Suggestions for Making Your Manuscript Sparkle

While I'm not yet published, I read a lot and I have taken a ton of writing workshops and read writing books. I also taught writing for 15 years.

Once upon a time we wrote our stories in longhand or typed them, or did both. Some people still write their stories in longhand. I would if I could read my handwriting.

We read what we had written, then made changes and recopied the pages or retyped them. Some of us worked with sections until each suited us before going on. Others began at the beginning and read all the way through, making changes on the current draft, then typed the whole thing again.

Since the computer allows us to edit as we read, it can be tempting to expect to do the whole story in one draft. That means we might not like making big changes or we can cut and paste ourselves into a less than clear whole manuscript.

Proofing means looking for typos and errors in spelling or punctuation. You must do this or even get someone to read your work with a fresh pair of eyes.

Editing is a bigger process. Editing should make your book better, stronger and can use the suggestions below.

I suggest you write the story before you try to pack every scene with all the elements other writers say you need in your stories. Keep your pace and let your characters speak to you. Even if you plot and do character sketches, you can learn things from your characters as their story progresses. If you learn something so big it changes the beginning of the story, take a limited time to go back and make the changes you need, or make notes to yourself to go back and fix things after you finish the story. These suggestions here can be used to help you write yourself out of a slump or writer's block.

Once you have a completed draft, you can go back and build in layers.

If you know what you want your reader to get from each scene or chapter you can play with the words. Each time you infuse emotion, you seduce your reader into caring more. Add emotional words and strong verbs. Go back and look for things to clarify or sharpen.

As you read, look for places where you told the reader things she doesn't need to know at that point or at all.

Read scenes and see if they serve a purpose. Don't dump scenes until you finish the story and see what you need and what you don't. At the end of each scene have you given your reader a reason to keep reading the next scene? At the end of each chapter have you teased the reader into reading just the first page of the next chapter, then one more, then one more?

Texture includes adding the sensory details to make a story mean more to readers. We can't control our readers' frames of reference or likes and dislikes. We can't make every reader love our characters and stories. We can use things that mean something to us and make us feel. Look at each scene and see if a reader can see, smell, hear, and taste? Remember that we feel hot and cold, rough and smooth. Different fabrics have different textures. Foods have different textures and tastes and smells. Have you used these to evoke reactions in us as readers or in the characters? Do these mean something to the characters? Can you let your characters experience memories or react to what they touch, smell, hear, taste, etc.?

I find doing this in stages, scene by scene, helps.

Telling a good story is the most important part of writing novels, but doing it well helps. Write your story. Fill it with interesting characters. Refine it with the tools you have, using words that pack a wallop. Arrange them in an order that shows what you want me to see or feel or smell, or hear. Make me read nonstop and take me on a journey I don't want to end.


Comments or suggestions? Don't leave me alone here!