| Prune unnecessary adjectives and adverbs. Keep the prose tight. Too many make writing over written and laboured. Try to use more active language to show by action and dialogue rather than explain. Try to avoid excessive use of the passive voice. Look out for verbosity and sentences that are trying too hard to be clever. Watch out for vagueness and generalisations – there is no excuse for this in fiction – don’t sit on the fence; research it or make it up! Keep ceaseless vigil for clichés and worn old phrases, stories and stereotypes. Keep your word processor’s grammar and spell checkers on when editing, and look out for words misspelled into another valid word – your spell-checker won’t pick these up, although the grammar checker might. |