Weekly Wordcount
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What is This?
Weekly Wordcount is a post-NaNoWriMo attempt to continue writing a reasonable amount throughout the entire year. Everyone sets their own wordcount goals for a week, giving their own values to draft, edit, blogging, and collaborative writing.
How Did I Do?
My weekly wordcount goal is set to 1,000. According to my GoogleDoc Spreadsheet, I hit 1708.25 words this week, in a combination of new drafts and editing
That’s above my goal, but a little bit low for where I want to set my goal. I think I may modify my spreadsheet to have a column called “excuses”, wherein I detail the things I did instead of writing. I can’t recall just what I did this past week instead, but I somehow doubt it was as important. I have a feeling it begins with an ‘F’ and ends with an ‘armville’ and that is just not acceptable. My farm is hereby on probation.
- Choose Draft. Hasn’t been that hard to squeak out words in months. Finished it, though, and I’ll start the polishing tonight. If writing were easy all the time, NaNoWriMo wouldn’t exist!
- Blue Moon Chapter Edits. I also had the husband look it over, and some of his comments made me realize a spot or two that I should modify to keep the characters likeable.
- Song of Binding Edits. Very slowly coming along. I’m doing the fine-toothed comb routine because I only want to do this once.
How Did YOU Do?
Anyone else? How did you do with your writing goals? Remember, we’re not here to judge, we’re here to encourage. =]
Writing Tip of the Week
Unnecessary modifiers are unnecessary.
Unnecessary modifiers inflate writing. One of the ways a writer can tighten up their work is by removing the unnecessary bits.
So, what IS an unnecessary modifier? Distracting adjectives, adverbs, and clauses. It’s not that they don’t contribute – the problem is writing bloat.
The squirrely little toady man sneered wickedly. Without a backward glance, he spun on his heels, cape flashing in the midday sun and one hand twirling his waxed mustache, and cackled triumphantly as he stalked away. Tied to the railroad tracks, Trixie the Helpless Heroine struggled painfully against her bonds, screaming wordlessly into the tight cotton gag between her teeth, tears drawing tracks through the thin layer of dust settled on her cheeks.
So that’s what bloat looks like. Some of that’s a little obvious (if I’d thought about it, I’d have saved some bits from my actual drafts, which are almost as inflated as this monstrosity!)
Let’s deflate it, shall we?
Sneering, the toady man twirled his waxed mustache.
Removed “squirrely” because although it’s a FUN word that might give the reader the impression that he moves in quick, unpredictable jerks, it might also give the impression that he’s got buck teeth, is adorable, and hoards nuts. Removing the word actually makes the sentence read a bit more smoothly.
Removed “little” because it’s unnecessary. Plus, why does the bad guy have to be little? Removing the word made the sentence read better. When in doubt, go with a single descriptor.
Removed “wickedly” because it’s pretty well implied with the word “sneer”. Heroes do not sneer. Only villains do.
I also borrowed the mustache twirl from a later sentence because THAT sentence is way too bloated, and it’s just not a classic villain without the mustache twirl.
Aaand I rearranged the sentence a bit to put “sneering” at the beginning rather than “the”. Personal preference, there, to try and break up the sentence structure a little.
Cape flashing in the midday sun, he spun and walked away, certain of his victory.
“Without a backward glance” could be removed without impacting the meaning of the sentence (and let’s be honest – the original sentence has a few too many extra clauses!).
Replaced “cackled triumphantly” with “certain of his victory” because we’ve already got the cartoon villain sneering and twirling his mustache. I don’t think the readers are taking him seriously enough. I mean, come on, he’s the villain! He should be at least a little competent, right?
I liked the cape flash and the indicator of setting, so I kept it.
I combined the verbs “spun” and “walked” so the reader could get a better sense of action.
Removed “on his heels” because really, what else is he going to spin on? Unless I’ve specifically mentioned that he’s got some sort of gyroscopic top that he rides around while doing villainous deeds, most readers are going to read “he spun” and mentally add “on his heels” without me spelling it out. Reading it both ways, I found the one using “on his heels” to be clunkier and less smooth.
Removed “stalked”. Sure, maybe he did turn leonine there at the end and slink away…but more likely, he just walked. The thesaurus is our friend, but sometimes trying to use a “creative” word instead of a “boring” word just makes the reader stumble. “Said” and “Walked” and “Asked” are all beautiful, invisible words. Allow your reader to stay in the story by using them. Though if he really did stalk, then feel free to use the word. My villain walked.
Tied to the railroad tracks, Trixie struggled against her bonds, screaming into her gag.
“The Helpless Heroine” removed – by now, the reader should know who she is without you having to remind them. Unnecessary clause.
“Painfully” removed – she struggled, that’s enough. She may FEEL pain because of the struggling, but a mental read-through with and without the word “painfully” had me preferring the one where she just struggled. It gives me more freedom as a reader to imagine her struggling however I like. It’s pretty unlikely that I’m going to imagine that she’s struggling comfortably.
“Wordlessly” removed. I don’t think it negatively impacted, but it didn’t necessarily help the phrasing, either.
“Tight cotton” and “between her teeth” removed – a gag is a gag is a gag. “Tight cotton” was unnecessary, as was “between her teeth”.
