The countdown begins!

In the spirit of Christmas and with only twelve days left to this celebration, I wanted to write a checklist that we can use when revising our work (hopefully before we open our gifts). 

1)      Read, read, read! You can get inspired, emulate style, and learn more about your genre by reading someone else’s work.

2)      Read your story aloud.

3)      Have a fellow writer read it.

4)      Strengthen your scenes by being an actor and playing the main character (or any character you may think is weak). Relive the action in your head.

5)      Polish your dialogue; make sure it flows and it’s not contrived.

6)      Check the tone. This means the author’s attitude toward his subject: grave, amused, scientific, intimate, aggrieved, authoritative, whatever.

7)      Make every word count; that means use strong verbs and adjectives.

8)      Keep in mind the story arc. The purpose of a story arc is to move a character or a situation from one state to another.

9)      Let the plot guide the story. A short story must immediately pull the reader out of her world and drop her into the world of the story.

10)  Put your work away for a few days and then come back to it. Tired eyes never see mistakes.

11)  Punctuation is everything, period! Be mindful of your commas, semicolon, and especially those exclamation marks; they’re not Christmas tree ornaments.

12)  Edit, edit, edit! You can never do enough editing. Any good writer knows that editing is at the top of the list, like the star at the top of the tree. 

Do you use a checklist? Are you counting your days to Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, or getting published in 2012?

The Perfect Equation: Reading + Reading = Developing Your Own Style

You may be questioning the title of my latest post. Well, I got inspired to write about it because I am reading Ernesto Sabato’s The Tunnel, whose controlled and factual style, I find fascinating.

One of my mentors once said that writing cannot be taught, only learned. He further explained that a writer can only learn by reading and writing. Lecturing about style was not enough, he told us. Each writer develops his/her own writing style by reading a lot of books, he then added. You can learn from the Masters but you cannot duplicate their style.

Well, it turns out he was right. I’ve noticed (and my mentors, too) that my style has evolved since I started writing and continues to do so. I owe it all to the many books I’ve read and my mentors, of course. When I write, I fuse different styles and make them my own, always keeping in mind what works better for the story.

Do you think your writing style has changed over time? Whose style do you emulate?