Style: Checklist for Fiction Writers


In the narrative: 

1. Do any sentences begin with the words “There” or
“It”? They can almost certainly benefit from revision.
(Compare: There were three gunmen who had sworn
to kill him. It was hard to believe. or: Three gunmen
had sworn to kill him. He couldn't believe it.)

2. Are you using passive voice instead of active voice?
(Compare: Is passive voice being used?) Put it in active
voice!

3. Are you repeating what you’ve already told your
readers? Are you telegraphing your punches?

4. Are you using trite phrases, clichés, or deliberately
unusual words? You’d better have a very good reason
for doing so.

5. Are you terse? Or, alternatively, are you on the other
hand expressing and communicating your thoughts and
ideas with a perhaps excessive and abundant plethora of
gratuitous and surplus verbiage, whose predictably
foreseeable end results, needless to say, include as a
component part a somewhat repetitious redundancy?

6. Are you grammatically correct? Are spelling and
punctuation correct? (This is not mere detail work, but
basic craft. Learn standard English or forget about
writing novels.)

7. Is the prose fluent, varied in rhythm, and suitable in
tone to the type of story you’re telling?

8. Are you as narrator intruding on the story through
witticisms, editorializing, or self-consciously,
inappropriately “fine” writing?

In the dialogue:

9. Are you punctuating dialogue correctly, so that you
neither confuse nor distract your readers?

10. Are your characters speaking naturally, as they
would in reality, but more coherently?

11. Does every speech advance the story, revealing
something new about the plot or the characters? If not,
what is its justification?

12. Are your characters so distinct in their speech—in
diction, rhythm, and mannerism—that you rarely need to
add “he said” or “she said”?