Creative Writing Barbara Daniels
1. Whose story is it? Revise to move the point of view closer to one of the characters.
2. Use first person narration only if your narrator is interesting. If not, consider switching to close third person.
3. Get a character into trouble in paragraph one or two.
4. Listen to your characters. Let them speak.
5. Get to the body. How does it feel? Show your characters in action. Help readers hear and see them.
6. Complicate the story. Is there another character you can add? Another plot twist? If you have three ideas for stories, try putting them all into one story.
7. Surprise yourself. Don’t paint yourself into a corner. Allow things to happen and see where the story goes.
8. Cut the story apart to separate the scenes. Are there too many? Try reordering the scenes. Is there summarized material that should be dramatized in scenes?
9. Have you found the focus of your story so that it seems to tell itself?
10. Evaluate your summaries. Have you used sensory, evocative language that leads to the scenes that follow? Can some of your summarized material be cut?
11. Look at your backstory (your exposition or indication of what happened before the story started). Do you need more? Less?
12. Have you remembered to show rather than tell?
13. Put in some grit to counteract sentimentality. Emotion is good, even essential, but normally you’re better off not signaling it too early or too clearly.
14. Subvert formulas. What can you change so your characters and plot are less predictable?
15. Vary distances, describing from a greater distance and then zooming in.
16. Don’t kill people to resolve plots. If violence is necessary, see if it can result from a character’s personal qualities or actions rather than be a random event.
17. Lie. Just because something happened in real life that doesn’t necessarily make it credible in a story.
18. Try adding DAT—description, action, or inner thought—to most lines of dialogue.
19. Look at your paragraphing. Is it inviting to readers? (Very long paragraphs may not say “Read me.”) Use paragraph breaks like line breaks in poetry to control the pace of your work.
20. Does your story start with an alarm clock going off? Try starting later in the day after the character is already in the middle of some activity that propels the story forward.
21. Don’t end with “And then I woke up.”
22. Try the plain past tense (“Herb coughed”) rather than the past perfect (“Herb had coughed.”)
23. If you’re using the present tense, reconsider. Does it impart immediacy and speed? Is that gain worth the loss you may have of thoughtful reactions by your point of view character?
24. Make two big lists of possible title ideas, one from the story and one not.
25. Check your punctuation of conversation. If it’s not conventional, be sure it’s done consistently and you have a justification for doing it that way.
26. Consider closing space break transitions or opening more of them. Indent paragraphs so readers can find your paragraphs easily.
27. Search for the word “you.” Is it confusing? Might readers react against it?
28. Condense. Test to see if the words “that,” “just,” “suddenly,” “somehow,” and “very” can be cut. Are your repetitions meaningful, or can they be cut? What could go out if it had to?
29. Anton Chekhov advised cutting the first three pages of drafts of stories. Would your story be stronger if you cut the first part, perhaps the first few paragraphs?
30. As a rough rule of thumb, do you have conversation on nearly every page? Consider using direct quotations instead of summarized dialogue if the conversation changes something in the story.
31. Have you used ALL CAPS and !!! marks in ways that detract from your story?
32. Do your intentional fragments and run-on sentences contribute to pacing and characterization or is there a chance they’ll look like mistakes?
33. Have you proofread carefully for errors?
34. Does your story present a vivid, continuous dream, unmarred by distractions you do not intend?
35. Look for two good readers for your work, one who loves every word you write and one who can help you see where to revise.
36. Read until you feel like writing. Look for stories that speak for you but also for fiction that surprises or annoys you.