by Eldred Bird

Four years ago, when I shared the results of a writing experiment with my Wednesday night writer’s support group, one of the members (Jenny Hansen, “High Priestess of WITS”) asked if I would write a blog post about my findings. I had no idea what I was in for when I said yes.

Over these last four years, I have gone from an occasional blogger on the WITS calendar to a regular contributor. Guest posting on Writers in the Storm has provided more than a platform to share my writing journey. It’s also taught me some valuable lessons.

Blogging is Different

The first lesson WITS taught me is that blogging is a different animal compared to other disciplines, especially when you’re writing to educate rather than entertain. I tend to write in a narrative style. That works out fine for personal essays and fiction, but not so much when you’re trying to educate.

Jenny would never blab about it, but my first effort was rough. It took several rounds of edits to forge my words into something more coherent and easily digested.

She taught me to organize my thoughts into a logical outline and make sure my points are clear by using examples to drive them home. A little exposition is fine for context, but don’t go overboard.

This leads me to my next lesson.

Keep it Focused

In the beginning, I had a tendency to pick a broad topic and include far too many details. The reality is you can’t cover everything in 800 to 1200 words. A better idea is to break broader subjects up into a series of posts.

People are drawn to WITS because the knowledge is served up in bite-sized pieces that are easily processed and incorporated into their writing life. Actionable advice is the very best kind.

I’ve also learned it’s okay to distill things down to the basics and leave some questions for the reader to research on their own.

Proper Formatting

Formatting is everything in a blog. How information is presented is just as important as the information itself.

Most important formatting lessons:

• A proper layout will make the subject matter pop.
• Using subheadings to break a post into sections makes it more digestible.
• Bolding, italicizing, and coloring text adds punch to important terms and concepts.
• The use of white space makes the information stand out and makes it easier on the eyes.
• Break up long sentences and paragraphs or use bullet points to help maintain focus.
• Well-placed pictures and illustrations not only compliment the information but also serve to further break up large blocks of text.
• Embedding links to definitions and related blog posts allows you to provide more information without crowding the page, making it more comfortable to read.

Best of all, doing all these things raises the SEO (search engine optimization) which means many more eyes on your post.

Know Your Audience

It’s extremely important to know who you’re writing for when you sit down at the keyboard, particularly for blogging.

A travel blog is going to read differently than a cooking blog, which will differ widely from a writing blog. Are you writing to entertain or educate? Knowing what your readers expect to get out of the blog helps you to focus on what’s important.

WITS readers like nice meaty posts with lots of takeaways. It’s a blog for both new and experienced writers where contributors share their knowledge and experiences related to both writing craft and the writer’s life.

My favorite part of being a contributor is that we learn too when readers share their experiences in the comments. I look forward to learning what has and hasn’t worked in your writer’s life. WITS readers give great advice too.

You Don’t Have to Be an Expert

Although there are many writing experts who contribute to WITS, I am not one of them. I have a little bit of knowledge about a lot of things and a never-ending curiosity about everything. Many of my posts here have begun while I’m looking for answers to my own questions. I do the research and then share what I’ve learned with all of you!

Remember, you are the expert on your own experiences. My father used to tell me “Mistake is just another word for experience, and experience is the best teacher.” I like to share those mistakes, so you don’t have to make the same ones I did.

Make it Personal

As a kid, I tended to be drawn to teachers who tied a lesson to their own personal experiences. It made it real for me and showed how I could incorporate it into my own life. I learn better when there’s a human element to the lesson rather than just a list of dos and don’ts.

I also think that Including personal experience gives a blogger authority. A good “this is what happened to me” anecdote cements information in a way that nothing else can. Let your life be a shining example or a serious warning!

A Final Thought

I’ve learned far more from my experience here on WITS than I can list in a dozen posts, and I continue to learn with each new article. It’s made me a better researcher, writer, and educator. The same lessons learned from blogging also apply when I’m putting together a presentation for a group.

Blogging for WITS has also given me one more thing—credibility. And that’s something money can’t buy.

In short, blogging has made me an all-around better writer.

Do you blog? What have you learned from the process? What have you learned as a WITS reader? Educate us in the comments!

About Eldred

Eldred Bird writes contemporary fiction, short stories, and personal essays. He has spent a great deal of time exploring the deserts, forests, and deep canyons inside his home state of Arizona. His James McCarthy adventures, Killing Karma, Catching Karma, and Cold Karma, reflect this love of the Grand Canyon State even as his character solves mysteries amidst danger. Eldred explores the boundaries of short fiction in his stories, The Waking Room, Treble in Paradise: A Tale of Sax and Violins, and The Smell of Fear.

