Re-Writing: Purge the "He wondered if..." Blurbs

So it's New Years Day, January 1, 2010.

It's a new year, and I'm up this morning, enjoying the Friday off, sitting on the couch with the Pomeranian sleeping next to me, listening to Puddle of Mudd, and working on my next novel, The Dark Woods, working title.

And I'm looking over yesterday's work and I found a section that originally went something like this:


Henry wondered what the girl would look like when the dog found her. He imagined her covered in mud and blood and whatever sin she'd seen back at First Baptist. He wondered if she would be terrified when the dog found her. A steely blue-black crossbreed of blue heeler and border collie, with one glaring blue-white eye, the other a chestnut brown, the splotchy colored dog blended into nothingness at night. Maybe she wouldn't see the dog at all. Henry thought she might be better off if she didn't see him. She might think the dog was a ghost who'd followed her from the graveyard.


My eye caught all the Henry wondered and Henry imagined bullshit -- and that's what it is, bullshit, thick and steamy and good for nothing but fattening the worms and fluffing your flowers.

So I went back and edited to this:


She'd be a filthy mess when the dog found her, covered in mud and blood and whatever sin she'd seen back at First Baptist. Although well-intended, the mutt dog would probably terrify the girl. A steely blue-black crossbreed of blue heeler and border collie, with one glaring blue-white eye, the other a chestnut brown, the splotchy colored dog blended into nothingness at night. Maybe she wouldn't see the dog at all. Probably better off if she didn't see him. She might think the dog was a ghost who'd followed her from the graveyard.


Do you see the difference? I cut out all that Henry wondered shit, and transformed it into a more punchy paragraph.

I hate when characters stand and wonder, or imagine, or sit in place and introspect. I'm a reader, and I don't like reading a still-framed character with a voice overlay ticking off their thoughts.

As a writer, sometimes I need to get a paragraph out of my head in whatever form it will extract itself, but it's the editing process, and the re-writing process! that many writers forget to embrace.

Go back, and in your re-writing, purge yourself of those pointless introspections.

Be punchy! Punch the reader in the face, the gut, and drop them to their knees, and don't let up until you sign your name at the end of the book.

Readers like it that way.


- Eric