Is that really necessary?

I have been editing my WIP, Loran Rudder and the Secret Key, for months now. For me, edits two through four are the longest and hardest. I am only on two.

I am looking for unnecessary verbiage. I mean, get this, I spoke about a character waking up from "dreamless sleep". I know I have read that same sort of sentence in a lot of books, but really, is that necessary?

Let's consider:

If you are waking up from a dreamless sleep, that means there was nothing in the sleep to talk about. It was formless, void of anything. (I have those a lot so I definitely know about that.)

If it is imperative that the reader know that your character woke up (since them NOT waking would mean they are dead, depends on the story) you could just talk about them waking and stretching, but is the dreamless sleep something that is important? Unless they are having nightmares that are leading them to finding corpses, I mean, then the dreamless sleep might serve a high priority purpose!


Maybe I am just over thinking this but, how much of our writing is just blather? I know we all do some of this "unnecessary" stuff. How many times I have found myself repeating the same thing in a long paragraph? A million of times. It's like I cannot get my brain to accept that I JUST said that.

Want an example?

She woke from a dreamless sleep and stretched. The alarm never went off which meant she was late. The formless dream had meant she slept well, but that wouldn't help her with the boss. He was a stickler for punctuality. She rolled out of bed and tried to recall any part of her  nighttime mind. She couldn't recall anything. No dreams had been there. She'd know if she'd dreamt anything.

Well, okay so that is not a great example but really, those are pretty obvious two by fours you are pounding the reader over the head with.

Happy Thursday, Murderers. Stop that unnecessary stuff and get on with that story!

Clinchers, aka Crisis

This week I decided to write about those moments between turning points. I call them Clinchers, they are also known as a (or) the Crisis. They are those times that make the reader's heart beat faster and make them turn the pages. It is where the bad guys attack the good guys, it is where the girl finds out something about the boy (or vice versa)that makes them question their love, and it is where the evil wizard sends his minions after the hero and the hero has to fight.

Now, the hero of this story you are writing is given the opportunity to follow his heart, but choices are oftentimes hard and this is how you know when a Clincher is about to happen. Something comes along to make this hero act. Heart or not. These Clinchers make the hero do something. Anything, to move this story along. It might even be better if he or she makes the WRONG choice. Sometimes characters making mistakes are a good thing.

If you were making a pudding, this is the ingredient that makes it thick. These Clinchers are scenes where there is so much tension and suspense, the reader has to gulp. And when it is over, they go ahhh.

If you are a story structure person, novels often have two of these Clincher scenes, the first one being sometime before the midpoint of the story, and it sometimes is used to introduce the villain character, ah yes. What a great Clincher that is!

Can you think of three stories where the villain is introduced? What surrounded that scene? YES!!! that's a Clincher.

Come on back next week, and I will discuss the middle of a novel and how it should behave.

Thursday Tips: The Hook

There are a few items that all writers should know before tackling a big project like a novel.

One of the most important being how to structure a story. Every good story has parts to it that are kind of requisite. Like rising and falling action for the plot line (s) and GMC *goal, motivation, and conflict* for the characters.

But if you don't know where to put in all that goodness, and why, you are missing out on a very big deal in writing.

Take the Devil Wears Prada for example. *I know I am WAY behind on movies* but this one really caught my eye as I was studying story structure.

First of all, the main character, Andrea, or Andy, lives in a sort of duh-dump world. She is just average. Average education, average apartment, average kind of boyfriend, average sort of life in total. And then bada bing! She gets a job at Runway. The most glamorous magazine in fashion. As the assistant to the head editor, Miranda Priestly. Who was played by none other than the fabulous Meryl Streep. Can anyone do bad meanie better than MS?

Enter story structure.

First thing in writing, item numero uno, the character's real world. Here we see a reallllllly good comparison between Andy's regular world and her work world. One is just common, and one is amazing and as they say over and over in the show, the job that every girl in the world wants.

This is also known as the HOOK. Every one wants the job that Andy just landed, and she is not that into it. What???? Now what reader(or movie-watcher) isn't "taking the bait" at this point? Hence it is called the hook. We want to know what happens next. Will Andy do something magic or will she end up throwing up on the million dollar desk where Miranda sits?

Tune in next week, Murderers. I will try to 'spain what a plot turn is.