January update

In a few of my previous posts, I’ve mentioned some writing characteristics that put me off books. They don’t necessarily make me put the book down, but once they impinge on my reading enjoyment, they become distracting if they pop up again. Most recently, I’ve become more aware of redundancies and repetitions. As with all writing, it’s a balance. On the one hand, you want your readers to get the point rather than scratching their heads over your opacity. But on the other, spending too much time/word budget on a description or thought or clue bogs down the pace (and irritates this reader, for one). As a made-up example:

Bob shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows to indicate his confusion. He didn’t know what was going on.

We have the body language, complete with shrugging of shoulders (what else would you shrug?) and we’re also told what the body language means and why he’s using it. A simple “Bob was confused” or “Bob had no idea what was going on” could have sufficed (depending on context, of course).

Anyway, all these ruminations have made me review the redundancies and repetitions in my own writing 😳. Unsurprisingly, my earliest work seems to have the most of it: after all, I released it two and a half years ago, and my writing chops have (I believe) improved since then. So I’ve finally yielded to temptation and given A Quiet Rebellion: Guilt another polish. It’s nothing major – trimmed around 1300 words – but in retrospect, those were self-indulgent words that didn’t help the read.

And since I’ve now revisited the world of Numoeath and its characters, I thought it would be fun to illustrate the characters using Daz. So here are a few of them 🙂

That’s all from me for now. Don’t forget to drop by my buddy Philip Folk’s blog and check out his little story gems!