Unravelling Visions

The two detectives had arrived as the body was trundling on a gurney over to the white tent where the pathologist waited like an adjudicator at some macabre contest. The woman was found stripped of any clothing and the technician had thrown a green sheet over her poor mutilated and rotting body for that short journey, but the gurney jerked as its wheels stuck to the walkway, which was so burning hot it was melting the policemen’s thick soles, and the woman’s head slid to the edge, her heavy locks falling free, as if she’d just unpinned them. Despite the river weed and silt, her hair was still glorious; as black as a nighttime lake, not tampered by bleach or dye. 

Detective Sergeant Gary Abbott had stepped forward, his hand outstretched, and touched the woman’s hair, crying out like a distressed relative. “Take care with her, for God’s sake!”

Hinkley Point

I'm proud and delighted to announce that a new Kindle edition of the second of the Shaman Mysteries by Nina Milton is up and running. Revised and now called On the Gallows it continues the adventures of Sabbie Dare, the Somerset shaman who has burst upon the crime fiction scene. The series is famous for it's dark landscapes, and this second one features the waterways of the Somerset Wetlands, the grim,

Bridgwater Bay (Wikipedia)

bare coastline with its 'drowned forest' and the continually controversial nuclear power station, Hinkley Point. Nina Milton is also known for her wonderfully descriptive and atmospheric shamanic journeys, undertaken by Sabbie in her search for answers. In this book, she meets a wolf by a Roma camp fire;

    'Beware. If a wolf comes in friendship, it will offer you inner strength and the deepest kind of wisdom. But if it comes as your enemy…'

    'What?'

    'It will bring you down by the neck.'

    'Your otter is right, of course,' said the wolf, as it came up to me. 'I will grant you nothing but the right of terror.'

   'I am here to find Kizzy Brouviche, for good or ill.'

    The wolf grinned as I spoke, as if I’d said something that amused it. 'You will listen to me, Sabbie Dare. You will be show directions. Follow, and you will discover.'

    'Where will I find these directions?'

    'There are many that will appear to you.' His tongue lolled

from his muzzle and saliva drooled and pooled on the ground.          'The place of blame. The place of absolution. The dark place. The place of no escape. You will find little in some, and confusion in others. In some you may be rewarded. Do not expect satisfaction from any answer.'

    'Do I know these places? Or seek them out? Should I look in the obvious places first?'

   'That is shrewd. Now you show me your gums, as we wolves say.'...

On the Gallows (Unraveled Visions in the US edition), opens on the hottest day in August, when a young girl is pulled from a Bridgwater wharf, her body so mutilated that it makes identification impossible. Months later Sabbie Dare’s nemesis DS Abbott is found dead after the Bridgewater Carnival. The Bridgewater police are on high alert.

Meanwhile, Romanies Kizzy and Mirela Brouviche have come to England from Bulgaria in the hope of finding their fortune, but soon after Sabbie meets Kizzy at the carnival, the Roma disappears, leaving her young sister Mirela stranded and afraid for her sister. Sabbie is determined to help her in her search, but her shamanic journeys are confusing…her visions unravelled…and they lead Sabbie into dangerous territoriy. This includes being chatted up by immigration worker Fergus Brown, who is reticent on what he knows about the Romany sisters. And while she begins to suspect that the owners of Papa Bulgaria, where Kizzy and Mirela worked, are somehow involved with Kizzy’s disappearance, she also needs to factor in Eric Atkinson, the leader of a sinister cult, who seems too interested in Sabbie's new neighbours, Drea and Andy. Sabbie journeys into Drea's spirit world and is confrontated with a terrifying anaconda. Drea is shocked and distressed by Sabbie’s revelations and shortly afterwards disappears.

Are Kizzy and Drea’s disappearances related? Is Eric Attkinson's cult a danger? What led Garry Abbott to die alone of a single gunshot to the head in a darkened alleyway? Is his death linked to Papa Bulgaria's carnival float of gypsy dancers? Should Sabbie accept a date with charming Irishman Fergus? While Sabbie is facing these questions, she also has to cope with the discovery of her long-dead mother’s family, whose surprising appearance is set to take the wind out of her sails. A disapproving DI Rey Buckley instructs Sabbie to stay well away from his case…and away from him. Naturally, Sabbie does the opposite, on both counts. Her headstrong nature leads her towards romance...and right to the heart of trouble.

