I don't mean to do this but for some reason my brain is addicted to overwriting and forces my fingers to type the words that just make my manuscript melodramatic and cliche. It is a hard habit to break and I'm looking for ways to fix my addiction.
What is overwriting? Well, I will give you an example...each day a black hole has grown, pulling me deeper into darkness.
A little flashy, yes. You see, too many adjectives and adverbs just candy coat what we are really trying to say. We know not to do this but sometimes it just happens. I've noticed I tend to do this when I force my story or I try too hard to follow the rules. It's something I need to learn how to stop. I also learned that overwriting can lead to losing your MC's voice. It masks over it and the poor thing gets lost.
Here is a great blog post from Nicola Morgan --overwriting post.
That's right, overwriting was the number one complaint on my manuscript. I went to the Philly SCBWI conference on Saturday and had my editor critique.
First, I want to thank all of you for your encouragement and advice. It helped me so much. I really don't know how to thank you, seriously. From your comments, I had my questions ready and I found out a little bit about what the critiquer goes through to prepare for a critique such as this. This made me feel a little more at ease. Not entirely, but a little more.
Second, the critique. I was nervous. I will not lie. The critique actually went better than I thought. I do have a lot of thinking to do and re-writing but in general it gave me validation. It made me believe that this story may have a chance. For this critique, I was required to send in my first 10 pages and a synopsis of my entire story including how it would end. The editor liked my idea and my synopsis which made my year. To have an editor say that to me was glorious. It made the negative points seem like nothing. **Which is not entirely true, it just made them easier to swallow.
I do have some re-writing. The general idea of my first chapter is fine, I just have to strengthen my MC's voice (which I know I lost because this is my 12th revision of my first chapter), get rid of the overwriting, some grammar stuff and try to adjust the voice on some of my other characters.
Are you an overwriter?
Any advice on controlling overwriting?
How was your weekend? any new goals?
Thank you again guys. You support is awesome.
Have a great day! Oh and on Wednesday, I'm going to post another addiction-- "-ing" words. Little pests.
