This weekend I was at LTUE and I attended a panel on self-editing. I thought the presenter did a fantastic job with explaining some of the more difficult editing. I will cover more of these tips later but the two that I found really interesting was when she talked about was and said. I am pleased to say that for the most part I was correct in my earlier posts. But there is more to it than what I originally said.
Was
I said to get rid of was as much as possible, but there are times when was is important. When there are two actions happening simultaneously you need to have was.
Jordan walked into the room and Lesli was standing at the window.
If we said Lesli stood at the window it means that when Jordan walked in Lesli then moved to the window, not that she was already there.
Said
I wrote that said is invisible. The presenter mentioned this belief and explained that if you always use said it is no longer invisible. The trick is to intermix said with beats. A beat is when instead of having a dialog tag, you use an action to let the reader know who was speaking. Don't always use said, don't always use beats, don't always leave the tags off. The trick is to mix them throughout the story.
Nice tips. I especially like the one about beats and tags and said. I will keep this in mind.
ReplyDeleteThanks. It is something that I am going to use in my own writing.
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