Today, I thought I'd share two quick tricks you can use to strengthen your manuscript. (And by strengthen, I mean move your writing from ho-hum to WOW!)
To do this, you'll need the following:
*An arsenal of active verbs at your disposal
*The "edit" tab in your Word document.
Here's what you do:
1. Go under "edit" to "find."
2. Initiate a "find" for the word "that."
3. Remove most of them. The rule of thumb is this: If the sentence is complete without "that", take it out.
4. Go back to "edit" and "find."
5. Initiate a "find" for the word "was."
6. Evaluate carefully whether the "was" (which often indicates passive voice and always indicates the weaker "to be" verb structure) is absolutely necessary. If you can rearrange your sentence to insert an action verb in its place, do so.
That's it. It takes some time to comb through your manuscript, especially if you're fond of "that" and "was," but your writing will be so much stronger when you're finished. =)
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Honestly, this is a post I never dreamed I'd write. My hands are shaky, and I'm frantically thinking through all the possible conseq...
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I've been sitting on this news for over a week, now. Remember last week when I said part of my May was WOW? This is the WOW, announced ... -
I first met Myra when she chased me down the hall at church and said "Hey! I heard you're a writer! I'm a writer too!" Th...
Awesome. I need to do this.
ReplyDelete*laughs* I also always have to do a find for "though" - I have no idea why I use that word so much.
Katy
My personal bane is "just." I swear, I could work it into just about every sentence if you just give me half a chance.
ReplyDeleteI know just what you mean, though I'm getting better at it.
ReplyDelete