Self-Edit Checklist: Clichés and Idioms

Pull yourself together. Why are you bent out of shape? Hold your horses. There’s light at the end of the tunnel. Hang in there. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Don’t jump the gun or rock the boat. Don’t cry like a baby or open a can of worms. Bite the bullet. It’s a blessing in disguise. Jump on the bandwagon. Count your blessings. Keep your chin up. Shoot for the moon.

We’re all familiar with clichés. Original and thought-provoking when we first heard them, these phrases have become overused and repetitious.

A dime a dozen, people use them like they’re going out of style. But be careful when using clichés in your writing. They can be fun, as they are easily recognized and understood, but use them sparingly. Using too many clichés can make your writing seem unoriginal and stagnant, indicating laziness and lack of careful thought.

We speak in clichés and idioms because they have become a part of our everyday language. I love you more than life itself and what goes around comes around are now common phrases. We speak them so often we tend to think them, which makes them very easy to write. But they will not excite or impress your readers.

Clichés and idioms are a clever use of words, but they are boring. Because they are so generic, you can attach them to any idea, which is why they are ineffective.

How many stories have you read that start out It was a dark and stormy night? Unless it’s written in jest or ironically, it immediately makes me think the writer has no originality.

And let’s not forget the classic fairytale ending, And they all lived happily ever after. It is one of the most tragic sentences in literature, leading countless generations to expect perfection in an imperfect world.

There are many clichés involving time. Time flies, a waste of time, lost track of time, just a matter of time, the time of my life, in this day and age, at this moment in time, in any way shape or form, for all intents and purposes.  

Descriptions are full of clichés and idioms. He was old as the hills but fit as a fiddle. She was ugly as sin and as stubborn as a mule. He is honest as the day is long, a man of few words, a pillar of the community. She was older than dirt but strong as an ox.

How many times have you seen characters in gut-wrenching pain or heart-stopping fear or frightened to death? And fiction is full of moments that are the calm before the storm, before all hell breaks loose.

What about those clichés that don’t seem to mean anything but are still popular? You are what you eat. Ahh, no, I’m not a candy bar or a bean burrito. I’m a human, and I don’t eat other humans.

You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. Really? I made it so I could eat it. Why would you not eat your own cake? If you’re not going to eat it, send it over here and I’ll eat it.

Take the bull by the horns. Well that sounds dangerous. How would you grab the horns in the first place? And if you did manage to grab the bull by the horns, then what? What do you do with two tons of angry muscle and hooves?

There’s no such thing as a stupid question. “How can I become a mermaid?” is a stupid question. “Don’t you get lonely being an introvert?” is a stupid question. Hello! Do you know what an introvert is?

The five-second rule. Come on, the ground is dirty, period. The dirt and germs are not repelled for five seconds while you decide if you’re going to eat what you dropped. And why five seconds, why not six or eight or two? Does it suddenly become bad on the sixth second?

Clichés are usually the first ideas that come to mind when you’re trying to present an idea. If you must write in clichés to get your ideas down, do it. But when you get to the self-edit stage, replace those clichés with more energetic, exciting phrases, phrases that give your story a unique spin.

Help yourself to the Self-Edit Checklist: Clichés and Idioms to check your writing. Express your ideas in fresh and interesting ways and who knows, in a few years your pithy, original phrases could be the new idioms on the tip of everyone’s tongue.

Self-Edit: Vague, Weak and Unnecessary Words

You’ve finished your draft. You read it again; it kind of sucks. There’s something missing, it sounds blah, not like you at all.

What happened to your voice? Are you robbing your writing of its power?

You have a never-ending challenge to grab and keep your reader’s interest. If you can’t hold their attention and engage their emotion, you may lose them.

Be Precise

Many words and phrases are so commonplace they glide unnoticed past our radar. These words are eroding your reader’s attention and weakening your writing.

The easiest way to strengthen your writing is to cut those weak words and phrases, those words that don’t add to the overall meaning and make it difficult for readers to understand.

