Just Do It: False Starts, Late Deaths, and Appearances by John Robert Marlow

PUSSYFOOTING AROUND

There are several things wrong with this sentence: “Frank was visibly upset when he
started to cross what appeared to be a street.” Strictly speaking, there may be nothing
grammatically incorrect here. Stylistically, though, it’s a train wreck—and would be even
if Frank hadn’t died fifty pages back. Simply put, the sentence pussyfoots around, wasting
time and space. This post will help you to avoid doing the same…

FALSE STARTS

Some authors feel the need to precede a great many physical actions with the word
“started” or “began.” Instead of saying the character walked across the room (or street),
or raised a glass in toast, they’ll say he started to walk across the room, or
began to lift the glass. In most cases, this is not an occasional eccentricity;
writers who do this once tend to continue the practice throughout the entire story.

If a character lifts a glass or walks across a room, say he lifts the glass or walks across the
room; don’t bog the story down by saying he started to lift the glass or began to cross the
room. Both are long-winded, unnecessary and distracting ways of saying the same thing.
Have your characters take Nike’s advice and just do it.

Exceptions include situations where you’re setting up the choreography for a subsequent
action or action scene or sequence. In such cases, it may be very important to know, for
example, that Bob has started to cross the street. but has not yet reached
the other side, when the Bugatti Veyron screams around the curve doing two-fifty.

Or that, say, Rain Man is only halfway across the intersection when the DON’T WALK sign
starts flashing. (Note that the word starts is appropriate here because it’s tied
to action: the sign wasn’t flashing when Rain Man stepped into the street—and when it
starts to flash, he stops walking. Note also that it’s okay to switch tenses in the previous
sentence.)

GHOSTS

Somewhat like their namesakes, literary “ghosts” are phantoms of departed scenes and
characters which linger on to haunt your pages. Changing something in one scene often
affects events in other scenes. When we fail to realize this, or neglect to track down and
alter all of the other scenes that need to “match” the one we just changed, we create a
ghost.

In the course of my editing, I’ve seen lost or sold items reappearing in their owners’
possession, individual scenes and entire subplots that have absolutely no remaining
connection to anything else in the story, characters who appear to be doing something
important in one scene but are present nowhere else, a party taking place in a home that
burned to the ground in a previous chapter, and deceased characters who carry on as if
nothing had happened—driving to the post office, playing baseball, making love.

Each of the individual scenes made perfect sense at some stage in the story’s history.
Later changes turned them into ghosts. If not hunted down and excised—or
exorcised—such ghosts can result in a story that appears to have been hastily or sloppily
constructed.

When revising or rewriting, give some thought to both the overall and specific effects of
the changes you’re making. Ask yourself what else must be added, altered,
or deleted to “match” what you’re doing now and bring the rest of the story into line with
the new changes.

Sometimes the answer will be obvious: if Andre is now killed by a pack of wild vampire-
rabbits on page forty-nine, he won’t be having dinner with Priscilla on page eighty-two—
unless he has exceptionally large ears, and Priscilla is on the menu.

Other slips may be less obvious. As a general rule, the more tightly woven your plot
becomes, the greater the chance that any one particular change will ripple outward into
other scenes. Perhaps the ultimate expression of this can be found in the film
Memento, where—because the scene order runs backward instead of
forward—the deletion or significant alteration of any single scene would cause the entire
plot to collapse.

Working with an outline makes it easier and faster to spot most ghosts, but doesn’t get
you out of a final ghost-hunt: after you’re done with the final revision, you must reread
the whole thing one more time, killing any ghosts you find along the way. Better they
meet their end at your hands than spook an agent or publisher into viewing your work as
shoddy.

There are no exceptions here: all ghosts must go.

TRUE APPEARANCES

Like false starts, this habit is tough to categorize. Authors subject to this compulsion tend
to precede their descriptions with “seemed” or “appeared.” For example: “On the table
was what appeared [or seemed] to be a bowl of fruit.”

Now, if the object turns out to be something other than a bowl of fruit—say, a cleverly
disguised surveillance device containing cameras, microphones, heat sensors and motion
detectors—this is perfectly acceptable.

But when (as is usually the case) it really is just a bowl of fruit on the table, this phrasing
becomes unnecessarily long and convoluted—a distracting affectation that makes for an
awkward read and takes up far too much space saying, essentially, nothing.

