Editorial Notes = clarifying information, additional insight, annotations

Hiya Reader,

How are you doing? No, really.

It's been a challenging season over here in my little world. Consider this your reminder that sometimes the best thing you can do for your writing and, more importantly, your self, is to take a break.

Pick whatever metaphor you prefer: Our electronic gadgets all need batteries recharged or they go dead. You can't get or give water from an empty pitcher. The car won't start if the tank has no gas. Bread dough doesn't rise unless it rests. And so on.

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Example of the Week

Sometimes this is a good example—or a great one. Sometimes this is a bad example—or just a funny blooper. Sometimes a combination. You never know.

Elmore Leonard gave this infamous advice: "Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip." When people refer to this advice, they usually shorten it to the less pithy: "Cut the boring parts."

But either way, to continue the last issue's Actionable Tip re: getting distance, try reading your work as an incredibly bored, unengaged reader who was assigned to read your piece and doesn't really feel much like doing so.

What does this mean in practice? Skim! Look for the good parts. Notice what you're skipping. Can you make it more enticing? Can you (gasp!) cut it?

Actionable Tip of the Week

A trick to add to your self-editing toolbox right now!

Don't go changing...unless you are a piece of writing.

Whatever you're writing — a novel, a memoir, an essay, a business proposal, a technical guide, a sonnet — something meaningful must shift in the space between the beginning and the end. It's true at the paragraph, scene, and sentence level, too. Write the change.

For clarity, I'll refer to all of these as "section."

Perhaps your reader enters a section confused about a concept and exits with understanding. Maybe they arrive skeptical of your argument and leave persuaded or at least willing to reconsider. Or the character begins with incomplete information and ends the section with some nugget of necessary information — which might be a red herring. Or or or.

No matter what the change is or needs to be, readers need that transformation. It happens in domino effect, with one section leading to the next to the next and the next. Sections depend upon each other for that chain reaction, and yes, this is true even in nonlinear writing.

To put your writing to this test, start by figuring out what your character/reader has at the end that they didn't have at the start. Struggling to come up with something necessary, specific, and meaningful? You've found a section that asks "so what?"

If you're the outline type, try plotting what Section A either established or shifts to make Section B necessary, and the same for Section C and so on. If a section delivers the same value for a reader without the preceding section, you've found a weak link to strengthen.

In the transition space between sections, determine what your reader/character understands or believes or chooses to do. If the choice is static or nonexistent, you've found a place to infuse with more emotional weight.

And of course, if a section could simply poof in a cloud of smoke, ask yourself if anything important is lost. If not, just wave it away with the smoke.

Don't get too hung up on the connotative idea of change. We don't have to go from something red to something yellow. But readers/characters do need to arrive at the end of each section altered, even subtly, from the state they'd been in before, whether that's some kind of improvement or some kind of disappointment or just a shift in circumstance or perspective.

Do you agree? Let me know!

Reader Question of the Week

Barb wrote: Can you give me a clear example of show vs. tell?

Barb! You got it!

Drya was exhausted from her journey through the Shadowfen. She was also frightened because she knew the wraiths were dangerous. When she finally reached the ancient shrine, she felt relieved and hopeful that she'd find the artifact inside. The shrine was old and mysterious.

versus

Drya's boots squelched through another pool of black water, and she had to grip a moss-slick stone to keep from collapsing. Three days. Three days since she'd slept more than an hour at a stretch, always jerking awake at phantom whispers in the mist. She touched the iron pendant at her throat, a cold comfort against things that fed on warmth and breath, and quickened her pace when the fog coiled tighter between the twisted trees. Then she saw it: weathered columns rising from the murk, their carved runes still faintly glowing amber. Her hand steadied. If the old songs were true, the Sunstone waited inside, and she'd have a weapon that could actually hurt these things.

At first glance, the passage may just seem longer. Yes, I've sprinkled in a few modifiers, increasing the concrete details. But look at the difference in the verbs alone! They do the real work of showing.

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Link of the Week

​Just say no...to gravity?​

I ❤️ Hearing from You!

Comments? Just reply to this email or click this link. I respond to every email—that's a promise.

Thanks for reading!

~Helene, your writing sherpa

P.S. Your manuscript deserves more than spell-check.

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