Writing Tips

Tip #1: Don't write the parts people skip

Tip #1: Don’t write the parts people skip. The following is a list of skip-able material that, while it sounds good in our head, it just sounds like gobbledygook in the head of the reader. The goal is to keep the reader interested.

1.      Avoid the info dump. Don’t start your book with a play-by-play of your character’s life. Lead me into it a little at a time. Break it up with amusing dialogue. Think of it like school—teachers don’t dump a load of material on you in an hour then give you a quiz at the end of class. They lead you into it, give you a few days to digest it. In our case, you give a few pages to describe something, even a few chapters.

2.      Show, don’t tell. Telling is this: “Once upon a time, there was a kingdom, and in this kingdom lived a prince.” Showing, however, would look like this: “At dusk the magnificent towers of the castle lit to a dull orange, reflecting the light upon the city below. In the afternoons, one would pause and stare up at the home of the king in awe, watching as delicate shadows danced over the pale stone.” Imagery is everything.

3.      Don’t go overboard on details. Give the reader enough to know what’s going on, and then top it with some sugar and spice to make it pretty in their head, and move on. (See Tip 2, part 2)

4.      This is actually my pet peeve: telling me the exact heights of a character. I don’t need to know that Johnny is 6’1” with green eyes and slightly brown hair with a tinge of red that hangs almost to his chin, but not exactly, and his super-hot friends are 5’8” with blonde hair and brown eyes, 5’11” with black hair and blue eyes and 6’2” with whatever and who cares. Think about every book you’ve read—no author goes into detail that much. Avoid it by (a.) maybe cutting down on the number of people Johnny hangs out with and (b.) just saying “Yo, those boys are taller than I am.” (c.) and don’t list their characteristics like you’re describing a missing person to the police. Mention his hand tousling his brown hair or you accidently caught a flash of dull brown as your eyes met. And for Gale Hawthorne’s sake, please don’t tell me their exact heights. 6’1” tells me the same thing as “he’s really tall,” only the latter is less of a headache.

5.      Don’t put every citizen in America in your book. Limit your main characters to about 4-6 or something in the range of this-person-has-no-friends to I-can-remember-their-names. Make it so the reader doesn’t have to flip back just to remember what so-and-so looks like.