The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes - Jack M. Bickham [54]
2. Check the story for general acceptability. Is there a length requirement or limit you must stay within? Have you followed guidelines or tip sheets, if available? Look back at your story plans? Does the finished story match up with the plan? (If you discover in the tip sheet that the heroine must be under thirty-five, for example, and somehow you made her forty-seven in your story, some obvious changes have to be made.)
3. Read the manuscript straight through. If possible, read it away from your work desk and even out of your office room. Except for a red pencil to mark typographical errors, don't plan to write notes during this reading. A tape recorder nearby is okay. But you are to try to make this a reading experience, not a writing or editing one. If you note problems, dictate notes on how to fix them, or merely dictate a note that the problem exists.
4. Repair any problems found on the read-through. This will involve going back to the word processor and writing or revising some pages. It's import ant to produce these now, in order, and get all your substitute pages neatly into the manuscript so it once again is "finished."
5. Reexamine the opening of the story. Is it gripping? Does it start with something happening—something that threatens the viewpoint character and sets her in motion toward some goal? Are you sure you didn't warm up your motors or describe a sunset to open?
6. Study the viewpoint character(s). One viewpoint must clearly dominate. Make sure of this. Count pages in each viewpoint if you must. Now look at ways you established the placement of the viewpoint. Is it clear where the viewpoint is at all times? Can you find any author intrusions that ought to be taken out? Any excursions into other viewpoints that are slips, or author self-indulgence rather than being required by the plot?
7. Check the time scheme. Make a chart if you have to, but make sure your timing is correct. Sometimes you can get this far and have two Tuesdays in the same week, for example, or someone in Houston at noon and in New York an hour later. Make sure you have enough time pointers in the story so the reader always understands what time it is, what day it is, how this segment fits into the larger time scheme of the tale.
8. Reexamine the character motivations. At key points, is it perfectly clear what the story people want, and why? Just as important, at key points of stress in the story, have you made it clear to the reader why the character is hanging in there? Ask yourself: "Why doesn't my hero just resign from the plot and go home, here? Why must he carry on?"
9. Look for coincidence. Coincidence, as explained earlier, is nearly always bad, bad, bad. Make a conscious search for coincidence, especially of the kind that helps the viewpoint character. If you find a coincidence, figure out a way to fix it so the character has the desired experience by trying, rather than by luck.
10. Read the chapter or section endings. These are the spots where you most risk losing your reader. Do most of your sections or chapters end with developments that hook the reader with a new twist, disaster or realization that positively defies the reader to quit at that point? Of course they should.
11. Think about total story logic. Unless you're writing about crazy people, they'll all be trying to do things for what they see as good reasons, and they'll be trying to do things that will achieve their ends. Make sure you don't have any characters—especially the antagonist—doing things just because you the author wanted them to do that.
12. Examine the ending. The start of the story raised a problem, a character goal, and a story question. The ending must answer the question you posed at the outset. Does it? Clearly and unequivocally?
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