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Helping to Change the World…Word by Word

The Steve Laube Agency

The Steve Laube Agency

Helping to Change the World Word by Word

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Home » Writing Craft » Craft » Page 12

Craft

Unnecessary Words

By Dan Balowon November 14, 2017
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From my earliest days writing and communicating, I’ve needed to fit whatever I wrote or spoke into space and time required by the medium in which I was using at the moment.

In electronic media, a clock runs everything. If you have 90 seconds to fill before the radio newscast, you actually have 89 seconds to make a point. Not 91 or 105 seconds…89 seconds, so the network feeds are picked up without talking over them.

In the early part of my career, everything I wrote needed to fit into a timeframe as well. A 30-second radio commercial is actually 28-29 seconds. Trust me, when you need to fit a very precise timeframe, unnecessary words stick out like a sore thumb.

For example, I recall first learning about numbers in radio/TV spots. The number of days in a year is “three hundred sixty five.” Four words. You might write “365,” but it counts as four words.

My wife taught public speaking on the collegiate level for many years. I remember her saying one of the universal truths of public speaking was “no one knows how to limit their time.”  She would tell me stories of a student giving a required five- minute speech and the introduction taking three minutes. They needed an extra 10 minutes to finish the five-minute speech.

Every person alive has been in a situation where someone else asked for five minutes of their time and took twenty-five.

Rule of thumb – normal paced speech is about 150 words per minute. If you need to speak for five minutes, you get 750 words…not 1,250.

When writers are disciplined by writing for time or word-count, they often find a lot of unnecessary words can be edited out.

Aspiring authors of books often consider books somewhat like untimed media where length restrictions are suspended. This is not true. Using too many unnecessary words slows down the pace of a book and could cause a reader to stop reading, which is not something you want to occur.

Books need to be the most effective use of words, simply because they are longer, you need to hold attention by writing well. You want the reader to turn the page, again and again.

And part of writing well almost always involves removing unnecessary words.

You want to learn how to be an excellent writer? Try writing hundreds of devotionals or scripts for a short-form 90-second radio program. Both require something important and interesting in 200-250 words.

Every word is important.

A while ago, while reading the first page of a manuscript from an aspiring author, I began counting the number of times the word “had” appeared. I stopped counting at twenty in the first couple paragraphs.

I asked the writer how long their complete manuscript draft was. You guessed it…280,000 words. (That’s two hundred eighty thousand for those of you who are radio announcer/word-counters.) Evidently the work originally was 500,000 words and “substantially edited” to eliminate over 200,000.

Yikes. (A technical publishing term for this type of manuscript used throughout the publishing industry.)

The author could have cut the length another 10% by limiting the use of one unnecessary word, appearing 30 times a page!

I could list a number of overused, unnecessary words but most writers with some training know them already.

Writing a book is difficult, especially when an author realizes it is not a puffed up blog post or a no-limits open-mike session in the public forum.

If you write a 70,000-word book, it is relatively easy to slip into “school term paper mode” wrapping 30,000 well-chosen words in 40,000 unnecessary words. But the nature of books, holding someone’s attention for many hours, requires the author’s full attention for every single word they write.

And that is what makes writing books difficult. (Hey, sometimes you can use “that.”)

 

 

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Category: Craft, Writing CraftTag: word count, Writing Craft

Beyond the Hook: Character Flaws?

By Tamela Hancock Murrayon November 9, 2017
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My husband gave me a turquoise ring I enjoy wearing. For one, the stone was unearthed from the Sleeping Beauty Mine in Arizona, which has since closed. The location seems cool to me since our agency’s corporate headquarters is located in Phoenix. And since the mine is no longer in operation, the stone possesses special cachet. But more important, my husband likes the ring and wants me to have it. …

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Category: Craft, Writing CraftTag: Characters, Writing Craft

Beyond the Hook: What Makes Your Reader Care?

