REDUCING REDLINE

3 Tips for Writing a Novel Your Editor Won’t Need to Change

There’s a lot that goes into a novel, the most important of which being your heart and soul
(and your cramping fingers). So when you turn it in to your editor, proud of the work you did,
and they send it back covered in bloodred ink, it feels like they just insulted your baby. You
know they do good work, but at what cost?
So you ask yourself, How can I make my novel stronger? What can I fix before I send it off
so that editors don’t have to change every single line? How can I make my writing better?
You could revise your novel about eleven times using each pass to focus on something new:
plot, characterization, dialogue, concision, cohesion, and more. Doing this cuts out all the extra
passes with your editor and leaves more visible paper, but it also makes you spend a lot more
time sitting at your desk.
Or you could focus on three key ideas as you write: building characters, showing instead of
telling, and crafting dialogue. This doesn’t solve every problem, but all three items are the
foundation of your story and it doesn’t add any extra time to the process at all. By strengthening
your foundation, there will be less that you have to change in the long run. And if you’re worried
about missing something—don’t be. Your editor is there to catch all the pesky details that you
don’t.
Now, just keep reading for three quick and easy tips that will help you save your novel from
ink stains in no time at all.

How to Create Strong, Believable Characters

Characters are the core of your story; the plot always depends on how characters react to the
situations you put them in. If you don't have believable characters, the story will be flat, maybe a
little fake, and readers won't relate to either one. And if readers don't connect, there's a good
chance they won't like your story.
So, how do you make good characters?
It's quite simple, really. Sure, characters are complex; you need to worry about stereotypes,
backgrounds, physical appearance, and much more. But that can come later. First, you should
worry about COOTYs.
COOTY stands for character, objective, obstacle(s), Tactics, and Yield. Answer all five and
you’ll be able to design a character that’s directly tied to your plot, and vice versa.
Character
You need to start with your character first. Who is it that you want to write about? What's
their name, their gender, or their occupation?
Take this moment to describe your character. Give them an appearance, things they like,
things they hate, things that make them laugh, things that make them happy or sad. Give them a
few quirks. Readers like characters who are a little off the wall. They don’t want to read about
someone boring or normal. Most people live a normal life.
List a few of the traits down.
Man, thirty-eight years old. Has salt-and-pepper hair. Loves running. Is perpetually
single but is also a serial dater. Drives a big black truck. Wears a high school class ring
on his right ring finger. Puts milk in his bowl before cereal. Is absolutely terrified of
ducks.
These traits become the basis of the character’s actions. For example, say the character
above decides to take a run in the park. In the middle of his third mile, the man comes across a
group of women. What would he do? As someone who continually dates, he might take a
moment to smile and wave at them. But what if a duck suddenly waddled in his path? Would he
scream? Would he dive in the nearby pond and make a fool of himself in front of the women?
Whatever he decides to do will tell you, as the author, where the next part of the story
should go.
For this step, you don’t need to make a comprehensive bio with the character’s favorite
soda, their morning routine, and their favorite songs (unless you want to), you just need to define
the character and what role they are taking in your story.

Objective
This is where your characters become people.
What does your character want? A donut? To rule the world? Do they want to just get
through the day? Or maybe they want to go home early to watch Hallmark movies all night long.
Everybody wants something; we go about our day wanting different things every hour,
every minute. Our desires drive our actions, and that’s what makes us human.
I wake up in the morning and I want to brush my teeth and get ready for the day. So I get
up and brush my teeth.
Give your character a driving motivation, something that drives the story along. It could be
an overarching goal, something they want to get by the end of the story. For example, a villain
would want to rule the world, and their story would be how they go about achieving that goal.
But it could be something more simple, a smaller motivation for every chapter. For example, say
the villain’s main goal is rule the world. But for this one chapter, they want to take over a donut
shop because the donut empire has ties to the black market (and also because they really love
donuts).
When people want something, their actions are more realistic.

