I finally got done with those arduous Macros on Sunday night. My last one is "overused words" which includes a lot of "look"s, "since"s, and "even"s. The problem is, most of the time, it's either very hard to reword it, or it doesn't matter. If a character looks at something, there's not a lot of other ways to put it.
So now that I'm done with this, I let it incubate for 3 weeks. Then I'll use a program I found called "Natural Reader" that I'll use to read the story out loud to me. This will help me find all those little things I miss, the little skippable words, that get glanced over if you stare at a manuscript too long. I've only done this once before and that was years ago. I was reading out loud to myself then, and I just felt stupid. Plus since I write at work, speaking out loud isn't going to go over so well.
In the meantime, I've a got a bonus critique of Defender to go through. This is the short story basis for my White Mage Story, and it's helping me do a few things differently. Most importantly not to sound like a D&D rip-off while still being a D&D rip-off.Labels: Mermaid Story, White Mage Story
