Fic - When Good Intentions Go Sideways

Title --When Good Intentions Go Sideways
Author-- cornerofmadness
Fandom -- Fullmetal Alchemist
Disclaimer -- Arakawa owns all
Rating -- teen
Characters/Pairing -- Roy & Chris Mustang, Maes Hughes
Timeline/Spoilers -- Immediately post Ishvalan War
Word Count --1000
Warning -- drunken behavior
Summary - Chris Mustang has called in Maes to help with her nephew who’s been drinking himself stupid for nights on end.
Author’s Note -- This was written for picfor1000. Nothing like waiting til the last day. Here is my inspirational picture. Though Roy’s not paying since he’s family Also it was partly inspired by This strip my friend sonjajade came up with. I figured it was just as likely to happen with Maes as it would with anyone else. (I would, however, read the story first then come back and click that link so the funny isn’t spoiled).

XXX

( When Good Intentions Go Sideways )

Writerly Ways

I actually had plenty to say over on Jana's blog today and you can find it here.

And my friend, ES, shared her weekly writing post finds again and this one on marketing I liked the best.

My post today will be short but hopefully helpful and hopefully not something I've shared in the recent past. I've been working hard on Blood Red Roulette and I have one simple trick that can catch a lot of weasel words and filter words too (though I haven't been doing that this time as I'm rushing around with this draft). And every word processing system has this function: 'find.'

I put in That, Really, Just & Very with an eye to eliminating them as much as is reasonable (which can be almost entirely in many cases). My muse is a bitch and I over use these words without realizing it. In one chapter I had 63 thats and by the time I was done I think I had 20 left that were essential to the understanding of the sentence.

Find is helpful too because sometimes we read right past this. That's 63 thats that neither me nor my betas found. I had the marked up pages in my hand as I did this and I had only circled about four. Also it's been very helpful in letting me see some truly clunky sentences that weren't as apparently (for some reason) on the paper print out that I had. Maybe it's the big yellow highlighter my program uses. I don't know.

What I do know is that by using something as simple as find my prose is tighter and better.

Anyone else have a simple but effective trick they want to share?

Also, seriously, I want, no need to fix up my YA story to send it to an agent. Anyone want to take a no/low pressure look at it? It's set in Madison, WI where a murderer is stalking the school. It has werewolves, seers and things far darker.

As to the word count, I've been paralyzed on Weird West so not much has been added since last time so I'll hold off on sharing that.