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Revising Fiction: 13 Ways to Show Character Emotions, Part 3

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by Kirt Hickman

This month’s column completes a three-part look at techniques that can help you show your characters’ emotions effectively. So far, we’ve learned to:

1. Use emotional honesty.
2. Convey the source of the emotion.
3. Avoid clichés.
4. Use metaphor.
5. Use concrete details.
6. Use internal monologue.
7. Use dialog.
8. Show physical response.

Additional techniques include:

9. Have the character respond to the emotion in an unexpected way.

Snider pulled Chase aside. “That was a lovely exercise,” he spat, “but you haven’t answered the basic question: Why?” Veins bulged in his forehead as he said the last word. His eyes, crazed as though he was on the verge of a breakdown, spoke of the unbelievable pressure that he must be under. Chase had thought he’d understood, but matters were apparently worse than he’d imagined.

“Look, Morgan.” Snider dropped his voice. “You must answer that question. And soon. I’m getting to the point where I don’t even care if it’s the right answer.” He looked Chase in the eye. “You hear what I’m saying?”

In this example from my science fiction novel, Worlds Asunder, Snider responds to his stress by essentially telling Chase to lie. This is surprising, because Snider’s primary concern has been his own reputation, which could be ruined by such a lie.

This technique can be tricky to employ because the emotional response must be believable, even though it’s unexpected. The key is to make it specific to the character. I do this here by incorporating one of Snider’s tag lines: “You hear what I’m saying?”

10. Use one emotion to express another.

The following day they received a broken transmission from Snider, crackling through a faulty connection in the comm gear. A pair of geologists had arrived on the scene and found Herrera’s bodyguard dead in the cabin. Chase swallowed hard and bowed his head for a moment…

“Everyone else is missing,” Snider finished.

The news was good and bad. It reminded Chase of the fragility of life and the cold ruthlessness of space. And he mourned the loss, even though he hadn’t known the man. But according to Snider’s report, the rover was still moving. Somehow the others had found the means to endure without the protection of a ship or habitat.

In this example, I talk about mourning over the man found in the wreckage, but because Chase didn’t know the man, there’s no basis for his grief. What he’s actually feeling is hope for those that still live. The mention of mourning is a way to express Chase’s hope by contrasting it with another, dissimilar, emotion.

11. Use external setting to mirror your character’s emotions.

In the following example, Bill has just awoken from a coma. Dana has stepped away from his bedside to allow the nurse to assess his condition. Notice how I use the sunlight in the hospital room to reflect Dana’s feelings.

The sun warmed the room through the durapane window, suddenly now bright and cheerful as if it had just risen. Dana returned to Bill’s side and kissed him again, this time on the mouth. “I thought I’d lost you.”

12. Use character action.

Gerri threw the contract onto the floor, snatched up her coat, and stormed from the room.

This example uses Gerri’s actions to show her anger.

13. Express the emotion in a way that is specific to the character.

[President Powers] felt like she had when she was twelve, when she and her friends were playing in the surf off the South Carolina coast. She’d waded in too far and a large wave had washed over her, pulled her under.

China armed in Earth orbit and the United States ignorant. She couldn’t breathe. A cold pressure squeezed in around her, holding her down while she was powerless to prevent it. She heard Norton slam the table through the muffled sound that filled her ears. They were arguing, Norton and O’Leary, but only Norton’s voice penetrated the president’s consciousness with the words incompetent and consequences.

Finally, like it had when she was twelve, the wave receded and she came up for air. She banged her cane on the hardwood floor to bring civility back to the meeting.

In this example, I use a specific event from President Powers’ childhood to express her sense of being overwhelmed in a way that is specific to her.

The techniques in this three-part column are valuable tools to master. If you’d like to see a more in-depth treatment of this topic, I recommend Creating Character Emotions by Ann Hood.1

Read the first two parts of Kirt Hickman’s series:
“13 Ways to Show Character Emotions,” Part 1
“13 Ways to Show Character Emotions,” Part 2

1Ann Hood, Creating Character Emotions, Story Press Books, 1998.

