Look Up
First item on the agenda: I am a geek and I love Groklaw. That is all.
Second item: more writing wank.
One never gets really fantastic at writing. About the only thing one gets is better in small increments. There’s always something.
My evolution as a writer has gone through several “what do I strip out?” periods. There was the Kill-All-THATs phase (that is the most overused word in the English language) and then the Great Dialogue Tag War. (They almost won, but I pulled the nuke.) There is an ongoing Passive Verb insurgency, that needs must be smoked out one chapter at a time and sometimes grows back. And the “And Then” infiltration is a hideous blight upon my writing that MUST BE REMOVED.
Plus, currently I’m going through and tearing out every “seems to” and “seemed to” by the roots.
All these things are, to some degree (or even a large degree) bad writing.
1. That is, in nine cases out of ten, unnecessary. Kill it before it breeds.
2. Dialogue tags! (he said, she said, he grunted, she squealed.) These are only meant to be used in case of emergency. Action tags and description tags work better and give one more bang for one’s buck.
3. Passive verbs. Don’t do it. It’s not she was sitting. That’s a bloody copout. It’s she sat. Do this, young Grasshopper, and marvel at how much better your writing has suddenly become.
4. And Then. My own personal fall from grace. I apparently love starting sentences with and then when I shouldn’t. One editor compared it to that Saturday Night Live joke with the Asian chick going, “And then…and then…and then.” I usually do a global search for And then at the beginning of sentence, and howl them into oblivion.
5. Seems to and seemed to are just further copouts. Don’t say something seemed to something. Say something DID.
All these various writerly sins (and these are just mine, they are the most common because I am a pluralist and because they’re easy copouts) spring from one source–and for once, I’m not blaming bad grammar.
They spring from a lack of authority in the writer.
Writers are hammered from all sides for daring to engage in a creative career. The number-one thing people say to hurt or denigrate us is the ever-famous, “Don’t quit your day job.” Writers are in the position of being gods of their little universes (when the Muse lets us, ha ha) on the inside and being forced into bowing and scraping apologetically on the outside. This inevitably leads to what I call “weak dictator” writing–loading the work with the weight of passive verbs, seems-to, and dialogue tags to get the arch reader’s approval by refusing to definitively state what the hell your characters are doing.
Better writing comes from getting brave enough to scrap those crutches, having the balls to state clearly and simply what your character’s doing–speaking, of course, from your authority as the one who’s writing the goddamn story.
She seemed to think this over, tapping the gun against her thigh. “Okay,” she said. “But if you touch my bum, I’ll bloody well make you regret it.”
“Of course,” he replied, that old weight beginning behind his eyelids. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
She was turning away towards the tunnel’s mouth when the claws punched through her back.
Bad writing. Bad Lili. No cookie.
Edited, it would look somethin’ like this:
Margot thought it over, tapping the gun meditatively against her thigh. “Okay. But if you so much as think about touching my bum, I’ll ventilate you.”
“Of course.” Bloodlust clouded the corners of Evrard’s vision, stretching his lips into a gruesome smile. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
He waited until she turned away to drive his claws into her back.
Ahhhh. Much better. No passivity, very little weight. Every word (except the frocking adverb in the first line) is pulling its own share of the load. Naming the characters gives them a personality, and getting rid of cliche in the first dialogue chunk makes it more interesting.
Poor Margot. We barely knew thee.
But to return to my point, it is a constant uphill battle to get rid of these things in your writing. Recently I noticed all the seems and seemed to in my manuscripts. Which drove me into a froth of removal, and another froth of worrying about the books already published. I console myself with the thought that they represent an evolution in writing ability; I do firmly believe that to get locked into stasis as a writer represents creative death. (Not to mention the cold hard fact that I can’t change ‘em now even if I want to.)
In other words, if there’s not something you’re trying to fix, it’s probably broken. You will never ever achieve perfection in writing. (Neither will I.) That’s the fun bit–the messiness and room for error sometimes giving birth to great things. One only gets better one small bit at a time. Be easy in your skin, Young Writer, for even the best of us are capable of astonishing sins in service to the Muse.
You just have to get better when and where you can, and forgive yourself your peccadilloes. (I love that word.) On that path lies the way to better writing.
Third on the agenda: I’m listening to Madeleine Peyroux. If you have not listened to her GO DO SO NOW. She’s Diana Krall with cojones, dudes.
I’ve also fallen back in love with Big Head Todd and the Monsters, especially Sister Sweetly, one of my favorite albums since it houses “It’s All Right” and “Bittersweet.” Riviera is harder-edged and I’m not sure about it yet, but I can’t stop listening.
Nickelback and Big Head Todd. Auditory schitzo, anyone?
Plus I just finished reading Kent Anderson’s Sympathy for the Devil. It was an earthshaking book, and I can see myself reading or seeing most analyses of the Vietnam war through the lens of Anderson’s main character’s experience. Reading All Quiet on the Western Front while in Bellingham recently reminded me of Sympathy sitting in my TBR pile, and I decided to attempt the book. It leapt on me about fifty pages in and didn’t let me go until four in the morning (no wonder I’m an insomniac) when I reached the end and let out a breath I wasn’t even aware of holding. In short, a thumb’s-up, though I will caution that this book is graphic and affecting enough to give me uneasy dreams. Use at your own risk.
Fourth and final item on my agenda is caffeination, dear Reader. So I bid you adieu. Have a wonderful day.
I’m going to go pull out seemed to and and then by their frocking roots.
No related posts.
September 21st, 2006 at 12:44 am
For goodness’ sakes. “Seemed to” is not bad writing. It could make the difference between whether something really happened, or the viewpoint character just saw / heard it that way. I like your books but I really hate the swingeing generalizations you indulge in on this blog. You’re pretty close to putting me off your series altogether.
September 21st, 2006 at 9:51 am
True, occasionally “seemed to” can be good writing. Far more often it’s a copout. The general rule is not to say something “seemed to” (especially as often as that creeps into my rough drafts) but to say something DID. And when it comes to writing advice, I can only say “generally” because there are some books that break every one of those rules and still manage to be readable–even classic. Unfortunately not everyone is a Dickens, Hemingway, or Shakespeare.
The rest of us have to be more careful in how we flaunt the rules.
September 26th, 2006 at 12:45 am
You wrote this for me… passive voice plagues me. Thanks, you actually set things out in a clearer way then some writing books do.