Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #3

[Guest]

George Orwell made a point many years ago, about imposing strong writing on the reader, taking a verse from Ecclesiastes:

"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, not the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."

... then "re-translating" ...

"Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a conserable element of the unpredictable must inevitably be taken into account."



Sounds a bit like Alan Greenspan giving Fed testimony in front of Congress, doesn't it?

 

[McKenna]

B-but, the view is so pwetty from up here.




K, seriously. I'm listening. And learn stuff too. But wuts wrong with posting opposing perspectives?

There ain't nothing wrong with posting opposing perspectives, they just sound to me like petty defences (that ofttimes come off sounding pompous and conscending.) I'm sorry, did I miss the published authors in this group? So glad your prose is working out for you. You don't need these threads.

I question whether the authors of these statements even know that they come off sounding like know-it-alls. A little humility goes a long way, folks.

Look, I don't agree 100% with what this guy says and at times I've felt like taking it personal, too. But you know what? He's published more books than me and maybe, just maybe he might know what the fuck he's doing. If nothing else, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Reading his text makes me examine my own writing a little closer, whether or not I agree with him. That makes it all worth while.

Now someone run a spell check. And be sure to point out all my mistakes. I'm sure that makes you more superior to me in the long run. I hope it soothes your aching ego, too.

Mck, out.

 

[Liar]

McK, if I have insulted you in some way, I apologize. The chapters so far have been very interresting, useful advice.

I (and I assume others too, but I can only speak for myself) simply thought that they were also good conversation starters around the subject. Apparently that was not the intention. Mea culpa and all that.

Awaiting #4,
#L

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Mck,

I don't think I am guilty of bashing you, but I will be dammned if I let my pride cause me to hurt your feelings. If you felt I was attacking you I sincerely apologize and promise that wasn't my intent.

I was only trying to own up to being "uberguilty" of this particular mistake.

*HUGS*

 

[McKenna]

I (and I assume others too, but I can only speak for myself) simply thought that they were also good conversation starters around the subject. Apparently that was not the intention. Mea culpa and all that.

Of course the intention was to start a conversation... it was NOT to listen to people defend their prose like they themselves know it all and cannot, therefore, be taught anything new. Please don't insult me by implying my intent was otherwise.

 

[McKenna]

Mck,

I don't think I am guilty of bashing you, but I will be dammned if I let my pride cause me to hurt your feelings. If you felt I was attacking you I sincerely apologize and promise that wasn't my intent.

I was only trying to own up to being "uberguilty" of this particular mistake.

*HUGS*

No Colly, I did not feel like you were attacking me at all. Thanks for your reply.

 

[CharleyH]

Of course the intention was to start a conversation... it was NOT to listen to people defend their prose like they themselves know it all and cannot, therefore, be taught anything new. Please don't insult me by implying my intent was otherwise.

Is this a sex thread?

 

[McKenna]

Is this a sex thread?

Kiss me. Let's see.

 

[Liar]

Can't and won't argue. Backing off with a final apology.

 

[oggbashan]

Am I the only one finding these threads useful?

I know that there are many flaws in my writing and I appreciate those who provide constructive criticism even when it hurts. It hurts most of all when I know that the criticism is right.

Mistake #3 is one that I thought I had overcome. My original stories, pre-literotica, had Virgilian sentence structures and polysyllabic words. My real stinker that I have now finally deleted, scrubbed, erased, was the story with a long disseration on hydraulics and the problems of irrigation, the principles of deflected aiming for artillery, how to load and fire a black powder muzzle-loading musket and a Baker rifle and a plot spanning 60 years with minimal sex and minimal interest for any reader.

Now I tend to write in shorter sentences with shorter words. However I still lapse into Mistake #3 for example including details on how to replace the sash cords on a sash window in an unbirth story. (If you don't know what 'unbirth' is you will probably find that fetish barf-making.) Those few who like unbirth seem to have found the idea of an unbirth story with a plot as an unheard-of innovation.

Please keep posting these mistakes. Even if we feel defensive about the ones that are closest to our own style they do help.

Og

 

[impressive]

Mck, out.

Please, no. I want (need) more.

 

[Svenskaflicka]

Language is my tool, my toy, my preciousssssss...

I write in simple words, except for when the plot or the character demands more advanced ones. By using them sparsely, I add more emphasis on them when I finally pick them out and add them to a text.