WorldsAsunder125_2Kirt Hickman is a technical writer turned fiction author. His books include three sci-fi thriller novels Worlds Asunder (2008), Venus Rain (2010) and Mercury Sun (2014), the high fantasy novel Fabler’s Legend (2011), and the writers’ how-to Revising Fiction: Making Sense of the Madness (2009).

This article was originally published in the October 2008 issue of SouthWest Sage, and is reprinted here by permission of the author.



Revising Fiction: 13 Ways to Show Character Emotions, Part 2

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by Kirt Hickman

Last month we began to look at creative ways in which you can show your characters’ emotions effectively. To recap, we learned to:

1. Use emotional honesty.
2. Convey the source of the emotion.
3. Avoid clichés.
4. Use metaphor.

This only scratches the surface of what you can do. Wherever you see the name of an emotion in your writing, question carefully whether you’re showing the emotion to the reader, or simply telling him about it. Here are more ways to show your characters’ emotions.1

5. Use Concrete Details

Not bugs, but locusts and flies. Not flowers, but crocuses, pansies, or marigolds. If your character is drinking soda or wine, name the brand (real or fictitious). If she’s reading a book or listening to a song, name it. Choose details that reflect your character’s emotional state.

Consider the following passage, from an early draft of my science fiction novel, Worlds Asunder. This shows Dana McKaughey’s first glimpse of Bill Ryan in the base trauma center after he’s been in a terrible accident.

Tubes and wires ran everywhere, to machines and equipment whose purpose she could only guess at.

Does this passage let you feel what Dana is feeling? No. It shows her ignorance of the equipment sustaining Bill, but it doesn’t convey emotion. Because she’s not familiar with the machines, I can’t describe them by name and function, but I can give details to the extent that she understands them.

Tubes and wires ran everywhere, from his arm, mouth ,nose, chest, and several from beneath a blanket that had been pulled down to his waist. Each connected him to equipment in his headboard.

Meaningless numbers and graphics lit the display. She heard the hollow pump and hiss of a respirator and a series of beeps with the rhythm of a steady heart, but she’d cautioned herself against false hope for too many hours to draw encouragement from the disembodied sounds.

Instead of wires just running everywhere, they now run from specific parts of Bill’s body to equipment in his headboard. Instead of settling for “machines and equipment,” I describe what Dana sees and hears in a manner that reflects her emotions.

6. Use Internal Monologue

This example is from Bill Ryan in Worlds Asunder:

Why couldn’t he share that part of her life? Whenever he tried, she was just responsive enough to make him think he had a chance. But in the end, she always kept him at arm’s length.

But Bill had resolved years ago not to psychoanalyze her behavior. He reminded himself of that pledge now to prevent his mind from slipping into that self-destructive mire of a woman’s emotional logic. Women’s prerogative, he repeated over and over again to make himself believe it. Some days it got to him more than others.

This shows more about his emotional state, and about him as a character, than words like frustration or loneliness could possibly convey.

7. Use Dialog

Consider this example from a critique submission.2

[Ian] reached the table just in time to get the last slice of mushrooms, olives, and green chili, much to the annoyance of his sister.

The author could have used dialog to show the girl’s annoyance.

[Ian] reached the table just in time to get the last slice of mushrooms, olives, and green chili.

“Mom,” Kasey yelled in her most whiney voice. “Ian took the last piece of good pizza.”

“You’re a kid. You’re not even supposed to like these toppings.” Ian made a show of stuffing half the piece into his mouth in a single bite.

“Mom,” Kasey yelled again.

The second passage reveals both characters much more clearly than the first, which simply tells the reader that Kasey is annoyed. The second passage shows, through dialog, how both characters respond to her annoyance.

8. Show Physical Response

The bodies, when he found them, were nothing more than a partial set of scorched bones and ash, incompletely cremated, with a few melted personal effects. Bile filled Chase’s throat and forced him to turn away. God damn it! Nobody was supposed to be in there. The death count was now at six, and Chase had known some of those people. He swallowed the vomit that rose in him, fortified his resolve, and looked again upon the victims. Both skulls remained intact, their bony grins mocking him from the ruins of his investigation. He imagined the perpetrator doing the same from somewhere nearby.

This passage from Worlds Asunder uses the involuntary response of Chase’s body to express his revulsion. Without it, the scene contains some macabre imagery, but it’s emotionally lifeless.

