Yes, there is such a thing as polishing too much. But I wouldn’t worry about it. You can always put stuff back. What generally happens is not that you take out all the goody, but that you lose the rhythm and flow of sense, so you wind up with a series of perfectly good insanely-clunky non-sequiturs. “He put his hand out. The apple had a rind with a spot. His hair was brown with threads of highlights. Noon came sooner than he expected. His fingernails were clipped square.”

I’ll look forward to reading your acknowledgements page with pleasure!

Victoria

To be on the safe side, I’ll just spell out the centuries.

This isn’t the first novel I’ve written, but it is the first I thought might have a chance, so it’s my first real polishing job. I’ve heard you can polish too much, and take out all the goody. So if someone suggests something I just don’t see, I won’t immediately change it. However, I don’t blow it off. I think about it very hard. If I can I’ll ask them to defend their opinion so I’ll understand what they are really saying. Sometime you have to see something from a different angle to really see it.

I’ve made all the changes you suggested now that I understand why you made them.

You’ve given me a few things to consider as I do my next revision. Thank you for being patient and for all your help. I plan on reading all your essays. Hopefully someday I’ll have an acknowledgements page to put you on.

As far as dialog, I’m afraid writing the way people really talk can turn out pretty boring. Good dialog is an art whose purpose is to condense the words down to an essence that 1) carries the speaker’s voice, 2) gets across essential information, and 3) holds the reader’s attention. That’s why I strongly recommend cutting all extraneous words like “well” and “oh” or “ooh” that are used constantly by almost all of us. They clutter your dialog and don’t generally show us a particular speaker. On the other hand, specific dialog like, “They actually made you say that, back then—I mean, back now?” tells us this speaker speaks quickly, perhaps without thinking so she has to correct herself in mid-sentence, which results in repetition. Suddenly we feel like we know her, and we’ve only heard her say one thing! Then she goes on to change her order, and again we hear the repetition. Now we see that she’s thinking about what she’s said as she’s correcting herself, because she’s curious about things and not afraid to show her ignorance. Smart, curious people are interesting. Imperfect people with good intentions are interesting. Smart, curious, imperfect people with good intentions who don’t know something we think everybody knows—we REALLY like THEM!

As with every other aspect of fiction, the general rule is condense, condense, condense. What you absolutely can’t do without are the words that make up your story.

The issue of spelling out numbers is a dicey one. In journalism, you spell out every single-digit number and use numerals for the rest. In fiction, you generally spell out every number—particularly in dialog, which is meant to be heard rather than seen in the reader’s mind—unless it’s something commonly-recognized as numerals, like a year. But it can depend upon your publisher’s preference. I would probably spell out twentieth century. Twenty-fourth and twenty-seventh? Well, I strive for consistency, so if I was spelling out twentieth, I’d probably spell out those, too. But it’s a good question. Your publisher might feel differently.

The one hard and fast rule is that you never, ever start a sentence with a numeral. This can be tricky if you want to start a sentence with a year (“Nineteen-eighty-one was the year we all regretted.”), so most writers find a way not to start a sentence with a year.

Victoria

You’re right about the genre. The woman, Dr. Serendipity Brown from the 24th century, just invented a time machine. Being her, she jumped in before testing it or even changing her clothes. If anyone wants to read the rest of the scene, they can go to Excerpt from Chapter One.

Sherman’s attitude does get better through the book. Right now he’s devoid of all hope for the future. He’s nineteen and feels stuck in a small town. He will progress from mopey hanger-on to Serendipity’s right-hand man and trouble shooter.

I hadn’t noticed, but I do have too many “buts” in that last paragraph. (Maybe comes from stammering, eh?) I like the rework you did on it.

My philosophy on dialogue is to write the way people talk, even if the grammar isn’t quite right. Only edit if it’s confusing, hard to read, or gets too boring. Am I way off base with that?

Also I have a question. Throughout the book I talk of the 20th century, 27th century and 24th century. Should I use numbers or spell it out (twentieth century)? Myself, I think the numbers are easier for the reader to tell at a glance which century I’m talking about. Or does it look amateurish?

Thank you again for your help!