⫸ being an editor

converting similes to metaphors when possible—saying something is something else is more powerful than saying it’s like something else.

Circle every adjective and adverb in three pages of your manuscript. Challenge yourself to replace them with specific, concrete details—nouns and verbs —that show rather than tell. Instead of “she was angry,” show her “knuckles whitening around the steering wheel.”

I suggest thinking of revision not as a single sweeping process but as a series of distinct drafts, (seven of them, cough cough ) each with a specific purpose. By focusing only on the story, or only on the characters, we avoid that overwhelming feeling of needing to fix everything at once, pinballing from clunky sentence to missing scene to Mom’s-g... See more