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SLUG: TWELVE    BY: BRUBAKER    DESK: HOME    HOLD FOR RELEASE: NEVER, IT'S EVERGREEN BRUBAKER'S TWELVE What thirty-eight years of red pencil taught me about writing. Take what's useful. Leave the rest on the spike. 1. Read it out loud. Your ear is a better editor than your eye. If you run out of breath, the sentence is too long. If you stumble, the reader will too. If you're embarrassed, good, you found the bad part. 2. Specific beats general, every time. Not "a dog." A three-legged beagle named Pontiac who won't go past the mailbox. Not "she was sad." She ironed the same shirt twice. 3. Most adverbs can go. If she "said angrily," you need a better verb, or better yet a better scene. If she slammed the screen door hard enough to knock the calendar off the nail, I don't need to be told she's angry. 4. "Said" is invisible. Use it. Nobody ever "opined," "retorted" or "chortled" anything in a story I let through, and I'm not starting now. 5. Cut your first paragraph. Go ahead. Try it. Nine times out of ten the story starts in the second one. The first paragraph was you clearing your throat. 6. Get in late, get out early. Start the scene as close to the trouble as you can. Leave it before everybody's done talking. Nobody needs to see your people say goodbye and find their car keys. 7. Inspiration is a no-show. Like a city councilman at a Tuesday meeting. Write anyway. Same time every day if you can, even if it's twenty minutes. That's why the prompt is on Wednesdays and not "whenever Hal feels like it." 8. Put it in a drawer. A week, at least. You'll come back a stranger to it, and strangers see everything. 9. Plain words. "Use," not "utilize." "Help," not "facilitate." "Before," not "prior to." Nobody ever cried at the end of a story that facilitated anything. 10. Check your facts, even in fiction. If your story says the Reds won the pennant that year, somebody in Cincinnati is going to write in. Believe me. Somebody in Cincinnati always writes in. 11. Take criticism of the work, not of yourself. When someone says the middle drags, they didn't say you drag. Say thank you and go fix the middle. 12. Finish things. An ugly finished story is worth ten beautiful first pages. You can fix ugly. You can't fix a thing that isn't there. WORDS I WOULD BAN IF THEY LET ME very · really · utilize · impact (as a verb) · "suddenly" · "all of a sudden" · "little did he know" · "a chill ran down her spine" · "at this point in time" · "irregardless" [that one isn't a word, and I will die on this hill] This week's prompt | The morgue | Disagree with me? [email protected]. People do. Last updated September 22, 1999 -30-