The Write of Way [Work in Progress, Member Driven]

Writer's Glue or How To Fix the Broken Sh*t #2--Your Story Bogged Down

This one is so common on Wattpad that there ought to be a notice above the door, "Warning! Snorefest Ahead."

Yet, bogging down is one of the easist problems to fix.

Your story IS there, it's just buried under too many unnecessary words and you're at a loss about how to fix it.

So, if people are telling you it's slowing down or your chapter 7 has 100 reads but chapter 8 only has 50--clearly your story has bogged down and it's time to step up the pace.

PROBLEM: Too much description. This is common with fantasy writers. I once waded through over 4000 words on a critique and all that happened was the hero got off his horse and knocked on the door. Boring doesn't begin to describe what I experienced as a reader. It was more along the lines of, "give me my 15 minutes of life back--RIGHT NOW."

You're just dying to get your whole world on the page. After all, you worked hard on it, it's an mind-blowing, original world isn't it?

Readers don't care. They want just enough description to build the picture in THEIR heads, not see the one in yours. They are your partner in the realms of imagination and if you weigh your story down in too much description then they are nothing more than a passive spectator. In the day of the video game experience they are used to participating in the story.

So, let them.

Put their imaginations to work for you.

GLUE #1: Check your Point of View. Which character is wearing the camera on his/her head? Anything they don't see/taste/smell/hear/touch--get rid of it. If they're a guy, get rid of anything that smacks of fashion or heavy description unless they are a detective and the chartreuse, lacy, empire-waisted dress, is a clue.

GLUE #2: Ask yourself, "Is there some reason the reader MUST know this?" Description for the sake of description is a one way ticket to Dullsville. Nobody wants to read three sentences on what the tavern table looks like and Starbucks is pretty much ubiquitous so don't waste your reader's imagination where you don't need to make them work. A tree is a freaking tree unless there's something unusual about this particular tree or it's a magical tree that advances the plot.

Building atmosphere is wonderful when done well. Lovecraft and Poe were masters of building up the creep factor. If you need description for atmosphere, like sugar in coffee, a little goes a long way and too much makes it undrinkable.

GLUE #3: Wherever you have more than a one word adjective [description word] such as: "He drank hot, sweet, black, vanilla-flavoured coffee."--get rid of all but the most important one. Which one of those words says something about the character? Or which word is the most unusual that makes his choice in coffee stand out from the crowd?

PROBLEM: Excessive verbiage.

This is the droning blather that often accompanies first person point of view where the character is babbling like a lonely patient in a psychiatrist's office. Other times it is the third person informal point of view full of clauses that just turn the paragraph or entire pages into reading drudgery. It's not technically passive writing but it drags on and on and on...

It goes along the lines of: "Kurt was dragging his heels on the way to work thinking how much more he would know if he could only get the keys to the magical kingdom. The keys were not in his grasp as yet but they could be in the future, if he could only figure a way that would help him pickpocket the princess to get them back."

OR

"I was walking to the story trying to think of what to tell my mother when I got home until I came up with a brilliant idea."

Glue #4: Get rid of the junk. Check for any sentence that has "would" or "could" in it. Lose it or rewrite it if you can do so without losing the meaning.

Glue #5: Get rid of repetition. If you see a word--ANY word [other than the obvious ones such as "the"] more than once in a couple of paragraphs, see if you are repeating yourself. The exception is dialogue tags to be discussed later. Or not.

Glue #6: "BUT" hunting. Go through sentences that either start with, or have, the word BUT in them. It's often the way that our minds work in stringing together two thoughts when writing. That's fine for first draft then commit homicide on all except the most necessary BUTs.

Glue #7: Rewrite sentences that have more than one or at most two, conjunctons, whenever possible.

Conjunctions are those words that tie together two separate ideas. This is not the full list. It will do for now: after, although, as, as if, as long as, as much as, as soon as, as though, because, before, by the time, even if, even though, if, in order that, in case, lest, once, only if, provided that, since, so that, than, that, though, till, unless, until, when, whenever, where, wherever, while.

It isn't wrong to use several conjunctions in a sentence. They do tend to lead us into run-on sentences. They are sneaky little reprobates attempting to draw you into the sin of slow pacing. Don't let them!

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Well that's it for the second edition of Writer's Glue.

Let me know if the article helped, or if I need to clarify anything in the comments below. Never be afraid to ask, comment or critique, oh writerly friends :)

Also, if you're struggling and you need some writer's glue, you're more than welcome to ask. This series is a writer-driven series so if you are struggling with something--chances are, someone else has the very same challenges and we're all in this together.

And hey, voting helps to let me know if this was helpful for you :)