When he’s not writing, Eldred spends time cycling, hiking, and juggling (yes, juggling…bowling balls and 21-inch knives).

His passion for photography allows him to record his travels. Find him on Twitter or Facebook, or at his website.

Top Image by Werner Moser from Pixabay

I don't know about you, but I don't like to advertise my mess. I tend my wounds in private and try not to whine too much. My garage is a little bit insane, my junk drawer is...eclectic, and I keep both firmly closed against prying eyes the majority of the time. But when it comes to writing, my mess is where the magic happens.

Your Mess Is Your Message

When I talk about "my mess," I'm obviously talking about more than my garage.

• I'm talking about the little girl who survived her parents' bloody battle of a divorce and grew up with a narcissist.
• I'm talking about that dreamy kid who put on plays in her closet and dove into books to find a better place to live.
• I'm talking about the friend/wife/mother-me who learned how to use humor and patience to solve problems.
• I'm talking about the little girl with no voice who grew into a woman who used her voice wisely.

All of that is my real mess. It's what informs my writing voice and shines light into the shadowy corners of my characters' hearts.

Leaning into my mess and throwing open the doors of my own dark corners turned out to be my quickest hack to writing better stories. Bringing honesty and authenticity to my own life deepened my writing voice.

Your Unique Voice

The best description I heard for "writing voice" as a new writer was from Rebecca Forster:

"Imagine you are sitting across the table from your best friend, telling them about something that happened to you. The way you tell them that story is your writing voice. It is unique to you. No one else would tell your friend that same story in that exact way."

Your writing voice comes from your world view, your humor, your family, your friendships. Your writing voice comes from the lessons you've learned and the wisdom those lessons brought you.

In essence, your writing voice gets honed by understanding your mess.

If any of you read my post last month, Are Writers Born, or Are Writers Made?, you'll know I believe that many writers carry around some decent internal wounds. Perhaps we've healed them, or perhaps we're still a work in progress, but all that sometimes-painful life experience is what has given you that beautiful unique voice you bring to your writing.

All of this reminds me of a refrigerator magnet I used to have:

Ongoing Themes in Your Work

I heard the quote at the top during an interview with Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi. Dean said, "Your Mess is Your Message" when he was talking about skills you'd learned in your own life that you could teach others. The applications to writing fascinated me.

It's our job as writers to create something from nothing. But what we're really doing is creating something out of a piece of ourselves.

We are every character and no character, all at the same time.

Getting back to the title of this post, the reason why tuning into our mess is such a great writing hack is that it allows us to find our story's theme more quickly. Some people even have the same theme in almost every book.

For example, here are some common themes from authors I know:

• Keeping secrets
• Telling the truth
• Shame
• Love
• Family dysfunction
• Chronic illness
• People-pleasing

Further reading: 10 Common Book Themes

My Own Sneaky Theme

My critique partners all know that one of my biggest pet peeves about my own work is my super-sneaky theme. It pops up every-damn-where, whether I'm planning for it or not.

I'll be writing away, thinking I'm writing a reconciliation-between-two-sisters story, when in reality I'm writing about the shame that prevented the reconciliation.

Or I'm happily scribbling about young love and then a plot twist will hit that causes one or both characters to feel shame, and it will keep the young lovers apart until they've worked through it.

One story was a humor-filled tale about the challenges of caregiving for older parents, but of course, it was really about shame. The caregiver had shame because she had a desperate yen to travel and see the world instead of being stuck at home, caring for Mom. Mom had shame because, for the first time in her life, she was putting her own needs before her child's.

See? Sneaky. I'll think I'm writing about some other Big Universal Idea, and all of a sudden I'll realize I'm writing about shame. Again. It doesn't seem to matter if the story is hilarious, sad, happy or sexy - shame will be lurking in the weeds somewhere.

Many children of divorce grow up feeling shame. I'm not remotely special there. But I'm a writer and, since shame was my mess to work through, now it's my message the majority of the time (whether I planned on it or not).

Plotting Hack: Writing to Theme

But what if I did plan for it? What if I started writing TO the theme that I know will be there anyway?

Let's use the example of that caregiving mother-daughter duo I mentioned above. What if the mother felt so much shame and guilt over her health because she hadn't taken care of herself and now she was terribly ill. And what if that mom decided the solution was to take on the role of matchmaker to "make it up" to her daughter? What if that mother decided she was going to find her cranky sleep-deprived daughter a man.

