People talk about rules of good writing. I’ve used the term myself. But really, there are no rules, just tips. See? I broke a rule there – I started a sentence with a conjunction, ‘but’. Did it bother you? It avoided the comma and the run-on sentence if I’d made it a clause. You can break the rules if it makes sense. Following the rules blindly just leads to weak writing. Follow the tips when they make sense.

The so-called rules are there for a good reason – they distil a lot of experience. The show-don’t-tell rule, for example, is a pretty good tip. Writing is a collaboration between the author and the reader. Constant telling, constant narration, distances the reader. Showing involves the reader in deciding for herself what is going on.

If I write ‘Peter was old and sickly’ I’m telling you how to see Peter.
If I write ‘Peter shuffled towards me, supported by a stick. The effort of every step was etched in pain on his furrowed face’ I’ve invited you to picture Peter and draw your own conclusions.

Does that mean a writer must always show rather than tell? No, of course not. If the detail is unimportant to the story, tell it. If Jane walks down the stairs, it’s much better to say this, rather than tiring the reader with a long description of the stairs and the walking. Use the show-don’t-tell tip when there’s a good reason to do so.

Closely related to show-don’t-tell is the adverb rule. All writing manuals tell you to use adverbs sparingly. Stephen King goes further and would have us eliminate all adverbs. He argues that adverbs make for sloppy writing, signs the author is fearful that she isn’t getting her point across clearly.

I, like many amateurs, am guilty of breaking the adverb rule. Of 1,000 words in the story I described in the last post, 18 were adverbs. After editing, I reduced this to 14, but that’s still 14 that Stephen King would say shouldn’t be there. Maybe he’s right. He’s a successful author and I’m not.

Let’s look at this though. Why this particular hatred for one part of speech? In case you forgot your school grammar lessons, adverbs are words that modify verbs, and usually end in –ly (though not all do – ‘up’, for example is also an adverb). We don’t have the same rules about nouns, or verbs, or adjectives. Is this just textism? What’s the reason?

Reason one. It makes sense to eliminate adverbs when they’re making the writing weaker. Sometimes they just cover up failure to find better words. For example ‘he spoke quietly’ is unnecessary – it would be stronger to say ‘he whispered’ or ‘he murmured’. Many times, we can eliminate adverbs by using a stronger verb. In this sense, adverbs can be good pointers at the editing stage to where we need to polish the writing.

Reason two. When the adverb is doing no work at all, purge it. For example, in the phrase ‘he shouted loudly’ the adverb loudly is doing nothing – a shout is loud. Or, to take another example, ‘he said interestingly’. If what he says is interesting, maybe that he’s discovered the secret of time travel, then the reader doesn’t need the adverb, and if it’s dull, maybe that he’s tired, the adverb doesn’t change the dullness. Though, even there, if the character to whom he’s speaking has good reason to be interested, the adverb may still justify its place.

Reason three. Adverbs may distance the reader by telling, rather than showing. They can narrate details the reader should be filling in for themselves. For example ‘she looked suspiciously at the box’ could be better written ‘she examined the box, checking for booby traps.’

There may be other good reasons for eliminated adverbs. I couldn’t think of them while writing this. The point is that if there’s a reason not to use an adverb, don’t use it. By the same token, if there is a reason to use an adverb, then use it. Adverbs are pretty much like adjectives. Adverbs can add description to verbs, bringing a picture to life, in the same way as adjectives can bring nouns to life.

For example, take this phrase from the story I’ve just edited, ‘trees perched crazily like sure goats on precipitous falls.’ I spent some time considering whether to remove or change the ‘crazily.’ It’s doing some pretty important descriptive work, showing the random arrangement of the vegetation. It can’t be turned into the adjective ‘crazy’ since neither the trees nor the goats are crazy. The only thing that’s crazy is the perching. So, I retained the adverb. I think I had good reason to do so.

Technically, I suppose you could argue that the ‘crazy’ and the ‘sure’ contradict each other and one of them should go. I would disagree – crazy paving isn’t less secure as paving for being crazy. You might also argue that the description is overdone, with two adjectives and one adverb in the phrase. Overusing descriptive words in the belief this makes the writing more literary is a classic error of amateurs. You might be right, but there are some good reasons in the context to be highly descriptive.