Terri Bischof, the acquisitions editor at Midnight Ink says of Unravelling Visions…I loved the masuscript.The Shaman Mysteries are among my favourite series... this is a great book!

Library Journal says...Sabbie Dare is the most compelling protagonist and Milton’s tale is riveting. 

The visceral suspense Milton creates is commendable, not to mention terrifying. I like pairing her work with Elly Griffiths’s  atmospheric English mysteries.

I hope you'll enjoy it too. Of course, if you haven't yet obtained your copy of In the Moors, it is also on Kindle at just 99p; free with Kindle Unlimited.

Writing That Very First Draft

Are you starting to write a longer piece of work for the first time? A novel for young people? A novella or novel? A full-length piece of creative non-fiction?

An article in Writing Magazine this month suggests that writing ‘little and often’ rather than ‘spurge and purge’ is the most successful way to complete that important Draft 1. 

They recommend that you either:

• Set an achievable number of words per day (say, 500) and write this without fail (even Christmas Day if possible!)

or

• Make a resolution to write something ever day, even if it’s only a paragraph.

little and often or spluge and purge

This is good advice; advice that seems to conflict with the ethos of NaNoWriMo, an annual, international novel writing project that asks subscribers to write 2000 words per day for whole of  November. This is 60,000 words done and dusted, and for me, last year, it worked really well. It meant that by the end of January I had almost completed my third novel’s first scribblings; Draft 1. However, it’s not the entire picture, and NaNoWriMo’s theory of ‘spurge and purge’ isn’t all that far away from the far less rigorous suggestions in Writing Magazine. 

The crux of both methods is regularity. In the past, every novel I’ve written, both for children and adults, was attempted sporadically, and this, I now realize, is what puts the biggest handbrake on completing a project. Every time I returned to my slowly growing body of work, I discovered that I hadn’t touched for far longer a time than I’d realized. I had to get back in the grove everytime I started writing, yet again finding the right voice…remembering the plot…reading through enough past writing to get me going again…and that usually led me to unnecessarily edit what had already been drafted and tinker with sections that, later, I removed anyway, rather than battling on with the next part of the story.

For this new project, I’m writing as often as I can. I’m not letting the story slip out of my mind for more than 24 maximum at a time. Even a paragraph is better than a day with nothing done. 

If you commence a longer piece of writing, it is most likely to fail if you can’t write it regularly; every day if possible. With that fundamental in place, it then doesn’t matter much whether you attempt a socially crippling 2000+ words or a tiny little paragraph; the important thing, I’ve found, is to write as a routine. To think of that little daily task in the same way you think about cleaning your teeth.

I started with zero words and had 60,000 on month later; two months after that I’m so close to the end, it’s frightening. But even 250 words a day for a year will net you 90,000 words. That’s a novel, folks. Think about that for one moment. Just 250 words a day.

Of course, nothing is quite that simple. Those 90,000 words (which is the amount I’ve complete in 3 months of Draft 1 work) are not going to be perfect. What you do have (and where I am right now) is a first attempt that is a concrete foundation draft you can now work on. Mind you, ‘concrete’ is not the right word at all. A ‘plasticine draft’ is a better way of looking at it. Something you can mould into the novel of your choice.

My thoughts and written notes on my 90,000 words look like this;

• Some of the words/paras/chapters will have to go
• Some new words – ideas, enrichments, changes – will have to be accomplished
• Some parts will have to be moved; juggled about
• Some character profiles need alteration, or souping up
• Some characters should be removed from the stage altogether
• Some of the work needed will be very bitty; sentences taken out, conversations rearranged, names changed.
• An overall view of the draft will point up the sagging sections and where further dramatic tension should be added - not to mention whether the overall thing works!
• Although I thought I was writing things in the order I wanted them, I haven’t done so; this suggests that it’s not necessary to write things in the right order at all at Draft 1 stage.