Like the false start, this issue tends to be habitual: an author who does it once will usually
do it dozens, if not scores of times over the course of a manuscript or screenplay.

When describing ordinary objects or events that are exactly what they seem to be,
describe them as just that; do not tell the reader that they seem or
appear to be exactly what they are.

When you look at a table with a bowl of fruit sitting on it, you don’t think to yourself,
“Hmmm. That seems to be a bowl of fruit sitting there on the table.” You
think: “Bowl of fruit.” So does your reader. And so, too, should your characters.

Exceptions include things or events that are not what they appear or seem to be. (”On
the table was what appeared to be a bowl of fruit. On closer inspection, Henrietta found
it to be a cleverly disguised surveillance device.”) Also things that are unlikely to be what
they seem to be, even if they turn out to be exactly that. (”On the table was what
appeared to be a dead alien.”) In such exceptional cases, you are in effect voicing the
character’s skepticism.

A third and rarer exception would be a character who, for whatever reason, doubts that
things are as they appear to be. This could be due to a psychological problem, previous
experience, unfamiliar surroundings, etc. In this case, also, you’re conveying the
character’s skepticism.

VISIBLIES

It’s a medical fact that one in every twenty authors will at some point come down with a
case of the visiblies. Writers with this malady find themselves writing things like “Sarah
was visibly upset” and “Jimmy was visibly shaken.” Why not simply “Sarah was upset,”
or “Jimmy was shaken?” Because unless otherwise informed, readers will expect the
reaction to be visible; adding the word visibly becomes redundant
and—particularly with screenplays—marks the writer as unnecessarily wordy. (Some
directors and actors might even consider such additions to be infringing on their turf,
telling them how to do their jobs.)

Exceptions include situations where, say, a particular character who has been presented
as stoic, expressionless, or adept at concealing his emotions becomes visibly upset or
shaken—because now, rather than repeating old information, the word visibly
is conveying new information about something that runs counter to reader expectations.

CONCLUSION

While stylistic liberties may be taken by accomplished writers and talented beginners, the
habits mentioned here are awkward, distracting, and unprofessional. Ghosts, on the other
hand, can crop up on anyone—but professionals banish them before sending out their
material.

Author John Robert Marlow is available for professional editing, development, and consultation. If you’d like help taking your work to the next level, contact John here.

JRM

copyright © by John Robert Marlow
all rights reserved

Blah, Blah, Blah: Overdescription, Exposition, and Stage Direction by John Robert Marlow

THE BLAHS

Have you ever attended a lecture, or sat in a classroom, or watched a video where the speaker droned endlessly on about what should have been an interesting topic? After a while, the eyes and ears glaze over, and all you really hear is “Blah blah blah…” Don’t let that happen to your writing…

OVERDESCRIPTION

Overdescription is a common malady. The primary symptom is a tendency to OD on description, going into endless detail about things that ultimately don’t matter. The author may “see the movie in his head,” even if he’s writing a book.

Driven by a desire to convey this vision to the reader in its purest form, the writer mistakes quantity for quality—and embarks upon a frenzied attempt to describe every factual detail of each scene, no matter how small.

From the color and style of clothing worn by each character to the year, make, model, color, and general condition of their cars, to the wallpaper, floorboards, carpet, furnishings, knick-knacks, architecture, temperature and humidity of each room, to ongoing descriptions of every street, sidewalk, building, lamppost, passerby and blade of grass—it’s all there in excruciating detail; a frenzied minutiae. Some writers do this nonstop, from first page to last. Others suffer from occasional bouts of descriptitus.

Instead of ODing on overdescription, realize that your purpose is not simply to record people, places, and events. A camera can do that—better, cheaper, and faster than any writer who ever lived. But that is not the function of the writer.

The writer’s purpose is to convey emotion. You can write description thick as a phone book, and fail to make a real impression. Facts—alone—are devoid of emotional content. A tree falls in the forest. So what? A tree falls toward a tent occupied by someone we care about—that’s an emotional event.

We don’t need to know who made the tent, or what color it is. Nor do we need to know how many leaves are on the tree. What we need to know is this: that tree is about to kill someone we don’t want to die. That’s it.

What you want to focus on is emotional content. Not: Is this room well- or dimly-lit? Rather: Is this room cheery or depressing? Inviting or forbidding? How do the bare facts relate to human emotions? You can say (as part of your description) that a room is dimly-lit, but you must also set a mood. This doesn’t mean you have to say “The room was cheery;” instead, you use words that evoke an image of cheeriness in the mind of your reader.

