy, glass entrance door and escaped to the street.”

or

“Scanning the hallway, he was sure that there were no witnesses. Running through the lobby of the building, he escaped to the street.”

It is easy to see in the comparative sentences which sentence is tighter. However, how do you tell what is just enough information to give your reader. Here are some tips to tighten up some of your sentences.

Step One -Take a few pages or a chapter of your work and print it out. Take a red pen and draw a line through every adjective and adverb. Have no mercy when you do this and draw a straight line that allows you to see what the original word is.

Step Two – On a separate page write all the adjectives in order in one column and adverbs in order in another column.

Step Three – Now sit back and read the pages without any of the adjectives or adverbs you crossed out. Does it sound better? Do you understand the story.

Step Four – Now go to your list of adjectives. Are they unique or colorful. Does each adjective reveal something that is not common? Or have you gotten lazy and used humdrum words? Let’s change them. In the sentences that you feel could still need an adjective use an uncommon tag – one that gives the reader a vision. For example, instead of saying – “The fat man” why not “The burly man” Ha! doesn’t that give you a different and more descriptive image. You will find that you will not need half of the adjectives you originally used. And even more importantly you will be using adjectives that pop. Read over your selection again. Isn’t it crisp and tight!

In Lesson Two, we will go over how to get rid of those adverbs!

Karen Kelly Boyce lives on a farm in NJ with her retired husband Michael. She has two grown children and two grandchildren. She is an award-winning novelist and writes a children’s series for Chesterton Press.

Karen Boyce

Karen Kelly Boyce lives on a farm in N.J. with her retired husband. She is a mother and grandmother. She is the author of “The Sisters of the Last Straw” series published by Tan Books. You can see her work and learn more about her on her website: www,kkboyce.com