T.D. Severin - Award-Winning Medical Thriller Author

  A little update post today. As some of you may know, I came up with the Ten-Point Revision Strategy to help me complete the current revision of my novel, so what I'd like to do today is give you an idea of how well this strategy is working for me. A touch of backstory. Before this revision started my novel, a medical thriller, was about 117,000 words. Not overbearing, but a little long for the genre. My agent, who's quite enthusiastic about the book, suggested I get it down to about 90-100,000 words. Now, think about that for a moment. I already told the story I wanted to tell, and it took me 117,000 words. How am I now supposed to keep that story intact and reduce it by roughly 20%. Daunting, to say the least. Stephen King has shared a formula he learned from one of his mentors. Second draft = first draft - 10%. I like that formula, as it shows the type of editing we all need to do to tighten our stories. But I needed 20%, not 10. Ouch. To top it off, I tend to be an adder w...

  Before we move on to our discussion about theme in the novel, and how, with a little bit of time and thought, your discovery of the theme of your novel will sharpen and tighten your writing, I wanted to make two quick digressions. First, I wanted to thank all the readers who've come over.  I intentionally have not publicized this blog yet, as I'm waiting until the ink is dry on my publishing contract (I signed it yesterday!!!)  Your response has been greater than I ever imagined. I created the Ten-Point Revision Strategy out of necessity to finish this final draft before my round of querying. I needed a guidepost, some freeway signs to get me moving in the right direction. I wanted to share with all interested writers this strategy as a suggested tool that may help your writing as well. So, thank you. Secondly, I wanted to move back to an early point in the strategy, #5 End Chapter Earlier , and add an example. As I'm going through my revision, I've utilized this poin...

I'm back from a research trip to Turkey and Malta and have volumes of material socked away in my mind for location, people, culture, texture. There's nothing like going someplace fully with the intention of researching for a novel to help you see all the little nuances you'd miss as a tourist. Traveling has set me back a bit on writing here, which I plan to rectify this year. Look for an update at least once a week as my novel is completed, goes off to the agent, to the publisher and beyond. I'll keep you all posted on all the tricks and tips I learn along the way.  Which brings me to the all-important subject of today's post: The Final Read Through. After going through the whole novel, following the Ten Point Revision Strategy we've discussed, there's still one, immensely important task to do. The Final Read Through. In order to do this, you must get some distance from the book. Many authors suggest putting the book into the desk drawer to let it cool. For ...

As I'm finishing up this (hopefully) final revision of the book, another revision strategy point has come to mind so frequently that I've been tempted to add it as the eleventh point on our  Ten Point Revision Strategy . Unfortunately, it's so simple and basic, I'd be embarrassed to have to remind myself to do this. Yet, time after time, reviewing the book that I'd worked on, slaved on for such a long time; woke up at 4 am daily to squeeze more hours out of my exhausting day; obsessed over in the waning hours of night, story ideas coming to me instead of dreams, I've realized I don't always do this one particular thing. What is it you ask? What daunting discovery have I made that could have such magnitude that it deserves consideration as the  11th point of our strategy ? It's really very simple. Write well. Yes, that's it. The new 11th point of our revision strategy. Write Well. Or as I'll rename it and gussy it up; Kill the Clunkers. It's s...

  In the end, this is what it's all about. Move the Story Forward . Everything we've discussed so far, each of the  previous 9 points , have all been aimed at this goal. Keep the story moving, keep the reader involved, or to paraphrase, Elmore Leonard, cut out the parts that readers skip. Sometimes, in order to be true to this principle, we have to be cruel. In this current revision, I've cut out two of my favorite scenes, what were in my mind grand displays of my writing, because quite honestly, they weren't necessary. In one scene, my hero has just finished a grueling Grand Rounds conference to get his research approved. In this scene, I have him working with a nurse, Mary, repairing a head laceration on a construction foreman, while he and the nurse discuss the Rounds. I loved that scene. It showed my hero in action, being very competent in the ER. It showed Mary's enthusiasm, and therefore all the hospital's support staff's, for the project, and the cons...

  This little tip is a must for thriller writers. Shorten as Tension Increases . By shorten, I mean shorten the length of sentences, shorten the length of words used, shorten the paragraphs. Essentially, shorten anything that can be shortened. This is a neat tip, because it's not just referring to the act of writing, but how that writing looks and is read on the printed page. Shortening the sentences as the tension is mounting creates a staccato feeling for the reader, a bop, bop, beat that automatically makes them read faster. Using shorter words and shorter paragraphs, intensifies this effect, so as you story is moving faster, so is the reader's eye and hopefully the reader's heart. Here's a quick example from  Robert Dugoni's  best-selling  The Jury Master . In this scene, our hero arrives home to find his house ransacked, his cat Bud running across the kitchen. "Sloane looked down at the broken plate at his feet, which a moment earlier had been on the leani...

