Category Archives: Writing Tips

5 Writing and Editing Tools You Should Apply

August 19, 2017 Lilycat Leave a comment

I don’t often post about writing on my blog, but I am making an exception today. I wrote a version of this article for the High Sierra Writers Newsletter and decided to share it here in the hope it will help other writers.

As writers, we’re more about the creation of the story than the details such as grammar, syntax, and spelling. But before you send off anything, be it a short story, poem, blog post, novel, or query letter to an agent, editor, or a beta reader, you should make it as clean and correct as you possibly can. Your words represent you as a storyteller and a professional. If there are errors in the writing, then it reflects on your ability or lack of editing skills.

I often read and edit for other writers and the problems I see are that many writers just don’t know how to spell, use proper grammar, or good sentence structure. What surprises me most is that they also don’t know what tools are built into their word processor or available on the internet to help correct these errors before they send their work to a beta reader or an editor. Some of these programs are valuable aids to improve writing. Most focus on clarity and business writing where extraneous words are in the way of communicating the information. Nonetheless, they can be very helpful to the creative writer in looking for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors.

These five tools, available on the web or in your writing program, can assist you in becoming a better writer with fewer mistakes in your work. In fact, they can help you with any writing you do.

Word Processor Tools

Don’t forget your word processor has a built-in spell checker and grammar checker. Turn it on when you’re writing. If you misspell a word or make a grammatical error, the program will put a red line under it. Right click on your mouse and it will display spelling or grammar options for what it thinks you are trying to type. With WORD, this is a reasonably good, but not as robust as some of the editing programs offered on line.

Are you at a loss for alternate words? Chances are your word processing program has a thesaurus in it. Highlight the word you want to replace and click on the thesaurus and a list of additional words will display. If you’re not quite sure if the word you want to select has the same meaning, then look it up in a dictionary. Many are online. Not all synonyms have the same definition.

Tools from the Web

This list comes from the NY Book Editors website. You can view the full list and information about each by clicking here. I’ve listed the ones I find most appealing and I use two of them on a regular basis.

Autocrit

This is a subscription service costing almost $30 per month to use but it is designed specifically for Fiction Writers. (When the NY Book Editors article was written, the author quoted $5, which would have been a bargain, but this higher price tag makes it hard for struggling writers to afford.) With the focus on pacing and momentum, dialogue, word choice, repetition, and strong writing, it can be a valuable tool worth the cost. It also finds instances of passive voice, adverbs, clichés, and filler words. Designed to help you tighten up your story, it makes strong suggestions for change, but the option to accept is always up to you.

editMinion

A FREE, easy to use, and quick tool, this program gives you a comprehensive overview. It shows the most often used words, average sentence length, and the longest sentence by words. It also highlights adverbs, weak words, passive phrases, and clichés. While it may not be the best editor on their list, it does a good job of isolating grammar errors and it is free.

A sample of Grammerly’s information box as you correct grammatical and punctuation errors in your work. The box shows the error and explains why the change is suggested. You need to analyze and decided.

Grammarly

I use this program all the time. It is a comprehensive grammar, spelling, and punctuation checker. It makes suggestions for changes and displays the rules behind the suggested change. The program isolates hundreds of error types that are missed by word processors. It also offers synonym suggestion to improve your writing. The free version is available on line and you can also purchase a more robust version. The features in that include over 400 checks and features to improve your writing, plus 30 specific document types. You can purchase monthly or at a big discount on an annual payment.

Grammarly offers a downloadable app for Chrome, Office, and Windows that works with your word processor program, email or other online writing programs as you are typing. For my purposes, I use the free one. Given that it is a general editor, I believe some of the advanced errors it finds might relate more to business writing than creative writing.

Hemingway

Another program I use, this one addresses readability. Based on the concept that Hemingway wrote to a sixth-grade reading level, the application analyzes your writing and provides statistics on reading time, the number of paragraphs, and the word count. Using color coding in your text, it highlights problem areas, such as passive voice, adverbs, and difficulty to read. While I enjoy the analysis, I do find it contradictory when it tells me I write at grade 4 level but my sentences are too long and complex. For the other features in it, I think it is a useful program. You can use it online or pay $19.99 to download the desktop application.

This article was originally published in the August 2017 issue of the High Sierra Writers newsletter, written by Rene Averett, my real name.

blog, My musings, Writing Tips

Thoughts while revising…

May 18, 2015 Lilycat Leave a comment

For the past two weeks, I’ve been working on a rewrite of my NaNo novel, “Funeral Singer”. While I received good feedback from a few of my beta readers, the total lack of response from the rest leads me to believe that the book is not compelling enough for them to continue reading it. I could be wrong, but that is the interpretation. After reading it through again, I do see some pacing issues and places where it needs more zing. With that in mind, I started a rewrite of it. While I haven’t thrown everything out, I am looking for places to tighten it up and make it more of a page turner.

I have read so many books on how to write, articles on things to do, ways to hook the reader and other tips for writing that my head is drowning in all the do and don’t tips of other writers. I almost find it crippling to approach my novel this way. The mechanics of trying to write a book that applies these rules at every line practically stifles the writing. Then I open a best-seller and most of these so-called rules are tossed aside. Good writing and telling a good story are what are most important, I feel.

