Content Edit

 

For a novel of 102 chapters, words 99,300.

 

There are many good things about your novel. The story works. Now is the refining process. I am recommending quite a few improvements in technique; especially reading flow, active voice, and punctuation. I am making comments on most of your chapters, at least enough to give you direction; many of these are not chapters, so often I am suggesting combinations to improve the flow. As I proceeded, in a few instances I had new insights. All of my comments apply to the entire novel.  

 

MOST COMPELLING – Imagination

 

MOST EFFECTIVE – Story thought out

 

STRENGTHS –  I appreciate the effort to utilize senses. Now needs trimming back. Your strongest characters are Sawyer and Hank (lots of notes on them, plus notes on Michael and Rachel).

 

SUGGESTED IMPROVEMENTS  – Active verbs. Use of comma and periods: sentence breaks for suspense pacing. –  Fewer adjectives and adverbs; instead, the perfect strong verb or noun conveys a clear simple image. –  Stay in the story’s now, present, to show events unfolding as they happen (rather than tell about them after the fact). –  What is a scene, what is a chapter, how to flow characters and multiple viewpoint.  

 

GENERAL NOTES – You have space breaks where none is needed (only when a scene break in a chapter, and then blank space only and no asterisk). You can pretty much delete all of those and close the space. Yes, good: Times New Roman 12 font, 1 inch margins, tab paragraphs (and not extra spaces between paragraphs). I do suggest using hard page break for each chapter.

 

OVERALL RECOMMENDATIONS – Active voice needed throughout. In addition to a few examples, a great help to you are these three steps:

1. Delete your use of “had” and force yourself to redo sentences in direct voice and in story’s now or story’s present (using had is “telling” about events after the fact rather than “showing” events as they actually happen in the story moment which is more active and dynamic). (Use of “had” is typically rare, not frequent; you overuse this word. Overuse is “passive” writing and distances the experience for the reader.)

2. Delete your use of “ing” (especially start of all sentences). Again, an overuse. This is not active voice writing. Again, I give you a few examples. (Slows the reading, invites confusion, interferes with flow.)

3. Shorter sentences (so not “run-on”). More periods. This will give the writing a crisper feeling, which enhances suspense. This is “pacing” through style and punctuation. – Delete clichés and rewrite (okay in dialogue by character, not in narrative). You have a lot of these. (e.g., swan dive) – New paragraph for each shift in action (as well as speaker). – Inconsistent tone (sometimes fluff or melodramatic, then serious). Cut back on melodrama = stronger threat. –  Suspense writing effective with more terse writing (cut excess).   

 

STUDY how-to books on: writing suspense and thriller; as well as active voice, what constitutes a scene, punctuation, flashback use, backstory and character sketches, multiple viewpoint and character viewpoint, and dialogue. Plus, these two books for rudimentary improvements: Strunk and White, The Elements of Style; Browne and King, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers (storytelling).

 

CHAPTER 1 – Good effort but I feel it can be simplified; for example, less of over and over showing same images (watch over-repeating of words and phrases). This first scene tends to be difficult to jump into and was a little “murky” to follow. Needs to be tighter; then refine to assure we are clear about what is going on. (Also, as I proceeded, with all the bodies and victims, I lost track of what happened to this first victim and who she was…) (See notes later regarding Sawyer as a stronger chapter one because it is your best-written chapter and pulls the reader in; later on, I wanted to see more of Sawyer, even to the end.)