Micro Editing Cheat Sheet

by Deb McLeod

A lot of the writer’s craft time is spent on the macro side of things – does the story follow an arc? Does the character change from beginning to end? Do my scenes have conflict? Move the story forward? Are all of them necessary? But the macro edit is only step one in the editing process.

Next comes the Micro Edit.

There are many ways you can go about your micro edit. In taking a class with Pam Houston one time, she told us how she micro edits. She reads the first sentence, makes changes, rereads and tweaks until she’s happy with it. Then she reads the first sentence and the second sentence together and any changes she makes are based on the relationship between the two. Then, she moves on to the first, second and third sentences together – and so on. For the whole piece! If you’ve ever read her work, you know her writing is smooth, vivid, and so, so tight.

I wonder if one of the things she’s reading for is rhythm. Not only do the words need to make sense, and make sense in context, but they also have a rhythm the reader hears. You might read for rhythm by reading out loud. If you can hear the music of the words, you can hear where it jars.

Micro Edit Cheat Sheet

One of my favorite clients developed what she calls her cheat sheet to track recurring issues I would point out in her work. Because she used this cheat sheet before she sent me anything, her writing improved dramatically and soon she didn’t need the cheat sheet. She had changed her habits and her writing was smoother, cleaner, and far more powerful.

If the sheer pleasure of micro editing doesn’t get you excited to create a cheat sheet of your own habits, then think about this:

If you are pursuing traditional publishing, there are lots of ways to get rejected by editors and agents. Not mastering the micro edit should not be one of them. Then new trend at conferences is for an agent or editor to read an anonymous submission and stop where they would if they received it in their office. Then they tell the audience what made them stop and why they would reject it.

• Dialogue tags can get you rejected. 
• Too many adjectives or adverbs can get you rejected. 
• A prologue can get you rejected. 
• Telling rather than showing can get you rejected. 
• Just plain weak writing will get you rejected. 

There are many more issues that can land you in the No pile, but so many of the above reasons are avoidable. So let’s look at some of the micro issues you can include on your cheat sheet.

WARNING – Some of what you’re about to read will rankle the grammarians. But remember, I’m talking about fiction. In fiction, in my world, grammar serves the story. Not the other way around. But also know that I’m the writer who had an agent pursue me, express that she really wanted to represent me, but she couldn’t until I rewrote my entire manuscript. She said I couldn’t write the way I do. “It’s fine,” she said, “to write this way when you’re established.” (Sentence fragments! Paragraphing with impunity! Established writers write this way. Is that a compliment? Or did she just call me lazy?) “But until you are established, you have to prove you can write, so if I represent you, you’ll have to rewrite the whole book using the accepted tenets of grammar.”

Yeah. No. Compliment or not… Who’s next?

Micro editing cheat sheet or pick your grammar fight

Paragraphing – I have a friend who has her PhD in Linguistics. She told me once that you never bury an image or a powerful sentence in the middle of the paragraph. Lead with it or better yet, break the paragraph just after the powerhouse sentence or image. In the nanosecond the reader’s eyes take to move from the end of the paragraph to the beginning of the next paragraph, your image or powerful sentence is resonating in the brain before any new information is brought in. So toss out all those old grammar lessons from elementary school and break your paragraphs where they have the most effect. Even if it’s in the middle of things. The grammarians will hate that, but the readers will respond. And this is fiction right? Grammar serves the fiction not the other way around. Are you with me?

Dialogue Tags – I’ve written about this before and in a Facebook discussion just today I learned that dialogue tags other than ‘said’ or ‘asked’ can get you rejected by some editors or agents. For them it is a signal that the writer isn’t seasoned and it’s likely that the rest of the manuscript will show that. So why risk it? Use ‘said’ or ‘asked’ and save the creative tagging for a just few times during the novel when you can really use the punch. But too many times writers rely on the tag to tell the reader how to read the line. Notice the phrase ‘tell the reader.’ Telling, rather than showing. Rewrite without the creative tag, add an action to clarify and paint the picture for the reader. Your dialogue will be better for it.

Tenses – check your tenses. I don’t have anything creative to say about these. Just make sure they agree throughout. Are you writing in past tense, present tense or in some pluperfect time warp? Whatever. Write the thing the same way all the way through.

