These are Rachel May’s 8 Tips to Better Writing::

1: Read your work out loud.

This one is the most important in RayMay’s eyes. And she’s quite right.

What does this do?: By reading your work out loud, you will pick up grammar mistakes and flow problems. Also, you will hear how your audience is hearing it in their heads. If you trip over a phrase, most likely your reader will as well.

2: Vary your sentence length.

Why is this important?: Sentences that are all the same length tend to make the reader hear your story in monotone. By varying up line/sentence length you add rhythm and flow to your writing. To tell whether or not you have sentences the same length, print out the first page of your story, take a pen or pencil and at the start of every sentence draw a line through the words. When you get to a period end the line. At the next sentence do the same thing. Follow that same system through your first paragraph and subsequent paragraphs. If every line appears to be the same length. Cut some of your sentences down into short ones. Read the entire paragraph out loud to double check that you haven’t taken anything out that’s imperative or shortened a sentence where it should, in fact, be longer.

3: Write great descriptions.

Why is this important?: By writing vivid descriptions, you are involving the reader beyond just words and dialogue. Physically imagine yourself in that particular situation…you already know this I’m sure…but it can’t hurt to remind you.
Also, another way to get descriptions just right is to imagine yourself explaining whatever it is you’re trying to explain to someone who doesn’t have that sense. If I were blind, how would you convey to me a sunset? If I had no sense of smell, how would you convey a scent to me?

4: Dialogue can make or break a story.

Why is dialogue important?: Dialogue is important because when you write great dialogue it adds a whole new level to your story. It gives your characters a voice. Try to think about the people you know—how do they respond to mundane conversations or important conversations? Write dialogue that feels natural. Every person has a different rhythm to their speech patterns; try to give each character a different rhythm to their dialogue. This will help the reader differentiate between your characters.

5: Make (-ing) your friend.

Why are -ing words important?: Sometimes starting a sentence with a gerund helps to add a different feel to a sentence.

Example:

She ran as fast as she could to catch the bus, but still missed it.
Despite running as fast as she could, she still missed the bus.
Running as fast as she could didn’t matter, she still missed the bus.

Basically these sentences are pretty much saying the same thing in different ways. Determine which way flows better with the sentence before and the sentence after.

6: Make each chapter stand on its own.

What does this mean?: This means that a person should feel intrigue in each chapter. That if I picked up your book and turned to chapter 14, I should feel the pull of your story as strongly as if I started from the beginning. And every chapter should end with a hook so that it compels me to read the subsequent chapters.

7: Characters with a point.

What does this mean?: I’m not saying that your characters should have pointy heads or have daggers coming out of their skin. No. I’m saying that you should not introduce a character that has no point. Why? Because if you introduce a character without a real point to push your story along, we as the reader are thinking, “well all that time we spent reading about that unimportant character was wasted.” So, if you have superfluous characters in your story, as cruel as this sounds, KILL THEM. No will notice and no one will care. Well, you will. But your readers will thank you for it.

8: Add moral dilemmas.

Why should you do this?: When I was in school my writing professors told me that stories, especially YA stories and children’s stories, should have a moral. Make sure if you’re writing for the children genre or YA genre that there is some sort of lesson to be learned. Take a cue from Aesop’s Fable’s and Charlotte’s Web. They have a moral. Even the more complex YA tales have morals—they may not be as easily defined as say, a Dr. Seuss tale, but they are there. I promise you!

Hope these tips help you! I know they did me.

What tips do you all have? What are your writing secrets?

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Since winning her first writing competition at a young age, Eden Tyler, has only fallen more in love with the written word. She uses her English, Psychology, and Sociology backgrounds to create depth to her own stories and novels while contributing to and running websites about writing. This is what fulfills her, along with working as Co-Editor for Fuel Your Writing, but she also enjoys the freelance work that puts food on the table (and that ever-essential roof overhead) for her family.

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I, for one, would love to see if this was a useful exercise. Not that I’m doubting it…I just adore seeing progress!
My first five changed drastically. The comments I received made me realize that my initial instinct was right and I had tried too hard to make my beginning what it ‘should’ be.
You’d think I would already know this, as my guest blog on here a while back was all about going with your gut. Hmmm… Maybe I should take my own advice.

Anyway, we’d love to see those revisions!
Just post them as a comment to your submission–don’t be afraid to own up to which one was yours. They were all great =)

Thanks to all who participated!

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Since winning her first writing competition at a young age, Eden Tyler, has only fallen more in love with the written word. She uses her English, Psychology, and Sociology backgrounds to create depth to her own stories and novels while contributing to and running websites about writing. This is what fulfills her, along with working as Co-Editor for Fuel Your Writing, but she also enjoys the freelance work that puts food on the table (and that ever-essential roof overhead) for her family.

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This is what I’ve learned. A hard lesson that took about a month to make its way through my thick skull.

Being a first time novelist, I believed that everyone had something to teach me. I was willing to take advice from anyone who offered, and run with it.

Run, I did. New York marathon entrants had some tough competition at the time.