Many of these words are filler words, words to keep our hands busy at the keyboard while our brains find the next thought. These words add no value to sentences and can and should be cut.

Precision should be the goal of every author. You are creating these worlds and your characters. You are the authority. Don’t weaken that authority with vague details and fuzzy ideas.

Think of it like gardening. You’ve planted your healthy vegetable garden and it’s growing green and strong. But what happens when you don’t keep it weeded? The weeds strangle the plants and kill the entire garden. Just as weak words will strangle and kill your story.

Every word you use should bring something important and unique to the sentence. Your words must engage and attract attention, express emotion and advance the plot.

Really?

Weak phrases can make your writing sound bland and boring. Really, actually, very and just are bland words. They add nothing and can almost always be deleted.

Good, bad, small, big and nice are subjective and vague. They don’t tell the reader anything. Is tall six feet or six feet eight? Tall to one person can be short to another. 

What is a good pizza? Does that mean it tastes good, or it's made with healthy ingredients, or it’s shaped like a cat instead of round? Or is the crust just crispy enough, the sauce tangy with garlic, the mozzarella hot and stringy? Then say that.

Vague words should be replaced with more powerful and specific words. There are a plethora of nouns, verbs and adjectives just waiting for you to choose them.

Most of us tend to use safe words, the words that pop into our heads first, the words everyone is using. But don’t self-edit on autopilot. Make every sentence sing by choosing the right words to convey your meaning.

You want to use appropriate language for your subject, genre and audience, but you don’t want to sound like everyone else. Your writing should stand out, you want your voice to be unique.

Be Bold

Don’t you lose interest when reading something long-winded and rambling? So will your readers.

Sifting through useless words exhausts them. They want to know the key points of your story. Grab them and hold them by using powerful and meaningful words. Be concise.

Write what your inner demons or muse demand you write, but then clean it up.

• Remove redundant phrases to create stronger, more direct sentences that get your point across faster.
• Strengthen weak adjectives by replacing weak words with one strong word. Seek out and use the best words for the situation.
• Eliminate vague verbs that don’t move your point forward.
• Delete filler words that add no meaning and simply take up space.
• Construct dynamic sentences using active voice to promote a stronger and more direct tone.

Every word should earn its place in your story. If it doesn’t add anything, delete it.

There will be times where your story demands vague phrasing for plot reasons. But when not necessary, don’t take the chance on confusing your readers by using vague words such as seems, appears, looks as if, approximately, about, roughly, more or less, almost or nearly.

Be bold and precise in your word choice.

To Cut or Not to Cut?

While few of these words are explicitly bad for writing, eliminating them or decreasing them can make your writing clearer, more direct and much easier to read.

Your writing should take the reader on a journey, each word moving the reader closer to the conclusion. If it doesn’t, get rid of it.

It’s easy for these words to make their way back into your writing. Incorporating these checks into your Self-Edit regimen will make your writing more powerful.

Download your free copy of Self-Edit Checklist: Vague, Weak and Unnecessary Phrases and keep it handy for your Self-Edit.

Epic Lab of Oddities: Building Face and Body

I hope you are enjoying the generators provided in the Epic Lab of Oddities. There are now generators for the Head and Body features available.

Paint Me a Picture
You don’t describe a character from head to toe and constantly review what they look like. Some introductory details and a few pertinent clues will be enough to help readers form and keep a picture in their minds.

You’re inviting readers to peep into characters’ lives and view their thoughts, emotions and actions. Such an intimate exposure requires them to be fully formed, multi-layered, three-dimensional characters who will inspire some sort of reaction in your readers: empathy, sympathy or even hate.

From the first moment a character is introduced, the reader’s imagination will create an image. As the dialogue and narrative provide more description, that image changes with each introduction of an emotion, action, or dialogue tag.

You don’t need to describe every character in your story. Background characters don’t need a description unless you need a detail as part of your story or you want to add a little quirk. You can let the readers’ imagination describe these non-essential characters.