Point of view - avoid head hopping, unless it’s intentional. And if it is intentional, it must have a solid reason to be there. Every time you break point of view you risk losing the reader. So be sure you really have to do it, before you do. But do break point of view if it serves the story and ignore all the POV police in your critique group. Just do what I do… I say, yes I know it’s head hopping. Then I tell them why I’m doing it, what effect I’m going for. I quote a few of the greats who use it for effect, like Hemingway and Jennifer Egan and say my favorite critique group phrase: “Yes, it breaks the rules, and writer that you are, you caught it, thank you. But would it make you close the book?”

The trick to point of view changes is to be absolutely sure you have anchored the reader in the point of view. The best way to do that is through a sense. If you switch from Dick to Jane and you want that to be clear, simply give Jane a sense right in the opening of the point of view change. Ex: Jane heard the key rattle in the lock. That can’t be in anyone’s point of view besides Jane’s, right? She heard it. So the reader is anchored.

The second trick to changing point of view is not to do it too often. Head hopping implies that it changes too much. Unless you have a great reason to head hop, keep the point of view in one person for a while, then switch, or create a pattern. Your readers will thank you, though they won’t know why. Unless they’re writers and then they’ll tell you that you can’t do that.

Ing the wishy washy – one of my favorites. I could write a book on –ing the wishy washy. How many times have you read or written a sentence just like this: “I don’t have to go,” she said, picking up her book, plopping into the chair, and putting up her feet. I’m exaggerating with the clauses. But that rhythm of dialogue + tag + -ing verb (“I don’t have to go,” she said, picking up her book.) is so overused there needs to be another word to describe it – like trite, tired, worn, banal, weak!

There are rules about gerunds and past progressives which make my eyes cross. Suffice it to say two things about –ing verbs. Many times they force the sentence to use the ‘to be’ verbs (is, was, etc.) which are the weakest verbs in the vast collection. And secondly, listen to the rhythm of a paragraph with too many –ings. Read it out loud. Soon all you can hear is the sing-song -ing.

Power verbs – So let’s talk about verbs. Power verbs. Pull a paragraph and highlight all the verbs you used. All of them. Then rewrite the paragraph using more powerful “showy” verbs. Read aloud. Did you go over the top with too many from your thesaurus, or is your writing more vivid now? Power verbs add punch to the sentence. Make sure the verb fits the emotion you’re trying to evoke in the reader.

Adjectives and adverbs – I agree that, in general, adjectives and adverbs should be avoided. They, too, weaken the writing if used too often and too many will get you rejected. Use a few, now and then. Use the right one, in the right place and your sentence will pop. John Gardner said: “Wilson rocks slowly and conscientiously – a startling word that makes the scene spring to life (adverbs are either the dullest tools or the sharpest in the novelist’s toolbox).” I think that’s the correct quote from Gardner to Raymond Carver.

So, until you’ve gone through the micro edit, your work isn’t done. Even if you’re going to send it off to an editor, like me, do the nitpicky, it gives your editor more time to focus on other issues they may find. And, if you’re sending to an agent, you’ll be less likely to be rejected for something besides the story. If they’re going to reject you, shouldn’t it be because the story isn’t right for them? Not because they jumped to a conclusion that you were an unseasoned or undisciplined writer?

Characterization Through Setting

By Karen Albright Lin


You’re typing away on your amazing action scene. Your heart races. You love your protagonist and want to knock your antagonist down. But down to what? Unless your story takes place in zero gravity like the hit movie, readers don’t want to float ungrounded through a plot, even one with well-drawn characters. We crave a sense of place, we want it to matter, and we want its description to be reflective of the POV character’s personality.

A sense of when and where your story takes place offers context and tone, and helps us better imagine your tale. It helps us believe these people you’ve created are truly living it.

Readers need more than a character wandering through a nondescript park. Are there children giggling on a jungle gym? Is there a sheepdog wrapping its leash around its owner? What is the vegetation? How does it smell? Are there bird droppings dotting the sidewalk or dirt path?

It’s not as simple as creating a list of facts about the locale. We bump up our prose several notches closer to marketable by conveying POV characteristics and mood through HOW those details are described. To one character, splotches of bird poop might paint an abstract masterpiece leading straight to the cocoon of a turret-crowned church. Another may grumble as he navigates through the maze of filthy bird shit.

