From Procrastination to Page-Turner

This is our final blog on Anti-Procrastination month. Time for a status check. If you took the challenge, how did you do? If you didn’t officially take the challenge, maybe all this talk of anti-procrastination subconsciously affected you and you crossed off some projects from your to-do list.

My plan was to make it through Margie Lawson’s Deep EDITS lectures. I will be done in a few days. Hooray!

Trouble is, when Margie says deep, she means deep. Going through her lectures, I am applying the material to only the first three chapters of my current WIP. Yes, I’ve spent over three weeks editing three chapters.

Throw in a side trip led by Stephanie to www.storyfix.com to read Shutter Island and work through the story deconstruction, and I’ve studied a lot of craft this month.

In Margie’s lectures she encourages you to not be satisfied with a scene you would rate at a 6 or 8, but make each a 10. She gives lots of tips on ways you can write to subconsciously make your book a page-turner.

My head all full of her lectures, I sat down with my latest stack of books. Usually, I have three or four going at once, in various locations around the house. But there is one book that I keep passing over. I’m making good progress through it. I am enjoying it. But when I’ve got a quick minute, I will reach for a different book.

So what is it about my slow-moving book? It suffers from a lot of missed opportunities and uses very few rhetorical devices. Different techniques the writer can use to provide an interesting read.

One of my favorite techniques is backloading.

When your paragraphs end with interesting or powerful words, you want to read on.

Pre-edit, my middle-grade novel’s first paragraphs ended like this: it, said, aloud, paper

Changing a few words around to backload, my paragraphs ended more like this: silence, disappearing, strange.

Which paragraphs do you think provide a more interesting read? I may have already had those colorful words there, but rearranging them to the ends of my sentences and paragraphs should help propel the reader through my work faster. Can you say page-turner?

But then, I got to the lecture about MRU’s. Yes, the motivation-reaction units. I still struggle with these little guys, and they messed up my nicely backloaded paragraphs when I had to change the paragraph breaks.

No wonder deep editing is taking me so long. And when my three chapters are done, I’ve got to continue on through the rest of the WIP. But hey, when I’m done. Those first three chapters will be ready for a submission!

Note: Margie Lawson was our month-long guest back in January. If you want a taste of her deep edits, just take a peek into the archives.