Rewrite 8 – Stronger Verbs for Better Stories

Strong verbs enliven your prose. Weak verbs flatten it. When I rewrite, I always find the same sad, weak verbs: look, feel, walk, know, and forms of the verb “to be.” Often, I’ve tried to bolster them with adverbs. Autocrit (a powerful application I’ll write about in a future post) highlights these for me, and I squirm when I first see the analyzed pages.

I hobble even good verbs by adding limiting words (almost, nearly, more or less, practically) or undercut their strength with –ing or have/had (I embalmed/was embalming/had embalmed). And, of course, the passive intrudes from time to time. (The dead iguana was embalmed.)

I also indulge in negatives. (I was not eager vs. I hesitated. He didn’t explain it well vs. He confused me.)

I can identify these problems without much trouble. First, I mark them. Later, I revisualize each scene, and better verbs come to mind. When I get stuck, I resort to a thesaurus, but I hate to do that. A good thesaurus will tempt me to use a verb that amuses me or that is inappropriate for my tone, character, or audience. (As a speechwriter, I rarely resort to books of quotations, for the same reason.) Finally, I make the fix.

So it’s a simple process, and a necessary part of rewriting:

·      Identify weak and weakened verbs.

·      Mark them.

·      Reimagine the scenes.

·      Make repairs (by putting in more specific, visual verbs, getting rid of adverbs and qualifying words or phrases, and/or changing the verb form).

But what happens when the verb resists replacement?

Dialogue – Your characters do not need to sound like good writers. In fact, making characters hyper-articulate can ruin your stories. I am aware of the grammatical errors my characters make, and I usually let them stand. I spot their weak verbs, too, and, when the characters naturally express themselves with those words, they stay in the manuscript.

Avoiding repetition – Except in instruction manuals and poetry, repeated words bore readers. But the story actions may demand a series of repeats. In such circumstances, something like “stroll, walk amble” may be better than “stroll, amble, amble.”

Simplicity - It is possible to make the prose too dense, to end up pummeling your reader with strong verbs. Do not make replacements that stress your reader or muddy your prose. Read the piece with the weak verb out loud. If it sounds good, it is good.

Sometimes weak verbs reveal poorly imagined scenes. This may be the biggest value to my analysis of the verbs. I may create a lot of rewriting work for me, but it makes the story stronger. And that is the main point of rewriting, isn’t it?   

Rewrite 7 - Fixing Dialogue, Step by Step

Most of the time, I love my dialogue as it goes onto the page. The characters come alive for me, and I can barely keep up with their chattering, and drafting is a pleasure. Occasionally, the characters get sullen, and I have to put words in their mouths. I struggle to meet my word count. Whether inspired or workmanlike, the pages never look wonderful when, after a cooling off period, I return to them for the rewrite.

I could get discouraged, but process saves me. I know from past experience that going through, step by step, I'll end up with pages that do the storytelling job. My process has changed over the years (and it continues to change). While I used to treat rewriting like an immersion experience, taking on whatever displeased me in each go-through, now I tend to isolate one concern at a time.

That discipline

• reduces confusion, 
• keeps me from missing things, and 
• helps to prevent the problem of having one repair knock everything else out of whack.

Here are the steps I use, in this order:

