Practicing one Paragraph at a time

 I had an interesting experience while writing my manuscript with my alpha readers. We were having a picnic outside on a beautiful June day, eating sandwiches and talking about my first ten chapters. My alpha readers are people I select carefully, whose opinions I trust. They are all intelligent people. And they each gave me completely different feedback.

“The beginning is too long,” said one. “You need to cut it down, rearrange it so your characters get to training earlier.”

“I like the beginning,” said another. “I think the characterization of some specific team members needs to be fixed.”

“I like the team members,” the third said. “I want to see more interaction between the two main characters. More dialogue.”

“I think there's too much dialogue. The main character talks more than he should. Guys aren't like that,” said the last.

Holy cow. The only thing they all agreed on was that the prologue needed a point of view character and more description. How do I sort through all this input?

We hear all the time in our writing classes and seminars the phrase, “Show, don't tell.” So we try. Instead of Janice running, we say Janice rapidly made her way down the narrow hallway. The dark blue tapestries loomed menacingly along both walls. She clenched her fists angrily. She was going to kill him as soon as she found him.

Then those same teachers tell us “Cut the adverbs. Get rid of all those 'ly' words. Show me more. Be descriptive” So we take them out, and now Janice made her way down the narrow hallway, the balls of her feet slapping against the hard concrete floor. The old carpet was a deep red with a confusing paisley pattern. The dark blue tapestries seemed to absorb the light and made the darkness thicker and more threatening. There were only small windows that flashed light on her tear stained face, although her sorrow was long over. Her fists and jaw were clenched, her eyes were narrow and she breathed rapidly through her nose. When she reached the room at the end of this long hallway, she was going to kill him. Her only hope was that no one else had done it yet.

Then our writing is turned it again to our teachers and editors. It comes back with red marks everywhere. “Too wordy. Try to cut it back.” And we tear our hair out because the rules seem so contradictory and no one explains what they mean, and no matter how hard we're trying it is always wrong. Too many words. Not enough words. Too descriptive. Not descriptive enough. Get rid of adverbs. Show me, don't tell me. It's enough to make any writer want to lock their work away and never show it to anyone.

Breathe. You're doing all right. There are a lot of rules, and they are all important, but they aren't all important all the time. Let's rework this paragraph with Janice now that we've done the most important part- we wrote it.

“Janice made her way down the narrow hallway, the balls of her feet slapping against the hard concrete floor.” Let's cut it back. Instead of “made her way” we can say “went.” Does it matter to the story what part of her feet hit the floor first when she's running? If it isn't, we can cut that. And do we need to call concrete hard? Isn't it hard by definition? Writers have a tendency to repeat themselves because they are trying so hard to show the reader what's going on. So now, “Janice went down the narrow hallway, her feet slapping against the concrete floor.”

Now let's see if we can combine the next two sentences. “The old carpet was a deep red with a confusing paisley pattern. The dark blue tapestries seemed to absorb the light and made the darkness thicker and more threatening.” These are about the same length and are both descriptions of the hallway. We can make one longer sentence. “The confusing paisley pattern on the carpet and the dark blue tapestries lining the walls absorbed the light, making the darkness thicker and more threatening.” We could work it more, because saying that the darkness is threatening is not as strong as showing how the darkness was affecting Janice. “making the darkness thicker. Janice tried to ignore the shadows that twitched and nudged the corners of her vision and her heart beating in her chest so hard it was painful.” Wordy is only wordy when you're repeating yourself or adding useless information. We don't need to know the color of the walls or how many windows there are in the hall. We need to know where Janice is and how she feels so clearly that we feel it ourselves.

“There were only small windows that flashed light on her tear stained face, although her sorrow was long over. Her fists and jaw were clenched, her eyes were narrow and she breathed rapidly through her nose.” Again, these sentences are the same length. Varying your sentence lengths makes your writing sound more smooth in the reader's head, and allows them to lose themselves in your story. “Small windows flashed light on the tear stains of an old sorrow. Her fists and jaw were clenched now, eyes narrowed, lips twisted in a feral snarl.” Are you seeing it? Does this paint a better picture than “angrily?”

“When she reached the room at the end of this long hallway, she was going to kill him. Her only hope was that no one else had done it yet.” These are all right on their own, but we can make them stronger. When writing you can usually remove “that” or “very” any time you type it. And we can give more information about the room at the end, depending on how we want the next scene to go. How does it feel if we know she's running to the kitchen? What if the room at the end of the hall is a bedroom? “When she reached their bedroom at the end of the hall, she was going to kill him. She only hoped no one else had done it yet.”

So here's our paragraph: “Janice went down the narrow hallway, her feet slapping against the concrete floor. The confusing paisley pattern on the carpet and the dark blue tapestries lining the walls absorbed the light, making the darkness thicker. Janice tried to ignore the shadows that twitched and nudged the corners of her vision and her heart beating in her chest so hard it was painful. Small windows flashed light on the tear stains of an old sorrow. Her fists and jaw were clenched now, eyes narrowed, lips twisted in a feral snarl. When she reached their bedroom at the end of the hall, she was going to kill him. She only hoped no one else had done it yet.”

If you give this to an editor or a teacher, they're still going to make red marks. That's fine, that's their job. My alpha readers still all have different opinions of what's good and what they love about my book and things they wish I'd added more about. Do edit. Go through your words carefully after you've gotten them down. Keep the rules in the back of your mind. But don't ever let them stop you from writing. If you do, what will they have to critique?