If main or secondary characters are left undescribed, readers will imagine their own physical features onto the character. If you want your readers to picture the characters a certain way, you need to provide the right descriptions.

If you wait too long to introduce descriptions, your readers will reject your description in favor of their already-jelled image.

That’s not to say that you dump loads of description. Let it unfold gradually as your story develops, sprinkled into dialogue, dialogue tags, action and narrative.

Don’t just list physical traits, weave them into your story in small pieces. Choose interesting details to describe or focus on with each interaction.

The Eyes Have It

The faces of your characters are essential for keeping them real. We deal with faces all day long.

What you feel inside is often reflected on your face. If you’re happy, you smile, your eyes twinkle, your skin glows. If you’re angry, your mouth puckers, your brows furrow, your eyes glare.

We all have uniqueness in our faces. The facial features of each of us is unique, even twins aren’t exactly alike. There are subtle differences in arch of eyebrow or fullness of lip. Find that uniqueness by using the correct words to describe those features that make us each individual.

How you describe your characters will paint a picture in the readers’ mind. Make sure you are providing enough description to make each character unique without adding so much detail that your readers can’t use some imagination.

Is their face square or chiseled? Do they have chipmunk cheeks or are they gaunt? Are they squinty- or hollow-eyed? Are their brows wispy or bushy? Is their mouth crooked or slack-jawed? Are their teeth straight or bucked? How about their ears, elf-like or elephant-like?

Eye color doesn’t matter in the long run, they can be brown or green or blue. But will that make an impression?

It may not seem like eye color would matter, as no one will ever see the color. But you do, in your head, as you write. When you see the cobalt blue eyes of a character, that becomes part of them as you see them. Make us see the same.

Hair is another feature that is different for everyone and very subjective. Long hair to one could mean to the waist, to someone else to the shoulders.

Hair is not just hair; it has a length, a color, a style and a condition. A mane or a mop? Buzzed or receding? Russet or toffee? Crewcut or ponytail? Flyaway or thinning?

Most people have feelings about their hair which give us insight into their personality. Many people are bored or not satisfied with their natural hair and find ways to change it, whether though color, cut or style. Others don’t want to be bothered with hair and keep it short. Even others spend inordinate amounts of time on their hair and take pride in matching their style to any occasion.

Bodybuilding Champion

Body type, skin tone, body marks, even hands are opportunities to provide better visuals for your readers.

Are they petite or pot-bellied? Alabaster skin or olive? Do they have tattoos or track marks? Are their hands elegant or calloused?

Body descriptions will often be described in conjunction with movement or action. Similes and metaphors are very useful for providing illustrations without details.

Are they nimble like a deer or do they lumber like an elephant? Hunched shoulders like a vulture awaiting the death of its prey or perfect posture like a superhero watching over her city?

Use the Epic Lab of Oddities generators to spark your imagination and come up with dynamic descriptions that will make your characters multi-layered and unforgettable.

Stay tuned for Traits, Emotions and Actions!

The Epic Lab of Oddities: Creating Captivating and Unforgettable Characters

This is the first in a series on creating your fictional characters. Make no mistake, you are Dr. Frankenstein, creating your own walking, talking creatures.

But where do you get the parts? Where can you find just the right body type? Do you want lean and leggy? Or chiseled and muscular? Maybe emaciated and gaunt?

Most of us focus on the face first, as that’s where we get most of our social cues. Instead of brown hair and eyes, why not caramel or copper hair and cognac or mahogany eyes? They all bring to mind a particular shade of brown that isn’t as generic as brown.

And the face. Where are you going to find just the right facial shape, the right cheeks, chin, ears—all those individual features that make up a face?

Look no further. I have also been creating, dumping endless supplies of body parts, traits, emotions, quirks, actions, senses and more into the Epic Lab of Oddities. And the most amazing random descriptions are popping out. Hopefully, you’ll find some ideas that will spark your own.