When I did that, the whole book opened up. The conflict went sky-high. The changes ratcheted up the humor and punched up the pathos. All I did was lean into my sneaky little theme, and into my own experience with my own mess.

Consider the theme(s) on your last several stories. Are they the same down in their underbelly, or very very different? Do you write to theme, or figure it out in the end? Do you have a favorite theme you love to read about?

I'd love to hear what came up when you did this exercise. Please share it with me down in the comments!

About Jenny

By day, Jenny Hansen provides LinkedIn coaching and copywriting for professional services firms. By night she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction, and short stories. After 20 years as a corporate trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.

All photos created by Jenny Hansen in Canva.

(part 1)

By Kris Maze

Cutting out filler in your novel isn’t easy. Taking the time to tighten up your writing can make readers buy your books and turn an editor’s tired eye. How can writers take a thorough approach to editing out extraneous words?

“Search and Destroy” is what one editor told me while cleaning up my manuscript.  It’s tough to hear, but there are words that writers simply need to kill. In the spirit of clarity, of course. Perhaps this post with a detailed list can help you work through your writing and save you time.

Why is it important to cut these words? 

Fluffy phrases cause our readers to think of naps and soft pillows and putting down our wonderful books.  No writer wants that to happen, so we work with care to unearth the words that cause the reader to pause.  Keep your reader from thinking about nachos or kittens or their shopping list. Whatever is on their mind, dear writer, it is no longer your story. And that is a terrible waste of time and mind-space.

It’s true that fiction writers are destined to break the rules of convention to make a creative point. But many writers overuse these no-go phrases. We can use these extra words sparingly, but only with the finesse that can wow the reader. Using filler words must justify the potential fluff factor with an unexpected twist or clever turn, or they shouldn’t be used at all.

We want our readers to keep turning pages and to do this we need to remove blockages they may encounter.  Too many words, when a simple description will suffice, makes readers skim. Skimming is as bad as setting the book at the bedside. Let’s get our books ready to read by removing the excess, and in the process, have more writer success.

Use this list to help in your editing process. Keep your readers engaged and consider editing out these phrases to enhance your story. It’s daunting, but one can look for these word-culprits and delete, delete, delete.

Lose the Fluff!

Vague Words, Let Us Be Clear

One way to tighten your writing is to use more specific vocabulary and avoid vague phrases that include the word ‘some’.  Someone, something, sometime may be tempting to use, but they often muddle the real details your reader needs to know. There are many variants of the SOME family, get rid of them all. 

Other phrases in this category include: one of, thing, and stuff. Your word-crutch words may include other phrases too.  Notice what these are while editing and add to your own key-words-to-kill list. Being aware of your common filler words will help you avoid them in the future. 

Do a find search in your document to see how many of these vague words are lurking in your story. Add specific details and actions where these words show up.  This can provide clarity for your reader and draw them further into your action.

Words to Search:

• Some
• One of
• Thing
• stuff

To Be or Not to Be Cut?

Be verbs and gerunds are indicators of loose fluff on your pages and should be considered when editing.  A be verb followed by a gerund (a grammar term for a verb used as a noun that ends in -ing) is a common construction that slows the action for a reader.  Try these sentences in this basic example:

He was looking through the window and was talking to his partner on his cell. One thing was certain, he realized there was criminal activity a foot.

OR:

He looked through the window and talked to his partner on his cell. One thing was certain, he realized there was criminal activity a foot.

Words to search:

• Am
• Are
• Is
• Was
• Were
• Being
• been

Internalization

Internal thoughts, feelings, and states of mind are another source of fluff to cut. Writers get a tighter story when they use other techniques to express what is on the character’s mind. If it makes sense, a writer could also simply add the thoughts to dialogue. 

One way to fix these internal musings is with italics. Use italics to show what they think, feel, or realize is a mental process within the narration. See the example we used above:

(original) He looked through the window and talked to his partner on his cell. One thing was certain, he realized there was criminal activity a foot.

He looked through the window. Criminal activity is a foot. No doubt about that. And he talked to his partner on his cell.

OR:

He looked through the window and talked to his partner on his cell, “there’s criminal activity a foot, Boss.”

Another way to fix internalizations is to show the action that causes this idea or feeling in the POV character.  Show the reader what is happening to pull them deeper into the story. 

If they are reading about what the characters are feeling there is a disconnect between the reader and the story.  If they are immersed in what happens at that moment, they will feel these connections and discover key story elements for themselves.  And that makes reading a pleasurable page turning experience.