Consider: you can factually describe a room without conveying a shred of emotion. You can also describe a room emotionally, without conveying any factual description at all. The best writers blend fact with emotion.

But when you come right down to it, the emotional description can stand alone; the factual description cannot. Because when you’re telling a story—fiction or nonfiction—emotional involvement is what keeps people going.

You are not a recording device; you are a chronicler of emotional journeys.

EXPOSITION

Expository writing is what happens when an author needs to get information across to the reader, but can’t figure out how to work it into the story. What happens is this: the information is clumsily dropped into dialogue or narration, creating an “infodump;” critical details that appear out of nowhere, and exist for the sole purpose of transmitting information from author to reader.

Writers who do this believe that readers will simply absorb the information and move on. What actually happens is similar to the effect described in Hey, Look at Me! Intrusive, Chatty, and Explanatory Writing.

Instead of guiding the reader experience, the author is now inserting himself between reader and story—redirecting the reader’s attention to his own kludgy attempt to graft out-of-place information onto what should be a smooth-flowing narrative. The writer’s intentions are good; his technique, not so much.

There are two solutions to this problem: integrate the information into the story in such a way that it seems “organic” to the tale being told—or drop the information entirely.

Excellent examples of technical information smoothly presented include The Terminator (where Reese must educate Sarah on the nature of the threat they face) and The Matrix (where Morpheus and his crew must educate Neo about “the desert of the real”). Note that the same technique is employed in both of these stories: the mentor relationship. A character unfamiliar with the territory is guided by one who is; as the student learns, so too does the audience.

In True Lies, a humorous approach is taken. Taken hostage by terrorists and dragged before a stolen nuclear warhead, secret agent Harry Tasker is ordered to identify the device for a camera. His response? “I know what this is… This is an espresso machine… No, no wait. It’s a snow cone maker… Is it a water heater?” Finally, when his wife’s life is threatened, he spills the technical details. The wife—who had no idea he was a spy—punches him.

STAGE DIRECTION

Narration describing character action—that’s stage direction. The term originated with playwrights, who had to tell the actors what do via instructions—directions—written into the play. Today, stage direction also appears in books and screenplays. It’s rare to find too little stage direction in either format, but extremely common to find too much.

There are two basic ways to go wrong here. Sitting behind door number one, typing away, is the writer who’s not quite sure what his characters should be doing. Instinct tells him that ten pages of pure, uninterrupted dialogue isn’t working; something more is needed.

And so he gives his characters something—anything—to do: gaze out the window; arch, furrow, or scrunch their brows;, smile, frown, giggle, titter, scowl—or (ever popular) eat. The problem is always the same: the actions being described are inconsequential or meaningless, and exist for one reason only: to provide filler for a scene that is missing something.

Inevitably, this leads to passages brimming with information that is both irrelevant and distracting: instead of having two “talking heads” chatting for ten pages, the reader must slog through a conversation that is constantly interrupted by long thoughtful gazes, arched brows, slurped soup, and masticated meat.

Sitting behind Door Number Two is the author who applies overdescription to stage direction—detailing every slightest motion, gesture, breath, shifting glance, and sigh of one (or every) character. The end result is the same: a choppy, distracting read.

Ideally, everything means something, and nothing means nothing. And while that ideal cannot always be achieved, you can strive to minimize meaningless character actions. Look to see what can be eliminated, but also what might be recast and given meaning.

In The Usual Suspects, Verbal stares ahead during his interrogation. At another point, he gazes up toward his interrogator. Neither action seems particularly significant; both turn out to be crucial. Stage direction is both necessary and inevitable. Your job is to make it count.

CONCLUSION

Of the many sins a competent writer might commit, the worst by far is boring the reader. Technical perfection does little good if the reader’s mind wanders from the story. Even a mild case of the blahs can be damaging. Severe cases can be fatal. Overdescription, exposition, and stage direction are leading causes. Guard against them, always.

Author John Robert Marlow is available for professional editing, development, and consultation. If you’d like help taking your work to the next level, contact John here.