• Make sure something happens - Sounds simple, right? For scenes with little dialogue, this tends to occur naturally, but it is amazing how often dialogue does not move a story forward. And this is especially true if your characters are clever and charming. I do two things as a test. First, I title the scene. This forces me to think about it holistically as opposed to as a series of exchanges. Next, I add a subtitle that begins, "In which..." Anyone who has read a lot of older novels is familiar with these subtitles. "In which our heroine Beatrice steals Alexandra's locket." Beware of subtitles where a character "finds out" something or "insults" another character. Ask what finding out leads to. If she finds out her best friend has betrayed her, is she forced to flee Coventry? Ask about the results of that insult. Does Harold challenge Christopher to a duel at dawn?
• Make sure the scene fits - A great scene can be in the wrong place or in the wrong book. Look at the scene in context. If you've titled your scenes, line them up and see if the order makes sense and moves the story forward.
• Make the characters distinct 1 - Can you hear your characters voices? Is there contrast? Would you know who was who just by their perspective and choice of words?
• Check the narrative - I often short change the action, description, and reflection in the draft, so this is vital to my rewrite. It often puts me back into draft mode, forcing me to visualize the scene anew and to feel along with the characters. Once the narration is added, the pacing becomes evident and may need adjustment.
• Check the point of view - The scene looks much more complete now. Is the point of view consistent, or is there head hopping? Even more important, is the point of view character the one who has the most to lose as the scene proceeds?
• Trim the start and the stop - Most draft scenes start too early and end too late. I chop from the top first, removing any lines that are not essential. "Hellos" are deadly. When it is impossible to start the scene any later, I look at the ending. Sometimes the ending doesn't truly resolve and more must be added. But more often it dribbles on longer than necessary. Last line - cut! Next to last line - cut! Continue until the scene can't end any sooner.
• Eliminate on-the-nose - I need to write a whole piece on this. Basically, people are more interesting and reveal more character when they talk indirectly. Check out this nice ScreenwritingU article. Also, avoid at all costs and line that could be preceded by "As you know." Do not use your characters as shills to avoid your job of clear, well-placed narration.
• Check for clarity - Lots of words now. Lots of changes. Lot of opportunity for confusion.
• Make the characters distinct 2 - This is so important. Readers love to hear characters. Make sure they still are talking in their own voices.
• Clear out the throat clearing - "Um, err, well" People do talk like this. A little goes a long way. Fiction is not reality. It is enhanced. Clear out the dull stuff. Beware also of "real" dialect. I'm not gonna tell ya twice 'bout this.
• Eliminate the repeats - Yes, people repeat themselves. Yes, they echo back what the other person has said to ensure they heard properly or to change emphasis. No, you shouldn't do this (most of the time).
• Add the attributions - Make sure we know who is talking. "Said" is usually the best word.
• Read the dialogue aloud - Your ears will pick out the problems.

I'll note that this is not a recipe. I am not concerned if I drift away from the process or change the order. Since I often end up drafting new sentences, paragraphs, and scenes during rewriting, things can get crazy. But this process provides a fallback position when (as often happens) I get uncertain about what to do next. And it provides an excellent checklist to ensure that I've done the full job.

What about you? How do you approach rewriting dialogue and rewriting in general?

 

The Ethical Consequences of Fiction

Occasionally, I write stuff that is immoral, dangerous, blasphemous, and grossly inappropriate. I turn off my internal editor as fully as I can during the drafting stage. It is often appalled at what it finds when it is put back online.

This is appropriate. If you stay within the safe zone and never address anything that might cause trouble, you will never find the limits of what you can do in terms of entertainment, influence, and art.

However, what you write carries consequences and a measure of responsibility. Rod Serling wrote a thriller, "The Doomsday Flight," about an airplane that carried a bomb with an altitude-sensitive trigger, and I understand he felt pangs of guilt when, to his surprise, someone actually carried out a similar plot in real life. On the other hand, the morons who put together the anti-Islam film "Innocence of Muslims" seem to have intended for it to be provocative.

It is up to your inner editor to wake up and think about the implications of whatever work you produce before you set it free in the world. This should go beyond whether it is simply legal. (I still shudder when I think of a man I met who was making money with a product that helped drunks pass breath tests.) It is good to think ahead of time of what your limits are and what questions you might need to ask.

• Will the work amplify or justify bigotry and hatred?
• Have you encouraged people to act in ways you believe are immoral or socially destructive?
• Have you just supplied detailed information on how to build a weapon or commit a crime?
• Have you exposed someone you know to ridicule or unfairly maligned an institution?
• Have you falsified history in a way that will lead to harmful actions or decisions?
• Have you distorted scientific knowledge or advocated choices that harm nature?

With all this said, the writer must balance the responsibility as a truthsayer with potential results and should not be silenced by what the most malicious or reckless among us might do. I heard that Robert Heinlein was so eaten up by the possibility that mass murderer Charlie Manson was inspired by his novel "Stranger in a Strange Land" that he hired an investigator to interview Manson in jail. (The report came back negative.) Though it is not my favorite book, I think it would be tragic if, because a madman read the work though a distorted lens, Heinlein's novel would have been suppressed.

What limits do you put on yourself when you edit? What questions do you ask?

Good Endings 2 - Satisfaction testing

Last week, I wrote about the four essentials for good endings: clarity, resolution, logic and fairness, and timing. Without these, it is difficult to achieve a satisfying ending, much less a memorable one.

