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Monday 28 May 2012

"I love pretty things and clever words..."

But your readers do not. It may be great for school essays when there's loads of description and huge long words into which you can read very deeply but your book will just confuse people if you use huge words.

You have to separate your "school brain" and your "bestselling author brain" because they work entirely differently. If you really pare things down, you'll notice that they sound a lot purer and they'll read better too, trust me.

As for clever words, you may think you sound like a literary genius, worthy of all the prizes for use of language but your readers will not be able to understand you and those who do will scoff at you for being pretentious - its a lose-lose situation. You don't want your readers reaching for the dictionary for every time that you grabbed the thesaurus.

Don't leave your reader hanging as they can't understand what you're trying to say. The simpler you say things is often more punchy and leaves more of an impact: if a book jacket leaves me wondering what it meant then I leave it well alone. Don't lose your reader because you wanted to seem clever.

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