 Another one of my favorite points on the Ten-Point Strategy and one that has had the biggest impact on my writing. Describe Through Movement. Back in the day of Melville and Dickens (before television, MTV and Youtube, when reading was the only form of entertainment) it was perfectly acceptable for authors to expound endlessly on the weather, the flow of grass across a hillside, the decor of a room, the fall of a woman's dress. Not any more. In today's world of short-attention span theater, things need to be speeded up, and particularly for thrillers, they need to be in constant motion. Now I don't mean a swirling maelstrom of nonstop action, and I don't mean to say that description and setting aren't important to a story, but never underestimate the power of movement as a technique to get a point across. One of the simplest ways I incorporate this in my writing is in describing a new setting. Say my character Taylor enters a new room, like his lab for the first ti...

  This is where I really go over the manuscript with a surgeon's scalpel cutting out any unnecessary or ineffective words. This can be a fun process as it involves our creative use of the English language. As I'm reading each sentence, I ask myself, "Does it relay exactly what I wish for it to relay?" Can I find a better word to describe what I need to describe? Can I find a better word to convey a sense of movement, of drama, of tension? In the prologue of my novel, my character, a young boy, is staring at the ceiling, watching the interplay of light and shadows. Inside this spectral drama, he knows hides the dark spirits of his grandmother's tales. Yet, the word 'hides' while appropriate, doesn't quite convey the fear a young child would experience, alone in his room at night, searching for malevolent ghosts. Sure, the spirits may be hiding in the shadows on his ceiling, but the word, 'lurking' is much more chilling, much more full of the omi...

  This is an easy one. Kill adverbs. You've all heard this before. Adverbs are, by and large, an unnecessary aspect of writing. They are the sign of a sloppy writer, too lazy to think of a more creative way to say something. And almost always, they are clumsy. In an earlier post I mentioned Iris Johanson's use of the phrase, "she nodded her head jerkily," three times in the first sixth of one of her books. As a quick writing exercise, I bet we could all write down three ways that we could convey the same message more elegantly, more clearly, more creatively. Better yet, I bet we could think of three ways that the same information could be conveyed that do a better job of revealing character or moving the story forward with more drama or tension. Yes, one little phrase can do all that, if we stretch our minds and think creatively. One place that adverbs tend to creep in is as a dialogue tag. This is a practice we need to stop. People don't shout angrily. They shout...

  This is probably my favorite item on our ten-point list, because it's so simple and can be so effective.  End Chapter Earlier . This is a tip I picked up from Robert Dugoni, best-selling author of  The Jury Master  and a fantastic writing teacher. If you ever get a chance to take a course from him, do it. He's extremely talented, very enthusiastic and an incredibly nice guy. You can learn more about him  www.robertdugoni.com. End Chapter Earlier . We've all heard the axiom, "Start after the beginning and end before the end." While I find this to be a powerful truth for plotting the novel, I need to remember that this applies to each individual scene also. Often times, I find myself ending the chapters with what I think is an excellently written summary, detailing the heroes tension or fear, setting up for my big final sentence. It usually feels good when I'm writing it, but in revising, I've learned to cut it out. Bob's advice was to go to each chapt...

  Moving on down our list, today's entry is  Tighten Dialogue . Now, we're not going to do a whole, big dialogue entry today. Book's have been written on that; listening to how people speak, making sure each character has their own voice, etc. We're in revision mode remember. (By the way, I'm up to chapter 11 now. Had a great day yesterday. Plenty of time to write and got a lot of work done. Good work. You know the kind; when you finish you really feel like you accomplished something). Back to the post.  Tighten Dialogue . To me, this means two things. 1)  No direct answers . We do it all the time in our writing. Bill asks, "Did you see the paper yet?" and his boss replies, "No. Not yet." Technically, there's nothing wrong here, but it doesn't do anything either. To tighten dialogue, add tension and reveal character, try never to have your character answer a question directly. In real life, we rarely do. We're always to busy thinking ...

  Todays trip down the Ten-Point Revision Strategy lands us at  Know Each Character's Motivation . While this might seem incredibly basic, I find that at times, it's one of the hardest things to do. When we're writing a scene, we usually pay careful attention to our hero's point of view (or the POV of the main character in the scene) but we often ignore the fact that all those little secondary characters also have their own lives, ideas, desires and reasons to be in the scene. For example. In my novel,  Deadly Vision , the hero, Taylor, has many significant scenes in the lab with his research partner, Malcomb. In each scene, I know exactly what Taylor wants and why. His backstory is imprinted in my brain. And I think I know Malcomb as well. He's a little awkward, a brilliant scientist, and a touch of comic relief compared to the much more serious Taylor. But when they're in a scene together, do I really know what Malcomb wants? Or do I know how to make him say t...