Every writer has a strong points and weak points. Some writers do some things without any effort at all while others struggle.
For me, plotting and dialogue are my strong points. I LOVE me some dialogue. I have a knack for it. Description? Uh, not so much. If you were to take a look at my draft you would be like, “Dude, where are we? What do these characters look like? What is Grace seeing? Why don’t we know anything about Grace’s town or her house?” LOL.
For me, during the draft, I tend to concentrate on plotting, dialogue, and conflict. Those are the things I think I can do better than other things like description and setting. But I do know that those elements are important.
And that’s the beauty of revision. It’s a time to highlight the weaknesses and then go back and make those areas stronger. You just can’t do everything in a draft. You have to do it during the revision phases.
I’m still not there with the description yet—I’m trying. There are many scenes in my novel where setting is very important so I’ve had to work in some missing details. But it will probably take another revision round to really make it the way it should be because I also don’t want to forget about the sensory details–smell, touch, and sound.
So praise yourself with the writing skills that you do best. Let those come naturally to you and shine. For the things that you aren’t so good with, read other authors that do it well, break down the scene, figure out how they made it work and then try to apply those techniques during the revision stage. Focus on one thing at a time. Your revision cycles will go much better this way than trying to do everything at once.
Awhile back, I wrote a blog post about layering. It bears repeating here how through revision phases, you can add strength to your scenes.
