move the story forward, give information about a character or.......????


I know there are three - I'm sure I didn't dream it; but cannot for the life of me remember the third - is it backstory?

Sorry - I really should know this.

Great thanks in advance for any help.

I'd argue that any piece of backstory should be advancing the plot and/or giving info about the character, so I don't know if it is that.

I can't think of another one, though..

Hi FV, I'm going through a major edit on one of my novels at the moment and Issy gave me this advice:

.At the very basic level of the words used there are different ways of writing things that are quicker, and shorter, different phrasing, order of words, ruthless with repeats, one word where there are three. I've got quite good at this from when I wrote to a word limit for a paper. Next to look at are chunks that don't progress storyline, setting, or character and delete. At this stage you may well find that you've cut a quarter or a third already. It gets easier to spot the extraneous words, the more I do it. Only after that might need to look at whether any events can be cut, or summed up in a paragraph.

So I'm assuming each word of your wip needs tomove forward as she says the storyline, setting, or character.

Ooh yes - setting - that was it! Thank you so much - I knew I'd heard it somewhere! That's great!

Personally, i wouldn't pay too much attention to these rules.

I finally got an agent last year, and i think it is because, after writing 5 novels, i finally 'got' that an editor at a publishing house wasn't really going to lick my prose into shape, i had to.

for the first time, after the first, draft, i went through my whole novel, line by line, making sure the prose was as tight as it could be.

I didn't think about whether each sentence added to the setting or moved the plot forward, etc etec - i just made sure that every sentence added something to the story, in whatever way, and that it was as tight as could, be, ie i closely edited it.

eg 'i turned myself around' = ' i turned around'
' i quickly scribbled' = ' i scribbled' )scribbling is never slow, right?

Maybe i am dense, but it took me about 4 novels to realize that it was down to me to make sure every word counted.

Good luck! The rewrite/edit is a very exciting stage! Take the time to go through each chapter and study each line.

Rhythm. That is the most crucial thing, i would say. Does each sentence have a rhythm that sits nicely with the paragraph as a whole.

Thank you very much for this Petal - very good advice!

Thanks for this nice advice.