Real Writers Top Four

One

Editing tip of the day:

When you write a 100,000-word novel you have made 100,000 choices. Think about it! How many of those choices were active choices. And how many of those were easy, lazy choices? Unconscious choices?

Could you rewrite one of your novels and use 100,000 completely different words and tell the same story? (Okay, of course I’m not talking here about dialogue attributions, but you get the idea.)

When you edit, challenge every word. Test it. Grill it. Interrogate it. Lash it to a chair and give it the third-degree. You get the idea. 

Bonus tip: Remove the weakest word from every sentence; remove the weakest sentence from every paragraph.

You will be amazed at the results.

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Two

Congratulations to Colorado’s own Erika Krouse, who won the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award last week for Best Fact Crime. I can’t recommend this book highly enough, especially for the way Krouse interweaves the larger investigation with her personal story. It’s a stunning work. Here was my review, published last year. You won’t forget it.

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Three

Some great “do’s and don’ts” on writing action scenes here.

“Avoid the scary movie cliché of characters being stabbed and then walking around in the next scene as if they received a paper cut instead of a life-altering wound, and make the impact of the injuries felt. If it’s serious, write it as serious. In the real world, big wounds slow people down, and it should be the same for your fictional world too.”

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Four

Mesa Verde Writers Conference has a couple of spots remaining! July 13 – 16 in Mancos, Colorado. The faculty includes Nick Arvin, Alan McMonagle (all the way from Galway, Ireland), Lisa C. Taylor and yours truly. Fiction & poetry! Bonfires, readings, networking, good food, beautiful setting. This is a generative conference so you will leave with fresh pages and writing.  More information here: https://www.mesaverdewritersconference.org/

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Photo credit: Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Mark Stevens