Read the rest of Kirt Hickman’s series:
“13 Ways to Show Character Emotions,” Part 1
“13 Ways to Show Character Emotions,” Part 3

1Ann Hood, Creating Character Emotions, Story Press Books, 1998.
2Excerpts from critique submissions are reprinted with the permission of the original author.

WorldsAsunder125_2Kirt Hickman is a technical writer turned fiction author. His books include three sci-fi thriller novels Worlds Asunder (2008), Venus Rain (2010) and Mercury Sun (2014), the high fantasy novel Fabler’s Legend (2011), and the writers’ how-to Revising Fiction: Making Sense of the Madness (2009).

This article was originally published in the July/August 2008 issue of SouthWest Sage, and is reprinted here by permission of the author.



Revising Fiction: 13 Ways to Show Character Emotions, Part 1

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by Kirt Hickman

Revising Fiction

In some ways, the telling of emotions is easier to identify than other forms of tell. Simply look for the name of any emotion:

He felt defensive.
Chase was relieved.
It concerned him.

Consider the following passage from an early draft of my own science fiction novel, Worlds Asunder:

Dana spent most of the day after Bill’s surgery sitting at his bedside, battling a tumult of unfamiliar emotions. Frustration at her helplessness, fear that she’d lose her best friend, anger at those who had done this to him, regret for never having expressed her feelings in any meaningful way, and sadness for the loss of her fallen companions.

This tells what Dana is feeling. The revised passage below shows the same emotions.

Dana spent most of the day after Bill’s surgery sitting at his bedside. The doctors and nurses came and went, but she didn’t talk to them, afraid her voice would fail her if she did. Instead, she watched their faces and tried to read Bill’s progress in their expressions [ fear of losing her best friend].

She’d lost her friends and her innocence, taken by an enemy upon whom she’d fired the first shot [sadness and regret]. So she buried her head in her hands to block out everything from her sight but the man she was helpless to aid [helplessness].

Anger and frustration are missing from the second passage. I decided they would have faded to the background, supplanted by deeper, more profound feelings. Besides, the original passage contained too many emotions to begin with.

If you’re having difficulty determining whether you’ve told or shown an emotion, find a way to render it without using the name of the emotion or a synonym. You can’t tell an emotion without using its name or a synonym. Though the telling of emotions may be easy to spot, for many writers it’s one of the most difficult problems to correct. Here are some techniques that will help you show your characters’ emotions effectively:1

1. Use emotional honesty

Emotions are complex, and each is part of an emotional spectrum. The passage above that shows Dana sitting at Bill’s bedside, is a good example of the complexity of human emotions. Don’t restrict your characters to one emotion at a time or to emotional extremes.

2. Convey the source of the emotion

Consider the following passage:

Several minutes went by. Dana’s chest tightened with each passing second. It was nothing, she told herself. She should have expected it. But she was sweating in her pressure suit.

Clearly, Dana is worried about something, or something bad and unexpected has happened; the reader can’t be sure which. Though I’ve shown Dana’s physical response to her emotion, the emotion itself is lost. Now read the unabridged passage:

Several minutes went by. Still no word came. Dana’s chest tightened with each passing second. It was nothing, she told herself. Bill was always late. She should have expected it. But she was sweating in her pressure suit.

More minutes passed. Come on, Bill. The mission was timed to bring down the first four targets in the first two minutes of the attack. Yet no report came from the Puma.

The reader now knows what Dana is worried about and why. Show the cause, and the emotion becomes real.

3. Avoid clichés

Mad as hell
Green with envy
Love so much it hurts
Hate with a passion

Overused phrases like these may tell the reader what your character feels, but they don’t allow him to experience what your character is going through. Simply put, they don’t show. Find more original ways to express your characters’ emotions.

4. Use metaphor

In the following passage, Dana has spent the past several hours in the trauma center waiting for news on Bill’s condition.

Finally, Bill’s doctor emerged from the surgical wing wearing a white smock that looked like it had never been worn before. He was an angel or an apparition, his face devoid of any emotion that might reveal the state of his patient. Dana might have imagined him. Nonetheless, she rushed forward.

Comparing the doctor to an angel or an apparition, two disparate beings, shows the complexity of Dana’s emotions. Her action in the final sentence shows that her hope is stronger than her fear.

