As you will often see me say on the blog, there is no singular approach to writing. We all have methods that work perfectly for us and ones that don't. Some of these are instinctual, whereas others are learned through trial and error or from fellow writers.
The subject of today's post is among the latter and something that has made my drafting and revision process just a touch smoother with just two letters: TK.
What Does TK Mean?
TK originates as a publishing shorthand used to indicate that more will be added.
In journalism, for example, you might write, "When asked about the new exhibit, the museum's director Angela Garcia said, 'TK.'" if you are prepping a draft ahead of conducting the interview of waiting on additional information.
I didn't know this until recently, but TK actually stands for "To Come." As for why TK is used instead of TC, it's not a misspelling that happened to stick. Rather, TK is used because of how it sticks out to us as we read through our drafts. This way, there is a better chance of catching it. TKTK may also be used.
How Do Fiction Writers Use TK?
The use of TK doesn't only apply to journalism. It's something that can help fiction writers, too.
In a first draft, the goal isn't always about the quality of the writing, but simply getting the words on the page. As such, it's crucial to maintain your momentum.
If you find that you've gotten a tiny bit stuck and the word you want is on the tip of your tongue but you can't quite put your finger on it, instead of waiting and hoping that the word you want will surface, you might type up a quick TK and carry on.
Some writers, myself included, may get more specific and use things like TK-FRIENDNAME2 in place of a character name or TK-ADJECTIVE when they don't know how to describe something in the moment.
I personally have my own acronyms that I employ alongside TK in writing to account for specific points of writer's block.
TKDT is my dialogue tag or action beat substitute (which may sound familiar to anyone who read one of my earliest posts about what my editing process was like at the time).
TKSYN is my code for when I need to find a synonym with a stronger impact.
TKRES comes up if I need to do a little more research into an element of my story or just want to double-check something.
There's a whole dozen or so more but they typically pertain to super-specific things in my WIPs that won't make sense out of context!
TK also works in tandem with the Find & Replace function. Let's say you hadn't decided on your protagonist's best friend's name and were using TKBFF before suddenly deciding this character's name is Danielle. All you'd have to do is an easy Find & Replace to change all of those TKBFFs to Danielle and move on with your story.
Cool, right?
For writers, the shorthand of TK can go a long way!
Early on in my writing, I had something of my own TK system, in that I would surround the bits that were missing from a draft or in want of improvement with brackets or mark them with an asterisk. This served the same function as TK but was in a way less efficient when it came to replacing them later on. TK brings a level of swiftness that makes the writing process a little smoother.
What writing or editing shortcuts do you use? Share your best tips in the comments!
