A question for KillerMuffin

[Guest]

In one of the feedback posts that you gave, (I don't remember whose) you wrote about words used in a sentence that made the story boring. Could you please elaborate on that and possibly give a few examples of these words that should not be used when you are writing a story, please?


Thank you very much.

 

[KillerMuffin]

Sure. The primary thing that makes a story boring is passive voice. Passive voice is essentially where the subject of the sentence receives the action rather than does the action or the subject is in a state of being. Corporate documents and academia are infamous for their passive voice.

The thing about passive voice is that when you're writing it, it feels like it's more authorly than active voice. I'm not too sure why that is, but when you write in passive voice you are stretching your linguistic muscles, so to speak, because normal speech patterns are active voice.

Things to watch out for:

Convoluted sentences. If it's hard for you to get it to make sense, then it's wrong and your readers will have no idea what it means. Move on and come back to edit it out later. The sentence is undoubtedly a run-on and/or has too much information in it.

Conjugations of the verb "be." It's impossible to avoid was, is, are, be, has, and all those other words, however, they should not dominate your predicate structure. Why? Because when you use those words the characters aren't doing anything. It's boring when people do nothing but simply "be."

Started, began, or any similar word. She started to lick my neck. He began to thrust into her. First, it's inherent in the action. He thrust into her, well obviously he began to do it then kept on doing it. You may use them, but remember that a little goes a long way.

Repetitions. Not just the same word, but the same idea as well. Sometimes a writer can have a character do something and then explain to the reader what just happened or what the characters might not have noticed.

Telling, not showing. This is a difficult one to pick out. You don't learn it by writing either, you learn it by critiquing. Read a story and look for the narrator in it. When the narrator enters the story and adds something it's known as "telling." "Showing" is when the characters themselves show what's happening in the story. There's nothing wrong with some judicious telling. The problems are that narrators become characters, they editorialize, and they often repeat what the characters have already done. Watch out for the word "they." Characters rarely use it unless they say it or are referring to a group of people. They never include themselves in "they."

Adverbs are killer. You can't get along without them, but if you can replace them with a phrase, you're better off. Adverbs themselves are telling. Adverbial phrases tend to be showing. One exercise that I am fond of doing is to write a page of descriptive action with no words that end in -ly.

A few examples, I did not write them:

"Some years ago, when one of our great public buildings was nearing completion, the president of a leading university was invited to prepare a set of quotations to be inscrived on the walls of the foyer in expression of the highest meaning of law, religion, art, philosophy, science, literature, industry, and other central activities of the life of man."

"Harry was on his knees and getting licked along his chest by his girlfriend Sandra. She started to nibble on his nipples and he was getting harder."

"Having her here like this is his fantasy. He has been planning this since he first decided she would be his, that he would be the one to awaken what lay hidden deep inside her. He thought back for a moment to when he had first seen her ad on that web site and how profoundly her words had affected him. There was an aura of innocence about her presence, combined with a simmering sensuality just below the surface. She had intrigued him from the beginning. He was not disappointed now that he had gotten to know the person behind that simple picture. "



These are just a few things I've learned in the course of reading a lot, editing some, and writing for a long time.

 

[Guest]

KillerMuffin,

Thank you so much for going into such detail. I really appreciate it and finally understand.

 

[MissTaken]

Thank you , KM.

Great post and very helpful.

That you know your shit AND can make it clear to the anonymous wannabe writer on the other side of the glass screen is a skill very few can boast.

Thanks again.