After organizing critique groups in Raleigh twice per month for several years, we developed an eye for picking out cliches, dangling modifiers, adverbs, and other traits of weak writing. I have picked three simple tips out of the many things that catch a critiquing writer’s attention. If you are writing independently, participating with a critique group, or ready to send your manuscript out to agents, run your completed work through these steps and try to employ self-editing techniques in your future writing to make it stronger.
- Hook it. I’m starting with the hook because it is, well, first. Your first line needs to grab the reader’s attention immediately. In about 50% of the critiques I have done, one of my recommendations is to cut the first few paragraphs and/or relocate a strong line from another page to the first line on page one. You should be able to discern the quality of your hook yourself, but ask for the gut reaction of a read-through by a fresh pair of eyes.
- Quickly find the adverbs. Find the adverbs as fast as an Olympic runner after chugging two venti caramel macchiatos laced with steroids. Adverbs are opportunities. They are also a sign of weak writing. Do Ctrl+F and find ‘ly’ in your word processing software. Highlight each of your adverbs and re-write the sentence by using your creative license to create a unique description. These are perfect places to employ metaphors where you can express your own voice. See the first two lines of this tip as an example.
- Find and replace “filter words” as often as possible. Filter words (realize, wonder, think) are typically used around cliches. Employ your vocabulary and skills of description to write without these crutches. You can read more about filter words here.
I don’t limit the practice of these methods in my fiction and memoir writing; I use them in my poetry as well. Removing adverbs is especially important in poetry because your reader has a condensed piece and every word needs to have the strongest purpose possible.
I’ve been working my way through my fall reading list (yes, it is winter) and, when it comes to descriptive metaphors, I find diamond after diamond in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. I will leave you with an example:
I slid into the self-service elevator and pushed the button for my floor. The doors folded shut like a noiseless accordion.
Write Naked 
I kind of disagree about the ‘hook’ – or at least in fiction and poetry. I think of that as the Kafka school of writing, and sometimes a zippy title or first line leads to disappointment. Where would Henry James be today if his first lines were hooky? Or about hookers? (I know, I know, probably “being still read in schools.”) Anyway, I like being drawn in gently, even with shorter fiction and poetry, rather than being wow’d super fast. I know that many, or maybe even most of my favorites did not hook me in this way – I love Balzac’s The Black Sheep (which I am reading now) but for the life of me I don’t remember the first line – I guess I could pick it up and look. And for every Dickens’ “It was the best of times” there’s a “Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.” (BLEAK HOUSE.)
As for metaphors (actually, similes here) I think I have told you my favorite a billion times, from Richard Brautigan describing the firing of a shotgun: “It lets go with a huge slow-moving bullet like a fat man opening a door.” Man, I love that man.
Don’t you think an effective hook is one that keeps you reading, not necessarily stays in your mind after being consumed in the story? Maybe hooks are more important in today’s publishing (rather than the classics) because writers that go the traditional route need to catch an agent’s attention in order to move to the next step.
Me like the Megalosaurus line!
Oh, I love Sylvia Plath. Another great post, thanks!
She is one of my new favorites! Glad you enjoyed. 🙂