3 easy ways to tighten your novel (and build tension)

While your books might not necessarily have a specific word count, you don’t want them to feel wordy, especially if they're in an action-heavy genre.

Editor Louise Harnby has three tricks to tightening up your novel — and these are nice low-hanging fruit for you to attack.

She explains why you should review your use of filter words, speech tags, and action beats (and describes these concepts in full) in a post on her blog about how to write a leaner thriller.

Related posts 

• Does your novel overexplain common items and gestures? 

• A bestselling author's primer on thriller pacing