Make the experience of setting unique to your character. He is an eyewitness and, as is true of all witnesses, his perceptions will be affected by his mood and his nature.

Dialogue and action are only two layers of characterization. The narrative, your internals, should also include every one of your POV’s senses plus her interpretation of what is in her environment. For example, let us know which country we’re in through sounds and smells. Maybe it’s the turmeric-raison pungency of Morocco. Through setting we also get a feel for its culture.

Don’t bore us. Sprinkle details into your narrative a little at a time. Steinbeck’s pages-long descriptions would not be as tolerated by today’s impatient readers. A few vivid descriptors go a long way.

If your setting creates a believable backdrop for your tension, epiphany, or action, you’ve painted a tangible moment that your audience will experience vicariously through your POV’s senses.

Texture, weather, and atmosphere are all important parts of your setup. They add power to your narrative. Close your eyes, imagine you are your character. What’s around you? How do you feel about it? Then share it with us.

About the Writer:  Karen is an editor, ghostwriter, pitch coach, speaker and award-winning author of novels, cookbooks, and screenplays. She’s written over a dozen solo and collaborative scripts (with Janet Fogg, Christian Lyons and director Erich Toll); each has garnered international, national and regional recognition: Moondance Film Festival, BlueCat, All She Wrote, Lighthouse Writers, Boulder Asian Film Festival, SouthWest Writers Contest, and PPW Contest. Find out more at www.karenalbrightlin.com.

POV Faux Pas

By Linda Rohrbough


I spend time thinking about Point of View (POV) as a concept in fiction, because this is the one area where even experienced writers make the most mistakes. Let me define what I mean by POV – at a core level POV is how the story is told. I’ll start by saying there’s really two kinds of POV, and two major POV mistakes in popular fiction. Want to guess which POV mistake is mostly likely to keep you from getting published? And want to hear about a way to use POV to get unstuck in a story? Read on.

The first kind of POV has to do with the mechanics of how your fictional world is presented to the reader. What I’m referring to here is what we commonly call first or third person. First person uses the pronoun “I” and the story is usually told in real time. (The story can be told as “this is what I remember,” but I think real time is stronger and more popular with readers.) Third person is a lot more distant and the story can be told in the past as well as the present.

(As an aside, who in their right mind would craft a novel in second person? You have probably heard of someone with an English literature fetish who has done it, but it’s either first or third person in popular fiction.)

First person is the scary POV for me. I haven’t tried it. In first person, the character is telling the reader the story first hand in real time using the pronoun “I.” Where this gets tricky is the reader can only know what the character knows. In this mode, there are all kinds of ways to make a POV faux pas that pulls your reader “out of the bubble,” meaning they get disjointed and lose contact with the world you’ve created for them. (Readers hate that, by the way.)

The most common example is when a character says or thinks another character is afraid. How can the viewpoint character know that? That’s a POV slip. Not that you won’t see this slip in print from an experienced writer. You absolutely will. But technically, you’re not supposed to. However, as long as the reader isn’t pulled out of the bubble, the author can get away with this boo-boo.

The boring fix is to use dialog - the second character says, “I’m scared.” Now your POV character knows because they’ve been told. But this works in a lot of cases.

The interesting way to manage giving the POV character information about other characters is to describe things your POV character observes in the behavior of other characters. This allows the reader, along with the POV character, to conclude the emotional state of another character. Body language is the biggest “tell.”

For example, what are the physical reactions produced in the body by the emotion fear and how do they manifest? Blood runs away from the extremities, so the hands and feet get cold. The teeth chatter in extreme cases. But more often people rub their hands together or on their arms or thighs. The eyelids pull up so someone observing would notice more white around a character’s iris. And yes, I know these examples are cliché. But you get what I mean. When I’m stuck I use Google and type in “physical reaction to fear” (or whatever emotion I’m looking for) and see what comes up. Usually that’s enough to give me a spring board to figure out what I need to do.

What you want is a fresh way to describe this stuff. Readers are pretty sophisticated so unless there’s a reason to use a cliché, I try to avoid it. What I do a lot is watch people everywhere I go. (I had a creative writing professor in college say fiction writers are just glorified gossip columnists. I suspect he was right.)

