An exercise that helps is to write out as much description as you possibly can. Ignore everything I just said, and stuff as many similes and metaphors as your fingers can manage into the chapter. Pretend your chapter is on death row and this is the last Thanksgiving it will ever attend. Entire twenty-two pound turkeys should be in there, not to mention the mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce. Then you rest a little while, look at it with new eyes, and you cut the hell out of it. If you have a paragraph of description, pick the most important sentence, or even the most important phrase, and delete everything else. Or you could rate your descriptive sentences each on a scale of 1-5 according to their effectiveness and delete anything below a 3 or 4. While you’re doing it, it may kill you a little on the inside, but when you’re done it will look cleaner and more professional and read better.
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Writing Mistakes You're Making
RandomA self-help book for beginning writers, covering everything from grammar to plot with a dash of humor to keep you interested and learning! (The best part? Anything you already know, you can just skip over.)
