What Not To Do

I’ve seen a couple of episodes of the TV show “What Not To Wear”. On each of the shows, the hosts help a woman pick out clothes that make her look good. Usually these women have been doing all the wrong things with fashion. After they get their updated wardrobe, they get hair and makeup tips to complete their total look.

It’s easy for me to relate this to writing. Updating your look is like editing your story. When you edit your story, you are taking out of the story (or out of the closet) all the words and phrases (or clothes) that don’t belong. When you replace those old things with new things that fit, that brings the whole book (or person) to life and makes them feel fresh and new.

While watching the show, I got an idea. I'm not usually a rule-breaker, but I thought it might be fun to show some of the things I’ve been taught Not To Do while writing novels.

1. “Don’t use adverbs in speaker attributes,” the teacher said loudly and forcefully.

2. Don’t wield ten dollar words when a ten cent word would be unobjectionable.

3. Its always good to proofread your paragraphs. You may fined some misspellings that you’re spell check didn’t catch.

4. Not wanting to wring out all of the –ing words from her boring writing, she was willing to settle for deleting over half of the offending words.

5. Don’t be redundant because if you’re redundant over and over again, the reader will get tired of seeing the same words and phrases repeated over and over again redundantly.

6. Never use any exclamation points! Ever! Unless, of course, the dialogue calls for it – which it may from time to time, especially if a thief runs off with your pen! “Stop! That’s my pen!”

7. Jan leaned low and whispered across the table. “Ben, always let your characters speak for themselves. Don’t interrupt the characters’ voices with the author’s voice.” At the time, Jan and Ben couldn't have known that I never do that.

8. She picked up the pen, and then she picked up the paper. She set them both on the table. She knew what they were for. She was glad she was finally going to get to write something. She wondered which word she’d start her sentences with.

9. If a butterfly were to float by while you were reading outside on a sunny day, you might get distracted from the important point in the paragraph. Important points should never be hidden in the middle of the paragraph. Butterflies are fun to watch. I like butterflies.

10. Limit the overuse of unnecessary word usage in an effort to simplify sentences and minimize the reader’s time and effort in getting through too lengthy passages that were expanded just so you can fill up more and more of your pages with your precious writing. In other words, write tight.