I love to write in complex, flowing, poetic sentences though, like a stream of consciousness tamed by civilized temper. So far, people who have hit the back-button have never bothered pointing that out to me. The only opinions I hear are those who think my language is sensual.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Most all of my favorite writers have impressive vocabularies and aren't afraid to use them: H.P. Lovecraft, Kerouac, O'Brian, Joyce. I pounce on each new word I don't know as if it's a jewel (just came across one the other day: "ormolu": brass that masquerades as gold), and seeing language well-used is one of the joys of reading to me.

Vocabulary is to a writer what a pallette is to an artist. You can paint some interesting pictures using only black and white, but I'm just not that kind of writer. I like all the colors and nuances and musicality of language, and its use and its richness and rhythms are a joy to me. As Gauche points out, there is indeed an ocean of difference between mellifluous and tuneful and just saying that something "sounded good".

I'd also point out that there are a lot of writers who make a very good living by writing about highly technical and arcane matters. Tom Clancy is one, Grisham is another, and look at all the "procedural" police novels that sell well that concern themselves with the painstaking details and minutiae of cop work. Are those authors showing off? Not if they hook you and suck you into the world of what it's like to be a secret agent or lawyer or cop.

I apologize if you personally feel set upon, McK, but this is the second excerpt from this book that's telling us to dumb it down, an idea I violently disagree with. If I did that myself, I wouldn't be doing my best work. If something's translucent, then I'm going to say it's translucent, not that "it let light through but you couldn't see shapes." To me, that's just dumbing it down, and if the reader doesn't know what "translucent" means, that's his problem, not mine.

I don't know what that author's been reading, but for me, most of the bad fiction I see suffers from a distinct poverty of language rather than an excess. Of course it has to be readable, which those examples are not, but blaming the awkwardness on the vocabulary is like blaming the nails for an ugly piece of furniture. It ain't the nails, it's how they're used.

I think of "Clockwork Orange", a novel that made up its own version of futuristic slang so obscure that it came with a glossary at the back that I had to consult constantly for the first fifty pages or so. You can't get much more arcane than that, and yet it was a brilliant book. I hate to think of what that would have been like had Burgess followed this author's advice.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

It seems to me, in time and place, you need to be able to use the right words if you want to be succesful. Similarly, there are shades of meaning, that can be expressed with the right word, where it takes a paragraph to explain the diference.

Kalidescope is a good example. Or Collage. Of words where trying to simplyfy the words would take a para or more of explanation.

There are times too, when technical explanation or description are needed.

I'm going to give an example from my short story, turned novella, turned novel, turned winds of war challenger for length.


<i>Julia gathered up her makeup and gave her brother a critical once over. She patiently plucked his eyebrows and about three quarters of an inch of the hair from his head, to give him the fashionably high forehead needed at court. His skin was so pale, he almost didn’t need the ceruse base, but she dutifully applied it, from his head to his bosom, making sure to smooth it until his skin was flawlessly white. Once she was done, she broke an egg, carefully separated the yolk and used the white to glaze his skin.

Next came vermillion for a rosy blush and a cute puckered smile. She used kohl to outline his wide eyes and make them seem slightly farther apart. Next came a drop of belladonna in each, to give them that sparkle women so craved.</i>

In this case, the setting is regency france. I could have said, she put on his makeup, but, few people today understand what was involved in that smiple phrase back then. Bozo the clown has less makeup on than these women wore daily. And in the context of a man trying to pass himself off as a woman to get close to a married man's wife he desires, you need to understand just how much crap these ladies had on their faces. Grizzly Adams could have passed for one, almost without shaving, by the time they got through with him. You basically applied this stuff with a spackleblade and putty knife.

At the same time, if I gave as detailed a description of a woman applying her makeup before a night out, some people might see better what I was getting at, but most would find the information totally extraneous.

I think in this case the real problem is not the advice. the problem is the author is speaking in generalities, using the vocabulary of absolutes. I don't think the advice would have generated as much hue and cry, if he had said "In general, you want to use words people understand. Large words, arcane words, words from technical or leagalistic jargon may have a place in a specific story, but in general, you are better off using words your reader is more likely to have a grasp of."

