Review: The perfect start to self-editing
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 22, 2013
What's the most common thing I remember writing on people's manuscripts and essays over the years? "Wordy" Whether the sentence is from an academic article or a fiction manuscript, if it trips up the brain and sends the reader around in circles to decipher the meaning it needs rewritten. But there are also less obvious words that you can cut from your writing and make it smoother, clearer, and shorter? In The Word-Loss Diet, Rayne Hall presents techniques to tighten your writing from her own experiences as a writer and editor.The book is a great place to look if you're interested in tightening up your manuscript and improving your writing craft in general. It's a quick read, but if you don't want to read the whole thing from start to finish, you can start with the chapter that targets your problem areas. Looking back at my old drafts, my characters definitely have smiling problems-who cares if your character is always smiling? And what's the point in wasting a word every other line to tell the reader that?Rayne's advice:"Keep just the most heart-warming, the most devastating, and the most disconcerting smiles."Rayne Hall,  The Word-Loss Diet, Scimitar Press.At the end of each chapter is a simple "how-to" section encouraging writers to use the Find & Replace function to highlight the problem words to see how often they're used in the manuscript-a fun (or maybe not so fun if it reveals a lot of work ahead) way to see how clogged up the language has become.Rayne has thought a lot about the writing and editing process, and the book provides a simple route for most authors to tighten up their writing. Even if you don't follow every exercise in the book, I guarantee it will make you more conscious of the word choices you are making as you write (saving some time in the cutting and editing process later).If you're looking to improve your writing craft and make some changes to your writing habits, this is a great reference to have on hand.