Some people give birth to wonderful endings in one burst. In fact, many writers only begin work on a story when they imagine a full and powerful ending. Others approach the ending incrementally as part of the general rewriting process. Both of these are fine, but I've found that taking the ending alone and going step by step before to make sure the essentials are there often saves me time. Here's what I do:

Clarity - The easiest way to assure that your ending is clear is to have someone else read it and tell you (without prompting) what happened. You can go through and dissect the elements of the ending and look for ambiguities in the language, but another pair of eyes is much more efficient. I like to have people who are likely to enjoy the work and who are unfamiliar with it take a look. I do have one caveat. I have seen many people in writers groups explain and defend an unclear ending. (They seem to imply that it's all there, and the reader is at fault.) There is no value to doing this. Just listen and fix it.

Resolution - Check for this by articulating the story question and its answer. This means actually writing out both. What is Rosebud (Citizen Kane)? A sled, but also a symbol of the loss that drove Kane. Will the rescue team save Private Ryan (Saving Private Ryan)? Yes, but only by sacrificing many men who also have hopes, dreams, and families.

Note that while your questions for these movies are probably the same, your answers might be different. Writing down more than one answer is fine. The point is that an answer can be given for the story question. And it should never be simply yes or no. You want "yes, but" or "yes, and" or "no, but" or "no, and."

Logic and fairness - This is less clear cut, but here are the questions I use to test my endings:

• Have I followed cause and effect? Do events emerge as a natural consequence of what came before?
• Have I been true to the "rules" of the story? Does what happened make sense (especially in fantasy) given the constraints of culture, science, history, and behavior?
• Do my characters continue to act "in character," making choices that are consistent or changing with sufficient and clear motivation?
• Did I provide the elements that come together for an ending early enough? Did I avoid introducing a deus ex machina (a rich relative, a gun hidden in drawer, a suicide note) that made the answer suddenly easy?
• Does the ending come from the actions and decisions of the protagonist rather than from someone else?
• Was the ending made possible by the changes to my character as he or she worked through obstacles? (If the character could have done what was necessary from page one, I have a story problem.)

Timing - This is the trickiest of all. Keeping a list of loose ends that matter for a reader and making sure these (and only these) are answered helps. Length matters, and a good rule of thumb is Act 3 is no more than 25% of the work. It is always good to see what happens if paragraphs and scenes are cut. I often find that I didn't want to finish, and cutting either works directly or points me toward more compact ways to present the ending.

I prefer abrupt endings, both in what I read and in the final versions of what I write. I hate codas and epilogues. I am irritated by a kiss that takes place after I already know the hero and heroine have found love. But most readers like to have a bow put on the story, to have what they discovered at the end confirmed. I recommended keeping it (or, in my case, adding it) and asking explicitly what readers and editors think. Just don't overdo it.

I work in this order, and I include all the ending (usually Act 3), not just the final scene. When I have gone through this process, I have some confidence that I have a good ending. It doesn't guarantee that the ending is great or even entertaining, but it should be satisfying.

finis

Rewrite 5 - Cutting scenes and filling holes

Surgery is painful, and editing away scenes that you have struggle through is surgery without anesthesia. Here are a few thoughts that might be useful:

• Time is your friend. For all the other advantages of giving your manuscript a rest, one of them is it reduces your emotional attachment to the prose.
• Your instincts are right. Your logical brain will argue for many of the bits that must go, and it will make a convincing case: 
• This scene reveals character.
• The reader needs this backstory.
• Dumping this will wreck your pacing.
• The next scene makes no sense without this scene
• Every book has departures like this, so it's okay.
Oh, what clever brains we have. And how they deceive us. Trust your gut and cut away.
• You can fix it (and it's worth it). Yes. Your logical brain is often right about the havoc created by cutting material. But you can always repair it. After all, you know what needs to be fixed. And guess what. The book will be much better because of the sacrifices you've made.
• You can always undo. If you feel stress when you cut, save the copy first as a previous version or create a file of cuttings that you can use just in case. I tend to do this, and there are a few times a year when I go back and grab one of the cuttings. I've even used cuttings for entirely different stories.

Because of the cuts you make as you rewrite and the vagaries of the drafting process, you'll have holes to fill. There are risks here of being less imaginative, creating variations in the tone, and blocks. What's up?

• Filling holes puts you back into draft mode. You need to be patient, forgiving, and uncritical. Shut up that inner critic, catch a daydream, and write away. 
• Filled holes suffer by comparison. They stand out as ugly siblings of the prose around them.
• Filled holes need to be rewritten.  This may entail waiting for perspective. It certainly means reading the words aloud and bringing the full force of your rewriting process to bear on the words.
• Filled holes may need to be cut. They may not solve the problem. They may even reveal that there is no problem to solve.
• Filled holes should not stand out. That means they need to be in context before your job is done. Reading the scene that comes before, the filled hole and the scene that comes after helps to ensure that things are smooth.