See this now modified example from the simplified version above:

He looked through the window and talked to his partner on his cell. Inside the journalist’s messy living room a woman stood. She removed a faded poster from the wall with one hand and threw it to the floor. Behind it was a safe, one far more sophisticated than he would expect from a two-bit small-town newspaperman. She checked a slip of paper with the light from her phone and fumbled with a padlock, twisting out numbers that would uncover the incriminating photographs.

Details can add a vivid picture of what happens in the story.  It draws the reader in and leaves them with questions about what happens next.  Who is the journalist?  Why is someone looking into the window?  Are they a hired detective? What do they want to find?  Are they CIA? Who is the woman? Why does she have the numbers to a secret safe? What motivation does she have?  Writing details like these will compel a reader to continue to the next page and chapter.  It adds much more than the filler words ‘he realized there was criminal activity a foot.’

Words to search:

• think
• thought
• feel
• felt
• realize
• wonder
• ponder
• understand
• understood

Very and Other Distracting Modifiers

Using Very has been discussed in writing groups often.  Eliminating this word has been quoted  by Mark Twain when he famously asked writers to replace the word ‘very’ with ‘damn’ and it will be deleted by their editor.  I also appreciate the argument made by a fictional teacher…

“So avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys—to woo women—and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do. It also won’t do in your essays.” —N.H. Kleinbaum, Dead Poets Society

Other phrases like rather, quite, and really accomplish very little in a story also. Try a search on these wor

With fine tuning the places where you see the word are places to look for the more apt word.  When choosing a replacement for very phrases there are a few ways it can improve your story. 

1. Does the new word heighten the genre or theme of your story?
2. If the word is spoken or a thought, does the word choice exemplify the unique aspects of that story character?
3. Can the words you choose add a literary element to your writing?  Rhyming or great cadence also draw readers into your work.

Words to search:

• Very and the following words that are being described
• Rather
• Quite
• Really

Adverbs and Other Sins

Personally, I am a fan of using adverbs like a little dash of salt in my stories, but it is well-known in writing circles that one must avoid using adverbs.  Adverbs, or the words that describe how an action occurs, are often an easier way to show the reader what exactly is happening in your story.

Teddy walked slowly away from the park.

OR

Teddy walked, dragging his sneakered toe one after the other, away from the excitement of the swings. “Why do I have to take a nap?” Teddy stopped and knotted his arms into a tangled mess.  His last hope to wear his mother’s will into letting him play.

Look for how you described actions throughout your manuscript.  Do you have places to strengthen your writing with clear crisp descriptions?  Try adding setting elements, characterizations, and specific actions to better describe what is happening.

Words to search:

• Words describing how an action occurs
• Look for words that end in -ly

Never Use Always

Absolutes are on the list because they don’t say what is happening in the story. Never means someone has zero possibility of occurring. Is that true? 

If there is a case where it could be true, is it worth writing it in or eliminating the word for clarity? Dogs don’t always chase cats. Teenagers are not always moody. It doesn’t always rain in the Pacific Northwest.  It’s also not true that allegedly George Washington never told a lie. 

Never and always usually add distraction to your story.  Unless it is a specific, definitive point, consider eliminating these extra words. Try using juxtaposing ideas instead, like in this simplified example:

My dog never leaves the house.

OR:

My dog loved to chase cats coming into the yard. Until the burly neighborhood stray tried to make friends.  Now he won’t leave the house.

Try an example using always.

The girls always love to talk on the phone.

OR:

The girls used up all the family plan phone minutes, adding surcharges to our bill three months in a row.

Words to search:

• Always
• Never
• Other words showing absolutes

Tips for Reviewing your Manuscript for Phrases to remove

1. Read your work aloud or use the read feature found in many writing software programs.
2. Critique another writer’s work and use a similar list to cut. Using fresh eyes of another writer (and doing the same for them) can help reveal phrases you may overuse.
3. Try the Find command in Word or other writing program.

However you accomplish your editing tasks, try cleaning up your writing by pulling these phrases from your work. Watch for my next post when we go over more words to cut from the comprehensive list.

Do you have tips for editing filler words from your writing?  Do you have a phrase or word that you overuse?  Share in the comments below. 

About Kris

Kris Maze is an author, writing coach, and teacher. She has worked in education for many years and writes for various publications including Practical Advice for Teachers of Heritage Learners of Spanish and the award-winning blog Writers in the Storm where she is also a host. You can find her horror stories and keep up with her author events at her website.

A recovering grammarian and hopeless wanderer, Kris enjoys reading, playing violin and piano, and spending time outdoors.

And occasionally, she knits.