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← Click to join my mailing list and receive a free copy of my short story Crystal Servants, delivered through MyBookCave. Learn about some of the major players in my novel Crystal King and its sequels Crystal Queen and Crystal Empire.

Adrian, a spy for the King, sees a nobleman murder a servant. His desire for truth is pitted against the dangers of a high-stakes political game. When his friend Draken insists on pursuing justice, Adrian must protect those he cares about as the political games of powerful men alter the lives of everyone around him.

Thursday, April 6, 2017

Search and Replace: John's Pet Peeves Number 8

It's been a while since I've written a pet peeve. This one is aimed at the guy in the mirror because it's my own writing that sometimes annoys me. Over time I've discovered a list of things I can search for after a draft is complete. The more I write, the less I have to rely on this list, but it still saves me and my editors a lot of time by finding problems early.

Also, I keep seeing social media posts on self-editing and words to avoid while writing. I'm going to share my current Search and Replace (or Search and Destroy) list and just point people here as needed. Some of these came from lists, but many are things I've discovered in my own writing.

The Search part is mandatory. The Destroy part is optional since every one of these may be not only valid but the best choice in some circumstance.

I've used these to fix hundreds of instances of passive voice in a manuscript in one evening before. That's a huge time savings on hunting down and fixing things one at a time as you read through a manuscript.

Here's a post at the Writer's Circle of the sort of thing I've kept an eye out for so I can add to my list.

Adverbs

Adverbs can often be replaced with stronger phrasing. The easiest way is to look for the most common adverb ending followed by a space. The space is important since you don't want words with "ly" in the middle. This will be a long slog of a search so you may want to delay it until after you've done the easier ones.
  • "ly "

Bad Starts

The following entries are usually a bad way to start a sentence. Turn on the flag to match capitalization in the advanced search settings for these. These starts set might work well for folk tales or other special cases so your mileage may vary.
  • There is
  • There was
  • There are
  • There were

Weak Words

Weak or overused words to remove or replace in most cases.
  • just
  • very
  • really
  • suddenly
  • amazing
  • awesome
  • that
  • already
  • look
  • there
  • over
  • try
  • so

Passive Voice

Passive voice flags, which could also indicate weak words as shown above.
  • started/starting/starts
  • begin/began/begins
  • were
  • is
  • are
  • have been
  • had been
  • would be
  • would have
  • to be
  • could still

Senses and Emotion

Sensory or emotional crutches can be replaced with showing a scene instead of shortcutting it by telling us the emotions and senses involved. Show the scene that generates the input or thought.
  • felt
  • realized
  • saw
  • heard
  • smelled
  • seemed
  • decided

More Passive Voice

Passive voice with wildcards is a great timesaver in Word. Open the advanced search dialog and turn on wildcards. Then you can search for these passive voice hunters. Again, they're not all bad. Just mostly bad. The idea is to replace things like "was jumping" with "jumped."
  • [Ww]as [A-z]@ed
  • [Ww]as [A-z]@ing
  • [Hh]ad [A-z]@ed
  • [Hh]ave [A-z]@ed
  • [Bb]een [A-z]@ing

Obscure Stuff

Past perfect tense. This is a bit obscure, but it introduces hesitation.
  • had always

Checking Dialog Tags

You can also find lots of dialog tags that could be bad, confusing, or in need of clarification with these wildcards. It finds lots of false positives, so it's not always useful. You can find stuff like "He barked" with this.
  • [Hh]e [A-z]@ed
  • [Ss]he [A-z]@ed

Layout

Simple search and replace can fix lots of things. Word uses ^p as a paragraph marker when not in wildcard mode. You can get rid of spaces at the start and end of paragraphs with two simple searches, and then nuke all accidental double spaces. You're not one of those types who LIKES double spaces after a period, are you? ;)
  • Replace " ^p" with "^p"
  • Replace "^p " with "^p"
  • Replace two spaces with one.

And there you have it. That's the current state of my Search and Destroy list. Have fun!

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

League of Utah Writers Spring Conference


I'll join thirty-some-odd presenters at this year's spring conference this coming Saturday. I'm looking forward to this conference both because there will be a lot of great content, and because I'm giving "Why Write Short Stories" presentation.

This is an annual one-day event, where the fall conference is two days and is scaled up. We're also branching out to have a smaller conference in Logan and St. George if I recall correctly. One of the major goals of the league is literacy, and helping authors to write books that people want to read falls directly under that umbrella.

You can find a lot more about the League of Utah Writers here. I'm currently one of the chapter presidents in the Salt Lake Valley where most of our chapters live.

I'll also have some anthologies containing my stories there at a vendor table. Stop by to say hi to me or to my wife Kelly!