Links to Writing & Marketing Blog Posts PLUS More "Thoughts" on Editing

Continuing with another post on editing, I found this last night and immediately started through my manuscript. I found dozens of thought words. It’s a struggle to rewrite the sentences, but doing so, definitely improves them. Try it!

Craft: Maybe It’s Not the Thought That Counts 

By: Chuck Palahniuk

From this point forward—at least for the next half year—you may not use “thought” verbs. These include: Thinks, Knows, Understands, Realizes, Believes, Wants, Remembers, Imagines, Desires, and a hundred others you love to use. The list should also include: Loves and Hates.

That’s Chuck Palahniuk with the kind of writing-craft concept that can make others seem fairly lame. But only when he gets into the examples he offers in his Tumblr post, Thought Verbs. Initially, this sounds like deploying active rather than passive verbs, right? That, by the way, is great advice, and is and have come under their own, brief scrutiny in this write. But there’s more to what Palahniuk is suggesting than that. Here’s an example of what he’s saying:

Click here to read the complete article

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Here's a page from my manuscript The Last MacKlenna. The sentences with the word "remember" are listed in the left hand column. There are 27. I'm working my way through each of them. I changed the example below to this: 

Before: The alarm on Elliott’s cell phone beeped, waking him from a night of unsettling dreams that he couldn’t remember, yet he felt weighted down by them.

After: The alarm on Elliott’s cell phone beeped, waking him from a night of unsettling dreams. Images and emotions were beyond his grasp, yet he felt weighted down by them.

Happy writing & running, Kathy 

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If you missed my writing & marketing tweets and retweets yesterday, here they are again: 

1. In Defense of Organic Writing - GalleyCat http://ow.ly/nPlk4
2. "Dishin' It Out": SIX WAYS TO GET TO KNOW YOUR CHARACTERS BY RITA KARNOPP http://ow.ly/nPuS8
3. 19 Things Successful People Do on Social Media – via Forbes | Jan Moran http://ow.ly/nPuXD
4. 5 Tips for Launching a Product On Your Blog Without Annoying Your Readers : @ProBlogger http://ow.ly/nPv25
5. 2 things an agent isn't - Books & Such Literary Agency : Books & Such Literary Agency http://ow.ly/nPv6n
6. No More Excuses: Find An Editing Partner — First Today, Then Tomorrow http://ow.ly/nPv7U
7. Know your characters… | J.E. Tankersley http://ow.ly/nPvcD
8. Wordplay: Helping Writers Become Authors: 5 Ways to Limit Your Character's Options - and Make Your Story Better http://ow.ly/nPve8
9. Self-Editing for Everyone Part 4: The Weakeners - Bridget McKenna http://ow.ly/nPvgO
10. 5 Examples of How Hyphens Help http://ow.ly/nQlqe
11. Perspective, Opinion, and Point Of View — Distinctions That Matter To Writers & Readers — First Today, Then Tomorrow http://ow.ly/nQn6E
12. The 10 Most Used Smartphone Apps In The World [CHART] - AllTwitter http://ow.ly/nRGgj
13. Wordplay: Helping Writers Become Authors: Where Should You Begin Your Story? - An Excerpt from Structuring Your Novel http://ow.ly/nRGkA
14. Using the Subtext of Body Language in Storytelling - Amazing Stories http://ow.ly/nRGGh
15. When is it okay to stop reading a book? | Iain Broome http://ow.ly/nRGKv
16. Writers: Have Your Characters Ever Fought Over The Protagonist Role? | Creative Writing with the Crimson League http://ow.ly/nRGPm
17. Are We Done with Free Yet? - Books & Such Literary Agency: Books & Such Literary Agency http://ow.ly/nRGZ6  
18. The Collapse of a Writing Routine by Frances Kazan http://ow.ly/nRHf 

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