tense | nichepoetryandprose

poetry and prose about place

Posts Tagged ‘tense’

writing a novel – pulling out the weeds

I have completed Draft Three of my novel ‘Crossing at a Walk’. The entire story is there. If I add more ‘story’ now, I will only confuse my plot and my readers. Next I have to concentrate on honing every sentence, including dealing with the oddities I allow to creep into my writing. As if I am growing a garden, I have to find and pull out the weeds.

I think these are different for every writer and writers have to learn these for themselves. For me, the culprits are:

writing in the passive voice.

using the word ‘that’. I never use ‘which’.

using adverbs, although I (quickly) drilled this one out of my system.

repeating the same word in adjacent lines or adjacent paragraphs.

using phrases like ‘she stood and … ‘, ‘I opened the door and …’ , ‘I looked at her and …’ – I sometimes tend to breathe for my characters!

using colorless words like ‘felt’, ‘drove’, ‘went’, ‘wondered’, ‘just’ and so on.

putting two spaces after every period – I learned to type on a typewriter!

I also have to do careful editing with respect to tense and person. I tell Sadie’s story in the third person and past tense. Tom speaks in the first person and present tense. I also have an angler who likes to fish just below the covered bridge and always speaks in the second person (something new I am trying).

my husband when he was a boy, fishing on the North Branch of the Rusagonis River, under the covered bridge … this covered bridge is now gone from our community

My husband is not looking forward to the completion of Draft Four. It ends with me reading him the entire novel, chapter by chapter, every evening, an hour before ‘Coronation Street’ on TV. Until we finish. Poor fellow.