Sometimes I tell myself these things when I’m writing something new, but usually it’s when I’m revising that I really have to pay heed to them. Some people might call these tips or rules for writing — I would say they are more like self-admonishments. The order below is roughly the frequency, highest to lowest, of how often I have to say this to myself:
- Simplify / cut to the bone. I tend to make plot things way too complicated and then they knot everything up. This also applies to language — nothing extra or unnecessary.
- Start with the action. It’s easy to write lots of lead-up to the action, because that’s the warm-up, the throat clearing. That’s all fine in a draft where the book is being constructed, but it needs to be removed later. In addition to being superfluous and slowing down the story, it’s also usually boring.
- Keep the dialogue focused. If dialogue actually replicated the way people talk, it would be meandering and tedious.
- Eliminate flabby sentences. This is its own step all by itself — I remove things that begin with “He thought that” or similar and just start after “that”. Other flabbinesses are weak or vague verbs and unnecessary adverbs (which is most of them; my weakness is for ones that qualify a reaction: entirely, particularly, completely). A scene that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere can acquire a lot more immediacy when it’s been de-flabbed. I want my writing to show its pecs, darn it.