So, here’s my conclusion. We give adverbs too hard a time. It’s a good tip to think long and hard about why an adverb is there, and what work it’s doing. But, should we eliminate every adverb? No. As with every other part of our writing, we should make it as crisp and effective as we can. I’m all for better verbs, adjectives, gerunds and nouns, as well as better adverbs. The prejudice against adverbs is simply textism.

There is a big however to the defence of adverbs. Agents, editors and publishers often believe in the ‘no adverbs’ tip as an iron-clad rule. If you submit a work full of adverbs, however well-chosen and hard-working, they may just put a red pencil through it and decide you’re an amateur. You pays your money and you takes your choice.

There are many tools for writers out there. Goodness! How on earth did Shakespeare and Dickens managed without them?

Plot, structure and character

I’ve already talked about te tools for plot and character that I use for keeping track of the storyline, scenes, and characters. You can buy software that does this, but I make my own in spreadsheets. Obviously, you also need something to write on. Like most people, I use a word processor, but you can also get dedicated author software.

Depending on how you write, such software may help you. I tend to write in a fairly linear way from the beginning to the end. I know that some people write scenes just as they occur to them, starting in the middle of the book. Shuffling and re-ordering scenes can be very frustrating on a word processor. I can’t review any of the dedicated tools that make this easy, because I don’t use them. The most popular, however, seems to be Scrivener, which combines a word processor and a project management tool.

Here, I want to talk about tools that can help with the third essential element – the writing itself. Good writing is about sentences that are easy to read, dialogue that sings, evocative description, and scenes that make the reader want to keep turning the page. The most important thing here is, of course, practice. Write lots, get friends and colleagues to criticize it, and you’ll improve. Reading your work aloud to yourself can also help you spot the bits that don’t work. But there are some tools that can help.

Spelling grammar and words

A good word processor will have inbuilt spell-check and grammar-check, as well as a minimal thesaurus. A thesaurus is invaluable for authors. You read your sentence, like “John stared in fright at the apparition.” You can see the sentence should pack more punch. The problem is “in fright”. The word should be working harder. You consult your Thesaurus and find alternatives – panic, terror, dread, for example. You can buy a Roget’s Thesaurus or use the online version (http://www.thesaurus.com).

If you write, as I do, historical fiction, you have another word problem. There’s nothing worse than a Tudor character saying something like “you’re messing with my mind”. It transports the reader straight back into the twenty-first century and the spell is broken. So how do you check when a particular word first came into use? Enter the Etymological Dictionary (http://www.etymonline.com). I used this a lot in writing A Prize of Sovereigns. The archer, Reuven, for example addresses his comrades in arms as “mate”. But when did this first come into use with this meaning? Is it modern? The dictionary reassured me that it goes back to the mid-fourteenth century.

Stringing the words together

Sounds obvious, but this is where most of the trouble comes in. There are so many mistakes you can inadvertently make. We all have favourite words that we tend to over-use. We can inadvertently repeat the same word too close together. We overuse adverbs. We write sentences that are too long, or that make the reader stumble. We use the passive instead of the active. We allow the pace to drop.

There is editing software that can help you detect and correct these and other problems. There’s quite a neat little fee website at http://www.thedreamside.com/machine.html, which gives you word-counts for frequently used words and which flags up “hot-spots” where the same word is used repeatedly close together. You can find more sophisticated editing help from Pro Writing Aid (https://prowritingaid.com). The free version will give you reports on 17 different aspects of your writing. It will check for things like over-used words and repeated phrases, pacing, clichés, writing style, over-long sentences, and sentences that don’t flow well. The image, for example, shows the check for pacing on two of the chapters from The Wheel Turns, the sequel to Prize of Sovereigns, which I’m working on now.

The blue bars show areas of action or dialogue, while the white spaces are areas of background or introspection. Areas of white should be sprinkled through the text, rather than all dumped in one place. I was reasonably happy with the pacing, though there is a warning sign in the first chapter, with a slower area coming very close to the beginning.

I’m fairly impressed with Pro Writing Aid. With 17 reports, the amount of information you get back can seem a little daunting, but, as you work through them, you can decide which suggestions to respond to, and which to ignore. If you’re not employing a real copy editor, software like this can help sharpen up your prose