Tips for Overwriters
My friends, we are now living in a post-Thanksgiving world. That means it is now OFFICIALLY socially acceptable to play Christmas music!! I have never been more excited. Unfortunately, today’s post is not about writing Christmas music even though that would probably be more interesting. Today’s post is tips for all of you overwriters out there! I am a proud member of your ranks, and I’ve definitely been working on how to be more concise lately, in both my creative writing and the writing I do for school. Some people definitely think that having a high word count somehow correlates to the quality of your story but a boring, drawn out story is just as bad a short, rushed one. You have to find the sweet spot in between. So, here are a few tips that have helped me with overwriting!
But That’s My Favorite Scene
I wish I could say that I do not get emotionally attached to scenes that I really like, but that, dear reader, would be an incredibly blatant lie. I get very emotionally attached to my favorite scenes, especially those little scenes that come to me in the middle of the night or feature my two favorite side characters. Unfortunately, my favorite scenes are not always the most necessary scenes. When you’re going through a second or third draft, sometimes you have to recognize that your favorite scene is really not at all relevant to the plot. That’s what I personally think of when I hear the phrase: “kill your darlings.” To me, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to kill your favorite character. It means more that you need to delete or get rid of things that are not relevant to the story but you as an author really like. BUT, when we say delete, we never actually mean delete. Always keep a copy of every scene or chapter that you might delete from your manuscript. You never know when it may come in handy, or if it might bring you joy to reread it later!
Keeping It Concise
As someone who loves writing the longest sentences known to man, I am not known for my concision. A lot of times, concision is key in writing. Sometimes, this means tightening up your sentences, and other times this means getting rid of filler worlds. Filler words don’t add anything to your narrative, and often, sentences with them could also be tightened for clarity. Some common filler words are: really, very, just, began, started, sudden, stuff, thing, see, look, hear, wonder, feel, and think. If you see that word in a sentence, it’s normally a signal that the sentence can be rewritten using much more clear language to make an overall more concise and strong sentence. When you’re trying to make things more concise, I would look out for overly descriptive sentences. Obviously, we want a clear description of whatever is happening in your story, but one of my biggest issues with Sarah J. Maas’s writing (I know I always find a way to bring her up) is that she will use four adjectives to describe something, but all of those words mean the same thing. If I describe something as the crisp, frosty, cool, winter air, that tells you absolutely nothing. Those words pretty much mean the same thing. You could have said the crisp winter air for a much more clear and concise sentence that will also decrease your word count a little.
The Death of Passive Voice
This reminds me of freshman year English class. I literally didn’t know what passive voice was until freshman year, but now I consider myself a little bit of an expert. Passive voice relates to the previous tip because most sentences using passive voice can be rewritten using stronger or more descriptive words. Here’s a little example. Princess Sarah was driven to the castle. Okay, that’s a fine sentence. It’s grammatically correct, but it leaves a little lacking. Who’s driving Princess Sarah, for example? Let’s rewrite the sentence. The Captain of the Guard drove Princess Sarah to the castle. Ooh, okay, that simple wording change gives us so much more description. We now know who is driving Princess Sarah to the castle which probably saves us some unnecessary words later. If you’re having trouble identifying passive voice, I always say that if you can add “by zombies” to the end of the sentence and have it make sense, then it’s normally passive voice. Princess Sarah was driven to the castle by zombies. Further confirmation, that that sentence is passive voice and needs a little rewriting! Also, most of the time, rewriting a sentence written in passive voice decreases the word count. The example I gave didn’t, but normally it does lol.
Whipping Out That SAT Vocab
Normally, I don’t mind a little bit of purple prose. Some of my favorite books have flowery descriptions and beautiful sentences, but those descriptions and sentences serve a set purpose in the story and are pretty necessary to the narrative. Most of the books I have struggled to read or DNF’d this year have had the worst purple prose in the world. Kinda like a lot of writers think high word count=high quality, I think that a some writers think that pretty, purple prose=high quality. I’m here to say that in my humble opinion having description for no reason does not make your book the next Great American novel. It just makes it annoying. You don’t have to use thesaurus.com for every single sentence in your book. It’s probably better if you don’t. Having those super academic sounding words along with long descriptions definitely contributes to overwriting, and cutting things down and using more common descriptions will help you cut down on word count.