The way he phrases it, it comes off like an injunction to dumb yourself down or appeal to the lowest common denominator armong those who may be reading the work. When phrased differently, it becomes an injunction to study the words you are using and see if you are more likely to confuse the reader with a big word than you are with a smaller, or more commonly used one.

 

[McKenna]

I think in this case the real problem is not the advice. the problem is the author is speaking in generalities, using the vocabulary of absolutes. I don't think the advice would have generated as much hue and cry, if he had said "In general, you want to use words people understand. Large words, arcane words, words from technical or leagalistic jargon may have a place in a specific story, but in general, you are better off using words your reader is more likely to have a grasp of."

Thank you Colly for pointing this out. I couldn't agree more.

 

[impressive]

I suppose, when it comes to this discussion, each must decide what "success" looks like -- be it critical acclaim, popularity, sales, or just publication. We each set our own standards.

I don't try to "dumb down" my work, nor do I try to write over readers' heads. It's ever a balance.

 

[nushu2]

I have found that the most involving stories are where the author virtually disappears. In those cases, the writing style reflects the story and the characters. I've got no problem with an extensive and accurate vocabulary but rarely does a writer trying to impress actually succeed.

For some reason, I'm remided of Hemmingway's "The Old Man and the Sea". It was typically pedantic and purple of him but it worked in that unusual case.

Thanks for the thread McKenna.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

OK, so seriously, why do so many feel the need to defend their writing?


Don't get me wrong, thanks for sharing (and bashing me, though I have no idea when that became the sport de jour) but what would happen if you stopped defending and started listening?

God forbid a new idea be introduced to old writers (figuratively, if not literally).

Get off your fucking high horse already.

Since I believe this is in reference to my post on flow, I apologize for sounding arrogant, bashing, and like a deaf asshole.

The reason I posted something seemingly off-topic was because I listened to the advice, thought it good but limited. I also found the last two posts to both be relating more to an idea known as flow rather than an intentional dumbing-down of the work. Writers do sometimes put too much crap into a work and it becomes muddled, unreadable, and the flow is broken to the point the reader puts it down.

These last two tips seem to be about that problem and my point is about how as a writer you want to aid the reader in maintaining flow and not being tempted to put it down. The longer you can keep them from the bookmark, the better, in my opinion and it seemed to be the point he was alluding to if not stating. I'm sorry if that point came off as "high horse". I will refrain from doing it again.

And will we see #4 somewhere in here?

 

[bridgeburner]

I'm not convinced that "Don't be a show off" translates to "Dumb it down for the lowest common denominator."

There's a difference between using one's intelligence to write a good story and using a story to demonstrate one's intelligence. The latter tends to backfire. To put it crassly, if you swing your dick too much you're going to trip over it.

There are good expert writers and there are less good expert writers. Grisham is popular not because his knowledge is so expert but because he is able to open up that world to his readers. He knows what parts of his world will most appeal to his readers and that's what he gives them. Tess Gerritson is a less good expert because she tends to get lost in her medical terminology. Rather than explaining that some special test reveals an anomally in the DNA sample that will catch the killer she goes into a four page description of the lab procedure that will only appeal to other scientists.

I was recently disappointed by an author that I'd come to depend on. Vince Flynn writes political thrillers with an emphasis on special ops and the intelligence community. In his first few books he showed a truly amazing amount of inside knowlege of the political shell game in Washington and also internationally, as well as a knowlege of the military. His last book, Memorial Day, was a crashing disappointment. He let himself get carried away with his own political agenda, but worse yet, he spent whole chapters devoted to the specifics of a military operation which got bogged down in near spec-sheet like descriptions of vehicles, equipment and arms. I'm glad for him that he knows this stuff. He'd be a wonderful conversation find at a cocktail party for someone with a similar knowledge and interest, but detailing the minutiae of each of the vehicles and weapons involved in this military action whose sole purpose was to provide us with a hostage character was wrong-footed. It totally derailed the story every time we had to go to it. What should have taken a single chapter to accomplish was spread out over three that kept cropping up to take us away from the interesting action back in Washington.

It was not only unnecessary information but distracting information and it was there simply for Flynn to show off his knowledge about how such a military action might be accomplished. It was like he was saying "If only somebody in the military would read my book they'd be able to catch Osama Bin Laden."

He wasn't serving his story, he was serving his own political agenda. He took a character I had enjoyed and admired for several books and turned him into a swaggering know-it-all and it was quite clear that Flynn sees himself in the role of protagonist.