These changes, taken from the beginning again, constitute Draft 2. Bear in mind, I haven’t written my ending. This is because, as I headed rapidly in the direction of the last 20 or so thousand words, I realized the ending I’d been visualizing was foggy, lacking in tension, and was probably unworkable. So I made the decision to stop at 90,000 words and start on Draft 2 without a resolution. This, I have to say, is proving a good decision; already my ideas are clearer and more dramatic; they continue to shape and change. In the meantime, as I work through the novel, adding new ideas, pumping up the drama, reshaping and fine-tuning characters and taking out the dull bits, I’m getting that ‘overview’ that was impossible during Draft 1, because I didn’t read backwards at all. 

Hopefully, when I reach in Draft 2 the point where I broke off after 90,000 words in Draft 1, I’ll find myself pummelling ahead towards the finishing line, now clear in my mind how my ending will work.

As I go, I do edit – to be honest, I can’t help it. In my opinion, if you see that a full stop is missing, you’d be daft not to put it in. But Draft 2 is not the editing draft. Don’t waste time thinking it needs to be perfect for delivery to an editor. There is going to be a mighty lot of work to do in drafts 3 and 4, before anyone other than your tutor or writing group sees a word. 

Don’t look forward to much at all, it will only lead you to despair. Just keep the small, direct task in mind – writing those tiny bits every day is what will get you there. If you haven’t written Draft 1, with its red herrings, blind alleys, stone walls, wild goose chases, 2-dimensional characters, creaking conversations and other imperfections, you effectively have nothing; you don’t have any plasticine to work with.

Preperation counts for a lot

I must say one thing about preparation, though. We’ve just sacked our decorators, here at Rhos Hill, because they failed to do the preparation necessary and their coat of emulsion peeled off the walls (still internally damp from external continual rain!). Preparation is everything, whatever the task. Before you start to ‘write a tiny bit each day’ or take the challenge of 2000 word-a-day splurge, be sure to resolve that you have some sort of pathway to tread. 

It is my strong advice that you don’t start with the notion that ‘the ideas will come if I write’. What will come is a brick wall. Even if your plan for the story could be written on the back of a till receipt, or pitched in a 20 second elevator ride, make sure you have that plan. Before I started NaNoWriMo, I talked the ideas I had through with my husband and with other writers. I started a notebook, filling it with disparate thoughts. I created a rough timeline and pinned it up. I named my main characters and did little sketches about them. This was partly to create stronger characterizations, but also successfully to see where they’d fit into the prototype plot and where they might move it along. The best ideas spring out of who the characters are and what they’re doing to enrich the story. After all, that’s how our real-life stories work; they work via the people we know, love, like, hate, or tolerate.

A word to my students – all writing students, really. When your tutor or mentor reads and assesses your submitted pieces of work, they set up a paradox for my neat little template of writing a novel by not stopping and not looking back. The tutor will mark your work and suggest changes in the understanding that you’ll deal with their feedback. This is a dilemma; do you spend precious writing time sorting out the little redrafts of 3000 or so words, trying to bring Draft 1 work to Draft 2 level before you've finished your first draft? Or do you ignore the feedback and battle on with the novel? 

The obvious best plan of action is to keep to your resolution of writing every day; on…and on and on…until you have your entire Draft 1. Stopping to work on little snippets the tutor returns will only hold up your progress and might even curtail it altogether. You can only take this plan of action, however if your tutor isn’t expecting to see ‘set homework’. And if you’re an OCA student, intent on being assessed for your work then you simply must stop and deal with the feedback as it comes, or at least towards the end of the course. 

The happy medium solution is to put aside a certain number of hours for redrafting, utilizing the suggestions you like. As an example, I would suggest that every time you have some writing space, you return to some of the tutor’s comments, find the relevant sections and work on them. But do this after you’ve written your daily new lot of words. That way you’ll make even faster progress, because what you learn from redrafting completed assignments, using tutors’ comments, will be of value when you write on. 

I wish you luck with your long-term writing endeavour; I do hope you wish me luck with mine. 

