This post by Steve Aedy originally appeared on K.M. Weiland‘s Helping Writers Become Authors on 10/24/14.
Stuck in the writing doldrums? Has your prose become lackluster and stale? If so, it might be time to change up your writing style and infuse some fresh life into your words and stories.
Every writer has his own writing style–a particular combination of skills, techniques, characteristics, and practices that develops into his unique voice. But, what happens if your style becomes clichéd and predictable, tired and trite?
If it’s time to give your writing style a makeover, consider the following tips for a new approach and greater results.
1. Change Your Pacing, Change Your Writing Style
Enter the scene late and leave it early.
This screenwriting tip from author and screenwriter William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade applies as much to novels as to scripts. But what does it mean “to enter the scene late and leave it early”? It means preventing the pace of your setup from bogging down in unnecessary introductions that establish how the characters arrived in the scene.
Try changing the pace by cutting the first paragraph in each chapter and reworking the second one. This will help compact your information into fewer words and thrust the storyline forward.
Similarly, if the last paragraph is mostly filler, cut it and reword the one before it to tighten up the delivery of information critical to the scene’s conclusion.
2. Don’t Edit While You Write
Read the full post on Helping Writers Become Authors.