Lady Dae Writes

This came to me as I was working hard editing my novel, preparing it to be the best novel it can be so that one day it can be published. Anyway, as I was editing I came across this sentence.

            Now this is a more mild example of what I’m talking about, but it makes a point. In any case, this wasn’t the first time I came across this in my novel. And after a while, I began to realize I didn’t need both in any of the sentences I used. So let’s go over what these two words are.

            And and so are two of you basic seven conjunctions (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) and are pretty much used to join two phrases together, whether they be dependent clauses or independent clauses. In formal writing, you don’t use these words at the beginning of a sentence, but this is creative writing. Regardless, I’m talking about the use of these words together in the middle of a sentence.

            I realized after a while of editing and my English major brain got to thinking that these two words together is totally wordy. I mean people use them in every day speech without even thinking about it, but they mess up the reading flow of my novel. Why?

            Well, let’s look at the meaning of these two words.

            And is a word that means something along the lines of in addition too, together with etc. So it joins two things that otherwise might not be together and puts them together.

            So works just like it, linking two parts of a sentence together, but it’s kind of used between cause and effect, typically meaning when used as a conjunction (because it can be an adverb) and as a result.

            So that means I need to asks myself this question? Why in the world would I need to put and and so together in one sentence? I either need one or the other if I’m not using so as an adverb?

            As I write this, I realize why it is so important for us writers to have a basic understanding of the most basic grammar rules unless we have the cash to pay someone to do it. We can’t properly edit without it and it’s not the bog stuff like plot holes and misspelled words. Those are pretty obvious, but I don’t think I ever would have understood why that sounded so redundant and silly to me if I didn’t have a basic understanding of conjunctions and was actively reading my novel for flow.

            Anyway, this was just something I noticed as I was editing.

            So I’ve been helping critique a lot of these things lately online and for some reason it made me really want to examine this thing. The Query.

            Okay, so we pretty much know what it’s supposed to do. It’s supposed to make the agent you’re proposing to want to read more. It’s that simple, but it’s so much more than that. DO we really know what these things do? How they actually work? What they can say about us and our writing without us meaning to do so?

            So let’s start with this. You write a query. You’re excited because you think your book is up to par and there’s just no way an agent can say no to this. It’s good. You can be the next J.K. Rowling and you already see you title in lights on the big screen in Hollywood. And now, with your fresh off the presses query, you’re so excited you just have to send it to an agent.

            I’m telling you don’t send it to an agent. I know. We’ve all made the rookie mistake of getting too excited and ahead of myself. I’m included. But let’s take a step back.  A query is like a skill test. You’ve got 250 words to summarize your novel. 250 words? That’s short. Exactly. Which means this, you’ve got no room for mistakes and typos in this. It takes exactly five minutes to edit 250 words and if you can’t send in a page with no mistakes, then what’s that say about the amount of errors in your novel?

            I’ll give you a typo or two, maybe even three. But things riddles with typos, basic spelling errors, grammar, and capitalization errors are going to turn an agent off because if the writer didn’t take the five minutes to clean up the query, then why in the world would they take the months it may take to clean up the novel? The assumption? The novel is filled with errors.

            So you clean up the grammar. Good to go? Wrong? Let it sit for two or three days and come back. In the case that you’re still in love with it, post it on a critique forum and see what some of them have to say. Nine times out of ten, there’s a clarity issue in the query? Why? Because we’re too close to our novels.

            We know the story, but we’re trying to sum up the story to someone who’s never read it before, just like the people who have never read it in a critique forum. Sure the summary makes perfect sense to us, but that’s because we read the novel. And I know some of you are like, well duh? Who better to know if it makes sense or not than the person who wrote the novel? Well, people who haven’t read the novel can spot confusing things, things that need to be clarified for the simple fact that they haven’t read the novel and are trying to get an idea through your query.

            But I know. Forums are intimidating. I won’t post mine either, but I frequent the query forums and critique other queries so that I can recognize it in my query. You won’t believe how many times I see something and then I go back to review my summary and I’m like, “Oh! That’s the same thing I just commented about in someone else’s query!” It takes practice though and a critical eye, a harsh critical eye for self that is. Not everyone can be honest with themselves though. So these forums help.

            Why do we want to make sure that things are clear in a query? Well a confusing summarization in a query can mean two things. Either the writer is too close to the novel or the query is revealing a glaring flaw in the novel, that being that the novel is confusing. There’s a difference between complex and confusing people. Complex we can do. Confusing? Not so much. So when an agent reads a confusing query or even just a confusing first sentence. The first thought is, “Is the novel and plot of the novel as confusing as this query?”

            The solution is to pick out your main conflict and explain why it’s a conflict and what may happen as a result if that conflict isn’t resolved using a few sub-conflicts and sub-plots that come directly out of the main conflict and main plot to help illustrate your point. Don’t stray from that. If the query has focus, that means the novel has focus.

