Category: Thyme for Writers

Welcome Kathryn Ross with The Editor Diet: Pantry Substitutes for Digestible Writing, a part of her Series—The Write Spice: Writing Tips for Flavorful Words.

A discouraging diagnosis triggered my anxiety meter to spin into the red zone.

“Looks like you’ll need to remove a few things from your diet, Mrs. Ross.” The nutrition counselor spoke with confidence. She found the culprits of my digestive woes and dispensed a prescription with nary a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. “No sugar. No dairy. No eggs. No gluten. No soy. No. No. No.”

I went to this woman for help. I hoped for a quick fix. Maybe an encouraging word. But to hear her say “no” repeatedly to the hallowed mainstays of my diet, threw me into confusion.

“But . . . but . . . what can I eat?” Perhaps she would recant when she heard how disappointed I was at her advice.

“Oh, there’s plenty of clever substitutes you can make for these foods that will better agree with your system,” she said. “Once you make a habit of healthier food choices for your metabolism, I promise you’ll feel much better—and lose those pounds around your mid-section, too.”

REALLY?

The promised prize shone like gold before me. If only I could accept the new normal of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Tooling me with a list of foods to avoid and a list of foods to eagerly eat, plus a tips sheet on shopping and meal preparations, I left her office with a sense of both trepidation and hope.

Was I brave enough to make the life changes necessary to feel better, lose weight, and gain back lost energy? Could I be consistent with the new meal plans and food preparation protocols I had to learn? Would completely redesigning my pantry, fridge, and freezer to toss out the old staples and welcome in new and unfamiliar ingredients be within my power?

The red zone of a troublesome health diagnosis can be a blessing or a curse. It’s all in the way you choose to accept it and act upon it—with open arms, or stubborn resistance.

It’s the same with my writing. Knowing that what I’ve drafted needs work, I submit it to the review of an editor’s eye. In so doing, I must allow for my words to fall into the red zone of a marking pen diagnosis of where problems may exist, then follow editorial advice for healthy writing.

Thankfully, the English language is tooled with many options when choosing words and applying grammatical rules. Satisfying, healthier word choice substitutes slim down a written work suffering from illness, overweight, and lack of energy. The more those options are exercised, the easier they become to use on a consistent basis.

Here’s a couple writing pantry tips for your journey to healthier compositions:

Substitute vibrant vowels for weak “to be” verbs: In everyday speech, we use the simple verbs is, are, was, were, and the like to communicate. But on the printed page, a diet of such verbs wearies the reader and lessens the impact of the material communicated. Strive to edit out as many of these simple verbs as possible. Use meatier words to empower your story with greater accuracy of action.

Substitute similes and metaphors for bland adjectives and lazy adverbs: Descriptive language can make or break a written work. When it comes to adjectives and adverbs, too much dulls the reader’s senses or repels them entirely—like eating cake with too much sugar in the batter gives one an upset stomach. Vary your descriptive language with the use of similes and metaphors to cement understanding, allowing a reader to better apply and articulate what they read. Whether you’re writing fiction or non-fiction, the use of these powerful figures of speech add sticky sugar and spice to your work beyond the elementary use of simple adjectives and adverbial modifiers.

Inventory your concepts to focus on the topic and curb redundancy: Fill your first draft with all your ideas. Review to determine where your focus is and how you’ll build on it. Sometimes, you may illustrate your point by restating it more than once. Creatively, you’ll need to decide what to delete and what to keep. Take a bold inventory of how you communicate your focused thought and in what order you arrange the details, guiding the reader through to a persuasive ending with impact. Be brutal when you cut—like I had to be when tossing all the flour and eggs and cheese from my kitchen to accommodate my new lifestyle diet. Never easy—but ultimately rewarding.

This is by no means a comprehensive prescription, but a good start towards adapting an editor’s diet for digestible writing. At first, you might think you are losing your writing voice by making such substitutions to your normal writing diet. In fact, you are finding your voice—a healthier voice—that will be fitness to your readers and strength to your continued growth as a writer.

(C) 2018 Kathryn Ross

Writer-speaker, Kathryn Ross, ignites a love of literature and learning through Pageant Wagon Productions and Publishing. She mentors writers as a book shepherd and publishes homeschool enrichment and Christian living books for home, church, and school. Her passion is to equip women and families in developing a Family Literacy Lifestyle, producing readers and thinkers who can engage the world from a biblical worldview. She blogs and podcasts at TheWritersReverie.com and PageantWagonPublishing.com. Connect with Miss Kathy on Facebook.