Skip to main content

The Road to Hell is Paved with "Thats"

Hi everyone! Sorry for the absence last week. I was feeling a bit sick and couldn't get a post up but I'm back and excited for March. Next week I turn eighteen which is a little exciting and a little scary at the same time.
                                                 (And this gif of the Doctor is pretty much me when I realized I'll be eighteen in eight days!!)

I'm pumped because I just sent out the first chapter to an editor friend and will hopefully find out how much she'll cost and then send in the entire manuscript of Weapon Icean for professional editing. The process is a little nerve racking but also exciting since I've never had an editor look over one of my works before. It's another step closer to getting Weapon Icean published!

Update: I'm also working on book 2 which has had a bit of a rocky start but I'm pushing through and also will have a synopsis of Weapon Icean up here soon.

But anyways, now that my update and exciting news is done I have something to say about the road to hell. I'm not sure where I heard this quote or who said it but it's stuck with me for a long time. Someone said, "The road to hell for writers is paved with adverbs." Now I know most writers have a mutual hatred for adverbs. I sometimes despise them too, especially with how many sneak into my writing but I would say that my writer road to hell is paved with that's. I was going through Weapon Icean and could not believe how many "that's" were in there! It was ridiculous but it just made me realize that every writer has that one word -- or several words that always seems to get into their drafts and sometimes even bogs down their writing.

Personally, I don't mind adverbs too much. I actually sort of love them and I think they have their place. Where others tend to destroy any and all adverbs from their story I tend to keep a few here and there. But after going through and killing as many "that's" as possible I've come to realize my pure hatred for that word. Especially when it comes to it being in my manuscript and ruining some of my sentences.

Go Teen Writers did an excellent post that talked about weasel words and phrases that I found super helpful when it came to my "That's" problem. I also found that my characters did a lot of shrugging, grinning and nodding and I had to diversify and fix up that whole little mess too. Marissa Meyers post on how she edits and revises books helped me get through my manuscript as well and so I thought I'd share the links to the two posts to help you guys out too. You can find the Go Teen Writer post Here and Marissa Meyer's post Here. I hope they're as helpful to you as they are to me.

Have a great rest of the week everyone!

What are some of your weasel words and phrases? What's your road to writer's hell paved in?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How to Revise like a Pantser ft. Big Hero 6 Gifs

Happy Wednesday everyone! I hope you've had a great week so far and that you have a great Easter weekend ahead! We plan on going to my grandparent's on Friday to celebrate Easter with family and spending the night there so that'll be a fun time. :) Alright, so I contemplated doing an Easter-y post on here but I wasn't even sure what that would look like... So instead, I thought I'd do something fun and happy in honor of the celebration of Easter on Sunday. Without further ado, here is your Big Hero 6 gif filled revising process from a real life pantser: The end of your first draft is in sight! You type like crazy, stay up past your normal bedtime until it is finished. When you type The End, the satisfaction that you actually did this thing sets in. Guys, it is the sweetest feeling ever. Knowing you worked so hard to complete this draft and came out on the other side. Unscathed? Perhaps not. But triumphant? Definitely! That first draft is a total disast

Cover Reveal: Golden Touch!!

 Happy Tuesday!!  Today's the day! I turn 23 and I couldn't think of a better way to celebrate than to share the cover for Golden Touch! I think this is by far my favorite cover my mom has ever done. It's crazy to think that this time last year Golden Touch was still just a first draft and I was in the middle of writing book 2 of the series. A defining part of my twenty-second year will always be having revised Golden Touch and written almost the entire Archive Series. And now I get to open up my twenty-third year with sharing the cover and writing book the first draft of book 5, the very last book in the series. God is so good guys. I really think He gave me Golden Touch and this whole series a few months before the events of 2020 started. He gave me a story I could get lost in, I could find joy in even during some of the hardest times of the year. And now I get to share the cover and I get to close out the series and I just pray and hope that God will use Golden Touch and

How to Write a Negative Character Arc

Anyone else love reading a train wreck? I find negative character arcs refreshing and fun to read and watch because not a lot of people do them. Like I'm a sucker for a redemption arc. I love characters that start out horrible and bad and "irredeemable" and then slowly redeem themselves and become the good guy. But from time to time I just love watching a good character go bad. Call me evil but I hope I'm not the only one who enjoys this. I've actually wanted to write this post for a while after rewatching Merlin last year and then over the past month me and a friend were rewatching Star Wars and I've always enjoyed the prequels because of Anakin's downward spiral. Also the last season of The 100, you watch as Octavia completes her journey to becoming one of the meanest, worst antagonists in the show. And that's saying something. The other day I really thought about what other characters who have negative arcs there are but I honestly couldn't th