By Tamela Hancock Murrayon November 2, 2017
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Any book lover who’s made the hobby of reading a lifelong habit can name stories that kept him reading well past anything else – dinner, chores, bedtime… What makes this happen? The Problem Sympathetic characters can help as a start, but while they serve to draw in a reader, the story’s dilemma itself keeps the reader engaged. The reader can’t put the book down until the characters solve the …

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Category: Craft, Writing CraftTag: Characters, Craft

Beyond the Hook: Writing Sympathetic Characters

By Tamela Hancock Murrayon October 26, 2017
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The first page may be promising. The opening chapters may be engrossing. But a reader might still abandon your book if it doesn’t deliver. How can you keep your readers going? Sympathetic Characters Some writers are talented in creating sympathetic characters from page one. Perhaps Page one occurs during a fire, when the characters have lost everything. Or the heroine has been abandoned by a …

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Category: Craft, Creativity, Editing, Romance, Romantic SuspenseTag: Characters, Craft, Reading

Author Nuances

By Dan Balowon October 3, 2017
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Writer and humorist Dave Barry wrote, “The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion or ethnic background, is that we all believe we are above-average drivers.” The same applies to artists and writers. Most feel they are pretty good at their craft. But success as an author is a complicated mix of factors. If accuracy, neatness and timeliness were the secret to …

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Category: Craft, Creativity, The Publishing Life, The Writing LifeTag: Art, Nuances, The Writing Life, Writing Craft

Books are Not Mass Media

By Dan Balowon August 29, 2017
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A hundred years ago, the most powerful media in the world were newspapers. Newspaper writers and editors were society’s thought-leaders and political kingmakers. The day-to-day influence of a major newspaper was unchallenged, no matter what city or country. They were the first truly mass media, defined as broadly available to everyone at a nominal cost and holding an extremely high level of …

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Category: Branding, Craft, MarketingTag: Branding, Christian Market, Marketing, Message

Every Book is a How-To

By Bob Hostetleron August 23, 2017
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C.S. Lewis famously said, “We read to know we’re not alone.” I think that is true. But I have long subscribed to a similar statement that I see as sort of a corollary to “Lewis’s Law.” It is this: No one reads about other people. We read only about ourselves. Feel free to quote me. And send me royalties. But you might say, “How can that be, Bob? I read a lot of romance novels. They’re fiction. …

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Category: Craft, The Writing LifeTag: readers, The Writing Life, Writing Craft

A Few Little Letters Can Make All the Difference

By Tamela Hancock Murrayon August 17, 2017
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Recently I heard a great anecdote about one little letter. Seems our pastor did a Google search as he researched the parable of the weeds. He typed in “weed” and, well, let’s just say the topic of dandelions didn’t sprout. He had to add an “s” to find the right type of weed. Don’t try this at home and definitely not on a corporate computer. I assure you I didn’t! A couple of weeks ago my husband …

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Category: Craft, Language, Writing CraftTag: Language, Writing Craft

Six Books I’ve Already Recommended

By Bob Hostetleron August 16, 2017
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I have been a literary agent for a whole month now. I’m still waiting for my anniversary letter and gift from the Steve Laube Agency. I’m sure it’s on the way. I would say it has been a whirlwind so far, but that would be a cliché. And clichés are old hat. But I already feel blessed by the interactions I’ve had with clients, potential clients, editors, fellow agents, and others. And what is more …

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Category: Book Review, Craft, Writing CraftTag: Book Review, Craft, Writing Craft

Should I Use Song Lyrics in My Writing?

By Tamela Hancock Murrayon July 13, 2017
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While catching up on newspaper reading, I ran across an article about movie soundtracks and how uneven they can be. The article’s author offered praise for some for adding atmosphere, while opining that the soundtrack took away from other movies. But what about books? Do song lyrics offer atmosphere, or add to characterization? In my opinion, song lyrics are more problematic than they’re worth, …

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Category: Craft, Writing CraftTag: Song Lyrics, Writing Craft
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