Lesson 8

Writing style, sentence structure, and wording Lesson 8
 Welcome back to another great class. I hope your week was filled with great inspiration. Now that you are on your way into writing your book, take a break and read through for mistakes. While you’re doing that, make sure that all your sentences flow.

Writing Class 101 by Rick Kurtis
I find myself writing one way, and when I read it out loud, I say it another way. For example, “She threw out the bathwater. / She threw the bathwater out.” With bathwater at the end, it is a sentence. With the word out at the end, it is left open, unfinished. She threw it out where? The door, the window, and where is the baby? Follow your common sense and reword your sentences. I think it is all part of my dyslexic-ness, or my lack of the English language, my letter grade D all through English class. I never understood verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, prepossessions, and adverbs. I think I am forgetting one or maybe two. See, I told you so. 
Also check out your book for a lot of long, drawn-out sentences. If I have to take a breath while reading one sentence, it is too long. Break it up and reword. But then again, that’s just my opinion, like an arsch bloch, we all have one.
I have picked up bestseller novels and found run on sentences using and, comma, along with and then, but, while, and had to take three breaths to get to the end of a twelve line sentence, that went on forever without stopping from the beginning to the end and used up, or should I say added roughly 120 words to their writing style in making a novel when all they had to say was the sun rose up this morning from the horizon. Really? Publishers and editors let this fly? Why? Because those authors are vested, or financially backed by the publishers. We are not.
Another thing to look out for are repetitive words. My wife says I do this a lot. Such as; huge, or great. Look for synonyms to give your book more flavor. (His hands were huge, the boat was huge, her eyes grew huge, this is a huge mistake.) I also catch myself using ‘oh’ a lot in my dialogue starts. I have heard that people get annoyed with seeing the same word pop up over and over again. Now if it is the mental attitude of the character and he always says ‘yeah, I know,’ then that’s okay. Like for-sure, man.
One person wrote, “Who always says the person’s name when they are talking to that person?" (“I don’t like that, Rick," she said.) I get it, and I am guilty of that also. But you want your reader to know to whom they are talking to. Sometimes you need to, but try to avoid it. Rewrite it in a way so action takes a part. (Sarah turned her nose up and handed the plate back to Rick. “I don’t like that.”) I lengthened my book and deleted she said, which also gets repetitive. Enough said.
Many great writers want to wow you with their intelligence, and use big fancy words to articulate their book. I think it is a crock. I won’t lie. I basically flunked English and my spelling is atrocious. Thank goodness for the Dragon program and spell check. My wife also hates to read a book while holding a dictionary just because she has to look up what the word means, and she excelled in English, and loves to read. I say, keep it simple to understand so they can flow through the book getting to the next chapter. You don’t want them to stop, lose the plot, or put the book down to go find the dictionary and then never finish reading the book. If this is the case, they won’t buy your next book. If you want to use a big fancy word, work it in and explain through the characters on its meaning. “You said a what?” “Ratatouille. It’s a small little rodent that hides in a hat." Make it educational without getting a dictionary out. Who even has a dictionary anymore? Oh, writers.
A lot of editor guide lines that I have read hate certain words such as was, of, when, and some say said. My pet peeve is ‘got.’ I say it, I use it, I write it, and I also hate it. I think it shows my ignorance. I work hard to keep these words in mind while I write to restructure my sentences using a different approach. Sometimes it is inevitable or unavoidable, but ‘was’ comes up a lot and if they see it in the first sentence of your book they will reject your book and go on to the next manuscript of 6000 manuscripts that they receive every month. Although, I have seen it used by best sellers in the first paragraph.
There are so many more that everyone has opinions about, and if you have questions, please send me a line and I will answer to the best of my opinion in order to help. It may also make another blog for me to share.
May your dreams come true as you follow through your week. Coming up is writing style which is more prevalent. Enjoy your week and
 Happy Writing from rickkurtisbooks.com