As I near “the End” of my book, revisions cast their dark shadow over my future.   *cue menacing music* dun dun dahhhhh .

While I’ve been writing, I’ve stopped and made comments on a page in my journal called the “To Be Revised” page.  I decided that instead of stopping constantly to fix the things I was sure would need to be fixed later I would write them down so I could remember them when I trotted back through. 

Though many of my “To Be Revised” notes are specific and of no use to you (and of questionable use to me), there are some that seem general and perhaps applicable to everyone.  Here are a few snippets:

-          Check for any adverbs I can avoid

-          Plot out motivation to make certain it is consistent throughout

-          Check for plot holes

-          Strengthen verbs

As I read back through these notes, I started surfing around online to find other writing rules that might help direct me through my revising.  Here are some fun ones:

Kurt Vonnegut’s eight rules for writing fiction:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

– Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1999), 9-10.

Sort of an interesting take, huh?  I particularly like the cockroaches bit.

Here’s George Orwell’s list, though it’s more grammar driven than fiction driven:

1.       Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2.       Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3.       If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4.       Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5.       Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6.       Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.

George Orwell, Politics and the English Language (Horizon, 1946)

That last one is the greatest reminder to me not to get carried away trying to follow ”the rules.” 

In the end, there are always exceptions to every rule.

What writing rule do you have the most trouble with?  What writing rule do you think is complete bunk?  What writing rule do you think is vital to good fiction (my personal favorite being show, don’t tell)?