TECH: 101 Tips (25)

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 13 June 2009

Writers' Digest, October 2004, pages 26 to 33, has a collection of short "nuggets of wisdom" related to getting published. Maria Schneider is the author of the compilation. Take a deep breath, and here we go:

"I read an awful lot of beginning work that involves wheelspinning, throat clearing and flights of fancy that seem on the surface to be artful, but in fact are an impediment to careful reading." C. Michael Curtis

Hum -- get to the point (in late, out early) or even in medias res (start in the midst of affairs). Well, uh, you know, we could... yeah, you know, it's like... really, I think... just go ahead and start. Cut out the stuff at the beginning that was you thinking with your fingers, find the real point where the story begins, that makes the readers sit up straight and pay attention. And where those wonderful baroque piles of literate wordiness sit, glinting and gilding and sparkling like something left behind after a flood -- consider them carefully, and cut out the literary deposits that clog the reader's consciousness. Keep the ones that really do move the story forward, that make characters come to life, that help with setting and such, but not the ones that make the readers choke.

Just the story. The real story, the true story, and nothing but the story.