Let’s assume you’re already writing your story and before you post it online you decide to look over it one last time. However, it doesn’t sound as detailed, emotional, or eloquent as you want it to. From my experience, changing the style of the writing is the first thing you’ll choose to do. More specifically, from 1st person or 2nd person to 3rd person limited. Yet, you have no idea how. Transitioning from 1st person or 2nd person to 3rd person limited can be done in 4 easy steps. Dialogue does not apply to these steps.
Step 1: Look for words that you’ve written in 1st person (past tense) like I, Me, My, Our, and We. If you’re using second person look for words like You and Your. Highlight these words to mark them so you can easily go back to them later once your done reading through what you’ve written.
Step 2: Go back to the highlighted words and see if they are present tense phrases that you could change. For example, “I was shocked” can be changed into “he was shocked”.
Step 3: If you can’t change the phrase see if you can eliminate it altogether. For example, “I saw the glint in his eyes” can be changed to “There was a glint in his eyes”.
Step 4: Lastly, if you can’t eliminate the phrase see if you can rearrange the sentence. For example, “I saw the shine of the gem and my fingers itched to touch the smooth surface” can be changed to “The shine of the gem seemed smooth to the touch, tempting his twitching fingers”.
Note that step 1 is finding the words and phrases, step 2 is changing one word, step 3 is eliminating a phrase, and step 4 is doing all three.