Thankfully, this writer became tired. And frustrated. My book was a mere shadow of what it once was. Granted, it needed work in the beginning (and let’s face it, it’s still kind of the beginning-and still needs work). But, I took helpful, friendly advice entirely too far. Advice that didn’t even always make sense to me.

Alexis’ story became a farce of sorts. A movie, even. Someone recommended I approach my novel as such. What?!??!  That was one piece of advice I didn’t take, yet it ended up happening. Everything I loved about Alexis, and my other characters, was trashed simply to make The Abandoned Edge of Avalon more ‘commercial.’ More agent ready. More publishable. Right….

After about ten revisions, my book was practically all action and dialogue-with no depth. Yes, a good hook at the start is obviously important. Questions that force the reader to continue should be presented as soon as possible. The story should start where it starts-not twenty, fifty, nor even five pages in. Well, I took that to an extreme.

A pivotal scene that once occurred a few chapters in, I pushed forward to the third paragraph. Yes, the third paragraph. Where is a reader to go if everything is answered and put on the page right away? To a different book-that’s where. Not a good thing. That scene is now back where it belongs.

I have found that if I don’t believe in my own work, no one is going to.

I read an excerpt from a book recently that helped me ‘snap to.’

Writers write for the readers, correct? We don’t write for the editors, agents, nor the publishers. The readers are the ones who will ultimately buy our books. If a person is not a reader in the first place, don’t force them to be. Write for people who are apt to pick up a book. Do not go for shock factor just to gain readership.

Write for the words, the style, the feel, atmosphere, along with many other reasons. Mostly, write for yourself, and the reader will know your heart and soul.

I admit I sold out for a short while, and I’m rather ashamed. I lost myself by listening too much to others. But, I’m back on track and my book pleases me again. It seems to be pleasing my readers, as well. And that’s what all of this is about.

Please, learn from my mistakes, and set yourself free with your words and ideas!

Eden Tyler

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When I was a spry young thing (I’m 27 now, ancient, I know), I used to
imagine that authors only wrote a large oak desks, with a fountain
pen, and they’d peruse their manuscripts page by page, making little
notes on semi-colons and apostrophes.

I recently completed a MG manuscript, and trust me, it wasn’t the
semi-colons and apostrophes that needed work. It was the plot. The structure, the voice–the
big stuff. I needed something better than a fountain pen.

So I turned to technology. While some of the programs and methods I’ve
used before can be found on my blog here
and here,
today I’m going to talk about Scrivener,
a writing program that I found particularly useful in revising my
manuscript.

Scrivener was developed by a writer for writers. And before we go any
further, I should point out that Scrivener works only for Apple
computers–but an equivalent program, PageFour,
is available for PC computer users.

So, I had a manuscript done. In the past when this happened, I’d hit
print, then I looked at the pages, much like my dreamt-of image of an
author. But that just wasn’t efficient. First, I knew I needed to cut
down the manuscript by about 10k words. Second, I really needed to
focus on structure and pace. And all of that would have meant a lot of
flipping through pages, going back and forth, etc., etc. So, I
transferred the manuscript from Word to Scrivener.

Here’s why: Scrivener is designed for books. You can split chapters up
and click on them to go directly to each chapter. So if I’m in Chapter
1, reading away, and I wonder if I remembered to put that clue in
Chapter 21, all I have to do is click and bam! I’m in Chapter 21. OK, checked it, back to
Chapter 1–in just a click. It’s that simple.

Did you have to research something in your novel? There’s a space for
that–and now you can easily click between your manuscript and your
research without opening other programs, waiting for them to load,
clicking through them on the task bar, etc. Everything you need to
write is right there.

But even better than that is the notecard function. With each chapter,
you can write a short note or synopsis on a virtual notecard attached
to the chapter. Then, you can click on the Corkboard function and look
at all your notecards lined up in a row. If you are one of those
writers with Post-it Note boards or real-life corkboard, consider
going virtual with this program–it’s a lot less messy, trust me!

Of
course, I’m not a corkboard kind of girl…but I did use Scrivener’s
Corkboard. Remember when I told you I needed to cut about 10k from my
manuscript? Once I had all my virtual notecards lined up (in a process
that took maybe half an hour from start to finish–real notecards can
take me days)–anyway, once they were all there, I could easily see
where I had a whole chapter that didn’t progress the plot and two
short chapters that could be combined. Boom. Cutting 10k words has
never been easier.

And I had all those structure problems, remember? Seeing the book laid
out in Corkboard or Outliner mode with Scrivener helped me see those
plot holes and the ways I needed to restructure my plot.

Bottom Line: I had two options
in revising. 1. Print all my pages, read through them, flip back and
forth through manual pages, lug them around everywhere, and hope I
caught everything OR 2. Put
my manuscript into Scrivener and let it format it in ways that helped
me see the problems I needed to fix.

Bio: Beth Revis runs a blog on
writing for MG and YA audience called Writing it Out. She is the
author of a MG fantasy for which she is currently seeking
representation. Beth can be found online at bethrevis.com.

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