Read the rest of Kirt Hickman’s series:
“13 Ways to Show Character Emotions,” Part 2
“13 Ways to Show Character Emotions,” Part 3

1Ann Hood, Creating Character Emotions, Story Press Books, 1998.

WorldsAsunderKirt Hickman is a technical writer turned fiction author. His books include three sci-fi thriller novels Worlds Asunder (2008), Venus Rain (2010) and Mercury Sun (2014), the high fantasy novel Fabler’s Legend (2011), and the writers’ how-to Revising Fiction: Making Sense of the Madness (2009).

This article was originally published in the September 2008 issue of SouthWest Sage, and is reprinted here by permission of the author.



Revising Fiction: Render Your Setting Effectively

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by Kirt Hickman

Revising Fiction

Every scene you write will take place somewhere. In other words, every scene will have a setting. You must transport your readers to that setting. How do you do that effectively?

Determine Setting Elements

First, ask yourself: What impression do I want to make? That the place is desolate? Opulent? Filthy? Dangerous? Foreign? Something more subtle? Choose details that can be experienced by each of the five senses, that will promote the impression you want to make. Work these details into the action of the scene.

Second, find ways for your setting to meaningfully affect your characters and plot. I’m not talking about having your character sit on the beanbag chair, lean on the granite countertop, or walk across the plush, forest-green carpet. I’m talking about using the fountain pen on the desk as a murder weapon, encoding a message that your hero must decipher into the wall tapestry, or shooting a hole through a window that looks out upon the vast vacuum of space while your characters are standing nearby. These kinds of elements will force your characters to interact with their setting. It will make the setting an integral part of your story.

Describe the Setting

When a character first walks into a setting, don’t stop the action to describe every nuance of the place. Better yet, don’t stop the action at all. The original prologue of my science fiction novel, Worlds Asunder, could have begun:

The traffic control room was small. It had two rows of computer terminals. Behind them sat the traffic controllers, facing a central holographic display that showed the current traffic patterns. Two federal agents stood behind Director Snider. The smell of sweat hung in the air. Suddenly, an alarm sounded.

Find a way to work these details into the action of the scene:

Director Jack Snider pulled at the collar of his jump suit in the sweat-fouled air of the traffic control room. He would have paced the aisle behind the second tier of computer terminals if it wouldn’t have betrayed his nervousness. As it was, he felt trapped. The federal agents who stood behind him, looking past his shoulders, made him uneasy, claustrophobic.

“Something’s wrong,” Chavez, the controller, said. Her voice, edged with tension, carried in the small room.

Snider’s heart surged. Trajectory traces crisscrossed the holographic display that dominated the front of the room. The muted voices of the controllers speaking into their comm links died into silence as the trajectory displayed for the Phoenix turned red and separated from the green line of the ship’s assigned flight path. An alarm sounded, reverberating off the walls and ringing in Snider’s brain.

Enhance the Description

Find opportunities to show how the day-to-day life of your character differs from that of the reader who wants your story to carry her away from her mundane world. Bring out the setting elements that are specific to your setting’s time period, country, or culture. If your story takes place in the present day, show setting elements that are specific to your character or his situation. If he’s a cop, show him cleaning his gun or escorting handcuffed prisoners through the police station. Make him sweat in his Kevlar vest. Include the sounds of sirens and the clanging of iron doors, and have him say something only a police officer would say. Now the reader has a sense of what your character’s world is like.

Consider this excerpt from the opening scene of Worlds Asunder:

Chase sucked the last of the coffee from his seal-pak mug, then checked the date for probably the fifth time that day. Just two more weeks to retirement. Then he could go home to Earth and what was left of his family.

In this paragraph, Chase holds not just a mug, but a seal-pak mug. The reader doesn’t know exactly what this is, but with a reference to the slight lunar gravity a few sentences later, she can fill in the blanks. The reader also knows from this paragraph that Chase is not on Earth, which certainly makes his setting different from the reader’s here and now.

Describe from your Character’s Viewpoint

Finally, make sure you’ve described your setting in a way that reveals the viewpoint character’s attitude and emotional state. Is the room cramped, or cozy? Is it cluttered, or lived in? Are the furnishings antiques, or are they just old and outdated?

