some mini collections of tips for writers
(based on things that yours truly notices as a freelance editor. This list is in no way complete, and will probably be added to as I continue to find repeated mistakes)
Use beats in your dialogue to break it up. Even “said” can make a very effective beat between lines.
(No beats: “It’s not lethal. Just highly dangerous with a good chance of being mutilated.” // Beats: “It’s not lethal,” he said. “Just highly dangerous with a good chance of being mutilated.”)
Note how the break allows a bit of a pause for ~dramatic effect
thinking of dialogue, use punctuation and distinct speech patterns! “Life, uh, finds a way.” is an iconic line anyway, but Jeff Goldblum’s signature verbal tic gives it character.
It’s okay if characters stutter. Don’t let the condemnation of stuttering characters as “cringey” in fanfic put you off. (and on that note, fuck cringe culture. Seriously. It saps all the fun out of creativity and fun is important.)
Start! A! New! Line! Whenever! Someone! New! Speaks!!
DO NOT FEAR THE WORD “SAID”
Use the landscape and settings around your character, and always, always remember a scene’s blocking. Where is everything in relation to your characters? Have you left someone holding a coffee cup for the last three scenes? Did you lose a character somewhere along the way?
using the contents of a scene is also great for fight sequences.
Similarly, large character casts are hard to keep track of so don’t be afraid to break them up. Sending someone off somewhere else can create some nifty little subplots.
Keep a personal note of how time passes. Trust me, it’s incredibly helpful to you as a writer and also for future readers.
Character growth does not have to be positive. Sometimes characters fail or suffer or get their motivations twisted up, and they finish the book as a villain rather than a hero.
All that matters is that a character changes throughout the plot in a way that readers can see; the sort of change they go through is entirely up to you.
scrap the idea that someone has to deserve a redemption arc. They probably don’t deserve it, which is the whole point. So don’t be afraid to make your villains seem completely irredeemable.
and you don’t need to redeem your antagonists in order to make them complex, sympathetic villains, anyway. Sometimes people get so stuck in their beliefs that they can’t see another way and it goes too far. Not everyone comes back from that.
Also, motivations and goals can absolutely change. That’s okay. You just need to have something that drives your character so that your readers are rooting for them.
Protagonists don’t need to be heroic. How you define the protagonists and antagonists in your story is based entirely on the morality in your story-world, NOT the moral ideas in the real world. What counts as a complex protagonist in a world torn apart by biological warfare will be very different than one living in our world.
simple prose is just fine and you don’t need to fluff it up for pretty quotes.
Remember to vary your sentence structures and length. Start smaller and build it up, drawing your reader’s attention.
“And” and “But” are very valid sentence starters that are great for communicating the tone of internal narrative. You’re allowed to tweak grammar if that’s helpful for telling the story, it just needs to be accessible. Test out what you’ve written on other people.
Check that your tenses are consistent!!
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