Ahem. Okay, I've gotten pretty far afield here, but my point is that writing effectively doesn't require "dumbing down", it requires a bit of selflessness and overcoming the urge to say "Look at me!! Look at how good my vocabulary is!! Look at how much I know about brain surgery!!" Unless you're writing an autobiography the story isn't about you so your ego shouldn't get in the way of telling it.


-B

 

[McKenna]

Since I believe this is in reference to my post on flow, I apologize for sounding arrogant, bashing, and like a deaf asshole.

It wasn't in reference to you at all, Luc.


I get cantankerous sometimes. I'm like a good scotch whiskey: Great in small doses, but too much and I'll split your head open.



Number 4 has already posted. Might have to dig it up off of page two or three.

 

[McKenna]

There's a difference between using one's intelligence to write a good story and using a story to demonstrate one's intelligence.

Amen, amen, amen, and fucking YES! AMEN!

 

[impressive]

Amen, amen, amen, and fucking YES! AMEN!

And a hallelujah!

 

[oggbashan]

Amen, amen, amen, and fucking YES! AMEN!

And a 'Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition'.

 

[bloodsimple]

I would quibble with Dr Mab's view of police procedural books.

For me, police procedural is not about the minutiae of police work, except that the police procedures impose an order, structure and restrictions on what is taking place. The skill in writing it is to get across rules about legal search, admissible evidence, interviewing techniques, chains of evidence etc, in a way that adds to the story rather than taking away from it.

Thus, reams about arcane case law or the details of how forensic evidence is obtained, are unnecessary and poor writing. Whereas, the notion that the cop needs a reason to enter an apartment, or must set one interviewee against another, is part of the dynamic of the plot and the situation faced by the characters. These characters are, by turn, influenced and restricted by the nature of police procedure.

That sounds too long-winded and I haven't really expressed it well, but hopefully I've made the distinction. The police procedure matters, inasmuch as it affects the plot and the characters, not as a party piece in itself.

 

[EricCalder]

Personally I think the key here is to take the statement "Don't Show Off When You Write" quite literally. One shouldn't add obscure words just for the hell of it. But in many cases I think technical language can be used quite effectively to develop the setting. Stories with lots of police work or medical details are one type, historical fiction or science fiction another.

At the risk of self-promotion, I like this snippet from one of my own stories which takes place on an English frigate in 1804:

------

Hamilton looked out at the clouds along the horizon and then at the water.

“Set the stays’ls and bring the braces hard round, put us one point starboard.”

“We can outrun her, sir, all things equal. We’ve been two years at sea and Intrepid came down from Portsmouth, so it’s going to be a hard race.”

“Carry out my orders, please, Mr. Wray.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Damn,” Hamilton said to himself as he watched the approaching ship on the horizon.

--------

I think -- at least I hope -- one can fully understand that there is a tense sea chase here without knowing what a stays'l (staysail) is, what braces or the expression 'hard round' means, or even what direction starboard is or whether the reference to Portsmouth is to the one in New Hampshire, Rhode Island or England.

Stopping to explain these things in the story would be showing off I think, and would serve no purpose other than to slow down the pacing of the sea chase.

But there is a balance. What is written depends on the goals of the author in being technical, while the level of knowledge of the reader (as well as their interest, or lack thereof) will effect whether or not they are brought into the story.

I could probably have just had someone spin the ship's wheel to change direction and that would have been fine with almost everyone. But that is wrong, you can't just do that, the yards have to adjusted as well, and so I hope the addition or more realistic details help to create a more vivid setting that is more than a cornball pirate adventure.

On the other hand, I am sure someone who read this and actually knows how to sail a ship -- which I do not -- would find my version overly simplistic or incorrect (you fool! it should be: "Haul taut! Clear away the sheets! Clew up! Handsomely now! Settle away the main topsail halliards! Round in the weather brace!" and he should be looking at the barometer!)


As in so many things in writing, whether it works or not depends on the skill of the writer in working technical language or words with more than three syllables into the story. The worst thing to do, obviously, is just shove in more complex words without really knowing what the mean. But there are certainly instances where this sort of thing can greatly aid in enhancing the setting or characters -- if done in ways that maintain the story flow for people who don't want to stop and flip through a reference book every other sentence.