dmoonfire

One of the things I noticed while reviewing books is the differences between the books I managed to pick up in the stores and those I pick up at GenCon and less commerical places. I’m not going to say one is better than the other, because they aren’t. But, when I’m reading it, sometimes I get a nagging feeling that they are somehow “different”.

As much as I’d like to say otherwise, it can be a big difference. Obviously, I can’t identify a book as commerical or POD just by reading it, but there are little things that can suggest self-publishing.

And, since knowing the problem doesn’t make you immune, I noticed those same things in my own writing. One of them is passive voice. Many of the books I got at GenCon over the years start off with too much passive voice. It fades after twenty or so pages, but those initial chapters are littered with “was” and “is”. I see it in commerical books, but the point where the writer gets to the active descriptions occurs much faster than many self-published books I read.

In working with DG, I tried to keep aware of that. That and a ton of little other things like characters sighing too much and the glares. I also found out that it is really hard for me to avoid passive voice when I’m setting up a scene. My brain hurts trying to improve myself in this manner, but I think it is a good hurt.

Last night, I basically razed the entire first chapter and started laying down a new introduction. That consists of basically putting in a newline and rewriting the chapter above the old one, deleting as I pass the relevant bits. I’m much happier with this new version. It doesn’t set up all the relationships as neatly as I wanted, but I think there are merits in spreading those out in the first three chapters instead of cramming it into one.

There is a danger in focusing on little things, like passive voice or re-using words too frequently (sighed, glare). I need to work on the bigger things too, but in this case, I think I have a good story. It just needs polish. And polish is, at the moment, my weakest part of writing.

Originally posted on Moonfire Thoughts. Feel free to comment here or at the site.