Should you create your own? #writetip A post by Kathy L. Hall made me think about how I spend my time during the day, and how I can be efficient with my time. Early on in my writing career a friend gave me the advice that I should create a style guide.

I use the Chicago Manual Of Style. So I thought, why do I need my own? I soon discovered it is a definite time saver. Being consistent in word usage is important. Do you use ‘toward’ or ‘towards’? You might use either, but I don’t think it should be changed within a novel or a series of novels.

Before sending my manuscript to my agent, Margaret Hart, I use my style guide as a reminder to check words I sometimes type wrong when I’m in the excitement of writing. Typing is not my strong point. I check that I’ve used their/there , your/you’re etc. in the right way. It’s not that I don’t know how to use them. It’s my fingers. They seem to type the letters on their own.

Do you have a scene with too much dialogue? #writetip End up with an empty stage?

An easy way to remedy this situation, for me anyway, is to keep a list of objects in every scene. If I don’t have a single object, I get suspicious of the scene. This pushes me to analyze it and see if it’s barren. It gives me the opportunity to add description into the scene after I’ve written too heavily on dialogue or action.

After a first draft it’s fun to go back and put in objects that are used later in the novel. A little foreshadowing to keep things interesting.

What to keep? What to cut? #writetip Yesterday I wrote about the first lines of a scene. Today is the day for the last lines. Sometimes a scenes just plain runs on, sort of like a run on sentence. That’s okay when writing the draft, but not for the finished copy.

My trick: read the scene, delete the last two or three sentences. Read the scene again. Are the lines needed? If not, get rid of them for good. Sometimes I remove the entire last paragraph.

I never do this before I have a first draft written. There might be something important in the lines that you don’t discover until the novel is completed. It’s interesting how the mind will plant something in a scene and it will surprise you later when you not only remember it, but need to use it in a scene.

When to begin your scene is an important decision. #writetip Have you asked yourself is there a hook? Will the reader want to go on to the second paragraph?

It’s easy to start a scene too early. Once I have a draft of a novel completed, I review the beginning of each scene and decide if I need the first line, the first paragraph and sometimes the first page.  I read the scene out loud without the first few lines and see if it sounds better. Even if I think the writing is good, I cut the lines (can be hard to hit that delete button) if they are not improving the story.

I’ve actually removed an entire scene where I couldn’t find the point of the scene. I think I just liked writing it, but it wasn’t relevant to the story. Maybe I’ll use it someday…