Of course, what’s even more fun is to let the reader and the POV character conclude something based on observation, which actually turns out to be something else. That’s what readers love - to be tricked but in an honest, clever, interesting way. That’s what I try to go for in my work. And that’s what I think is the pinnacle of achievement in fiction writing.

However, there’s a second meaning for POV - how the character sees the world. This is the most common area where errors are made and this error can keep your work from getting published. It’s critical to have characters with a viewpoint. And that’s the same whether the work is written in first person or third person.

Let me put this another way: the character has an opinion. Hopefully, a strong one. And when that character takes us as readers into their confidence, it draws us into the story. That doesn’t mean the character’s world view is your opinion. It might be. The work (and the fun) is figuring out what this character will think, do, and say in a given situation. What makes fiction interesting is to place characters in situations where they are uncomfortable or even in danger and then have them react to figure a way out.

Of course, the most obvious way to accomplish a character with an opinion is to write in first person. It’s also one of the reasons first person fiction sells so well. The character must have an opinion in first person because there’s no way to write a character that doesn’t have a POV.

I promised you I’d give you a way to use POV to figure a way out when you’re stuck. One of the tricks experienced writers use is to rewrite a scene or a chapter changing the POV. Change the POV from third to first person. Describe the scene from the POV of another character other than the one you originally started with. Maybe retell the scene from the viewpoints of several different characters. Sometimes this works to stir things up so you see the work differently, and that might get you unstuck. Rewriting the scene from different points of view is one of those things you want to have in your bag of tricks for those days when it seems the well has dried up. (You’re welcome.)

That said, we’ve come full-circle in this discussion about the two kinds of POV in popular fiction, the two most common mistakes, and even a way to use POV to get yourself unstuck during a dry spell.
How about you? Have you tried first person? Does it scare you? Got a favorite POV? What is the POV of your main character in the story you’re writing now? These are important questions to ask yourself and I hope they’ve shed some light on your current work in progress.

About the Author: Linda Rohrbough has been writing since 1989, and has more than 5,000 articles and seven books to her credit along with national awards for her fiction and non-fiction. New York Times #1 bestselling author Debbie Macomber said about Linda’s new novel: "This is fast-paced, thrilling, edge-of-the-seat reading. The Prophetess One: At Risk had me flipping the pages and holding my breath." The Prophetess One: At Risk has garnered three national awards: the 2012 International Book Award, the 2011 Global eBook Award, and the 2011 Millennium Star Publishing Award. An iPhone App of her popular “Pitch Your Book” workshop is available in the Apple iTunes store. Visit her website: www.LindaRohrbough.com.

Scene Writing Series, Part VII - POV

By Jax Hunter

Greetings Campers, time to move on from Setting. On to Point of View. 

POV. It’s not a topic that comes up much within the screenwriting sources, but, in my ongoing discussion of putting scenes together, I’d be remiss to not touch on POV.

POV, for our purposes, is the particular character viewpoint within each scene. Now, if you’re writing in first person, you will have different concerns than the author that is writing in third person. However, you still need to be concerned a bit with POV.

The rules of shifting POV are changing as writing changes. You will find that most how-to books instruct the beginning writer that he should write the entire novel from one character’s POV. Some say that changing POV for each chapter is acceptable, while a few claim it’s okay from scene to scene. Rarely, you’ll find an “expert” say that it’s okay to head-hop within a scene.

I remember,  as I was learning to write, being nearly hamstrung by all the POV rules. I became the POV Nazi and grumbled when my favorite authors would slip from inside their hero’s head to inside their heroine’s. Now, I’m a bit more relaxed, but I’m glad that I have never lost my awareness for POV.

Last week, I began reading the book Ireland, by Frank Delaney. I have to admit to being a bit thrown by his use of POV. It might simply be that he uses omniscient POV, or it might be he head-hops even within paragraphs - next time you’re at the bookstore, pick up this book and read the second paragraph.  

Here’s the Jax Rule: Know when you’re switching POV and have a good reason for it. Oh, and be clear about it when you change.

How do you know whose POV a scene should be written in? Often, we’re told to write in the POV of the character that has the most to lose in the scene. That’s good advice. But sometimes you’ll want the other character to watch the first character suffer. The best “rule” is to write each scene from the most dramatic POV. Often, what isn’t seen is much more important to show the reader than what is seen. This is especially true when a character is acting “out of character” and you need the reader to know why. Sometimes that means writing the scene from each POV and then choosing the best one. 