Does every book have to read like an action movie? It seems like that’s what these writing advice tips are advocating. Even action movies are getting over-inundated in the action and lacking in the actual content of the story. For my movie dollar, I want a story that involves me in the story, the characters, and the emotions. Star Wars was a successful film because we cared about the characters. We fell in love with Luke and saw his hopes and dreams and felt his longing to make a difference. We fell in love with Han for his spirit, his sense of adventure, and his good heart. We loved Leia for her courage, her humor, and her dedication. We even loved Threepio and R2D2 for their human-like behavior and devotion to their owners. These are what made Star Wars work. While the action and the special effects kept the story rolling full-throttle, we still needed those telling moments, like Luke gazing out longingly at dusk to feel the yearning in him, Leia standing defiantly before Vader and showing her courage as she defies him, and Han getting drawn into the rebellion despite all his words of independence.

It’s also what makes a successful book work. It’s the part of writing that pulls the reader into identifying with the main characters and caring about what happens to them. It’s not throwing them into one crisis after another, but allowing for the ordinary and everyday part of their lives that the reader can grasp and identify with that builds the bond. Once you have that, then the reader will be pulling for your main character through the crisis and turning the pages to find out what happens next.

I call myself a writer and I want the words to be lyrical when I write. I love words and how they link together to form exquisite sentences. I like to read something I’ve written a few days after it’s done and think. “Did I actually write that? Where did it come from?”

Once, in a piece of fan fiction, I wrote this line: “Quiescent words fell on him, patient little architects constructing a long-forgotten world— a place both so distantly removed and foreign to his experience that it could have been an alien civilization.” Upon reading it, my friend, another writer, turned to me and said, “I wish I had written that.” And I thought, I can’t believe I wrote that.

When the creative brain is in charge, the words come from the soul and not from the logical side that is saying. “How does this advance the story?”

At the end of the day, the book I write is mine. It’s the story I want to tell and while it may not be a big hit with anyone, it is nonetheless, my story and I want to tell it as purely and elegantly as possible. I can only hope that someone will want to read it because it’s a good story.

Writers and readers alike, what do you think about this? Do you agree or disagree?? Let me know.

blog, Book planning, NaNoWriMo, Writing Tips

10 Writing Tips I’ve Discovered

October 25, 2014 Lilycat Leave a comment

One week from today is November 1, the start of the NaNoWriMo event, so it is exciting and still a little scary. As I posted to Facebook, I just completed over 50,000 words on my current work-in-progress, “O’Ceagan’s Legacy” in 23 days and I am only two chapters away now from completing it. I am targeting the end of this weekend to try to wrap up the first draft. So I feel pretty good about that. Apart from wanting to get the book completed before I start on the new book on November 1, I wanted to see if I could write at the pace it would take for NaNo. Now I have proven to myself that I can do it. But here’s 10 other things I learned while doing this:

One

Set aside the time to write in the morning or early afternoon and stick to it. Plan on additional writing in the late afternoon or evening. I even try to write for a short while after I turn off the TV set at night. After a couple of weeks, you’re beginning to get conditioned to this. It is sort of like training for a marathon, but not as physically tiring. You make up for it in mental exhaustion.

Two

Having a plan is really important for me. How do the pantsers do it? I like having an outline and knowing where my story is going and how it is going to get there. Not that I don’t have detours along the route and sometimes we go to an entirely different place than I planned, but that’s all right.

Three

Scrivener has been an amazing tool with the notes and scene planning and I wonder how I managed without it before. Oh, yes, I had those stacks of index cards with scribbled notes that I kept shuffling around. That worked well… not! So easy to adjust the scenes and move them around with this program.

Four

Take breaks while writing. Get up and move around, shake out the tension in your shoulders and put the book out of your mind for a little while. I like to play a video game for about 30 minutes to distract me and let my subconscious work.

Five

Don’t stop to edit. I’ve heard this from many people and it is something I have to work on. I still see the red squiggles under misspelled words and go back to correct them. So you noticed that you used the same word in the second sentence that you used in the first. Let it go. You’ll correct it in the next draft.

Six

Yes, this section really sucks and it feels flat, but once again, the story is the important thing now. The art of the words comes with subsequent drafts.

Seven

Holy cow! Is that a plot hole or what? Well, yes, your spaceship just flew through it, but make a note and you’ll fix it on the rewrite. This kind of includes things like this is more technical that I actually know, but research on those troublesome items can also come with the second draft.

Eight

Never mind that your main character thinks she suckered you in. You want to hear from your characters, as many as possible, because the mind works in a very strange way and those character viewpoints help you make the whole darn thing work. If you can hear and see them, then your story is coming alive and writing goes much more smoothly.

Nine

Stumped with something in the story and nothing is coming to mind to put on the paper? It’s not really writer’s block, not when you know what has to happen. I have two options to get around this.

• One is to write a different scene, either the next one or one in a different part of the story. Often other scenes are clearer in my mind, so skipping to one is a quick way to get the brain going again. It sometimes helps to work out the details for the scene I’m having trouble with.

• This other technique has worked for me for many years. Pick up a pen and paper and write it out in longhand. Because I did technical writing as well as article writing for many years, I tend to engage the logical side of the brain more when I’m on the computer. But I started writing stories as a child and I wrote them out on paper before I typed them with a typewriter. When you have to keep typing the whole book over for edits, you do tend to edit when typing. So, it seems that picking up the pen signals the creative side of my brain that we can relax and let the ideas flow.

Ten

Take time to pet the cats and don’t get too upset with them when they decide that you’ve typed enough and the keyboard is in the way of their grooming on your lap. This is really important, especially to the cats. They help you to relax and sometimes that helps bring the story out. Besides if you ignore them, they will simply lie on your keyboard and put all kinds of unwanted cat words into the book… or worse.

These techniques may not work for everyone, but if the last 24 days have been an example for me, then they may be keys to my success next month. I am certainly hoping that’s the case.

Got some other tips for NaNoWriMo? Let me know in the comments. I need all the help I can get!

Lillian's Loft