JRM

copyright © by John Robert Marlow
all rights reserved

Hey, Look at Me! Intrusive, Chatty, and Explanatory Writing by John Robert Marlow

Authors have a single, overriding function: to connect reader and story. At our best, we immerse the reader so thoroughly in the world of our story that the “real” world disappears and, for a time, there is nothing but the story. That’s the kind of experience readers hope for and deserve. It’s a zen-like state that is not easily achieved.

It becomes impossible when a brightly-dressed, cymbal-banging acrobat starts jumping around in front of the reader, yelling “Hey, look at me!” Yet many authors unknowingly engage in the literary equivalent of this practice by inserting themselves between reader and story—usually in one of the following ways.

YOU THERE!

The word “you,” well-behaved under normal circumstances, becomes suspect any time it appears outside of dialogue or first-person narration. When properly employed—You dunderhead, he thought—all is well. But problems arise when “you” refers to someone outside the world of the story.

The most common transgressor here is the phrase “You never know” (or “You never knew”). Another common phrase begins: “You’d think…” When phrases like this are presented as narration or internal monologue (the character’s own thoughts laid out for the reader) the word you often refers to the reader.

A few other examples, all from narration: “Life never handed out what you expected;” “It was like giving up your lunch money. But when Uncle Noonan tells you to do something, you just flat do it;” “What else could you say?;” “It was the kind of thing you’d find in a junk shop;” “…when you least expected it.” (Notice the tense issues here as well.)

When you come across something like this in your own writing, ask yourself: Does you clearly refer to a character within the story? If the answer is no, you have a problem, because that means you refers to the reader—and here you are talking to him (or her) in the middle of the story.

It’s the rough equivalent of a film director leaning into frame in the middle of a movie and saying “You never know”—or whatever your particular line happens to be—to the audience. Like you, he doesn’t belong in the story.

And, short of a nearby gunshot, nothing tears the reader out of the story more swiftly or destructively.

As a side note, passages that address the reader often have mixed or incorrect tenses as well, so be sure to keep an eye out for these.

Exceptions: First person narration, and some comedies. Keep in mind that letters, sound recordings, and videos which address a nonspecific “you” are usually fine, even when the story is being told in the third person. (These are, in a sense, addressing the character doing the reading, listening, or watching.)

Screenplays are another exception; here, it is permissible—but often inadvisable—to address the reader directly.

GETTING CHATTY

Though not quite as bad as addressing the reader, “getting chatty” also takes a toll on reader immersion and enjoyment. Here, the author writes narration as if speaking to the reader, but without actually resorting to the word you. For example: “He was drinking coffee from one of those big cafeteria roasters.”

When describing something in the third person, you don’t say things like “one of those;” rather, you describe the thing as what it is, outside of shared observations and experiences. (“He was drinking coffee from a big, cafeteria-style roaster.”)

Because you-the-author are not present in the story, you have no shared observations or experiences to draw upon. You are (or should be) invisible; the reader should share observations and experiences with the characters, because this draws them deeper into the story. Being chatted up by the author, on the other hand, pulls them out of the story.

Another chatty passage: “It was a familiar smell, they knew it, every homicide has its smell, but no one ever quite gets used to it.” Here, the use of no one makes this chatty. It’s important to understand why:

This is not internal monologue, so we’re not reading the thoughts of any particular character. Nor is it dialogue. Just as clearly, it’s not directed at any particular character within the story. That makes it narration—but it’s not written like third-person narration; instead, it’s written as though the author were speaking to someone.

Obviously, the author isn’t speaking to anyone inside the story. Therefore, he must be addressing someone outside the story. That leaves but one possibility: the reader. And ten out of ten publishers surveyed agree—you can’t do that, for reasons stated above.

Now, if the passage is changed to read “It was a familiar odor. Every homicide had its smell, but Malone never quite got used to it”—the chattiness issue disappears, because it’s now clear who is being referred to: Malone. The more generalized “no one,” on the other hand, includes the reader—and is therefore chatty.

A different example:

“You said to bring him back in chains.”
Well, that’s not quite what she’d said, or at least meant, but…

Just who is saying well here? Obviously, it’s intended to be the character’s train of thought—but it reads like the author, chatting with the reader. Again, be on the lookout for tense issues when reviewing these passages.

Exceptions include first-person narration, some comedies, and screenplays.

AUTHOR COMMENTARIES

Occasionally, an author feels the need to explain something that is somehow not obvious from a reading of the story itself. Avoid the temptation to do this with comments inserted in parentheses, brackets, or footnotes.

