Saturday, September 25, 2010

Kelly Sonnack talks about The Secrets to Revising

Focus on the big things first before moving on to small things like word choice.

“Envision your story like a path. The reader needs to stay on that path throughout the story and not get lost in the woods.”

Characters - Why should the reader care about your protagonist? We need to care in the 1st 10 pages. An exception: in a fantasy, worldbuilding may be the focus of 1st 10 pages and character comes later.

Dialogue - Kelly suggests read through your manuscript reading only one character’s voice out loud. Is it consistent throughout the story?

Pacing - You need a good balance of description & detail. Use spare details in action scenes.

Language - Do you favor certain words? “Every writer has favorite words. Be aware of the words you favor. Vary sentence openers & paragraph openers.”

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