Obstacle
It's not every day that things go our way; "You can't always get what you want."
Put obstacles in your character's path. What could possibly happen to them that will keep
them from getting what they want? Will they not have any money for that donut? Will the
meddling hero get in the villain’s way and ruin their plans of world domination? Will they get
stuck with Tiffany's workload at the end of the day and have to work until midnight to finish
everything, thus ruining all Hallmark plans?
Create conflict. Desires might drive a person, but conflict is what makes life interesting.
(Even if you hate it at the time.)
I want to brush my teeth, so I get out of bed and I brush my teeth.
Where's the fun in that?
I want to brush my teeth, so I get out of bed. But it turns out there's a giant racoon in the
bathroom, snarling and holding my toothbrush.
Now that's a story. Nobody wants to hear about some random person’s everyday life, but
they do want to hear about a racoon brushing its teeth with that random person’s toothbrush.

Tactics
So we have the character, we know what they want, and we know what's stopping them
from getting what they want, but what are they going to do about it? How are they going to get
what they want?
The conflict draws the reader in; it makes the story interesting, but how the character reacts
to the obstacle is where the story really unfolds. Will the person who wants the donut go steal
some money? Will they search the folds of their couch and find something shocking? Will the
person who wants to rule the world steal a nuclear missile and level an entire country? Will
Rachel willingly do Tiffany's work, or is she going to sabotage Tiffany and make her quit?
I woke up and wanted to brush my teeth, but I found a racoon using my toothbrush. I
stared into its beady, soulless eyes, and then screamed. I ran for the front door. I could
practically feel it right behind me, those little human-like fingers reaching out for my
ankles. I screamed harder. It was right on me when we reached the living room, and I
went for the first thing I saw, an old umbrella. The staredown ensued, me holding it an
umbrella's length away. The feral trash panda suddenly lunged at the umbrella, and I lost
it. I threw the umbrella as hard as I could and bolted for the door. I made it out, but the
 little fiend refused to follow me. I walked to my neighbor's house and borrowed their
phone to call animal control.
That sounds like a story, right?

Yield
All you have to worry about now is what happens after. Does the person get what they
want? Does the donut-lover get the donut? Does the super villain defeat the hero? Does Rachel
get her hallmark binge? How do they grow after they overcome their trials?
You want to create round characters, so this part is key. If your characters face a conflict that
they have to resolve, stepping out of their comfort zones to do so, they should come out different.
They should grow from their experiences, just like we grow from our experiences in real life.
After Animal control got the racoon out of the house, I went back in. I grabbed a new
toothbrush out of storage and hesitantly walked back into the bathroom, peeking around
the corner to make sure there wasn't a racoon waiting to murder me. Every day after, I
made sure to keep my phone on hand whenever I left my room. Animal control was on
speed dial, and I was on the front-page news as Racoon Girl.
Reasonable ending, right?
Your character's change doesn't always have to be good; both positive and negative change
creates character development. All readers want to see are characters that have grown, and
character development always leads to satisfactory plot resolution.

Start putting these character profiles together before you write your story. Or if you’re
reading this after you’ve already begun writing, answer the above questions and see if there’s
anything you can do to give your characters more motivation. The more believable your
character's reaction, the more the plot will fall into place, and the more likely readers will be to
love your story.

Showing Versus Telling

She was sad.
Her lips trembled, and she tried fruitlessly to see through the wet gathering in her eyes.
Which version do you prefer? Why do you prefer it?
It's quite simple, really; people like learning about other people—but not by hearing about
them. You get to know people the best when you experience emotion with them. You want to see
what's happening instead of having the emotions described to you; that’s the difference between
showing and telling. Showing gives readers the ability to see things from the character’s
 perspective, almost as if they were the character themself. This sort of immersive experience is
what makes the book entertaining.
If you center the structure of your writing around showing, you’ll make stronger characters
and a book that doesn’t need lines of red all up and down the pages.

How Can You Determine If You're Telling More Than Showing?

