A good way to prepare for the read through process is to first put it into ProwritingAid. Don’t worry about the WHOLE DOCUMENT, just each scene. You need to have a license for ProWritingAid, otherwise it only looks at I think the first 300 words.
Trust me, that shows you what’s wrong
Make a snapshot of your scene. Now open ProWritingAid in a browser.
ICTRL+A, CTRL+C to highlight and copy the whole scene, then go to ProWritingAid and CTRL+V.
Now start running reports. The first report, which essentially is “The whole shooting match” I don’t even bother with. I start with the second report and start making changes, then third report, then fourth, etc.
One of the biggies is the “repeated word” report. Wow. Am I ever guilty of using the same word over and over again. If it’s an action scene, that’s especially bad. Instead of the constant “Carpenter hit him between the eyes”, try punch, smash, strike, slam, crash, whack, etc.
If it’s a shooting scene, here’s a warning. You must NEVER write “yank the trigger” or “pull the trigger”. I see that all the time. The ONLY ACCURATE WORD to fire a weapon is “SQUEEZE the trigger.” Anyone who writes “yank” or “pull” I’ll be glad to do a shooting competition against, because I love easy victories. If you “yank” or “pull” the trigger, you “miss” the target.
Keep an eye on the overall score your document is getting. ProWritingAid has a “filter” word score you need to stay on the good side of.
Once you’re done with all of the ProWritingAid reports, CTRL+A, CTRL+C.
Now go BACK to Scrivener. CTRL+A.
STOP.
The correct key combination for “paste” into Scrivener is CTRL+SHIFT+V.
OTHERWISE it pastes formatted for the internet, and that’s annoying.
make another snapshot.
Here’s the key – it should now read MUCH more strongly. If it doesn’t, then go back to the earlier snapshot, and revisit/edit/revise and start all over again.
Do this until every scene in your novel is done.
