A Few Tips To Cut Down Your Word Count

 
So I've had this manuscript of mine critiqued by  ,   and   (Jeannine Garsee). They've all been an incredible help in making this book something legible. Maybe even worth reading.

Jen and I spent the afternoon at Borders the other day, and we both said that critiquing someone else's work is a GREAT way to improve your OWN writing. For some reason it's easier to spot the redundancies of words, grammar and punctuation in someone else's novel. But then we can carry that knowledge back to our own manuscript.

I thought I'd share a few things that I had NO IDEA I was doing. (Thanks to  for these)

1. Reexamine all of your passive verbs - 'I was, she was, he was' - and try to eliminate a few if possible.

2. Do a search for words you overuse. Such as (these were many of mine)...
 - was
 - were
 - tried
 - being
 - felt
 - seemed
 - began
 - still
 - just
 - like
 - glance
 - made
 - look/looked
 - could
 - sounded

3. I'm a HUGE fan of the metaphor... but I don't need to stuff them down the readers throat. Too many can be distracting

4. Try to make sure your characters all sound different. A reader should be able to tell who's talking (most of the time) without the author having to mention their name.

5. Song titles should be placed in double quotes; "Jingle Bells" (When they're not in dialog, that is.)

6. TV Show, Album and Movie titles should be in italic; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Only one more week people)

Of course, there is so much more, but it's a good place to start.

Once again, I'd like to thank  ,   and   (Jeannine Garsee) for taking their valuable time to help me with this book.

I honesty expected all of them, after reading it, to look like this...