Hey, that sounds like great homework to me. Give it a try this month. 

Remember, the POV character can’t see himself  (except for the cliched mirror scene that even Dan Brown used in DaVinci Code) and can only guess what the others around him are thinking. When you’re showing a scene from Rick’s POV, you will only see, hear, smell, and feel what Rick’s experiencing. Rick can THINK that Lily is angry (from her body language and from his expectation of what she’s feeling) but Rick can’t know for sure. 

How many POV’s can you use in a book? The rule of thumb is that you use as few as you can - only main characters and very important secondary characters. I find that, in romance, it’s very difficult to NOT write in both the hero's and heroine’s POV. Aside from that, I like to have at least one “mentor” type character that gets some scenes in his POV. Sometimes, it’s necessary to have a few scenes from the villain’s POV, as well. 

Remember, if you only write from one POV, then that character has to be in the room for each scene. This is also true when writing in first person.

So, again, when can you change POV? My suggestion would be to, at the very least, attempt to keep each scene in a separate POV. I have to tell you, though, that some scenes (especially in romance) will be better with two POV’s within the scene as the characters react to each other. 

When I finally broke down and used two POV’s in one scene, I wondered how to do it so my reader would know who was “speaking.” So I dragged some romances from my shelf and studied them. Most of them shifted POV by simply starting the shift with a paragraph that began with the new character’s name. Since I write romance, I study how romance authors do it; you should do the same with your target genre. You can learn far more from reading good books than you can by reading how-to books.

I guess the upshot is that you simply need to be AWARE of the POV at all times. Recently, I was in the midst of edits for Rick and Lily’s book that comes out in September. My line editor caught each POV change within a scene and I had to defend each one. One I changed, the rest I defended successfully. 

Okay, enough said about POV for now. If you need more information, I send thee to the Google. (Before I leave, though, you have to check out this article on POV, it’s a scream.)

Until next month, when we take a look at set dressing, BIC-HOK (Butt in Chair - Hands on Keyboard).

Jax (www.jaxmhunter@gmail.com)

(This series first ran in the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers newsletter in 2005.)


About the Author: Jax Hunter is a published romance writer and freelance copywriter. She wears many hats including EMT, CPR instructor, and Grammy. She is currently working on a contemporary romance series set in ranching country Colorado and a historical romance set in 1775 Massachusetts. She lives in Colorado Springs, belongs to PPW, RMFW and is a member of the Professional Writer's Alliance.

Point of View – Rules and Breaking the Rules by Karen Albright Lin

Point of View is a tricky thing. The popularity of each approach varies over time. First person (especially in Young Adult books) and deep 3rd person have the benefits of connecting directly to the reader and drawing on empathy early to maintain that sense of personal-stakes-in-the-conflict (when done well with a fascinating character). In the current reading climate I vote for a novel limited to one POV in a scene, if not chapter, if not entire book.

In my own books, I've mixed it up. I've used a single 3rd person POV in an entire book, 3rd person alternating (every other chapter) between two characters, and a more complicated method of three POVs - two of them 3rd person protagonists and one 1st person serial killer.

I tend to have a personal theme running through my books that is essentially: "The bad guy is a misunderstood good guy." That requires that I paint skin-crawling, dangerous bad guys that have motivations that can be understood and even sympathetic to the good guy and reader by the end. This is particularly tough to pull off with a character that kills, but being deep inside the antagonist and slowly revealing the cause of his/her behavior is easier to pull off using very deep 3rd person or 1st person. It is a challenge, for sure, the reason I didn't attempt it until my fourth book.

If we decide to change Points of View within a scene, each change in POV needs to be handled so deftly that it is a huge challenge (or more simply handled with a drop down as a signal). Rarely can a writer pull off abrupt changes in POV with no signal.

Omniscient is still used, as is 2nd person and present and future tense, but they often fall into the experimental category now rather than popular fiction. I frequently catch slips of POV in popular fiction, but in the context of deep 3rd person POV it is often ignored, forgiven, or missed by readers (unless they are also writers or editors who are trained to flag the slips - you should see me putting sticky notes into novels - sometimes it is a curse to be an editor). It isn't a cardinal sin, just head-bouncing if done frequently. And editors give less leeway to new writers - thus my seeming obsession over it.

