Once Upon a Daydream...

During the line editing and copy editing phases, the editing is focused on improving your prose. Here are 5 things to look out for (among many others):

1. Filter words

Filter words are words that filter the reader’s experience through that of the character. Words like “saw”, “heard”, “thought” etc.

These words should be removed where possible, because they break the reader’s immersion. They put an extra layer between the reader and what is happening in the story.

The reader already knows that whatever is being seen, heard, thought etc is being done so by the character. So, you can just describe whatever is happening without adding “she saw…” or “he heard”.

2. Overused words and phrases (also called crutch words)

Every writer has words or phrases they overuse. These should be cut because they once again break the reader’s immersion.

I recently had a beta reader tell me that I overuse “a muscle feathered in his jaw”. And it was scary how many times I had used that phrase in my manuscript.

So, use critique partners and beta readers to point out your crutch words. You can also use editing programs like ProWritingAid.

Remove around 80% of the usage of this word/phrase.

3. Dialogue tags

There are a few things to look out for when it comes to dialogue tags.

Make sure that you ONLY use tags where it is necessary - where it adds something to the words or is needed to avoid confusion.

Also, make sure that you do use dialogue tags where there is confusion as to who is speaking.

When using dialogue tags, use “said” unless a different tag will add something to the dialogue or change the meaning/tone of what is being said. “Said” should be used as much as possible because it becomes ‘invisible’ to the reader and doesn’t break their immersion.

4. “Very”

You should do a search in your manuscript document for the word “very” and remove 95% of it.

You can either just erase the word or use a stronger word in its stead.

The word “very” rarely adds anything and can slow down your story and make your your writing seem amateurish.

Of course, this doesn’t apply to dialogue, since people say the word “very” often.

5. Inconsistent punctuation or spelling

Are you consistent in your use of commas, dashes, capitalisation etc? Do you use British and American spellings interchangeably?

If you create your own world, make sure you keep the spelling of character and place names consistent.

You can check this manually, but you can also use ProWritingAid.

Do an outline, whatever way works best. Get yourself out of the word soup and know where the story is headed.

Conflicts and obstacles. Hurt the protagonist, put things in their way, this keeps the story interesting. An easy journey makes the story boring and boring is hard to write.

Change the POV. Sometimes all it takes to untangle a knotted story is to look at it through different eyes, be it through the sidekick, the antagonist, a minor character, whatever.

Know the characters. You can’t write a story if the characters are strangers to you. Know their likes, dislikes, fears, and most importantly, their motivation. This makes the path clearer.

Fill in holes. Writing doesn’t have to be linear; you can always go back and fill in plotholes, and add content and context.

Have flashbacks, hallucinations, dream sequences or foreshadowing events. These stir the story up, deviations from the expected course add a feeling of urgency and uncertainty to the narrative.

Introduce a new mystery. If there’s something that just doesn’t add up, a big question mark, the story becomes more compelling. Beware: this can also cause you to sink further into the mire.

Take something from your protagonist. A weapon, asset, ally or loved one. Force him to operate without it, it can reinvigorate a stale story.

Twists and betrayal. Maybe someone isn’t who they say they are or the protagonist is betrayed by someone he thought he could trust. This can shake the story up and get it rolling again.

Secrets. If someone has a deep, dark secret that they’re forced to lie about, it’s a good way to stir up some fresh conflict. New lies to cover up the old ones, the secret being revealed, and all the resulting chaos.

Kill someone. Make a character death that is productive to the plot, but not “just because”. If done well, it affects all the characters, stirs up the story and gets it moving.

Ill-advised character actions. Tension is created when a character we love does something we hate. Identify the thing the readers don’t want to happen, then engineer it so it happens worse than they imagined.

Create cliff-hangers. Keep the readers’ attention by putting the characters into new problems and make them wait for you to write your way out of it. This challenge can really bring out your creativity.

Raise the stakes. Make the consequences of failure worse, make the journey harder. Suddenly the protagonist’s goal is more than he expected, or he has to make an important choice.

Make the hero active. You can’t always wait for external influences on the characters, sometimes you have to make the hero take actions himself. Not necessarily to be successful, but active and complicit in the narrative.

Different threat levels. Make the conflicts on a physical level (“I’m about to be killed by a demon”), an emotional level (“But that demon was my true love”) and a philosophical level (“If I’m forced to kill my true love before they kill me, how can love ever succeed in the face of evil?”).

Figure out an ending. If you know where the story is going to end, it helps get the ball rolling towards that end, even if it’s not the same ending that you actually end up writing.

What if? What if the hero kills the antagonist now, gets captured, or goes insane? When you write down different questions like these, the answer to how to continue the story will present itself.

Characters are the inhabitants of the worlds you create. They drive your stories and pull in fans. They are how you provide representation and channel conflict. The problem is, these super important members of your paper population don’t like to behave.

