Things I wish I knew when I began writing a book

Completing my novel, titled "Custodians", was rather difficult to begin with. Editing, revising, cutting, adjusting, relearning, streamlining and perfecting it took longer than writing the book itself. That's because I learned so much about how to write after I've finished it, that I had to go back and apply all of the lessons retroactively. That took a lot of time and money. But that's OK. Here are the things I wish I knew going in:

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1) Exposition - I had to cut a LOT of exposition from my original draft. Narrating is fine, if you keep it in small, manageable bits, but mine was bloated in many cases. It's important to let the readers understand plot development via character interaction rather than me narrating from the side. Still, narrating has its place. It worked well for Morgan Freeman in the Shawshank redemption. It can work in literature too. Keep it brief and to the point.

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2) Showing instead of telling - It's true in every aspect of life, so why not literature? Still, I didn't think of it going in. Then I started watching Youtube videos and reading all sorts of articles about it. I heeded the warnings and went over the book several more times to eliminate cases of telling. It's like trying to remove confetti from a pool. It's daunting, difficult and worth it. You have a much cleaner pool. Or book, as it were.

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3) Adverbs. Often overlooked, but too many of them dilute the power of your writing. That said, in some instances, there's no avoiding them when trying to further enhance the impact of a certain action your characters take. In other cases, you can find one word that encompasses everything you wanted to say, thereby reducing bloat from your writing. For example - "yearned" instead "badly wanted".

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4) Tense cohesion - I wrote my book in past tense, but going through it, I found countless instances where I wrote in present tense without noticing. Man, did that take a long time to fix! I went through several websites about advice on whether past is preferable to present to create suspense. I found a rather heated debate on this issue, with one constant - Writing in past tense is the safe choice. Me being a debut novelist, I figured I'd go with it. And I did.

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5) Commas - I found a writing app called "Hemingway editor", which highlighted the excessive use of commas in my book. Specifically when narrating. That plus the professional editor that went through my entire book helped me understand how to simplify sentences. Break them apart. Give them to the readers in bits they can digest. Like I'm doing now.

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6) Overall tightening - You'd be amazed how many of the sentences in your book can be written in a way that reduces bloat. Most of the time we don't notice it, and even when we do, we often think it's too much of a hassle to do it. I totally get that inclination. Still, what separates a good book from a great one is attention to detail, and tightening is definitely a detail worth noticing. Words like "the", "it", "just", "that" and many others can be eliminated. In some cases, that could force us to alter sentence structure. This, however, can be a very good thing.

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These are some pointers I will definitely be mindful of going into writing my second novel. It'll help in substantially reducing editing time once I'me done with it.

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Much more about the writing process that helped me shape my novel, "Custodians", will be coming soon. I hope you enjoy reading it.