I. You notice BE verbs everywhere (are, is, was, were, etc.)

I was upset. [telling]
vs.
Heat rose in my chest, up my neck, and into my face until my ears started buzzing.
[showing]
Telling isn’t always bad because having a full paragraph of showing is just as boring as only
ever being told how a character feels. Everything is better in moderation. But being shown how a
character feels lets readers understand their reactions better, so if it comes down to showing or
telling, try showing first.

II. You use adjectives instead of action verbs.

If you were to use adjectives more, you would say "the loud man" instead of "He roared."
Of course, there's a place for everything, but action verbs are always stronger than
adjectives. The quicker you can convey an idea with a strong word that conveys action, the more
impact the description will have.

III. You use a lot of adverbs.

Stronger verbs always carry more weight and description than tacking an adverb before or
next to a verb.
Take "He shouted angrily" vs. "He bellowed." Which tells you more?

IV. You use very a lot.

Use very sparingly. It can be good when there's no better option, but normally, it's
unnecessary and just detracts from showing. Try to cut out as many verys as you can.

But take heart! There are more ways to show than by just using strong action words. You
can use dialogue, names, imagery, figurative language, and more. The most important thing to
understand about showing versus telling is that showing places readers right in the thick of the
action. Too many unneeded description words can slow the story down. Start by just writing
what your character sees, feels, and does as they go about their lives, try changing the words to
actions, and then showing should fall into place.
Actions show more than words ever could.

Better Ways to Say Said with Dialogue

If you write dialogue like people speak, then it will always be believable—grammar
mistakes and all. But what’s in the dialogue isn’t the problem. The problem is what surrounds the
dialogue because those tags tell readers a lot about the characters and their actions.
Dialogue tags are boring enough as-is; there's only so many variations of "he said," "she
said" you can use. If you've spent a lot of time writing, or even just reading, you've probably
heard a lot about using "said" in dialogue.
Said is boring.
There are 100 other ways to say said that will make your writing more dynamic.
Those voices aren't exactly wrong. There are 100 other ways to say said—maybe even a
million.
You can use stronger action words like roared, fretted, agreed, croaked, denied, and many
many more.
"Please stay," she begged.
"Please stay," she said.
Which tells you more?
You can use actions instead of a dialogue tag.
"You don't believe me?" she asked
She flipped her hair. "You don't believe me?"
Doesn't each version say something different about the speaker?
You can even pair action and a dialogue tag for some diversity.
He gulped. "Are you sure?" he whispered hesitantly.
He gulped. "Are you sure?"
"Are you sure?" he whispered hesitantly.
All three say something just a little different. Which one do you like better?
The problem with trying not to use said is that you call attention to whatever you use in its
place. Actions are always a safe bet. Whatever action or description you use in place of a
dialogue tag will give readers more information about the characters without making them aware
of what you're doing (people always want to hear more about their favorite characters).
However . . . words in place of said are considered marked language. When you try to
replace every said with asked, cried, protested, muttered or something else, you immediately
draw the audience's eyes to that specific tag because it has undertones of meaning, whereas said
doesn’t. People won't notice when you use said too much because it’s a placeholder—yes, it's
boring, but they're almost blind to it. So, if you've already used too many replacement verbs, said
is the safest choice possible. Then pair it (or those other replacement words) with some action to
center the readers in the scene, and you've mastered dialogue.
In short, when in doubt, said your way out.

Books are long and complex, and just getting the first draft down is hard enough. But when
you have to deal with thousands of edits later, the process can seem pointless, even despite your
best intentions. Instead of suffering through edits that frustrate you or trying to review your first
draft a million times, you can build your plot around your characters, show emotion and action
more than telling, and strengthen your dialogue by implementing the three methods above, a
system that will greatly improve the foundation of your book. And if the foundation of the book
is good, the only thing left that will need to be redlined out will be the smaller details. And only
having the smaller details left with save you time, energy, and heartache (and your editor’s red
pen).
Take the time now to work on the core of your book using these three easy methods, and
hopefully the editing process will begin to feel a little easier too!