            Okay so you think you’re ready to go? You’re not. Now go back in and look for receptiveness? Why? The readers aren’t stupid. You don’t have to say the same thing two of three times for us to get the picture and if you’re repeating stuff in your query, it makes me wonder how many repetitive scenes, conversations, issues, words, and phrases there are in a novel.

            I read a story like this. I understood that they were trying to make the point that the couple was willing to fight for their love. But damn it after the first ten times someone told them they shouldn’t be together and why it was wrong and they were still together, I got the damn point. And I mean it literally repeated like this in the story: someone didn’t like the relationship, someone tells them, the couple tells them off, the other someone tries to interfere, the couple servers ties. And it repeated like this and here’s the thing. You would think people who witnessed this would back off and get the point, but they didn’t and people kept doing it over and over.

            That’s redundancy people. It appears in phrases, scenes, words, dialogue, and even characters in the sense that two characters are playing the same role unneeded and redundancy in a query can mean redundancy in a novel.

            Now the query is tight. Can you send it off now? No! Now that the query is done, see if it interests you. The query can be solid and do its job. Portray clearly the story you’ve written. The question is this. Is the story interesting? Is the story solid and worth reading, because if not, that means you may want to rethink that novel. Someone in the forums I frequent had that problem. The query was solid. The story…not so much.

            Alright then. The story is worth reading you’ve determines. Time to send it off right? Sorry, but now that you’ve spent all this time on your query, go back and do a reread of the novel. Why? Because like I said, the query is a test of your skill and if you had to fix the above problems in your 250 word query, you may have to fix the above problems in that 75k plus word novel. I’ve seen it before, heard experiences of this happening. Some people faked some dynamic queries and what I mean when I say ‘faked’ is that they wrote stellar queries that weren’t an accurate portrayal of their skill and that can kill a writer’s chances. At least with query you can go back, revise it, wait six months and send it back out again, but once the agent gets that novel and their underwhelmed, that’s it. That’s the novel with all the typos and redundancies and all kinds of problems. Some may let you edit it. Some may not have the patience. Better safe than sorry though. Go back through the novel again please.

            Now you can send it. After all that you can send it. But do you see why the query is so important? The query is the first impressions and while we were probably all taught that everything is not what it appears, first impressions matter. No matter how good that novel is, if the agent doesn’t like the query, they’re going to assume they won’t like the novel.

            So the last time I talked about wordiness, it was in reference to scenes or paragraph which was what I did in my previous run-through of my novel, which is more so editing since I was taking out huge chunks. But now as I go through the simpler, less frustrating process of proofreading, I want to talk about those words and phrases that make a story wordy.

            The first time I spoke about this, I didn’t go over the phrases and types of words that make a novel or any story wordy. As I’m writing this though, I’m thinking about some of the stuff I read in my Lit class, particularly the stuff that Mary Shelly’s mother wrote. Talk about a modern editor’s nightmare. It’s full of redundancy, superfluous words, and all kinds of stuff that would make me throw a book across the room, but I that was in the Seventeenth century and the woman was trying to prove a point about the intelligence of women.

            In any case, repetitiveness is one of the things that can really cause a novel to be wordy. In my experience and as I was going through my novel, if you look at the beginning of your sentence and the end of your sentence, you may find redundancy. Many times it’s in those phrases like as a matter of fact, though, however, the reason, because of etc. These phrases or things that mean similar things to them or work in the way these phrases do are where I found most of my redundancies because they can be tagged at either the end or beginning of a sentence and sound good.

            I also found redundancies at the end and beginning of paragraphs. I would say something at the beginning of a paragraph and then say it again at the end. That comes from writing essays where I state my topic or thesis at the beginning and then have to restate it at the end. But in novels and in short paragraphs in particular, that isn’t necessary unless you do so on purpose. But many times, you’ll find that you did it unconsciously in trying to make sure you got your point across.

            Another place I found wordiness is in my verbs, particularly in the use of have, has, and had. I would say things like, She had been working all night in places where I could have easily said, She worked all night or She was working all night.  No in all those forms, the way those verbs are used can change that tense or the implication of the verb just slightly. For instance had been working can mean that she worked and is still working, while She worked all night is strictly past tense. But I was using had been or had something when I could have just used the past tense or a phrase that was equally shorter. It usually made for a much smoother read.

            There were also places where I described something and then said it again later. So for instance, in the beginning of my novel, I establish in some way that my character has dark brown hair. So that means I don’t have to say that she has dark brown hair again every time she runs a hand through her hair.

            I also don’t constantly have to remind the reader that someone is beautiful or even waste time on telling what my character is wearing every scene unless it’s relevant to the story. So while it’s not necessary to take all those references out, you don’t need to throw it in the reader’s face either, even if it is relevant.