I’ve created the Basics generators, giving you alternative descriptive words for your characters:

·      Hero or Villain

·      Good or Bad

·      Strong or Weak

·      Big or Small

·      Tall or Short

·      Thin or Heavy

·      Beautiful or Ugly

Go have some fun with them. The rest of the series will include:

·      Part 1: The One Thousand Dollar Man – from hero or villain to beautiful or ugly (we can rebuild him; faster, stronger)

·      Part 2: The Eyes Have It – facial features and hair

·      Part 3: Bodybuilding Champion – body types and body features

·      Part 4: The Quirk in Quirky – personality types, from bossy to wise

·      Part 5: Cry Me a River – reactions, emotions and body language

·      Part 6: Moves Like Jagger – expressions, actions and opinions

·      Part 7: The Tenth Sense – from sight and hearing to hunger and pain

The One Thousand Dollar Man

While plotting is vital to any story, characterization is also extremely important. It doesn’t matter if it is a plot-driven story or a character-driven story; the character-driven story merely has the character driving the plot.

Many writers map out their characters before they start writing, while others wait to meet their characters on the page. However it works best for you, the words you write to describe them should be as rich as your characters.

Dynamic character creation is vital to storytelling. If your characters are forgettable, two-dimensional or flat, no reader will care what happens to them.

If they’re dynamic and real—someone you would want to meet, be friends with, go on vacation with—they will linger in your mind long after the final page is turned.

Your characters should seem like flesh and blood people with attributes and characteristics of everyday people. They should be believable and real, very much like your neighbors, co-workers and the Starbucks barista.

The more details you provide—the more interesting and real the character becomes to you—the better you can get that character to come alive for your audience.

While some descriptions need to be provided in your narrative, those traits that can be shown through action or dialogue will be stronger and stay longer with the reader. The more dynamic your descriptions, the more unforgettable the character.

Make your reader want to know your characters better. Let them see peeks and hints of traits through their actions or dialogue. What doesn’t flow into those categories can be fleshed out in narrative. And sprinkle those descriptions, don’t pour. Don’t give them so much detail that the reader can’t take some liberties in their imaginations.

General

Good or bad, beautiful or ugly, big or small, short or tall, heavy or thin, strong or weak.

All of these words are subjective; each reader will interpret them differently. Beauty to one reader will be ugly to another. Using more descriptive words lets the reader nail down what you mean.

People are not good or bad, they are degrees and combinations of each. Bad means something quite different than evil or cruel or selfish or just mischievous; but even villains can be considerate or kind in certain situations, making them not all bad.

And your hero isn’t merely good, they are courageous or sympathetic or wise or generous. But they can also be rude or aggressive in the right situation, so not all good.

Giving your characters only good or bad traits limits the scope of the story you can tell. It can make them two-dimensional and not relatable or interesting.

Use your words! You know tons of them, you’ve just forgotten you know them. The Epic Lab of Oddities is meant to give you some alternatives to spark some of your own ideas.

So get to creating your creatures or darlings, I have plenty of material for you. It’s your lab, have fun!

Edit v Proofread v Grammar Tools: What Do You Really Need?

Have you ever wondered why you need an editor? Or why your sister, who passed AP English, doesn’t qualify as a proofreader? Or why anyone would pay an editor when there is plenty of “editing” software available?

I’ve responded to quite a few of these questions on Quora, a Q&A site where anyone can ask a question and get a variety of answers. The questions seem to follow the same theme, so I thought I’d share some of them with you.

Is there a website that can proofread my work and edit it for free?

I don’t know of any websites that edit or proofread for free. And if you come across one, I would be wary. You often get what you pay for.

Editing, like writing, is a skill that professionals must study hard to acquire. Once they have mastered those skills, they don’t give them away for free. Just as once an author has mastered their skills, they don’t give away their books for free.

A new self-publishing author will often have to give away or charge much less for their work than is fair just to get a loyal group of readers. A beginning editor or proofreader will also charge less.