Think of the reader’s thought process: Oh, a note. Who put this here? The author. Suddenly, your audience is thinking about you, and not the story.

Instead, weave the information into the tale in such a way that it is obvious (but not obviously expository) when reading the story. If this is not possible (which almost never happens), put the information in a foreword, introduction, author’s note, afterword, or appendix. Don’t “break the read” by sticking it in the middle of your tale.

CONCLUSION
Your job is to get the reader into the story, and keep him there until the very last page—entranced by a spell woven with words. Anything that calls attention to the author, or reminds the reader that there is, in fact, an author—breaks that spell.

It is as if you were making love to your wife or husband, and the person who introduced you suddenly barged into the room shouting, “Aren’t you glad I brought you two together?”

Go over all of your writing with an eye toward author intrusion, and delete or rephrase as needed. Not just where author presence is clear (addressing the reader or inserting comments)—but also where it may be open to interpretation (getting chatty).

Absent one of the exceptions mentioned above—or instances where you’re being intentionally unclear for other reasons—the reader should always be absolutely clear on who is being addressed, and by whom. The reader should not be directly addressed, chatted up, or given notes.

Author John Robert Marlow is available for professional editing, development, and consultation. If you’d like help taking your work to the next level, contact John here.

JRM

copyright © by John Robert Marlow
all rights reserved

Bouncing Eyeballs and Other Unintended Meanings by John Robert Marlow

LITERAL VS. FIGURATIVE

Unintended meanings are mood-killers. This is as true on the page as is it is in life: you say one thing, your listener hears another, and trouble soon follows. They heard every word you said, and accurately too—but they took those words to mean something very different from what you intended.

Consider the following passage:

“His eyes bounced between Teddy, Mandy, the girl, the geologist, then back to Franklin.” Read literally, this tells us that “his eyes” are flying around the room, bouncing between characters like a pinball between posts. And while it’s true that very few readers are going to take this figure-of-speech sentence literally, many will nonetheless read it the wrong way. When they do, one of two things will happen: they will stop, go back, and read it again to clarify—or they will laugh. The first reaction is never good; it “breaks” the read and kills momentum. In a work not intended to be comedic, the second reaction is also not-good.

When I first read this bit (an actual line from one of the manuscripts I’ve edited, though the names have been changed to protect the innocent), it conjured up images of John Anderton in the film Minority Report, chasing his freshly-dropped eyeballs as they bounced down the corridor at Precrime. Aiding and abetting this impression was the fact that, in this particular manuscript, one of the first murder victims had his eyeballs scooped from his head—making a literal sentence about bouncing eyeballs somewhat more credible than might otherwise be the case.

Another zinger: “Judy’s eyebrows jumped like she was impressed, then walked toward the front door and stopped at the fish tank.” That’s one lively pair of eyebrows. It is of course Judy doing the walking. So here again, we have a perfect example of grammar gone slightly askew, and completely changing the sentence’s intended meaning–so much so that, in this instance, there is no multiple choice: the unintended meaning–walking eyebrows–is the only one present. “Judy raised her eyebrows as if impressed, then walked toward the front door and stopped at the fish tank,” on the other hand, would at least be clear, if poorly constructed.

DANGEROUS SITUATIONS

You might expect such unintended meanings to be rare, but this is not so. Most manuscripts have at least a few—admittedly less bizarre—multiple-choice sentences. The vast majority are unique to the stories in which they appear. Still, when you’ve read enough manuscripts, you begin to notice that certain. grammatically dangerous situations lend themselves to particular variants of this problem.

One that pops up consistently goes something like this: Our heroes—call them Dick and Gwendolyn—are trapped in an old warehouse, where they’re hunted by armed thugs. Dick ambushes Thug One and takes his gun. Telling Gwendolyn to stay put, Dick moves forward, gun at the ready. Suddenly, Thugs Two and Three appear. The next line is:

Dick shot Gwendolyn a glance.

Tense scene, mounting suspense, edge-of-the-seat reading and then—Dick shot Gwendolyn? Of course not but, thanks to unfortunate grammar, that’s the way it reads. And that’s your reader’s first impression. It doesn’t matter how skillful you’ve been to this point, or how much suspense, drama, and reader involvement you’ve managed to create—it’s all gone, right there. Shot to hell, you might say, along with poor Gwendolyn. The good news is, the heroine will recover. The bad news is, the writer may not.

