Know Your Pitfalls

I've been working on a couple of novels and recently had them reviewed by amazing copy-editors through Reedsy. (If you're unfamiliar with Reedsy, check out my recent post about my experience.)

Both of the editors I worked with pointed out things in my writing that I didn't even realize I was doing, but once I saw them were completely distracting. If you have an editor or a writing friend who can review your work, ask them to point out those pitfalls when they notice them in your style. You may be blind to them, but those could be the things that are taking away from your story.

I'll sacrifice myself as an example of some common style pitfalls that are easy to correct with a quick CTRL - F, but only if you know they're there. 

• I tend to use exclamation points...a lot. If you've been a reader of my blogs in the past, you know this is true. I'm a very exuberant person by nature and it comes through in my writing via my punctuation. But as my editor pointed out, you want to make sure your writing hits home, and overusing exclamation marks tend to make them lose their punch. 
• I use a lot of "ing" words. Whether it was a verb or adjective, they were everywhere! This told me that I wasn't writing present enough and everything was happening at an arm's length. For example: "The shining sword went flying out of her hand, hurtling to the ground as she fell." VS "The shiny sword flew out of her hand and hurtled to the ground as she fell." See how much more immersive and in the action the second sentence is? It also made me realize that I needed more varied sentence structure.
• I subconsciously used the same actions with my dialogue over and over. My favorite ones appeared to be "smiled" and "winked" (the latter probably because I desperately wish that I could wink). Instead of saying "She smiled" or "She winked" after everything, my editor encouraged me to look at another way to express the emotion behind my characters' speech or body language. 

Do you know what your style pitfalls are? If you don't have a kind editor or friend who's able to point them out to you, start by looking at the usual culprits to see if you can discover a pattern:

• Dialogue tags
• Sentence structure
• Passive vs active voice
• Telling instead of showing action/emotion

It's very cool to see how your writing can change when you dive into the details. Though the larger elements like the plot and character development certainly matter, it's the small things that help tell the story.
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