Over the weekend, I worked through some of the final
rewriting steps of the fourth book of the Fair Warrior Chronicles, Cassandra.
I'm writing several months ahead of deadline, trying to stay in
front of a book-a-month publishing schedule given to me by eXtasy Books. When I'm about done with a story, I turn to
the eXtasy editors' list of Ugly, Weak, or Overused Words.
There's no such thing as an ugly word, only a word in the
wrong place. Using the list helps me look at each sentence and paragraph of the
story with a new eye. Some of the words
on the list can be rattled out of a sentence like a loose tooth. Others are
more deeply imbedded, and will take other words with them if they are
extracted. These require either a
rewrite, justification for leaving the sentence as it is, or removal of the
whole sentence. By the time I go through
the list, I've usually removed a thousand or more words from an 18,000 or
19,000 word manuscript.
The eXtasy editors also recently recommended a proofreading program
called Perfectit. (I think that means Perfect It, not Perfec Tit.) The program
is a step up from the grammar editor in Word.
I wouldn't rely on either one as a judge of sentence structure, but the
programs will catch word omissions and other items that are easily overlooked. Perfectit is a little prim. It assumed some of my favorite pieces of
erotic fiction vocabulary were typos.
Maybe the software company should develop an erotic version of the
program, one that won't have a problem with cock
and cunt.
No comments:
Post a Comment