Do all of these things and you will immerse your reader in your character’s world, which is where she needs to be if she’s going to buy into your story.

WorldsAsunderKirt Hickman is a technical writer turned fiction author. His books include three sci-fi thriller novels Worlds Asunder (2008), Venus Rain (2010) and Mercury Sun (2014), the high fantasy novel Fabler’s Legend (2011), and the writers’ how-to Revising Fiction: Making Sense of the Madness (2009).

This article was originally published in the April 2010 issue of SouthWest Sage, and is reprinted here by permission.



Revising Fiction: 5 Goals of an Opening Scene

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by Kirt Hickman

Revising Fiction

Your opening scene must accomplish several things:

Make it clear from the outset who your hero is

Write the first scene of Chapter 1 from your hero’s point of view. I go a step further and make my hero the first named character in the book. Your reader will pick up on these cues. If you start Chapter 1 from the viewpoint of some other character, your reader will incorrectly assume that this character is the hero, which might cause confusion later on.

Show your hero’s ordinary life

Your story should pull the hero away from his ordinary life. Before it does, however, you must show the reader what that life is like. This will help the reader understand the impact the crisis will have on that life and on the hero. Show the reader what kind of person your hero is. Give her a moment to connect with him in a setting she can understand and relate to.

Hook your reader

Many people will read the first page of a book while they’re standing in the bookstore deciding which book to buy. If your story doesn’t rev up by the bottom of the first page, you’ll probably lose these readers. Therefore, give your hero an immediate desire, even if it’s just a cup of coffee, and place an obstacle between him and the thing he wants. Otherwise your opening will lack tension.

My first novel, Worlds Asunder, begins:

“It was really embarrassing.” Edward “Chase” Morgan drew the top card from the deck: the queen of diamonds. “We’d just returned from hitting a crack factory and warehouse in Cuba. This was back when President Montros thought he could stop the drug trade with air strikes.”

He tapped his cards on the table. Michelle Fairchild, his materials engineering intern from Mars Tech, had won every game that evening. Not this one, though, if he could help it. Chase needed just two cards to win and Michelle hadn’t laid down any of hers. Unfortunately, the queen wasn’t one of the two. He tossed it onto the discard pile.

Smiling, Michelle picked it up, then placed it and two others on the table. Chase groaned. That group put her in the lead and, at double or nothing, the credits were starting to add up.

The opening dialogue promises an embarrassing story about my hero, Chase Morgan. It hooks the reader in just four words. The rest of the paragraph reveals Chase as an adventurous character, the card game gives him an immediate want, Michelle presents an obstacle to victory, and the credits provide the stakes of the game.

Make your hero likable

As the scene progresses, I show Chase caring (in a paternal manner) for both his intern and his dog, poking fun at himself, and losing the game graciously. The scene gives the reader several reasons to like him.

Define your hero’s goal

Because you need to show a snippet of your hero’s normal life before crisis disrupts it, you might not introduce the external conflict (your hero’s goal in the story) until some time later. Nevertheless, reveal his goal before the end of the first chapter. In Worlds Asunder, I do this about two pages later:

The comm panel buzzed. Chase stretched his lanky frame and got to his feet, then leapt to the terminal against the slight lunar g.

“We’ve got a ship in trouble,” Security Chief Stan Brower said. “The Phoenix. Snider needs you to assemble a team…”

[Chase] logged into NASA’s data net and scanned the Phoenix file. He scrolled past the physical statistics— size, class, thrust-to-mass ratio—and came to the corporate data.
OWNER: Stellarfare
CREW: Randy Lauback, Phyllis Conway
He read the last line again. His investigations career had come full circle, it seemed. It would end where it had begun. With Randy Lauback.

Chase knew then that he had to take the case, however long it might last, and follow it through to completion. He owed Randy that much.

This not only defines his goal, solving the Phoenix case, but also gives him a personal stake (some unspecified, yet important, history involving the ship’s pilot).

If you haven’t accomplished all these things by the end of Chapter 1, find ways to do so. This may mean deleting scenes from the beginning of your book and starting the story when the crisis occurs; it may mean changing the viewpoint character of the opening scene or moving a different scene—one written from the hero’s viewpoint—to the front of the book; or it may mean accelerating the pace by moving background information to later pages.

