How to Identify Writing Problems

I was asked recently how I resolved problems I faced on my Parallel Secrets writing journey. I share some solutions here in hopes they can help another writer along the way.

It pains me to admit that the first draft of my first published book was confusing. Parallel Secrets takes place during two periods of time almost a decade apart, involves almost a dozen characters and as many story lines, and features plenty of dialogue freely mixed in with internal narrative. I hopped from head-to-head, time-to-time, assuming readers would follow along. Surely they’d get what I meant.

My beta readers set me straight. In my experience, paying attention to feedback from direct and knowledgeable beta readers is the best way to identify overall story and structural deficiencies and missed opportunities.

Once I accepted that I needed to restructure, I got to work.

I do all my writing in Word. The program has great tools. I’d used Word for memos and reports for many years. It was a fairly seamless transition to writing a book, once I learned to use Headers and Navigation Panel to form a fluid outline. Those tools allowed me to easily move chapters around and to spot duplications and omissions.

‘Find and Replace’ is another of Word’s most valuable functions. F&R ruthlessly pointed out many, many opportunities to improve my prose.

Parallel Secrets includes a fair amount of people talking while sitting around drinking various beverages—but I was shocked when I ran ‘Find and Replace’ for certain words like nodded, smiled, shrugged, etc. HUNDREDS of repetitions, sometimes multiples on the same page. The words that? Said? Like? Literally thousands of occurrences in my 85k document.

I looked at each one of those individual words and decided whether they were necessary or best for the job. Very often they weren’t. Whenever I could, I changed dialogue tags to actions. “…said Vicky” appeared in my first draft more than twelve hundred times. One pass through the manuscript easily brought that down to under eight hundred. I used the same technique to check timelines, settings, and character development. A search by name allowed me to review every occurrence of every person in the order they appeared. I found consistency errors, but more often found ways to add to character arcs.

This task forced me to examine my manuscript closely and critically, to tighten up parts and expand others. The devil’s in the details, as the saying goes, and fixing a myriad of details created a much stronger foundation on which to build the intricate and satisfying story that is Parallel Secrets.