I’m reading through my advanced students’ work this weekend. The class, given through UCLA Extension, was limited to twelve students and they had to submit sample chapters to get in. Each person who was accepted is on his or her way to finishing a memoir and their stories are amazing and heart wrenching and funny and inspiring. Because their work has so much  potential, I’m being really tough on them, and editing the daylights out of their pages. I just want their work to be as good as it possibly can be. No excuses, no short cuts.

 

Here are some of my notes to them which may be of use to you too:

 

– Figure out formatting on your computer. (Click Format on your tool bar and then Paragraph.) Double space your manuscript and don’t add an extra space between paragraphs. Use paragraphs – indent. No solid blocks of text unless you’re writing poetry or picture books for kids. An editor has a lot to read so you want your manuscript so technically perfect that it’s transparent, only your words, your story is noticed.

 

– Cut out every single adjective and adverb that isn’t necessary.

 

– Cut out all comments about scenes that you then go on to write, or comments about a scene that you just wrote. The old cliché is true: show don’t tell.

 

– Speaking of clichés: weed them out.

 

– Speaking of scenes: write them out. Tell us the colors and smells and sounds and the temperature of the air. Make the scene come alive, use dialog and action.

 

– Feel emotion deeply and let the reader know. Don’t be afraid of feeling. If it goes over the top you can always cut it back. But if you (or your characters in fiction) don’t feel strongly about what’s going on, why should the reader?

 

– Don’t be cute or coy, ever.

 

– Ask yourself what’s at stake in every scene/chapter that you write. You want or need something and someone or something is in the way. Let things be really complicated, yet clear at the same time.

 

– Humor is wonderful – but don’t force it.

 

– Metaphor is like humor – it can light up your writing. But if metaphors don’t come easily to you, don’t force them.

 

– Don’t wander into side stories or details for the sake of detail – keep asking yourself as you write: what’s this really about? And cut out anything extraneous.

 

– Rewrite. It’s obvious when you don’t.