Christian Author Donna Dawson

He has discovered that he is a very spoiled pooch.  His bed cusion is filled with sawdust.  Plaster dust mixes with the tears in those bulging eyes to leave Duke the Chihuahua with more grey in his facial fur than he would like.  And the noise!  He's got big ears and those big ears pick up sounds that I and his pet human can't hear.  This leaves our champion of the quill cowering under the plastic draped sofa in anticipation of the day's end and the silence it brings.

Renovations are much like edits.  We tear out the old and put in the new.  In writing, this can come in the form of cliche awareness.  I am the queen of cliche.  I use them liberally in my manuscripts.  And yet I do so deliberately--because my characters like cliche and I am certainly not going to argue with them!  There does, however, come a time when I have to renovate my thinking--move beyond the lingo of my day into the lingo of today's readers.  Now having said that, I still notice that I use words like 'cool!' instead of 'sick!'.  I just can't bear to move that far into the present.  (I have the same reluctance with the use of the phrase 'shut! up!'  Thank you but no.)   This brings me to a very important awareness writers need to have--the awareness of their reader.  Into what age category does your reader fit?  If, like Duke and I, you are writing to middle age adults and up you certainly aren't going to want the bulk of your characters talking street jive.  In the same way, if you are trying to reach out to the local teen set you aren't going to want to use formal speech as your main voice. 

So how do you figure out your readership category?  With a bit of a challenge.  Read your manuscript out loud.  Not only will you find a multitude of mishaps in the editing department but you will hear whether your language is formal or slang.  That is your first clue.  Take note of your characters.  If they are all 18 years old you might want to make certain that you visit a high school or college to track the social linguistics there.  If your characters are in mid-20's and there is a faster clipped pace to the writing, assume you are writing to a business minded set.  If your characters are seniors, a more formal, precise language is a good idea. 

And then there is genre.  Each genre has its own linguistic style.  I prefer the fast-paced, abrupt script of a suspense or thriller.  Duke, on the other paw, seems to gravitate toward the flowery and longer phrased romance novel.  For such a manly pooch he is quite taken with the 'breathless anticipation' that comes in the 'heat of the moment'. (now you know what cliche is  I must admit, it has been quite amusing seeing him try to hide the fact that he has been crying his way through another Harlequin inspirational when the plaster dust leaves such obvious evidence.  There is nothing more heartbreaking than seeing a blubbering Chihuahua with globs of mortar packed against his cheeks.