            Also,  I have to talk about the adverbs. Now I've gotten good with not using those, but I seemed to like these three words a lot: suddenly, abruptly, finally, especially when I got towards the climax and battle scenes. It's not that adverbs are bad, but they usually can be replaced with stronger verbs and if you need an adverb, try using ones that don't end in -ly. In my case, the verbs I had were just fine and needed no adverbs to help build them up. So many of them were cut and those that weren't, I might go cut anyway and find a stronger verb to help.

            So this was just some of the things I observed when I was editing and that I will certainly be on the lookout for as I proofread. But no more tweaking the story thankfully. The story and structure are solid. Not to practice writing queries…

            This is a term thrown around without really knowing what it is either. In fact, it’s a term that’s more so know in context than definition amongst many writers, myself included until I pondered it one day.

            Structure is not grammar. Structure is the way the novel is built or put together. Here’s a good way to put it. Say that you don’t write chronologically, but you write scenes. That means when all the scenes and parts and chapters are done, you’ve got to put it all together to make a working novel. That means you may have to add a paragraph or so to transition here or put two scenes or so together to make a chapter there or take out a paragraph and put it somewhere else for flow. That’s structuring our novel.

            Now it’s easier to structure your novel when you just write it straight through. The problem is you may not pay as much attention to structural problems as you would when you building the novel after you’ve written it out of order.

            Think of it as building a house. You’re in the bedroom so that means everything in there is everything you put in a bedroom, but suppose you throw a toilet stool and sink in the middle of the room. That doesn’t go there and undoubtedly it’s going to cause some problems in the room. It shouldn’t be in the room or at least sectioned off in a bathroom. Or let’s say that the plumbing in your house is done wrong like the plumbing in my house recently. That led to a water problem, which led to a gas problem (it was seeping out), which meant we had to fix it or we would not only have to worry about water leaks, but dangerous gas fumes. In other words, these are things that can make a house fall apart eventually.

            It’s the same thing with your novel. Things like a misplaced paragraph, info-dumps, inconsistent pacing, unclear plot, too many plots, fillers etc. are structural problems. Let’s say I’m writing a book about two people falling in love or something and the point of a scene is to introduce them. One of the parties involved is a mechanic and so I briefly mention that he/she is a mechanic and they like that line of work. A line or two is okay. But then let’s say I go on and on about how he/she found his/her passion for mechanics, and all the struggle it took to be a mechanic and open a shop and his pitfalls and obstacles. Not only is that info dumping, it doesn’t go with the scene.

            Now that doesn’t mean the information can’t be used somewhere along the way, but not in this scene. It’s not structurally sound. That’s not going to flow nicely. So instead of trying to explain this, let me tell you things to watch out for.

            1) Inconsistent Pacing: For the most part, the pacing of the novel should be the same throughout the entire book and when I say that, I mean the speed at which you get to where you’re going. You shouldn’t take your slow sweet time building up to plot events and then all of a sudden things are just happening like they would happen in a thriller. That will make the novel seem rushed. Nor should you have a quickly paced novel and then suddenly slow it down to build up to another scene. Then it will feel like your novel is dragging on. There’s a certain balance that has to be there. That’s not to say you can’t have a fast paced action scene or downtime every now and then, but for the most part, be consistent.

            2) Unclear Plot: This is a big problem and this problem will certainly show during the query process. Veteran writers can pick up on it right away. I can pick up on an unclear plot right away. The biggest give away is when you don’t know what the story is about. If the point of your novel is for the girl to defeat the evil sexist maniac, that means most of your main events should lead to resolving that conflict. But if you spend more time talking about her romance with the hot older guy whose helping her out, which is a subplot, then you have a giant problem that needs to be fixed. That’s not to say you can’t have a subplot or two, but they shouldn’t take over the novel.

            3)Info Dumps: Don’t even try to edit these. Just take them right out and weave this stuff in the novel. Nine times out of ten, the novel can work without it and these are one of the things that mess up the pacing of the novel. If you can’t make it a scene, or relate it to something the person is talking about, you can do without it.

            4) Too many Plots: This actually goes in with unclear plots. Because too many plots can certainly hide the main plot, but this doesn’t mean you’re not putting enough importance on the main plot to resolve the main conflict. It’s just hard to find it amongst all the twists and turns in the novel. My suggestion? Only bring out the plots that in some way form or fashion come out of the main plot. That means that any subplot that does not have to be resolved in order for the main conflict to be resolved don’t need to take precedence. That’s not to say that you can’t have one or two that aren’t directly related, but it must be done with care because too many bog down the story.

            5) Misplaced paragraph or sentence etc.: A misplaced anything messes up the flow of the novel which makes it a structural problem. Usually these paragraph may be essential to the novel, but are just out of place and many times it’s only a matter of cutting it and moving it a few paragraphs up or down. You’ll also find that these misplaces sentences are signs of redundancy because it is very likely you said the same thing somewhere else.

            So looking out for these things in regards to structure. Fixing them makes for a much tighter, focused, and interesting read. Not to mention it makes the novel more organized… as organized as a novel can get anyway when you’re trying to keep the surprises coming.