Wielding Words like a Warrior

Words are gorgeous, glorious things. They have the power to convert, uplift, tear down, and shatter. They have the ability to evoke strong images and emotions that leave us blubbering messes for days. They also have the gift of hope, nestled between the folds of their robes.  

As wielders of words, we have amazing power at our fingertips!

When I’m writing my first drafts, I try to focus on the characters and the story. I’m still careful with word choice, but I don’t let my inner editor take over. If I can’t find the right word immediately, I use a stand-in.

But when it’s time to revise? That’s where the real magic happens.

Here are some tips to help you shine those words until they are the best, most powerful words they can be.

Choose active verbs

As you read through your manuscript, pay attention to verbs you’re using. Weak verbs can water down your fabulous characters and plot, while strong, active ones can create powerful images with fewer words.  

Consider variations of the verb to walk: gait, pace, tread, amble, stroll, hike, march, saunter. Each of these offers a different visual. Someone who is marching has a very different aim than someone who is strolling.

On a similar note, to be and to have verbs (e.g. is, was, were, has, had, have) tend to water down the images. They’re not wrong and at times they can be perfectly good and necessary. But if you’ve got a page full of these, you’re cheating your reader from a visceral experience.

And verbs like see, feel, and hear process sensory descriptions for your reader, also telling instead of showing. Again, a handful throughout the manuscript is fine, but too many close together can be problematic. Consider the following:

Maria saw an endless ocean in front of her and cool water pooling at her feet. She smelled the saltiness in the air. She heard the waves crashing against the shore. (31 words)

Now consider this revision:

Maria ambled to where the cool water pooled around her feet. The salty ocean spray lingered in the air and the waves crashed against the shore. (26 words)

If Maria is at the scene and we’re in her POV, then we know she’s the one seeing, smelling, hearing. We don’t need to be told as well.

Avoid wordiness…

As shown in the above examples, weak verbs and verbs that process sensory descriptions lend themselves to wordiness. The more concise you can be, the better! Using two or more words for something that could be said in one adds mileage to your word count and zaps power from your writing. You want every single word to count.

Some ways to combat wordiness is to comb through your manuscript for places where you’re being redundant or where there are too many words strung together to say something simple. Read it aloud, too. This helps catch wordiness your might miss when reading silently.

Consider the following:

Maria fell onto the bed exhausted, having stayed up until three in the morning. “I’m so tired,” she moaned. “I’m never going to wake up tomorrow.” (26 words)

And then consider a more concise version:

It was three in the morning when Maria collapsed on her bed. “I’m never going to wake up tomorrow.” (19 words)

“Three in the morning” and “collapsed” show exhausted. There’s no need for her to also say “I’m so tired” and by cutting out some of the words, we’ve reduced the word count by 7. Sometimes, we fall into a trap of redundancy without even realizing it. Consider for example, the following:

She nodded her head.

You can only nod your head, so “her head” is redundant and wordy. Removing these takes two words off your word count!

Passive voice can also lend itself to wordiness. Passive voice is when the subject is receiving the action instead of doing the action. It will make use of a past participle verb form and will often have “by” introducing the noun or noun phrase doing the action. For example, consider this sentence:

Maria was driven to the doctor by her mother. (9 words)

Here, Maria is receiving the action (she’s being driven) and “by” introduces what should be the subject (her mother). And we see the past participle “was driven.” Changing this to Her mother drove Maria to the doctor removes 2 words from that phrase. It doesn’t seem a lot, but if you’re counting, we’ve eliminated 16 words in the examples here. Do this page after page and you’ll have a tighter manuscript.

…and excess adverbs

Stephen King has famously said, “The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” Adverbs are not inherently bad. They serve a function: to describe a verb. The problem with adverbs, however, is that they tend to tell what can be better shown and they tend to be overused. Too many adverbs too close together becomes wordy. Instead of relying on an adverb to tell the reader, aim for stronger verbs and more vivid nouns.

