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Now that you've completed the challenges, it's time
to begin rewriting. Rewriting, or revising, is an important part of writing.
I do a lot of revising when I write. I want my story to be as perfect as I can
make it.
When you revise your mystery:
- Read it aloud. Your ears will catch awkward
wording that your eyes didn't see.
- Listen to your characters' dialogue. Does it
sound natural? Does it fit the characters?
- Tie up all the loose ends of your story. If
a minor character — Jason — offers to help the main character
— Kim — search for a missing friend, by all means bring him back
after the friend is found. Don't send Jason off to wander in the night forever.
- Use exclamation points only when one of the
characters, or the writer, is exclaiming. It was a wild, exciting ride.
Period. No exclamation point. But with, "What a wild, exciting ride!" the
exclamation point is right.
- Make sure you haven't used the same word two or three times in the same
paragraph. All writers have had this happen. It's easy to do. Try using
a thesaurus to find synonyms.
- If a sentence is too long, with too many clauses or phrases, it can be
confusing. See how you can shorten it.
- Double-check for words that trip
you up. Don't use you're if you mean your, or their if you mean there. Remember
that it's means it is, and its (without the apostrophe) is possessive.
- Use your spell check or dictionary to make sure that words you're unsure
of are spelled correctly.
Now you should have a finished mystery story. Let's
move on to
Step 5: Publish Online!
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