Normally Shannon posts on Fridays, but I’m stepping in for her this week. If you’re missing Shannon, here’s a post of hers from a few months ago that I’m particularly fond of: Write Stories That Excite You.
Today I’m doing another Mail Bag installment where I answer questions that have been sitting in my inbox for a really sad amount of time.
This is something I was asked during a mentoring appointment last month. Jillian Manning with Blink YA Books wrote a post about “What Does An Editor Do All Day?” so you can check that out if editing is something you’re interested in pursuing. (Though it’s also valuable information for a writer too!)
I recognized this in my own writing when I was still getting the hang of writing complete drafts but still hadn’t learned how to edit a manuscript. I felt like I handled dialogue pretty well, but the flow of everything else seemed off. Here are a few thoughts on how you can start to fix it:
- Reevaluate your content. One of the reasons I used to struggle with prose was that I hadn’t yet learned how to balance action and thought and description and weave them through paragraphs. That often left me with several sentences in a row that were action sentences, then a paragraph describing where we were, then a few lines for inner monologue, and so forth. As I learned to edit these different elements into better flowing sentences and paragraphs, I also learned to just write with a better flow as well.
- Focus on sentence structure. Falling into a habit of writing our sentences with similar structures is a very easy thing to do. Something you could try is taking a page of your manuscript and diagramming your sentences like you learned to do in elementary school. Seeing it laid out like that could help you see ways to rearrange sentences so that they mesh in a more interesting way.
- Be kind to yourself. While it probably doesn’t feel this way, just being able to look at a paragraph and think, “This is choppy” is a great step to fixing the issue. Learning how to edit your writing so that it reads smoothly takes time, so try to be patient with yourself as you learn.