“Unlock the Secrets of Fierce Editing: Transform Your Manuscripts from Mundane to Mind-Blowing!”
- Search for the word “as” in your manuscript.
- For each “as”, ask the following questions:
- Does one event start before the other? If so, remove the “as” and write them as two phrases or two sentences, with the events in the correct order.
- Do the events take different lengths of time? If so, remove the “as” and rewrite the sentence in an order your reader can visualize.
- Are the events actually simultaneous and do they actually take the same amount of time? If so, see if you can possibly remove the “as” and order the events from most important to least important.
- If the word “as” is not being used to say that events happen simultaneously, it’s probably fine and you can leave it in. Your job as a writer is to kick the bad “as” and keep the good “as.”
Try kicking one of your scenes in the “as.” It should take about 5 minutes. Then read it and see if the scene looks more like a movie in your head.
