In an early blog I wrote about the benefits of attending a critique group regularly. I stand firmly by that, since we cannot write in a vacuum and constructive criticism is vital to improving a manuscript. Here are some writing tips I’ve learned over the years that I still struggle to follow. They aren’t about the broad picture: plot, tension, POV, characters, etc. I’ll get to those in future blogs. They are small fixable ways to tune up your writing. You’ve no doubt heard many of these already, but the number of books I’ve sampled recently counters that notion. So here are my suggestions:

1. Get rid of those adverbs. Instead, use active verbs. “She sprinted” is better than “she ran quickly.”
2. Try to find other words for the boring and tired words we all slip into using: wonderful, amazing, nice. Bleh. The English language is rich. Use that wealth.
3. Lose “very” unless absolutely necessary, and “just” because both are really fillers that don’t add anything to your work.
4. Don’t pen long paragraphs describing a character’s looks. Draw it out and drop hints every now and then throughout the book. Of course, you can give a brief visual: “The redhead tottered on high heels that made her six feet tall.” Now I can see her. Add other descriptors later.
5. Try to avoid conjugations of “to be.” There’s nothing more maddening than reading “was,” “is,” and “are” 20 times on a page.
6. Get rid of clichés. They make me tired as well as your readers.
7. Use analogies, similes and metaphors so they fit the context of the story. Don’t talk about “cold as ice” (a cliché, by the way) if you’re writing about the tropics. That is, unless your character winds up in a meat locker.
8. In the humorous book, “Eat, Shoots & Leaves,” the author, Lynne Truss, reminds us that punctuation is, indeed, important. I always remember a junior high teacher asking us what was wrong with this sentence. “I saw a pen walking down the street.” Who was walking?
9. Add attributions only when needed to dialogue. If two people are talking to each other, it’s usually easy to know who’s saying what, although an occasional reminder is good. However, once the third person enters the scene, you’ll need to distinguish one character from another. If the voice of a character is so distinct, you may not have to add an attribution. It is frustrating, though, to read pages of dialogue and have to figure out who’s speaking.
10. Avoid repetition — don’t use the same word five times in a page.
11. And, speaking of dialogue, don’t use “mundane-speak.” In a conversation, keep the story moving forward. Talking about what the character is cooking for dinner is only relevant if she has unknowingly invited a serial killer, one who kills lousy cooks, to dinner.

Am I guilty of these writing errors? You bet. Who isn’t? All we can do is keep our eyes and ears open when we read our prose . . . . out loud. Yes, out loud.

I welcome feedback. Please share your own writing tips.