Hey hey. Still cleaning up the manuscript here, hopefully for shopping around in September or October. Here's another example of something that's come up time and time again: my writer's tics.
Every writer has 'em. Mine are kind of annoying when they get called out to me. These are the styles of writing that are particular to you that may or may not be too good for your manuscript. They're phrases, words, descriptions, or other repeating styles that stand out. They're not necessarily cliche's, except in the context of your own writing.
Mine? "Ya know". I know I'm writing a middle grade fiction book, and I know that phrase is popular with kids, but DA-YUM. I found myself using it ALL the time. Not cool. That's one of my tics.
See, my agent told me that publishers want kids books, even when narrated by kids, to be grammatically and syntactically correct. So while 12 year-olds may say "ya know", or sixteen year-olds may say "like" in between every other word, it seems publishers don't really want that. In other words, we can't write non-dialogue like we hear dialogue.
So that's one of my major tics I have to get over. Gotta make the narrative sound less informal, even if it means sounding less like an eleven year-old talking.
What are your major tics? Feel free to post! We won't, like, ya know, make fun of ya, or anything. ;0)
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