“Tears drawing tracks through the thin layer of dust settled on her cheeks” This one I removed because I believe it could be better done. I’ll address that in just a moment.
Let’s recap. The Old:
The squirrely little toady man sneered wickedly. Without a backward glance, he spun on his heels, cape flashing in the midday sun and one hand twirling his waxed mustache, and cackled triumphantly as he stalked away. Tied to the railroad tracks, Trixie the Helpless Heroine struggled painfully against her bonds, screaming wordlessly into the tight cotton gag between her teeth, tears drawing tracks through the thin layer of dust settled on her cheeks.
The New:
Sneering, the toady man twirled his waxed mustache. Cape flashing in the midday sun, he spun and walked away, certain of his victory. Tied to the railroad tracks, Trixie struggled against her bonds, screaming into her gag.
The new is pared down pretty far. I would probably go back into this and fluff it back up with RELEVANT details. The fact that it’s dusty, the fact that she’s crying, how does she feel, what is she doing? Why is she crying? Perhaps because she can hear the not-as-far-off-as-she’d-like hooting of the train whistle in the distance? She’s afraid. Her breath is probably coming in panicked gasps. She’s probably choking on the dust. She might be thinking about her Dudly Do-Right and hoping he’s on his way. Maybe she’s more resourceful – maybe she’s struggling with purpose. Has she got a knife tucked into her boot? Maybe she knows some key element to the villain’s plot, and she’s desperate to stop him and save the town.
The first version was inflated with useless information. Now that it’s been streamlined to its core, we should test the quality of what we put back in. We could make it more absurd or more serious. We could focus on Trixie and make her a three-dimensional character. We could focus on the villain, follow him as he callously leaves her there to die.
The options are endless, but I’d say we did a pretty good job of removing unnecessary modifiers from the writing. It’s like pruning the dead leaves and old flower heads from a plant – it now has room to breathe and flourish.
Exercise?
If you’d like, feel free to take that first version and do your own restructuring and pruning. What would you do differently than I did? Or, if your own writing suffers from bloat, take a passage and see if you can pare it back a little. Do you like it better this way? Maybe you prefer the more florid version.
Old: The squirrely little toady man sneered wickedly. Without a backward glance, he spun on his heels, cape flashing in the midday sun and one hand twirling his waxed mustache, and cackled triumphantly as he stalked away. Tied to the railroad tracks, Trixie the Helpless Heroine struggled painfully against her bonds, screaming wordlessly into the tight cotton gag between her teeth, tears drawing tracks through the thin layer of dust settled on her cheeks.
New:The wicked little toad sneered and spun on his heals. Cape flashing in the midday sun, without a backward glance he cackled triumphantly as he twirled his greasy mustache and walked away.
Struggling against here bonds, Trixie the Helpless Heroine screamed wordlessly. Painfully she gagged on the cotton rag stuffed into her mouth as tracks were left in the dust on her face by futile tears. (can tears be futile?)
gah, stupid support calls interrupting my train of thought (train? get it?)
.-= rhotley´s last blog ..Winter Hiatus =-.
*laughs* I like “toad” rather than “toady man”!
And I’m sure Trixie is glad of any derailed trains right about now!
If the purpose of the tears was to make her feel better or the villain feel worse, these were definitely futile.
And then there’s the copyeditor, who would want to put most of those subordinate clauses AFTER the action…
You: Sneering, the toady man twirled his waxed mustache. Cape flashing in the midday sun, he spun and walked away, certain of his victory. Tied to the railroad tracks, Trixie struggled against her bonds, screaming into her gag.
Me: The toady man twirled his waxed moustache and sneered. Certain of his victory, he spun and walked away as his cape flashed in the midday sun.
Trixie struggled against the bonds holding her to the tracks as she screamed into her gag.
(we should already know what kind of tracks, no?)
(Oh, and…my version’s rather boring.) ;)
.-= Steve Hall´s last blog ..Copyediting 1A: Nitpick Your NaNo =-.
@Steve
We should indeed know what kind of tracks by now, so depending on how it was nestled betwixt other information, “railroad” could be dropped as well.
Always good to get a copyeditor’s point of view! If I submitted this and my editor made that note, I would tip my hat and happily rearrange the sentence. ^_^
Eeee, this is the perfect post for me. I’m currently editing my NaNoWriMo and am rather surprised to discover just how overly wordy I am. Thanks for all the tips!!
.-= Pike´s last blog ..In Which There Is Much Cane-Waving =-.
@Pike
Hee! I’m so glad it helped!
Somehow this slipped the rather slithery surface of my attention up to now. *frown*
Last week I wrote the new chapter of Feather Path, which is just shy of two thousand words, which was my goal. It went through a major rewrite today and is finally up. That means I am just ubelow my goal for last week and will totally fail this week, but social like plus a rather bad cold had me unable to write for most of this time. Hey, still three days to crank out two thousand words this week! *squares shoulders and prays to a random muse*
P.S. In my opinion the whole example should be rewritten so that the toad is tied on the tracks, Trixie twirls her mustache, and a bunch of funny rodents sing inebriated songs about tulips. *nods*
.-= Iris´s last blog ..Feather Path: Chapter V =-.
@Iris
That’s quite a lot of words, lady! And the only way to fail is not to write. Goals are useful, but shouldn’t be measurements of success. <3
I like your version of the train scene. XD