One more tip - you might want to write yourself a note about how you feel after you have gone through these two steps in the writing process. In particular, document your thoughts on how much better it makes the manuscript. When you find yourself in the same position with the next manuscript, this will provide a good reminder that it is all worthwhile.

Rewriting 4 - Using Theme to Trim Your Story

Usually, I write short. But for my script, Warriors, I came up with over 160 pages. This meant that I had some serious cutting in front of me to get to a more reasonable length of 110 pages. One of the best tools I used during my rewrite process was identifying the theme of the work.

To me, theme means understanding what you're trying to say. Developing the theme is something I do before I begin writing a speech or other nonfiction. In those instances, understanding what I want to say provides one of the fundamental building blocks for the writing. 

Not so with fiction. I am highly suspicious of beginning an artistic effort with a message. To me it smacks too much of propaganda and the kind of didactic stories I hated when I was a child. Besides, I can't imagine that writing in such a way would be fun.

So I don't even think about the theme on a conscious level for fiction until I have completed a draft. Once I have the words in front of me, I know that my imagination has buried a concept, sometimes a surprising concept, somewhere in the story. It is my job—one of the more pleasant jobs of rewriting—to discover what that is.

For Warriors, this began with my looking at the dialogue. When my characters get talking, they often will state the theme explicitly. As I worked through my manuscript, I came up with several candidates for theme. Sometimes, they were formulated as advice offered by character. More often, they were statements of point of view–here's how the world really works.

Actions can also be clues to the theme, especially if you look at their consequences. When someone robs a convenience store and gets arrested, the obvious theme is, “Crime doesn't pay.” (Unfortunately, most themes, once articulated, seem simple and obvious. This is disappointing, but it isn't a problem for the writer. In fact, the simple formulations are easy to holding your head as you work through your rewrite.) Looking at the key action scenes in my work and the impact they have upon the characters usually provides a lesson of some sort.

In Warriors, where all the hackers hid behind their secret identities, a theme about taking responsibility for your actions emerged. The good news on this for me was that it provided plenty of opportunities for cutting scenes that did not relate to the theme. The bad news was that it left holes in the plot—one of which was the ending. I have a lot of work ahead of me, but that work paid off with a streamlined story that had much more emotional impact. Understanding the theme reignited my interest in the script and, with no strain, helped me to cut it down to the required page length.

Rewrite 3 - Structure, Structure, Structure

A hook or a clever phrase can pull a reader into a story, but it is structure that keeps him or her reading.

Many of us learned about structure in school -- topic sentences, inverted pyramids, and the like. Most of these are aimed at clarity more than persuasion or keeping the reader interested (which is why school themes are usually dull and why most people learn to hate writing).

In fact, nonfiction structure, when done well, can go beyond clarity to create interest, action, and enjoyment. For speeches, in particular, the writer may use literary techniques. Nancy Duarte provide a wonderful analysis of speech structure in her TED talk.

I often begin with structure when I write nonfiction. With fiction, however, I tend to be a pantser. I allow myself to meander and explore, and I put off structure until I get to rewriting. I'll provide some insights on the rewriting process in a later blog entry, but here I'll share five ways that I look at my draft to improve its structure:

1. Story logic - My best ally on doing this is screenwriter Jeff Kitchen, who has provided a method of using logic to analyze scenes in terms of cause-and-effect. He works backward from the ending to the beginning. When you do this with your novel, the scenes that are part of the main plot stand out vividly.
2. Stakes - The stakes should rise throughout the piece. Do they? Listing them and ranking them according to jeopardy opportunity can expose structural weaknesses.
3. Story turns - The ends of Acts, the Black Moment, etc. Do they happen at the right times in the story? Are they irreversible? Screenwriter Alexandra Sokoloff provides a series of articles that spell out what is needed.
4. Scene beats - Beats within a scene turn the conversation or action in a new direction. In drama, you look for 3-5 beats in a scene, and that's not a bad rule for novels.
5. White space - Often, just looking at the pages tells me if there is too much narration or too much dialogue crammed into a set of pages. What's "right" varies by story, but it is always worthwhile to make this part of the analysis of story structure.

