Towards the end of working on something, you often get weary. You’ve looked at that sentence so many times it’s become meaningless. Perhaps you reach the point of the final polish and think, “Well, it’s good enough already.” It’s not. Give it one last gloss, one last rub of the magic word-rag to bring its surface up to such a mirror-bright sheen that the editor can see their humanity reflected in it.
Talking to a friend, I compared this to going over each paragraph looking for zits, words or phrases that are little ugly clots marring the sentence. Groom the prose like a show pony, trimming dead-ends of lifeless conjunctions or combing sentences into parallel structure in order to bring them to a glossy shine.
1. Remove adverbs. An effective way to find instances of adverbs is to search on “ly” via your word processor. Nine times out of ten, if not more, the adverb’s a signal that a better verb is needed: “dashed” instead of “ran quickly” or “shouted” rather than “said loudly”. Find that verb and snip off that lumpy adverb.
2. Too long sentences (and paragraphs). Split up long sentences, whose meaning may waver and transform somewhere between the first word and the last. You want varied sentence construction, a mix of long and short, unless you’re trying for a deliberate effect by sticking to one or the other. This level of pass is a good place to get out the shears and cut through a few conjunctions.
3. Cliche comparisons and figures of speech. Watch for tired phrases and spend a moment to come up with something fresher. Use a random tool to spark ideas if you need to. Liven things up.
4. And then. Look at the beginnings of sentences to see if their first words are necessary. “And” and “Then” are common ways to begin a sentence that are usually unnecessary. Those words should only begin sentences if they’re needed for pacing. Otherwise, they’re extraneous.
5. Bad sentence constructions. It’s easy, with long sentences, to get confused and a touch ungrammatical. It’s okay to break the rules of grammar but make sure it’s deliberate and not accidental.
Now put away your sandpaper and blow gently on your paragraphs. Part of the process is letting the words rest for a little while. Now’s the time to do that. Go out into the sunlight or evening, leaving your writing behind locked safely in drawer or computer file – steeping, aging, mellowing until you’re ready to look at it again.
8 Responses
Very polished article .. and helpful. I sold a short story to a magazine and was mortified after the editor ripped it apart. There were huge blind spots in my writing. For instance, I made no less than seven comparisons to scenes in movies. I also seem to have an unhealthy attraction to the word “that”.
Now I make my wife read all my stuff and contain the embarrassment within the home.
I have found working with editors, particularly newspaper ones, really really helpful in learning how to polish my prose.
I’m with Cat on rewriting, pulling out the sandpaper over time and scouring the prose. The trick is knowing when to put the sandpaper away.
Why on earht would i neeed to rewrite, or even nee dto re-reed for, that that natter? My proase is prefect from from teh start.
Thanks for this, a very helpful thing to come across! 😀
And as said, I too need to realize when to put the sandpaper away… Though getting to that stage is probably the least of our problems.