Flabby writing

The best writing is tight and spare.

This doesn't mean it can't be evocative and descriptive.  Don't confuse descriptions, scene setting or any of the slower paced parts of your story with flabby writing or blubbery sentences.

What is flabby writing?

This can include unnecessary adverbs or adjectives, jargon or cliche, saying the same thing in different ways, or just simply overwriting - giving the reader too much information.

A few slimming tips

Reduce the number of adverbs by choosing more appropriate verbs.  Adverb-laden writing is often lazy writing.

Get rid of adjectives that seem more like subjective opinion than objective description (unless you are writing in first person or close third person and are using these to tell us about the narrator's attitudes).

Some adjectives are meaningless fillers.  What is the difference between exact same and same?  Previously done and done?

Watch out for adverbs that are not providing information:  very, really, totally, completely, extremely, decidedly.

What about sentence components such as "the fact that" or "as follows" or "one of the aspects"?  Are they earning their keep?

What other ways can you think of for cutting back on flab.

Readers everywhere will be grateful

Is first the best?

A first person narrator tells the story in the voice of one of the characters. The voice must reflect the character's age, background, ethnicity, culture, gender and attitudes.

It can be a useful way of getting this sort of background information across to the reader and making them closely identify with the character, but there are also disadvantages:

• The narrator has to be present at all the key scenes.  This has implications for the story structure.
• Experiencing the whole story from the close perspective of one person can be claustrophobic.
• Does the narrator need a reason to be relating the story?  Does the story need a frame? This is less an issue for stories written in the present tense.
• If the story is told in past tense, the narrator is an older version of the character and is remembering the events in the story.  This introduces temporal distance - it feels less immediate. 
• The reader is also aware that the narrator knows how the story ends and that the narrator character cannot die in the story.

These are challenges even for an experienced writer.  But what happens in less experienced hands?  Sadly the first person voice can end up either distant or exaggerated.  To be really effective, the narrator must have attitude and the narration must reveal character.  

First person narration is difficult.