I go through these in this order. I also do other work that is related to structure (theme and character analysis), but I find these five steps are the most critical. Surprisingly, the payoff for this analysis is emotional more than it is logical.  The right structure has a huge impact on the pacing, which allows engagement to rise without distraction. Get the structure right, and the readers will turn the pages.

Do You Listen to Music When You Write?

Music can help the words flow or it can get in the way. For me, music serves several purposes that make my writing sessions more productive.

• I use music to cover auditory distractions.
• Music inspires me, creating mood and emotions.
• Music sets rhythms in my head.
• Since rewriting (especially ferreting out junk words and typos) is my least favorite part of writing, I use music to make the experience more pleasant.
• A forty or fifty minute piece makes a great timer, setting the boundaries of my work period.

I can write without music. (If fact, the only sound I have as I write this blog is the perking of the coffee maker.) But music contributes to my productivity, as long as it does not have words. I cannot ignore lyrics. I sing along in my head. (This may be a leftover from my memorizing every jingle and TV theme song I heard when I was a kid.) The only music with words I can listen to is music in a language I don't know. Opera works great because it is full of emotion.

My wife seems to be able to listen to anything, even have the TV going when she writes. I know writers who need silence during drafting and need music during rewrites. Some people need silence all the way through.

If music is part of your writing practice, specific tunes and the style of music may make a difference. Film scores, classical music, heavy metal, jazz -- they may not be equally valuable (or horrifying) at different stages of writing. But, if you understand how music impacts your productivity, it can become an ally.

Try different styles at different stages, and track your experiences. The number of words written is only one factor. Make notes about how you felt as you wrote, how the music impacted the rhythm and emotion of your work, how it inspired you, and the quality, too.

If you understand how music and silence make a difference for you, you'll have a way to write more and have more fun writing.

Rewrite 2 - Give It a Rest

Conventional wisdom says you should take a break (usually a month is recommended for a novel) before you begin a rewrite. I've always tried to do that, even when the most I could manage was 24 hours (for a speech). My experience has been that a wait between drafting and rewriting made technical errors (grammar, logical sequence) jump out at me, but, when teaching, I have paid less attention to the wait's benefits to storytelling.

But, on consideration, my stories have gotten better with the breaks I've taken. Why should that be? I understand why reading sentences the way I thought of them rather than they way they sit on the page would be a problem. Isn't story more macro, and less vulnerable to that sort of blindness?

No. And I have a better understanding of why after having read Walter Murch's In the Blink of an Eye. Murch is the editor of huge artistic and commercial hits, like American Graffiti,  The Godfather, and The English Patient. Murch recommends that the editor stay away during filming because the knowledge of what happened beyond the frame of the filming contaminates the approach. It is all too easy to keep an expensive, hard-to-get shot and to dismiss one that was painful and felt wrong to cast and crew -- to the detriment of the people in the audience who know nothing about the history of how the shot was put together.

He recommends that directors, who usually get involved in the editing, take a total break from the film for at least two weeks, and then come back with a level of amnesia. (He liked that Fred Zinnemann, director of From Here to Eternity, would climb the Alps, risking his life, for two week after filming.)

The writer is just like the director here, with a head full of knowledge about the scenes in the story -- none of which is of value to the audience. So breaks are just as essential to editing a book and getting the story told in a way that best serves the audience. We need to get rid of all that excess information.  So when you finish a draft, give it a rest.

Rewrite 1 - Talk to yourself

For a speechwriter, few things are more painful than hearing your principal stumble over the text - especially if it is your fault. There is no way to prevent this completely, but reading the text aloud before you hand it in cuts down on the chances of embarrassing moments and eliminates the pangs of guilt (mostly).

Yet, a significant percent of the speechwriters I have known and worked with count on listening to the voices in their heads, and they hand in copy that suffers before the audience, time and time again. I can tell immediately if a speech (that may have looked good on paper) has never been read aloud. And this is such an obsession for me, that I have actually confirmed read/never read with the authors. My surveys show that, in general, a stumble means the text has not been tested with an actual, oral reading.

Here's the lesson -- You owe it to yourself, no matter what kind of writing you do, to read your work out loud at least once. It exposes errors, awkward phrasings, convoluted logic, and ambiguities. If you can get someone to listen as you read "final" copy, this is best. But reading the text to yourself, with a pencil in hand to correct or tick off problems to handle later, will substantially improve your prose in a fast, efficient way.

The biggest reason people don't read their text out loud is it feels like unnecessary work. It is easy to convince yourself that, if it looks good on paper or sounds good in your head, reading the text aloud is a waste of time. I have never found this to be true for myself or my students. People have argued with me about this, but I always win by having them read their "perfect" copy out loud.