As an author becomes a better writer and publishes better quality books, they can charge more  because their fans are willing to pay more to read their work. As an editor/proofreader becomes more knowledgeable and proficient, their prices will also go up to reflect their training and experience.

There are plenty of professional editors out there who will work with an author who has a tight book budget. But any editing or proofreading offered for free will not be a professional edit.

When I finish writing my novel, will I need to hire a proofreader, an editor, or both?

Once you’ve completed your novel, you will need to engage a professional editor. They will edit your story for plot, structure, characterization, consistency and style. In addition, the majority of punctuation and grammar issues are captured in the editing process.

Proofreading is the final polishing of your manuscript before publication. The word by word scrutiny will capture any overlooked issues or errors and ensure your formatting is correct and consistent.

Many editors will also provide the final proofreading, so you may only need to engage one editorial professional.

Does creative writing need proofreading?

Yes, anything written for any type of publication, whether it’s a blog post or a novel, needs proofreading. A second set of eyes can catch those errors you can’t see, as you see what you meant to have written, not what is actually written.

For websites or blog posts, a friend with a sharp eye may be all you need.

If you plan to publish your creative writing, you should engage a professional editor. Your sharp-eyed friend may catch some of your punctuation and grammatical errors but will not have the skills or experience to evaluate your story for plot inconsistencies, characterization or structure and flow issues.

In creative writing, these elements make your story compelling and readable. If they are missing or not structured correctly, your story will not hold together or be enjoyable to your readers. And once a reader walks away, they are unlikely to come back.

Will grammar correction software (such as Grammarly) replace proofreaders in the future?

Absolutely not. Grammar tools find only grammar issues. You can accept or address every suggestion Grammarly, ProWritingAid or other tools give you and you’ll still have hundreds of errors.

Grammar tools do not catch homophones, incorrect dialogue punctuation, wrong word choice, verbosity, accuracy or any of a dozen other issues that a trained proofreader will catch.

Every writer should use grammar software to not only check their manuscript but to teach them how to write better. A proper self-edit should always be done before you turn it over to a fresh, trained pair of eyes.

Once a writer has completed their grammar checks and their self-edit and they are satisfied they have done everything possible to create the perfect story, it is time to find a professional to ensure there are no lingering or hidden issues.

You should also make sure you are using the right grammar program for your writing. Word and Grammarly will have you using serial commas, while ProWritingAid will not. ProWritingAid will capture more syntax errors than will Grammarly or Word. Word will have you taking all personal pronouns out, which will not work for a memoir.

Suggestions in any grammar program are just that: suggestions. You must consider each suggestion individually and what accepting that suggestion will do for and to your writing. While some non-fiction and technical writing require specific grammar rules, fiction writing doesn’t have to be as structured. For instance, serial commas are required in business writing but slow down the pace in fiction writing. So make sure you are using the right program for your specific writing project.

Software, no matter how expansive, will never replace the trained eye.

Why is it so hard to edit a book all on your own, even with all the editing programs?

There is no such thing as an “editing program.” There are grammar programs that will correct your grammar and teach you how to use proper grammar in your future writings.

Every writer should use a grammar program after they have completed their story. I would suggest not using them while you are writing as they will stifle your creative flow. Get your story down first, then worry about the grammar.

Editing cannot be encapsulated into a software. There is no program capable of showing you where you’ve strayed from your plot, where your characters are not well rounded or real, where the pace of your story loses steam, where your dialogue sounds plastic, etc. These are the bones of your story. No matter how many pretty words you use, if the bones won’t hold them up, your story will collapse.

Likewise, there are no proofreading programs that will capture those last lingering errors in your manuscript before you publish. Nothing but a trained eye will catch a misspelled character name, how in Chapter 1 he had green eyes and now has blue in Chapter 14, missing or incorrect dialogue punctuation, wrong word choices, that Macy’s is on First Street not Forest Street, etc.

