Your characters smile too much. More than Mona Lisa. They also grin, nod, and shrug on every other page. Don’t believe it? Do a quick search to see how often your characters do these common actions in your manuscript.
Go ahead, we’ll wait.
Okay, Your Characters Do Smile Too Much
Now that you’re convinced your characters are on smile overload, what do you do?
First, don’t freak out or get frustrated. Every writer winds up with more smiles (or frowns, perhaps) than you can shake a stick at. Once you find those repetitive actions, you need to find other ways to show how your character feels.
Use one of the following tools:
- Action. Have your character leap for joy, punch a fist in the air, or break a board over her leg. Whatever your character does to show happiness or anger or whatever emotion you want to put on display, let your character go at it.
- Body language. Have your character sit upright. Let his shoulders slump or tilt to one side. Just be careful. You can easily enter repetitive territory when showing your character’s body language.
- Dialogue. Use your character’s words to show how she’s feeling. Just don’t overdo it. Sometimes, less dialogue in your book is better.
Why Does This Matter?
Using the same word or phrase over and over is annoying. As a writer, you don’t want to be annoying. You want to be great, because you want your readers to get all the way through your book without wondering why your character smiles every other paragraph.
Reduce the number of times your characters smile, shrug, roll their eyes, and sigh, and your stories will improve. As a result, your readers will smile for joy.
Having a hard time figuring out what expressions or words you repeat too often in your book? Not sure why you shouldn’t say you find yourself doing this or that? A good editor can help. At Argyle Fox Publishing, we edit every book we publish to make it the best it can be. Take a peek around our site to learn more about us or submit your manuscript for consideration today.