For many people, it is uncomfortable to read out loud. Oddly enough, this can be true even when no one is around to listen to the reading. Having had nuns who made me quake as I stumbled through oral presentations, I have some sympathy for these people. Here's my suggestion: Read very quietly to yourself. It works.

I got this idea when I took a course with Danny Simon (the inspiration for Felix Ungar). He said his brother Neil would lean in toward his typewriter and read copy to himself before removing a page. Sometimes, he rolled the paper back in so he could make a change. Sometimes he just chuckled to himself.

One more tip: Before I read my text to myself, I let Alex read it to me. This is one of my Mac's text-to-speech personas and the only one I can tolerate. It is available via system preferences, speech, text-to-speech. (Microsoft has text-to-speech, too.) Alex is amazingly good at finding problems. I don't try to correct the text along the way as he reads. Instead, I drop in a Zen comment when I hear something that doesn't sound quite right. (That is, I have the reviewing bar open, move the cursor to the spot where the problem is, and click on the comment button. I do not enter text into the comment box because that would force me to pause Alex.) I go back after he is finished and fix the places I've marked. Since I put Alex to work, my own reads discover about 90% fewer errors.

Finding problems is what rewriting is all about. That's why, even though it sounds crazy, good writers need to make a habit of talking to themselves.

The Humble Timer

Tick tick tick tick tick. I love the sound of an old egg timer counting down the minutes. Serving up a satisfying "bing!" at the end. I use a timer about half the time that I write (especially when I feel sluggish and reluctant). There have been times when I have done nothing but stare at a page for the full 15 minutes (or whatever the designated time was). More often, I jump as if a starting gun has been fired, write lousy and great sentences, and then keep writing after the bell rings.

I thought my dedication to the timer was eccentric, but my students claim it is the most useful help for productive writing as all. (Not all students, of course. Writers, if nothing else, are individuals.) Here's what I get:

• A ready tool
• A ritual the reenforces good habits
• A taskmaster that does not accept excuses; the dial marches forward no matter what I say.
• Permission -- to write less that perfect prose and to stop when the timer goes off.

I have used the timer primarily for drafting, but I've found it is also a great help for rewriting (my least favorite activity). For me, there is an extra requirement - I need to decide the day before what I will do specifically during that time period (proofing, removing "junk" words, doing a "backward" analysis. Without a plan other than "rewriting," the timer is not a help. With the plan, I stay on task and get the productivity I'm looking for.

I like real timers, but I use timer apps as well. CNET always has a few timers available for download, including free ones.

I'll end with a question. Why aren't timers used more often? The students who rave about timers and report productivity during classes have generally had success with them in the past. Why do they fail to use them on a regular basis? How can the habit be encouraged?

Draft 1 - Stop endless looping

Do you go back after you draft a page, a paragraph or a sentence and immediately begin fixing it? Even worse, do you write a little further, and then go back and do some more fixing on what you just "fixed"? I call this looping, and it is the most common impediment to productive writing among my students. It can lead to complete paralysis, and there's a reason for that -- the part of your brain that composes is not the same part that edits.

Shifting back and forth wastes time and energy. Even worse, it provides an opening for editor in your head (who hates everything) to seize control. Most productive writers separate the act of drafting and the act of editing. As Casey Wyatt says in her blog,"I can fix it later."

If you don't loop, don't start. If you have a habit of looping, it can be tough to break. Here are a few suggestions:

• Give yourself permission to write badly. Do this every day for at least a week. Remember, it can always be fixed later on.
• Join a writing sprint (as Casey does), race against a timer, or use a forced march program like Write or Die! Some of my students have also found it useful to shrink their text editing windows down so they can only see a line or two at a time.
• Keep you forward momentum (and avoid distracting research) by inserting a word or symbol whenever the exactly right word, number or fact doesn't come readily to mind. For years, I have put the word "bagel" into my texts, and then searched for the bagels. (Luckily, I don't write about food.) I heard Jenna Kernan speak recently, and I was delighted to hear she uses the same technique, inserting asterisks (***).
• Use a dictation program. I use Dragon Dictate for at least half my drafting. It works better for nonfiction than fiction, but it still is faster than typing for me. And it is almost impossible to loop when you are dictating.

 However you do it, break the habit of looping. You'll probably find that your productivity will increase significantly, even though you will be spending more time later on editing.

Do you loop? Do you have a trick to stop yourself?