Starting to Write Short Stories

Short strories can be read on any medium;
 book, magazine or electronically

In a previous blogpost on the short story, I looked at how the short story works today and wondered at its level of popularity. I do sometimes worry that the only people who read the short story are people who write, or want to write short stories. Even worse, some people start writing short stories only as a practice run for writing a novel. But the short story is a form of literature in its own right, able to strike directly into the heart and mind without preamble. The compulsion to tell stories is a very powerful and ancient one which continues to have a place in our modern culture. Commuters on the New York subway still read the latest short fiction, as they did a hundred years ago, proving just how strong a means of expression it is.

There’s nothing wrong with getting on and putting pen to paper if you have a story in your head, but at some point, it makes sense to define what a short story is. Of course it should entertain, engage, provoke empathy and possibly inform or even inspire, but that doesn’t set it apart from other forms of creative writing – a play, for instance.  And the modern short story as it’s been developed since the beginning of the 19^th century is also very different to the stories we tell over a dinner table…or the retelling of a legend, for instance. 

Short stories can demonstrate how diverse, joyful, outrageous comic, sad, illogical, cruel, and mysterious the human experience is – it should be a snapshot; a moment of illumination – enclosed in a capsule, entire to itself, drawing its being from a single point of emotion or wonder. Or, to quote Isobelle Carmody, a microcosm and a magnification. 

One thing that I really love about writing short stories is that there are not many fixed rules. You have carte blanche to create something original every time. If you read through the Unchained Anthology, you’ll see that diversity proved with every new story. 

Of course there are guidelines. The main ones are;

• use a small cast of characters
• keep the timeline as short as possible
• have, a single theme
• resolve your story satisfactorily
• every word has to count

Having sorted out a single theme, never wander away from the central point, as, for instance an anecdote might do. A short story is never an anecdote (which is an account of a probably true, often humorous, possibly exaggerated incident), while a modern short story has a narrative arc which builds tension throughout or towards the end and finishes with a resolution. The narrative must demonstrate a coherent progression towards the satisfying conclusion which, by definition, is never far away.

Even so, many a fine short story has successfully handled a bevy of characters, an extended timeline, or an ending that lacks closure. It might even appear, at first glance, to be a collection of vivid but disjointed impressions. But the story still has to be rigorous in its construction…it must be a whole.

There is only one rule that can never be broken, and that is length. A short story has to be short. But how short? Are there minimum or maximum word counts that short fiction must sit between? The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms describes the short story thus: “A fictional tale of no specified length, but too short to be published as a volume of its own, as novellas sometimes and novels usually are. A short story will normally concentrate on a single event with only one or two characters, more economically than a novel’s sustained exploration of social background. This isn’t just a good definition, it’s great advice: concentrate on a single event with only one or two characters. Doing this, at least to begin with, will prevent you from falling into many of the concealed pits that have been dug across the short story writer’s path.

The blank page or screen can represent a terror to many writers, not just writing students. But there are strategies you can employ to overcome any problems with writer’s block. What I love about creating short stories, is the opportunity it gives me to conjure small moments out of my own imagination. Although, like everyone else, I sometimes chew my pen and wonder what the heck to write about, the fact is, ideas for short fiction are everywhere – look out the window for inspiration – look around the room. 

When we were asked to write on a specific theme – that of library – for the Unchained Anthology, every single member of  Bristol Women Writers came up with an amazing story. For me, almost immediately I heard about the theme, the idea of writing about the library at Alexandria came into my mind because I’m interested in the tarot and wanted to investigate the legend of it being created to represent the books lost in the fire, but also because Hypatia was an amazing, but rather forgotten, female role model and writing about her was appealing.   

So finding the clue to starting your story can be as simple as being ‘told’ what to write about, or choosing one random word, or, as writers often do in a workshop environment, choose a picture or photo and allowing the story it tells you to develop into a piece of short fiction.

The anthology can be ordered from Amazon
 or from the Unchained website (details below) 

One way I get started, which I recommend, is by sifting through a shoe box full of a miscellany of clippings, photos and picture cuttings. Every so often, I add things to this box; a quote I liked, a newspaper story, a postcard from a friend or any other material that may be of later interest in your writing. 

