Writing Tips From Literary Consultant, Jeffrey Moores

Last Wednesday night Jeffrey Moores, former literary agent and current literary consultant, critiqued AgentQuery Connect members’ passages from their manuscripts over in the AQ chat room. He dispensed a ton of advice and tips, and 17 of those sweet writing tidbits I will share here.

1. If you can, skip using ‘first’ and ‘then’ to introduce action. It’s filler. Example: First she stood up, then she whirled around.

2. Instead of using two or three descriptor words, find one ‘good’ word that encompasses it all. His example: Instead of “sudden dead stop”, try “jerked to a stop”.

3. On adverbs (those words that end with ‘ly’): “Adverbs are usually weaker constructions that you could replace with more active verbs.” My example: He quickly ran to the store. He bolted to the store.

4. Use your verb choice to show your character. As Jeff asked, “how would grandma move across the room?” Wheel? Shuffle? Jeffrey added: “These are what I call “COMPOUND DETAILS”; those which show us an aspect of character development or theme or scene, while moving us forward at the same time.”

5. Don’t stuff a lot of details into one sentence. Do you have details you want to highlight for the reader? Focus on one per sentence and relate them to a theme or the character’s mood, etc. Justify why you are focusing on that detail. Save your details for the right moment.

6. When creating a scene, be careful how many images you throw at your reader. Allow time for them to sink in. Start with what is most pressing/important or sets the scene the best. What detail do you want to be the strongest? Give it the attention.

7. Delving into a character’s history needs to be warranted. There needs to be a reason for breaking the action in order to give some history.

8. When using words from another language or technical words that your reader may not know, add contextual clues so the reader can guess the exact meaning. Either that or use a narrator to explain what it is.

9. Hook your reader by putting the action first, then once you have them seeing a scene and wondering how your character ended up in this situation, move into telling, background, etc. to fill in the facts they need to know.

10. On other kinds of action… Actions causes reaction. Start by showing the action that propels the character and then move into the reaction. Show us what they see, then show us how they react. If something makes the main character yelp, show why they are yelping before they yelp.

11. Want to up the action? Speed things up? (Say you have a murder scene or a fight scene where you want to bring your reader to the edge of their seat and things to be happening one right after another.) Skip the ‘and’s linking those actions together. For example, instead of setting it up so this happened then that and this and this. Go for the jugular. This happened. That. This. That.

12. Early on, decide what your character’s level of smarts will be and what kind of things they will notice and in how much detail. Word choice and detail awareness create a character. For example, do they see erratic zigzags or 1 inch slices at regular intervals? Base the reaction and detail awareness on the character who is noticing the details.

13. Read aloud to hear the rhythms of you word choices, sentence lengths, etc. Anywhere you run out of breath or stumble, the reader will as well.

14. ‘Show’ when you can. Don’t tell the reader he was shocked or the mutilation was savage. Give us the details, let us draw the conclusion that this character is shocked and this is a savage mutilation.

15. Ensure your comparisons are equal. Don’t compare a cut to the bone to a papercut.

16. If you are using both second and third person point of view in your novel, break them apart so they are in different ‘scenes’.

17. You can start your novel with dialogue, just ensure that it isn’t between too many people and the scene and setting is immediately recognizable so you don’t lose your reader.