Consider the following:

Albert walked nervously.                                VS                    Albert paced.

Susan spoke loudly.                                        VS                    Susan shouted.

Lola wept bitterly.                                          VS                    Lola wept. “It’s not fair!”

Sometimes, you might add a handful more words, as in the case of example #3 above. This is not a bad thing so long as the result is a stronger image and the usage is as sparse as it can be.

Quality vs quantity

At the end of the day, your focus when revising should be on the quality of words and not the quantity. Your words should serve your characters and plot, and they should be wielded with precision. Avoiding filler words like adverbs and other qualifiers as much as possible will lead to stronger, tighter manuscripts.  And software like ProWritingAid.com can help with strengthening your story at the sentence level.

Happy writing (& revising)!

The Birds and the Bees: How to Define Middle Grade Stories

Ask a room full of publishing professionals what makes a novel middle grade, and you’ll get as many different answers as there are people in the room. So how can an author determine whether their manuscript (or shiny new story idea) is suited for middle grade shelves? One might be tempted to examine the audience in an effort to answer this question, but readers of MG range from young advanced readers (think six and seven year olds) all the way up through adults. In order to get to the bottom of this dilemma, we need to turn to the material itself. Let’s start by examining some of the parameters commonly associated with middle grade books.

Some claim a novel can be defined as middle grade if the protagonist is roughly eight to twelve years old. This is a terrific jumping off point, but the reality of writing novels is seldom that straightforward and it doesn’t address the murky middle ground of thirteen and fourteen year olds, who often don’t fit neatly into MG or YA. In a blog post, author Diane K. Salerni reveals that the publisher of The Eighth Day asked her to lower her protagonist’s age from 14 to 13 to better suit the middle grade market. Another example of the problematic nature of relying strictly on age comes from Gary D. Schmidt’s Orbiting Jupiter. The twelve-year-old protagonist should, in theory, anchor the story firmly in middle grade territory. However, another main character is a fourteen-year-old eighth grader, who is already a father. In an author interview posted on the publisher's website, the book is labeled young adult.

Clearly, we need to look beyond age––we also need to consider subject matter and themes. For example, does including the birds and the bees automatically mean the story can’t be MG? Including explicitly sexual material is definitely a sign that the novel isn’t destined for middle grade shelves, but this is not to say that romance can’t appear in middle grade stories or that edgy material (or the lack thereof) defines MG novels. Books such as Nest, Bridge to Terabithia, Wish Girl, and Paper Cowboy all demonstrate that topics such as suicide, death, terminal illness and depression/mental illness are fair game.

Sometimes writers are tempted to look at point of view and language/writing style to help determine the audience for their novels. Many middle grade novels are written from a single point of view and contain relatively straightforward language. But by now it won’t surprise you to hear that this isn’t always the case. Wonder has six separate POVs. Echo is another great example of multiple POVs within one novel. And one must only compare The One and Only Ivan to The Thing About Jellyfish to see that it’s neither language nor writing style that defines middle grade novels. Nor can one point to factors such as external (versus internal) plots, genre, or word count. Although these are all important considerations, a few moments in a bookstore demonstrates that middle grade novels are every bit as complex and versatile as the audience that reads them.

If you’ve made it this far and still aren’t exactly sure whether your story is middle grade or not, let me leave you with this final bit of advice: the only way to truly understand the middle grade market is to read middle grade books. Although every story is different, if you read enough of them, you’ll develop an intuition that, together with a close examination of the elements discussed above, will help you determine exactly whether or not your story fits into the ambiguous yet beloved category known as middle grade.

Happy reading!

Jessica Vitalis

P.S. What are your favorite MG novels? Please share in the comments below!

P.P.S. Want more information on this topic? Here are a few links to check out:

            * http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/the-key-differences-between-middle-grade-vs-young-adult

            * http://kidlit.com/2010/11/20/is-it-mg-or-ya/