In the spirit of "exceptions proving rules," if you'd like to see every writing guideline broken in an amazing, magnetic and shocking way, capturing even the Pulitzer Prize, take a luxury dip into TINKERS by Paul Harding. If I tried my entire life, I couldn't do what he did. I believe devoted writers, on the other hand, could do something off the beaten track after 100% mastering the more accessible POVs. A strong writing voice would carry the reader over the waves of atypical craft - not because it is easy to read, but because it is poetry to the heart. TINKERS may have still worked and had a wider readership if Harding had stayed within today's expectations. We can't know for sure.

Do you have any favorite books that break POV "rules" successfully?

I'd love to hear about them.

(Originally posted at the Sisters of the Quill blog on July 6, 2011)

About the Writer:  Karen is an editor, ghostwriter, pitch coach, speaker and award-winning author of novels, cookbooks, and screenplays. She’s written over a dozen solo and collaborative scripts (with Janet Fogg, Christian Lyons and director Erich Toll); each has garnered international, national and regional recognition: Moondance Film Festival, BlueCat, All She Wrote, Lighthouse Writers, Boulder Asian Film Festival, SouthWest Writers Contest, and PPW Contest. Find out more at www.karenalbrightlin.com.

The Points of POV by Cindi Madsen

At this year’s Pikes Peak Writers Conference, I sat in on Debra Dixon’s Point of View workshop. One thing Debra said again and again was, “You can do anything you want to do in fiction, as long as you do it well.”

I guess the trick is doing it well, then. Easy enough, right? When you get ready to start your novel, you’ve got to decide which point of view to go with. Remember, POV delivers the POV character’s agenda, not the author agenda.

First person is presentational, intimate, and an inside job. Third person is representational and as it happens. With third person, you can choose to use omniscient or limited points of view, getting in really close to our character. Decide how your story is going to work. What will your reader need to know? What do you need to keep from your reader? How can you do that with the POV you choose? And if you have multiple POVs, when do you switch? Debra suggested choosing the character who has the most at stake. Shift when the emotional weight changes or if suspense will be increased. After we discussed these points, she listed six stages of POV.

1. Observation

How does your character see the world?

2. Join in action

Make your character do something

3. Perception (here’s where we start getting deeper into the character’s POV)

What are things that skew how they see things?

How would they say it? (This is where a strong voice comes in)

4. Thoughts

Show the inner thoughts. Show us what they think about the things they’re doing and perceiving.

5. Emotions

Add emotions to the thoughts/actions/perceptions. Put us there with the character. Make us feel what they feel.

6. Deep immersion

Blend 1-5 into one paragraph.

So whichever POV you’re using, think about adding all of these to your characters, until he or she becomes a living/breathing person. Watch for descriptions that might pull a reader out of POV.

For example, unless your character is cocky, a sentence like, “He moved gracefully from one corner of the room to the other,” even in narrative, displaces you from the character a bit. Add that voice in. How would your character describe himself or herself? A good way to tell if you’re moving out of intimate POV is to ask yourself if you’d think or say that about yourself. Would I say, “My smile tipped up at the corners of my mouth?” No, but I might say that about the guy I’m checking out. Would I say, “I ran a hand through my silky, wheat-colored hair and blinked my sapphire eyes?” Probably not.

Even in your narrative, the voice of your characters should shine through. So take a look at your descriptions and see if you can put their POV spin on it. See if you can’t add more perception, thoughts, and emotions so that your characters become the friend your reader is sad to leave at the end of the book. Good luck!

About the Writer:  Cindi Madsen sits at her computer every chance she gets, plotting, revising, and falling in love with her characters. Sometimes this makes her a crazy person. Without it, she’d be even crazier. She has way too many shoes, but can always find a reason to buy a new pretty pair, especially if they’re sparkly, colorful, or super tall. She lives in Colorado with her husband and three children. Look for her YA novels, All the Broken Pieces with Entangled Publishing, and Demons of the Sun with Crescent Moon Press to be released Fall 2012. More information can be found on her website: cindimadsen.blogspot.com