WorldsAsunderKirt Hickman is a technical writer turned fiction author. His books include three sci-fi thriller novels Worlds Asunder (2008), Venus Rain (2010) and Mercury Sun (2014), the high fantasy novel Fabler’s Legend (2011), and the writers’ how-to Revising Fiction: Making Sense of the Madness (2009).

This article was originally published in the March 2010 issue of SouthWest Sage, and is reprinted here by permission.



Revising Fiction: Ten Tips To Tighten Your Narrative Style

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by Kirt Hickman

Revising FictionNo matter what kind of writing you do, your narrative style must be taut, clear, and engaging. If you write fiction, it must also contain tension and emotion. Unnecessary words and phrases will clutter your narrative. They will sap the strength, even the very life, out of your writing. The following tips will help you eliminate the unnecessary clutter.

1. Eliminate Filter Words

Filter words, also called viewpoint intruders, are words like saw, felt, heard, watched, etc., that take the reader out of the character’s point of view. Consider this example from a critique submission. “I” refers to a woman named Clara.

I looked around at my fellow passengers. I overheard snatches of conversation in Italian. I saw parents feeding snacks to children, even a breastfeeding mother.Here, the reader isn’t looking at passengers, overhearing conversations, or seeing parents feed children. The reader watches Clara as Clara looks at, overhears, and sees the action of the scene. These words have become a filter between Clara and the reader.

The author can eliminate the first sentence because Clara doesn’t see herself looking around. The rest of the passage can be written without filter words:

All around me, people spoke in Italian. Parents fed snacks to their children. One woman nursed her infant.2. Eliminate Thinker Attributives

A thinker attributive uses phrases like he thought, or knew, or remembered to show what your character is thinking. Don’t rely on these devices. You’re writing from the character’s point of view; therefore, any thoughts you express are assumed to be the thoughts of the character. This makes thinker attributives unnecessary. Look at the following example from a critique submission:

Luke believed that his dad knew most everything that went on in Willacy County but he wasn’t sure he knew about the sugarcane fields.Now, without the thinker attributives:

Luke’s dad knew most everything that went on in Willacy County, except maybe about the sugarcane fields.Because the passage is written from Luke’s viewpoint, these are clearly Luke’s thoughts, though he might be wrong about what his father knows or doesn’t know.

3. Minimize Use of “Not” and “n’t”

Readers want to know what something is. They’ll be dissatisfied if you tell them only what things are not. Therefore, not interesting, becomes uninteresting, boring, dull, or plain; perhaps even uninspired, bland, or tedious, depending on the context. Generally speaking, eliminating not results in tighter, more precise wording.

4. Eliminate Unnecessary Use of “That”

The word that is often used unnecessarily. Consider the following example, excerpted from a letter my hero wrote in my own science fiction novel, Worlds Asunder:

I’m writing to let you know that my homecoming will be delayed. I know that you and the girls were looking forward to seeing me, but a case has come up that will delay my departure.Wherever you see the word that, delete it and read the sentence without it. If the sentence makes sense, omit the word that. In this example, only the third occurrence of that is necessary.

5. Eliminate Repeated Elements

Repeated elements are aspects of your story, particularly an emotion or bit of characterization, that you’ve shown in more than one way. Repeated elements weaken your writing. This example from a fight scene in Worlds Asunder contains two repeated elements:

The whole apartment seemed to be swirling. Nothing was clear and everything was moving. Where is he? Chase heard a sound to his left and spun his head. For a moment, his vision went black, the swift movement nearly causing him to lose consciousness.This revision eliminates the repeats:

The whole apartment seemed to be swirling. Chase heard a sound to the left and spun his head. For a moment, his vision went black and the pain in his skull soared.At best, repeated elements give a feel of wordiness to your narrative. At worst, they condescend to the reader. Have confidence in your ability to show. Show things once and show them well. Your reader will get the point.

6. Eliminate Adverbs

In general, delete your adverbs. Adverbs tend to signify lazy writing. The author uses a descriptor to avoid finding the right verb. I once heard a writer recommend deleting all adverbs from a manuscript and reading it without them, then putting back only those that are absolutely necessary. I would add: For those that remain, strengthen the verb rather than reinsert the adverb. For example, stared grumpily might become glared, glowered, scowled, or frowned.