For my story The Library at Alexandria, from the Unchained Anthology celebrating 400 years of Bristol Libraries, I took out a cutting I'd saved from a magazine about the historic facts about the ancient library at Alexandria in northern Egypt. As I read it, I looked at the wonderful photo of a bust of Hypatia which inspired me to think about how a woman in my own world might be engender such an aura of charisma. I try to get ‘a moment of illumination’, and some part of a narrative arc revolving in my head before I open my notebook and write. Then I often start with notes which, given chance, build like a lego structure into the beginnings of an narrative arc. I like to be ‘bursting to write’ before I properly begin – then I freewrite for as long as I can without stopping, even to think too much.

If you’re desperate to write a short story, I recommend you try this method. \

A shorter version of this post can be seen at 
http://writersunchained.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/short-stories-how-long-and-where-from/

Forget plot, perspective and dialogue!

A new blogpost up from me on the open college of the arts blogsite!

A level three student of mine, Jo Wells, made a simple, but valid comment in her reflective commentary recently. She had included a well-realised and imaginative scene in her assignment work, and wrote that this… came out of an exercise where a person becomes invisible… I never forget the benefit of exercises and free-write. Most exercises can be arranged to include some aspect of what is currently being written.

go to

http://www.weareoca.com/creative_writing/forget-plot-perspective-and-dialogue/

to read the rest of the post.

Wishing you a very happy and positive 2014

The photo is courtesy of Cilmeri Studio  taken at my book launch. 

The festive season has brought me a tremendous review in my local paper from Jackie Biggs, a Wales-based journalist and poet, who, I hear, really loved In the Moors. Jackie, thank you for saying such nice things…if you like crime fiction that turns pages fast and keeps your interst to the last…Nina Milton is for you… a balance of mystic dreamlike sequences set against the all-too-real horror of child abduction and murder…when a second child goes missing, the plot takes ever darker turns and as in all the best crime fiction, there is a final twist of fate that reveals the truth of the terror faced by the missing children…the second of the series is on the way and I can't wait for Sabbie Dare's next adventure!

Don't worry, Jackie, news of the follow-up book will be with you all in the new year!

Alice Munroe; Nobel Prize winning short storyist tells her story

My followers are probably used to hearing the story of how I believe I became a writer; the day in reception class we listened to an Aesop's Fable then were asked to write something ourselves, and I realized that 'real people write the lovely stories'. 

Alice Munro in 2009. (Peter Morrison / AP)

But Alice Munroe's story is even more wonderful…it involves hearing Hans Christian Anderson read aloud his story 'The Little Mermaid' himself.


During this interview which was played at the nobel ceremony for Munroe's award for literature, she is also asked some crucial questions like 'what is important when you tell a story?' and  'when you start a story do you always have it plotted out?' She is also asked some pretty clueless questions, but those get short shrift!

She tells us how her husband helped her writing because 'he thought of it as an admirable thing to do', and talks very openly about her relationship with her mother. 

Go to
 http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=1973to hear the entire interview, including scenes in Munro's bookshop.

 Munro received this award in 2009; more recently she announced she is retiring from writing stories. In an interview with Canada’s National Post after winning Ontario’s Trillium Book Award, the 81-year-old says she’s “probably not going to write anymore.…When you’re my age, you don’t wish to be alone as much as a writer has to be. It’s like, at the wrong end of life, sort of becoming very sociable.”

I have always loved Munroe for her clear, simple prose and yet find her stories complex to the point of being Chekhov-like in their exploration of human nature. So, it's a sad thought that we will never again read a new story by Munroe; we will have to satisfy ourselves by re-reading all 14 of her collections - her latest being Dear Life, which came out last year.

Great offers for Crime Readers and Crime Writers

You have  heard of the Crime Writer's Association; they are the ones that  give the Prize Daggers to the best crime books each year. But did you know  they have now launched a new club for readers of crime; and writers who want to get their crime fiction published? It's called the;

Crime Readers' Association

They are doing a giveaway to celebrate the launch of their new website.

This 7 day giveaway features prizes of interest to writers and readers of crime and thriller writing.

