Just words or WORDS?

Job 4:4 Thy words have upholden him that was falling, and thou hast strengthened the feeble knees.
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Words words words. Sure you’re building a story, you being the architect of the masterpiece, but are you building your story on just words or WORDS?

There is a difference you know. I can write a poem and by the time I’ve revised it, many of the unimportant words have bit the dust and my poem comes out stronger in my minds eye. This is what we need to do to our stories.

Sure we hate cutting out words, but we need to make sure the reader is getting every juicy morsel of our work and not just words spilled on the paper like yesterdays coffee stain. Our words are our tools in making the reader flip through paragraph after paragraph. They need to see each blooming chapter as being filled with new possibilities for your character(s).

If you’re writing a novel, those first words in a paragraph are so important to keeping your reader reading. We usually call it the hook. The first paragraph, you say, not the first page? Nope, it is that very first paragraph that has to pack so much punch that the reader will be willing to move onto the second, third and fourth paragraph.

I have read books where I’ve gotten through the entire first power-packed chapter only to find that the second chapter had less fizzle than sizzle and I wound up never reading the entire story. Is this what you want for your reader? I didn’t think so. You didn’t sit at the keyboard hours on end typing fifty thousand words only to find you’ve written nothing with substance, just a bunch of words slung onto the page, thrown together like a heap of wind driven leaves.

In revision, you need to cut out those unnecessary words, fill the sentence with flavor, scan each chapter as if you were panning for gold, and make each and every paragraph leap out at you. Make your story what you think every reader wants in their arsenal of literature.

Do you have a heap pile? That’s the pile of books that have gone un-read, sit on your shelf looking out at you like the long lost teddy-bear of years gone by, wishing you would pick it up and hold it endearingly.

I don’t have a heap pile. ha ha I only buy or read books that I know are going to get me to the end and fulfill the commitment that the writer began in the first place and that is to make my reading journey a pleasant experience.

Don’t waste you or the readers time on ‘just words’, make every one count so in the end, we the writer and reader are fulfilled in the journey!

Job 8: 10 Shall not they teach thee, and tell thee, and utter words out of their heart?