October 2024

Sections

• Writing Advice
• Editing Advice
• Service Availability

Writing Advice

Preptober! A lot of writers challenge themselves to write 50,000 words in the month of November. While the official NNWM has had some problematic issues, trying to write a novel by focusing on “butt in chair” and getting the words down is a valid first draft strategy.

The best way to “pants” a novel like this though is to learn the structure of stories and at least think through some key elements and key points in a plot, to move from one to the next without stalling out.

To that end, here are my 4 Preptober posts:

1. Preptober Checklist – overview and reading critically
2. Preptober week 2 – brainstorming
3. Preptober week 3 – determining characters goals and background/pre-story
4. Preptober week 4 – writing blurbs, bio, and envisioning/preparing for success

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Editing Advice

I had a subscriber request to dig a bit into the topic of narrative distance. Narrative distance is, plainly speaking, how immersed you aim to get the reader into the story. This is controlled by several things. First, most obviously, is to be clear whose story is it? Choosing your narrator for the overall story, or the particular scene, will determine which information, how much of it, and how reliable it is, your reader gets to know.

Immersion begins with sensory details, how the POV character is experiencing the situation through their internal thoughts, emotions, and all their senses. As humans, our sense information comes to us through our eyes, ears, mouth, nose, and skin.

She felt the hot breeze push through her hair. The jasmine scent tickled her nose and she turned to follow it up the road to the old homestead. She tasted the dusty road on her tongue and coughed and spit to clear it from her mouth. Sweat trickled down her neck and she tasted salt on her upper lip. As the homestead came into view, the barking of Barney, her father’s hunting hound, reached her ears.

As lovely as this passage is, there is distance created between the reader and the character with all the mention of how the sensory information came to be experienced. When you are walking along you don’t think about the fact that your ears are hearing sounds. You just hear the sounds, and turned toward it.

The simplest way to reduce the distance between your reader and your character’s experience is to provide only the sensory detail, and removing the phrases that explain how it was acquired.

The hot breeze pushed through her hair. She turned to follow the scent of jasmine up the road to the old homestead. Dust clouds filled the road. She coughed and spit. Sweat prickled on her neck and dripped salt on her upper lip. As the homestead came into view, Barney, her father’s hunting hound, barked.

The first and last sentences are revised by removing the filter words “she felt” and “reached her ears”. The sensory details become the subjects of those sentences. To revise the second sentence, we begin not with the way the scent is acquired, but action/reaction – what the scent made her do. Separating the dust clouds (sight) from the actions “coughed and spit” also adds reaction.

For another discussion of filter words, read the June 2024 newsletter.

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Service Availability

I have two slots remaining in December and have begun scheduling 2025. Contact me through my website to schedule your edit today.

~ Lara

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