7. Eliminate Repeated Words

The following passage from an early draft of Worlds Asunder takes place immediately after a lunar building explodes. A construction worker drives his oversized bulldozer up a damaged truck ramp and spots two wounded survivors trapped on a damaged framework of trusses above him:

He depressurized his compartment and climbed out. He found the distance that he had to jump to be greater than he’d expected. He heard the men above him now, coming in loud and clear on his comm system, urging him to hurry. He looked up and saw their catwalk swaying and beginning to sag under their weight.

Every sentence in this passage starts with he. This draws the reader’s attention away from the story and onto the text. Restructure your sentences to avoid repeated beginnings. Include more sensory details. Show your viewpoint character’s emotions. The following revision doesn’t have a single sentence that begins with he:

Once in place, he depressurized the compartment and climbed out. His heart sank when he saw the distance he’d have to jump.

The men called to him through the comm, urging him to hurry. Suddenly, a support buckled and the whole catwalk began to give under their weight.

Similarly, don’t repeat the same uncommon word, or forms of the same word, within a short span of text. Consider the following example excerpted from a critique submission:

Jamie, Leah, Camille, and Lawrence passed the platter around, fast and deliberate, like a quarterback passing off a football.

Substitute synonyms to avoid repeating words.

Jamie, Leah, Camille, and Lawrence passed the platter around, fast and deliberate, like a quarterback handing off a football.

8. Eliminate Excess Adjectives

Don’t string a bunch of adjectives together to describe a single noun:

. . . a hot, dry, sunny, summer day.

The use of multiple adjectives gives the reader too much information to catalogue, especially if you do it often. If you must use an adjective, limit yourself to one per noun. Pick the one that describes the characteristic most important to the viewpoint character. For example, a construction worker laboring outside would probably describe the day as hot. A farmer, concerned about another year of drought, would characterize the day as dry.

9. Eliminate Unnecessary Prepositional Phrases

Chase stood among the clues in the cockpit and let them tell their story.

If the reader already knows Chase is in the cockpit, write this as:

Chase stood among the clues and let them tell their story.

Challenge each prepositional phrase in your manuscript. If it doesn’t say something that’s both new and necessary, delete it.

10. Don’t Put Questions in Your Character’s Thoughts

Minimize the number of questions that appear in your character’s thoughts. Similar to telling, questions in a character’s thoughts do your reader’s work for her. They tell her what to wonder. Let the reader come up with her own questions.

Consider the following passage from a critique submission, in which Luke has ventured into a sugarcane field that has always frightened him. There, he meets a boy named Antonio.

The dark-haired Mexican kid was standing with a finger over his lips. Luke frowned and opened his mouth. The boy shook his head and made a waving motion.

He wants me to go away? That’s what I’m trying to do. Why did he stop me? Luke studied Antonio. He’s trying to hide something. But what? Himself? This kid is confused, Luke thought. Antonio must be an illegal. What else could he be hiding?

The last paragraph puts direct questions into Luke’s thoughts. There’s almost always a more effective way to show what questions your character faces than to pose them so blatantly:

The dark-haired Mexican kid stood with a finger over his lips. Luke frowned and opened his mouth. The boy shook his head and made a waving motion to shoo Luke away.

All Luke wanted to do was run, to get as far from this creepy cane field as possible by the time the dying sun faded from the horizon. Yet he studied Antonio. Nobody would enter the sugarcane, especially at night, unless he was hiding something. He must be an illegal.

The reader still knows what questions Luke has. Now, however, the reasons for them are clear as well.

In summary, minimize your use of these ten grammatical devices. Doing so will increase the pace of your narrative and the tension in your story.

WorldsAsunderKirt Hickman is a technical writer turned fiction author. His books include three sci-fi thriller novels Worlds Asunder (2008), Venus Rain (2010) and Mercury Sun (2014), the high fantasy novel Fabler’s Legend (2011), and the writers’ how-to Revising Fiction: Making Sense of the Madness (2009). This post combines the first two articles in his two-year column, “Revising Fiction,” originally published in SouthWest Sage, and reprinted here by permission.



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