Day One: Signed CWA Anthology 

Day Two: British Library ereader and mini tablet cover with Sherlock Holmes design 

Day Three: Mslexia Diary

Day Four: Signed copy of SOLO by William Boyd

Day Five: Synopsis Advice to prepare for submissions to agents

To enter click the links above and follow the instructions

Entry for these prizes (and all other subsequent prizes) will end at midnight GMT on Saturday 7th December. The winners of each prize will be notified by email within 2 working days and have 2 working days to respond with delivery details before a new winner will be drawn.

And if you are writing crime, don't forget the newsletter that comes with free subscription to the Debut Dagger Competition for unpublished writers. If you fancy a stab at crime writing, go to: http://www.thecwa.co.uk/daggers/debut/

Great Review of In the Moors...they're still coming in!

Poet Joanna Ezekeil has posted this insightful review of In the Moors on her blog,http://mydelayedreactions.blogspot.co.uk 

Friday, November 08, 2013

book review: in the moors by nina milton

Even though I have a tendency to skip to the end of crime novels to find out 'whodunnit'

(or, in this case, whether two of the characters get together) I resisted this impulse when I began reading 'In the Moors', and subsequently could not put this book down.

Sabbie is an engaging character with an unusual profession: she is a shaman who is drawn into a police case involving one of her own clients. Her concern for her client, and her determination to keep hold of her intuition, even at the expense of her own safety, was completely absorbing.

 'Perhaps because I was thinking of rabbit holes and strange, reversible worlds ... I started at the end,' Sabbie says. Nina Milton has also given her readers the challenge of making associations between beginnings and endings, present and past, children and adults, memories and facts, speech and silences.

At one point, a wise character says, 'Everything connects'. Small everyday details are hugely significant here: bicycle wheels, eggs, nicknames. I found the characters - animal, spirit, human - convincing, and the various settings either warm and lively, or haunting.

In the end, Sabbie's search for understanding reminds us how our childhood experiences influence how we live as adults and how we make sense of the world.

The Big Ten; Words You Should Never Write

An interesting blog in the US journal Globe and Mail; a quicky and easy to remember list of words that should always be the ones you think of cutting first when you are redrafting;

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-tools/top-tens/ten-words-to-cut-from-your-writing/article15017159/?goback=%2Egde_4338694_member_5803255087199444996#%21

In no particular order, as Tess would say, these are;

just
maybe/perhaps
really
amazing
very 
literally
quite
got
stuff
things 

Don't get too wound up about them though. For instance, in dialogue, if your characters insists on saying "I've got to go the dance" then you'd better let them. In narratative however, it's a missed opportunity for a stronger verb. 'He was reluctant to go to the dance...'
And 'stuff/things' may also come under this class. My character Sabbie often describes things (oops) as 'stuff', but I made sure she does that because that's what she'd do. Again, in a 3rd person narrative mode, you sound lazy.

Although the big ten are a nice easy number to hold in your mind, I'm afraid there are a lot of other words that should be scrubbed through on redrafting. Most of these are modifiers and qualifiers – very is a good example (I was very unhappy…I was unhappy) but there are more; nearly, genuinely, absolutely, actually, seemed to, began to, almost.

Most of these weaken your writing; e.g  ‘suddenly’, makes things less sudden.

And I've not finished. (Sorry!) because there are a lot of other ways you can let your final drafts down. Here are some ways to tighten and polish your drafts;

Hackneyed parings – adjectives or nouns that cliche when rubbed together…old codger…loveable rogue

Overkill description – especially at the beginning

Redundancies - phrases that mean nothing at all… chop and change, in point of fact, at this moment in time, on the other hand.

Tired similies – sick as a parrot; Tired metaphors….icing on the cake. Use good metaphors and similes instead. Maybe I'll write a blogpost on just this one subject soon!

Overuse of adverbs. Check all ‘ly’s’ and replace with hard working verbs

Too many adjectives. Avoid using two together, they cancel each other out.

Misattributing the language…she raced out of the house, started her car and dashed to work…she began to get up from the chair…her eyes fell on his plate 

In jokes or high-flown phrases that look like showing off

Abstract nouns, especially to describe what characters are like, or how they’re feeling....angry/frustrated/political/loving. My OCA students already know my distress on this subject!