Quick tip: when you’ve got characters running around with projectile weapons, thinking they may have to shoot someone, never—ever—use the word “shot” unless someone has in fact fired a gun (or crossbow, or whatever). In different circumstances, this phrasing is perfectly acceptable; here, it is not.

MUDDLED MEANINGS

Unintended meanings are not always so dramatic but, dramatic or otherwise, they do always interfere with a clear, smooth-flowing read. This holds true for both fiction and nonfiction.

In this example, we have a character kneading a small, pliable object: “Now the size and shape of a pistachio, or tiny football, he achieved what he wanted and gently laid it to rest inside a wooden cigar box.” Read literally, this says that he—meaning our character—has somehow become the size of a pistachio.

More often, unintended meanings are mundane, and lead readers astray on such simple matters as choreography (specific physical actions and the order in which they occur), or which character performed a specific action or spoke a particular line of dialogue:

“O’Rourke was dead, shot in the head by an off duty cop fleeing the scene of a robbery.” It’s clear that O’Rourke is dead—but was he shot while he (O’Rourke) was fleeing the scene of a robbery, or was he shot by a cop who was himself fleeing the scene of a robbery? Even without crooked cops (which this story had), the meaning is not quite clear. Also unclear is whether the person fleeing the scene of the robbery actually committed that robbery.

The addition of a single word would clarify this: “O’Rourke was dead, shot in the head by an off duty cop while fleeing the scene of a robbery.” (To get the opposite meaning, add two words: “O’Rourke was dead, shot in the head by an off duty cop who was fleeing the scene of a robbery.” Still, the phrasing itself—a cop fleeing a crime scene—runs sufficiently against expectations as to warrant rephrasing, or the addition of a second, clarifying sentence. Even though the meaning is technically clear, the reader may think he’s misread it.)

Another example: “I pulled into the trees, trying to get Frank’s car out of sight and then turned around so I could see whoever came down the road and waited.” This reads as if the narrator is hoping to see someone who comes down the road and waits, but is meant to tell us that the narrator is waiting to see someone who comes down the road. The unfortunate addition of the phrase “Frank’s car” introduces a point of possible confusion here: is the narrator looking at Frank’s car and trying to ensure that he himself cannot be seen by anyone who’s already in (or might get into) Frank’s car—or is he himself driving Frank’s car? A third point of confusion: is the narrator turning around, or is he turning a car around?

“It’s a friend of hers, her son, punk kid.” Is it a friend of hers, or a friend of her son’s? And who’s the punk kid—her son, or her friend’s son?

““He really does look much healthier again,” she said as they walked into the market.” In this scene, two women are walking together—but which is speaking? Because the speaker is not identified, the line could be read as having been spoken by either character.

As writers, we’re expected to have an exceptional facility with language. With few exceptions (political speechwriting and a few ex-presidents come to mind), we are in the business of making ourselves perfectly clear. Unintended ambiguity—“multiple choice sentences” that can be read in more than one way—do a disservice to both reader and writer.

Exceptions are few: situations where a character is deliberately employing multiple meanings (think of Klaatu in the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, saying “I’m a friend to the earth”), or where you as author are doing the same for purposes of deception, comedic effect, etc.

CONCLUSION

Unintended meanings are the antithesis of good writing. The reader is taken out of the moment, plucked from the world of the story like Dorothy from Kansas, or Neo from the Matrix. What should have been dramatic is now confusing or–worse–comedic. The spell we’ve worked so hard to weave is now broken; the reader who a moment ago didn’t know the real world existed, now marveling at our ineptitude.

Multiple meanings creep into our work—and, often, remain there—for the same reason typos do: we as authors know how the sentence is supposed to read, and so that’s the way we read it, regardless of what’s actually on the page. For us, only one meaning is possible. For someone unfamiliar with the work (and with what was going through our heads when we wrote it), the meaning of each sentence is conveyed by the words of which it is composed—and nothing else.

So as you write, keep this question in the back of your mind: Is there any possible way to misread this sentence? If the answer is yes, rephrase it. When the manuscript is complete, proof it with the same question in mind. Then have someone else do the same. Hunt these sentences down without hesitation, pity, or remorse.

Then kill them—before they kill you.

Author John Robert Marlow is available for professional editing, development, and consultation. If you’d like help taking your work to the next level, contact John here.

JRM

copyright © by John Robert Marlow
all rights reserved