A Nerdy Way to Polish Your Writing

I geeked out and created a tool in excel to help me polish a piece of writing. I know with the mention of excel, I’ve lost half of you, while the other half has pitched forward in giddy excitement and I’m not sure which is more alarming.

Anyone who has read my work knows there’s no danger of me becoming a slave to grammar ... (so many rules, and so few who care). Nonetheless, as a writer, it’s imperative to continuously improve and hone the craft.

At some stage in my writing, generally toward the end, I begin to worry about the things English teachers and the well-educated tell me are important. I’ll call this the polish stage. Admittedly, the amount of polishing required sometimes turns into a major rewrite.

Rational for which words to eliminate or use sparingly to make your work stronger can be found tucked inside scores of writing guides. I try to keep them in mind, but if I dwell on them too early, my creative flow suffers. That’s why I wait until the near end of a project before I scrub it clean of grammatical maladies.

I look for particular words or phrases that fall into seven buckets. It isn’t all exclusive, but it’s a good start.

• Eliminate Clutter
• Omit and Explain
• Define Indefinites
• Reduce Redundancy
• Minimize Telling Words
• Passivity
• Prepositions

I run a word search for each of the words to see where I have a disproportional amount of ... fluff.

I populate a spreadsheet and turn each category into a percentage based on my total word count for the project. Then, I use the 80/20 rule with a quick glance to see where I’ve gone overboard. It doesn’t mean I’ll eliminate every, this, that was and like, but I do go back and reduce the population.

A caveat: I typically leave my dialogue alone. The last thing I want to do is make character dialogue grammatically correct.

If you want a copy of the excel spreadsheet, you can get it here. CLICK HERE FOR FILE There are two worksheets; The sample with formulas, and a blank one. Mess with them as you see fit. 

Let me know your thoughts and what you’d add.

10 Best Excuses Worksheet

When people neglect pursuing their dreams they often create clever stories to justify their lack of progress. 

Sometimes they kick their feet along the floor and act apologetic. Frequently they minimize their commitment to their own goal. 

“Something else came up,” is a common refrain when what they did was prioritize trivial things over the things they once deemed as important. 

There is a word for the hearty defense they offer. It’s called an excuse. 

Some people have no shortage of excuses for why they didn't do what they know they should have done.

Well, don't fight it anymore. Instead, use this 10 Best Excuses Worksheet I’ve developed. 

To get started, brainstorm your 10 best excuses for not accomplishing the most recent thing you committed to accomplishing. 

Next, explain why this reason is not an excuse.

The rest of the sheet is self-explanatory.

When you’re done, you’ll essentially have two choices. 

1. Either eliminate your goal, because you're not serious about achieving it.
2. Eliminate your excuses, and turn them into obstacles to be met and overcome.

Regardless of your answer, don't dwell on it. Take action and move on.

The Sense of Words

Words pursuade. It doesn't mater if you're writing fiction or non-fiction, you want to convey your thoughts to another.

The problem some leaders run into is they sometimes believe everyone thinks like they do. They don't. People are reached in different ways. The same is true for readers.

So, if you want to pursuade your audinece, it best to know them and which style they prefer to communicate. If you don't know, or if you have a wide array of personalities, then you may need to say they same thing in several differnent ways for maximum exposure.

With a hat tip to NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) and other methods that encourage you to use different senses to comunicate, I've created four sets of words to kickstart your next communication.

For Visual Learners

Give your writing some vision with words you can see.

For Audio Learners

Listern to your writing with words you can hear.

For Kinesthetic Learners

Get active with your writing with words that move you.

For Sensual Learners

Add flavor to your writing with words you can taste.

(Why is this one so long? They way to the heart is through the stomach)

These are just a sampling of words, there are many more in the wild you can choose from. Choose wisely, and keep writing.

Hero's Journey Template

Recently I had a great discussion with an old friend about writing, publishing and story structure. Pantsers grow queasy with any mention of an outline or planning and Outliners develop the shakes without an agenda to follow. There's not a right way or a wrong way. Like a good Libra, I fall smack dab in the middle of the two. The artist in me wants the autonomy of free expression and no rules when I write. However, the even keeled, disciplined part of my head requires at least some signposts along the way to reassure me.

Enter, once again, Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey. There are no shortage of tools and diagrams available for you to peruse, just fire up the Google. I married a few concepts together to create a storyboard template. I used the boxes above each stage to map a story I was working on that I knew lacked something, but I couldn't figure out what. Using this method made it painfully clear my story fell apart in the beginning of ACT III.

I used this template to help find and fix a structure problem. You can use it how ever you would like. Maybe to plan your next story, brainstorm alternatives or just print it out and doodle on the back.

Doesn't matter to me, just keep writing.