Factual inaccuracies. Research everything that you’re not sure about. It's what Google is for. Check for continuity mistakes and inconstancies

Check that you know whether you are TELLING or SHOWING, and change to showing wherever possible 

Avoid the continual imperfect tense (she was walking = she walked) unless it feels bang on right.

Anarcisms e.g… greensward…although think about how your character would speak. Would they be archaic? Or would they be bang up to date? 

Repetition in words…She screamed, John screamed back… sentences…come into the shop, John.’ ‘Okay,’ said John, coming into the shop… and paragraphs or superfluous scenes in which you repeat your thinking or presume the reader hasn’t understood

If you’ve written in the first person, check to see if you can eliminate any ‘I’s’ successfully, particularly at the start of paragraphs, as they can create a ‘blobby’ rhythm.

relative pronoun. One of the most common uneccessary words is ‘that’. In some Roman languages you're not allowed to cut out redundant 'thats' but you can in English. Cutting out 'that's' can actually reduce your word count painlessly.

Pleonasms. These are words that you simply don’t need to make sense of a sentence. For instance. ‘She hunted down her modifiers’ – you don’t need 'down'. However, don’t cut out pleonasms if they create a good rhythm in your work, or if they feel right in dialogue. Just use a bit of common sense.

In fact, a bit of common sense is needed throughout the drafting process. It's like Fowlers Preferences (if you don't know them, you'll find them on the web), which are great advice for good, tight writing but do in themsleves need a final qualifier; 

Always use the right word in the right situation

You, Me, & a Bit of We

Out very soon now, the latest anthology from Chuffed Buff Books. My copies have arrived,  and I'm already tucking into all the stories, which are starlingly good. It's a collection of mostly 2nd person writing, although my own contribution is in the 1st person POV. You can read a snippet of it on my PUBLISHED SHORT STORIES page, before, of course pre-ordering your own copy for less than seven quid. 

You, Me & a Bit of We

Pre-order now for £6.99

You, Me & a Bit of We

A Celebration of Writing in First and Second Person

List Price: £8.99
ISBN: 978-1-908858-02-3
Paperback, 216 x 140mm, 190 pages
Short stories and flash fiction (42 stories)
Published August 2013

You, Me & a Bit of We is a showcase of 42 stories written in either second, first or first person plural point-of-view. Through a selection of flash fiction and short stories, readers are invited to discover their favourite seat in a story. Is it front row centre, in the midst of a crowd, or from a more personal vantage point? Where second person thrusts the reader into an active role, first person offers experience through the eyes of an individual or group. Although the use of first person is common, second and first person plural perspectives are relatively rare. Written by an international cast of authors, this collection includes a broad range of themes. There are tales of transition, conviction, lost love, grief, conflict, domestic strife, tragedy, second chances, and stories about letting go and moving on. There are worlds where it is rare to be sighted, skin tells a story, past lives haunt, deadly viruses and parasites threaten humanity, and death is personified. From the poignant to the fantastical, dark, witty and uplifting, each story in this anthology is original, thought provoking, and reflective of the versatility of perspective as a literary device.You, Me & a Bit of We includes stories by Hettie Ashwin, Kim Bannerman, Cath Barton, Sharon Birch, Miki Byrne, Walter Campbell, Charlotte Comley, Annemaria Cooper, Meriah L Crawford, Stefanie Dao, Simone Davy, Laura Dunkeyson, Sarah Evans, Anne Fox, Robert Lee Frazier, Martin Gamble, Susan F Giles, Heidi Gilhooly, Anne Goodwin, Margaret Gracie, Cathryn Grant, E A M Harris, Dora L Harthen, Kati N Hendry, Debz Hobbs-Wyatt, Julia Hones, Amy Hulsey, Alexis A Hunter, Michelle Ann King, Deborah Klée, Tanya Jacob Knox, Meg Laverick, Diane Lefer, Diandra Linnemann, Nina Milton, Monika Pant, Emma Phillips, Barry Pomeroy, Zena Shapter, Jay R Thurston, Abigail Wyatt, Zarina Zabrisky.

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£6.99+ P & P (ships to UK and Europe only)