Sometimes you need to break them down and start again

Look at where they started, their original inspiration or, if that’s too vague, their core characteristics. Remove everything else that contributes to their personality, such as backstory and desires. Just examine the set of basics that made their skeleton and ask yourself some questions. Some possibilities are:

What other desires might they have? How do these basic traits impact their relationships with others? What flaws might these traits and characteristics lead to? Why are they like this? Can they grow? If not, try tweaking their basics. What are their fundamental morals? Their personal code? Are there any tropes that they fall into? Do you like this trope? What could these basics do for creating conflict? How much pressure can they take before breaking?

After that, you can start to remould them based around those new answers. There is a set of important things that you should always consider when making characters, whether they are new ones or old ones being redone.

Desires

Without desires, your characters are listless and uninteresting. There is one exception, which I will cover later on, but for the most part characters must must must have at least one desire to drive them. It could be something really simple or honest, like a steady job or a roof over their head. If you’re creative, even the most basic of desires can drive an enthralling plot.

What does your character want, more than anything? What would they do to get that thing? How do their morals and personal code influence the lengths they will go to in order to fullfill their desires? Are their desires typically good things, or bad things? How does this drive them? Do their desires define them as a person, or are they just side wants that come to the forefront because of the plot?

Flaws

I made a post on flaws, traits and disabilities (link at the end), where I talked about the ways these things are linked but are not one and the same, and covered the different types of flaws. Some considerations:

How do these flaws govern their actions? Their relationships? What kind of flaw is it? Negative or positive? How could these flaws drive conflict?

Growth

Characters need to grow to keep interest. I still maintain that Jane Eyre is such a lovable character because we see her grow from a child who has strong ideas but is ill-equipped to convey them and so becomes difficult, into a woman who knows how to stand her ground and uphold her morals while learning along the way to forgive and understand. She’s only one example of literal thousands, but you would do well to keep this in mind. Growth doesn’t mean a total revolution of character, it just means learning and expanding from the original stem.

What could motivate them to grow? Why would they need to? Who helps them along the way? Would they understand their need to grow themselves, or would someone have to push them to it?

Bending and breaking

My favourite ever piece of advice is that your characters are like geodes and must be broken before they can be displayed in their full colours. I’ve forgotten where I heard it/read it, and the actual words, but the gist of the quote has stayed with me for years. It is so true! Find every weak point and jab your pointy pencil in there, hard.

What are their worst fears? Would could they do that would cause them huge emotional distress? Would could push them to do said emotional distress-causing thing? What are their limits? Who or what could be a point of weakness for them?

Making mistakes

Put simply, let your characters fuck up. They’re your characters, yeah, but they’re just characters. There is no need for them to be perfect, smart, witty players in your plot. Readers want to see themselves, at least in part, in the books they choose, and readers are only human.

What could your character do that would be irreversable? Would they care enough to try and reverse it? How would other characters react?

Real life

Following the same philsophy as above, let real life happen to your characters, even if they’re in space running through a hostile planet or a fantasy world of your own creation.

Do they have a family, children? Could they fall in love and mess up? Are there people being left behind for the sake of this character’s goals? Is there a family member or close friend who could die of completely mundane causes? If the situation around your character is anything but mundane, this would be all the more heart breaking. Are there any small, personal life things that they have forgotten about in the course of the plot?

Real life lends itself to sub-plots, which are really important for driving the story as a whole.

Loopholes

How do your characters fail to fit this criteria? What can you do with this? Can it be turned to your advantage? Be creative!

For example: the one exception to having desires could be the flaw of a character being exceptionally apathetic to the point of making thing s worse for other characters, or having to force themselves not to have any desires to survive (see: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margret Atwood, in which Offred is a passive protagonist to make a point about the society of Gilead). In the case of the flaw of extreme apathy, play with what could potentionally change this. Or, as in the book Apathy and Other Small Victories, have a plot that revolves around the protagonist doing nothing and play with the chaos and hilarity that ensues. 

Finally, consider the world they live in. Study their backstory, what they came from and where they are going, and put all of these together.

Some other posts on characters to help you out:

Ways to create and develop characters

Rules for character building (including where they came from and where they’re going, and how this helps their growth)

Distinctions between flaws, disabilities and traits-  plus the different kinds of flaws and the considerations you could make

This has been part of my weekly set of advice articles. Each week I make an article or series of articles on the things you have asked for help with, or things that I feel need to be covered, such as aspects of representation. Check the tag, #artie gives advice.

If you need any help on anything else in the meantime, general or specific, drop an ask!

Search for “there is” or “there was.”

Find all the description or action that starts with “there” and change it.

“There is a strike of lightning” becomes “lightning strikes the sky.”

“There is panic building in his chest” becomes “panic builds in his chest.”