Self-editing is a skill that all writers should learn. It begins with using the grammar programs to correct the errors that you as a writer do not see as you’re writing. There are many errors that you can fix yourself, once they’ve been pointed out and it has been explained to you why they are errors.

You should create a self-edit regimen for yourself to follow once you’ve completed your story. Not only the grammar issues but such items as:

• Searching out every adverb you used (-ly) and asking yourself if they are (really) necessary. Can you make a more powerful statement by using a stronger verb instead?
• Using search functions to track down hyphens vs en dashes, closed quotes, other missing punctuation, double spaces, its vs it’s, etc.
• Search out redundant phrases (armed gunman, eliminate entirely, invited guest, past memories, 8:00 am in the morning)
• Search out homonyms and homophones (bated [suspense] vs baited [bait attached], appraise [assess] vs apprise [inform], born [started life] vs borne [carried])
• Search out those words to avoid (really, very, just, totally, completely, actually)

Once you’ve performed your self-edit, you’ll want to turn your story over to an editorial professional who has the knowledge, skill and objectivity to see and address those elements that are out of whack or not working.

After you’ve revised your manuscript and think it’s time to publish, invest in a professional proofreader to scour your manuscript for any hidden errors and provide the polish to your story.

Now you’re ready to publish.

If you self-publish a book, do you really need to get an editor to check it over first?

Definitely. You want your best work out there, not a story potentially riddled with plot holes, grammar issues, inconsistent characterization, and other deadly errors. Publishing a book filled with errors will turn off your readers quicker than you can say, “Why didn’t I invest in an editor?”

No matter how many times you re-read your own work, these issues will not show up for you because your mind reads what you meant to have written. And while beta readers and critique partners are great for catching a few of the smaller errors, an editor will drill down deep to find all the places your manuscript can be improved. And that’s what you want, someone to show you what you can’t see.

That should be your only focus before you publish: how can I write the best story I can write? Not just, here’s my story, let’s see what happens. Once you’ve published, that story is out there for the world to see. Shouldn’t it be some of your best work?

How many passes does an editor make when editing a document?

That depends on the editor. If you contract with a freelance editor through such services as Upwork or Fiverr, you’re likely to get only one pass.

If you take your time and find the editor that is right for you and your project, that editor will most likely be as invested in your story as you are. They will be willing to make as many passes as necessary until you and they are satisfied that your story is the best it can be.

The right editor for you will not put a limit on how or how much they can help you. They should be able to tell from the first read-through what type of help and advice they will need to provide and price their services accordingly.

Which comes first, proofreading or editing?

Editing comes first. Proofreading is the last step, the final word by word review, to ensure there are no lingering errors that might have been missed during editing.

Think of it like baking a cake. You, the author, pour all your ingredients into a story. You stir your story until it’s mixed together, pour it into your pan and bake. When it comes out of the oven, it might be lumpy, maybe you didn’t mix it well enough. Or perhaps it is lopsided, or still raw, or even burned.

You might be tempted to plop some frosting on it (a fancy cover) and serve it to your guests (readers) anyway. But how embarrassing it will be when they take that first bite (start to read)! They likely will think twice before sampling your next cake.

So you find the right editor for you, someone who knows how to mix the ingredients so they make a light and delicious cake. Your editor will lead you through those steps necessary to ensure your batter is smooth with no air pockets (plot holes) and no lumpy ingredients (bad characterization). They will show you how to pour the mixture into your pan evenly (consistency), and they’ll instruct you about the right temperature and time to bake your particular cake (pacing and voice).

Once you and your editor have correctly followed the right recipe for your story, your cake should come out of the oven a perfect golden brown; light, airy and delicious. But it’s not ready yet.

Your cake must first cool down and set up before you can apply the frosting (copy edit: all those pesky English rules). And to make it as perfect as it can be, your editor will decorate your cake (proofread) to smooth it out, hiding every last morsel of crumb and manipulating the frosting until your cake is a masterpiece, a work of art that you will be proud to serve to any guest.

Happy baking!!