Over lunch, while eating a sandwich she picked up from the
deli up the street on her break, she pored over the work spread across her
drafting table.
I am ashamed to say the above sentence was written in my
most recent book. Now, in my defense, the book is currently in the editing
stage. So, the good news is that I managed to catch this before it goes to
print. The funny thing about this sentence is that the very day I realized it
was filled with unnecessary words, I read a blog article on tips to keep an editor
from cringing. I’m happy to say I read the article before I took issue with my
wordy sentence, but it got me to thinking. How many more of my sentences are
this cluttered?
Asking myself this question led me to seek the answer.
Finding that answer in a one hundred thousand words plus novel was no easy
feat. The results are both good and bad. Good news? They weren’t as many
cluttered run-on sentences as I was afraid of. And since the novel hasn’t been
published, I was able to address them before they saw the light of day. Bad
news? There were more cluttered run-on sentences than I was hoping for. Since
the novel hasn’t been published, that means I have to correct them which might
lead to a delay in publication.
As I was going through my novel in search of these pesky
critters, I realized something. I have a tendency to add a lot more detail than
necessary to some of my sentences. Take that first sentence for example. Who
cares where she got the salad from and when? Does leaving that information out
of the sentence negatively impact the story? Does leaving it in help? The
answer to both questions is no. The solution is to take it out.
I also discovered that I like to take what could be two,
sometimes even three sentences, and make them one nice, long, flowing
sentence. There were a few instances where I had one sentence paragraphs that
were three lines long. I like writing which means I like words, but even I can
see this is some serious overkill.
In the category of more good news, this isn’t the end of the
world. It’s something I can fix which means making my stories flow better. Of
course, the flip side of that coin is the realization that it took several
published novels for me to catch on to this problem. Now I have to avoid
rereading those novels, or I might end up crying.
A long time ago, an editor told me I was addicted
to adverbs. I laughed her off until I counted how many there were. It was an
eye-opener. Now, I do my best to use them sparingly. It seems I substituted one addiction for another; run-on sentences in
place of adverbs.
Thankfully, I can and will do something about this. I am by
no means convinced I am the best writer I can be. As long as I write, there
will always be room to improve my craft. If I can overcome my adverb habit, I
can beat this too!
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