R.U.E.

Ana shares an editing prompt that helps her to not rue her writing.

R.U.E. stands for Resist the Urge to Explain. It's a helpful editing prompt from Browne and King, authors of Self-Editng for Fiction Writers.

Telling your readers about your characters' emotions is not a good idea. Showing the emotions through dialogue and body actions is preferable most of the time. This lets the reader experience the story.

The challenge, obviously, is to write "some original bit of action or interior monologue that shows the emotion you want to describe.

When they are editing, Browne and King suggest simply cutting the explanation of the emotion. "If the emotion is still shown, then the explanation wasn't needed. It the emotion is now missing, rewrite the passage so that it is."

Adverbs ending in -ly almost always "catch the writer in the act of explaining dialogue--smuggling emotions into speaker attributions that belong in the dialogue itself." An exception is an -ly adverb characterizing the word 'said,'  as in 'said softly' or 'said clearly.'

Another prompt I use all the time when writing (so I don't have as many to catch when editing) is F.A.D.  This stands for Feeling. Action. Dialogue. Passages will make the most sense if you write how the POV character feels first. Then s/he does a physical action. Then speaks. I watch for this a lot  when writing and critiquing, and have found that the FAD order is the best arrangement most of time.