TURNING PASTURE INTO LAWN
Hi, my name is Rosalie and I am the first to admit
there is a lot about writing I don’t know.
There is however, a lot I have
learned about writing fantasy since I have been studying the topic for the last
fifteen years. Experience has taught me a great deal, often the hard way.
Like art, writing is an indefinite science, but there
are rules that help improve your readability. There are guidelines that improve
your chances of publication. If you plan to self-publish, it is vital these
rules are part of your writing craft. Self-publication removes the support of a
team of editors. Their advice and expertise can identify a weakness in a novel
or in a writing style. Once recognized, correction and improvement should
become a habit.
Anyhow, I contacted three editors who shared their
‘pet peeves’. We can discuss how to rectify these problems once we know what we
are looking for.
Editors’ Pet Peeves
Barbara Ehrentreu, who edits for two
publishing houses, said her pet peeves are:
– Run on sentences: So many authors keep adding
clauses to their sentences and connecting them with commas.
– Long paragraphs with a ton of exposition that puts
me to sleep.
– Too many dialogue tags with anything but said. I’ll
take replied, but using anything else detracts from the sentence. Many times,
you don’t even need a tag if the author has delineated the characters with one
or two at the beginning of the dialogue.
Karen McGrath, Muse Content
Editor said:
– I don’t like to see more than three POVs, preferably
only one or two. It’s my worst pet peeve.
– Passive voice used inappropriately is another one.
– I really sigh when an author has characters use
dialog out of line for their age or characterization.
Nancy Bell, Muse Editor
said:
– I don’t like to see a lot of passive voice, also
inadequate research resulting in a lot of rewrites for the author, too many
and/or awkward dialogue tags, overuse of em dashes (–) and ellipses
– (. . .).
– General overuse of the same words or similar words,
which we all are guilty of I might add. In particular the words, then, he, she,
a character’s name, had, had been, that.
Thanks to these editors for their time and interest in
our writing.
Now, can we recognize and replace, remove or somehow
avoid those pitfalls?
Run on Sentences
Commas have their uses, but if they are creating run
on sentences it is time to rethink their use. I heard that sentences should not
exceed twenty-five words. Anything over that might constitute a ‘run on
sentence.’ At least it could use looking at for improvement.
Paragraphs That Have
Too Much Exposition
I have a feeling Barbara is describing what fantasy
authors refer to as info-dumps.
The temptation with fantasy to explain things too
early or too in-depth is hard to resist. Remember that as long as the author
knows everything there is to know about the characters, the world and the
conflict they are creating, then that’s fine. Readers are on a need to know
basis, they are looking for action, emotion and a story to flow. Background is
necessary but in small easy to absorb portions. As long as the author has all
the information, it is their skill to share it carefully. A passing comment, a
name dropped, a reference given can be all that the reader needs to follow the
plot.
Dialogue Tags
Pronouns. The guidelines on the use of ‘he said’/‘she
said’ vary from publisher to publisher. Barbara’s comment refers to the idea
that these simple dialogue tags become invisible to the reader. These editors
are working in today’s ebook industry. Their comments are up to date and apply
to books about to be published. There are ways to limit the need for dialogue
tags. Showing the reader actions and character emotions can give more
information, identify who spoke and avoid repetition of ‘he said’/‘she said’.
Care needs to be taken using character names and
pronouns. Keeping the reader in the loop is vital. Overdosing them with
character names, ‘he’, and ‘she’ is not. How often in dialogue do we name our
subject? When we talk among ourselves we know who we are talking to, so we
should reflect that in our writing where we are able. An occasional name or
pronoun is necessary. Overuse is something we need to watch out for.
Passive Voice
As writers we strive to use active voice. The rule of
Show Don’t Tell applies here. To avoid passive voice, rethink forms of the verb
‘to be’: was, were, had and had been can often weaken our writing. Again, this
topic deserves a discussion of its own.
Too many POVs
That’s an interesting one. Karen was not referring to
‘head hopping’ where the Point of View changes abruptly, but telling a novel
from too many character viewpoints. Readers identify with the main POV
characters and moving away from their story can cause the reader to lose
interest. Not what we want!
Em dash, ellipses. (…)
When editing for the digital world the use of the em
dash (–) ellipsis (. . .) and exclamation mark (!) becomes problematic.
Although they have their uses, remember in this day and age we must cater for
ebooks and not only print format. Besides the technical headache they can
create, their overuse weakens writing across the board. They often indicate a
break in the flow of thought. Any break can cause the reader to hesitate and
should be justified before inclusion.
There are other pet peeves I have heard editors quote.
This is my favorite.
Autonomous Body Parts
The most often used examples are ‘his eyes followed
her’, ‘her hands fell into her lap’, ‘my nose is running.’ Avoid if possible.
There has to be an alternative way of saying things. ‘His gaze followed her’.
‘She lowered her hands into her lap,’ and ‘I have a runny nose.’
There are other hints and tips that can help us avoid
the dreaded rejection slip, or ensure our self-published novel is as good as we
can produce. For now though, I am grateful to Barbara, Karen and Nancy for
giving us an insight into what annoying problems we can eliminate from our
work.
Next article will address the task of applying polish to our manuscript.
One: Let It Sit
Like a vintage port, your writing can improve with maturity.
Sounds odd and hardly proactive, but leaving your completed manuscript to sit
for a while can help you see flaws in it later. While the ink is still drying,
you are too involved with the characters and situations to look at every word
objectively. Despite the urge to submit your masterpiece to a publisher, or
publish it yourself, give it time to settle.
As an author, don’t rush anything about your writing, unless
perhaps completing the first draft. Once completed step away and think about
other things. The next work in progress, or cover designs or even a map,
anything but the manuscript. Trust me, when you pick it up in a few weeks, or
months you will see it in a new light. This is when you can begin to polish
your work and make it shine.
Two: Check It For Plot,
Continuity, and Flow
Reading through your dusty manuscript, look at it from the
perspective of the reader as much as possible. Try to forget you are the author
and see where there is too much information, or too little. Do your characters
behave true to form throughout the novel? Do relationships remain believable?
Does plot thicken and drama build? Are there moments of introspection, action
and resolution? Does the plot move forward smoothly? Does every word,
conversation and scene tie back to the plot? Check that your theme and
underlying premise remains topical.
Three: Action and Reaction
When editing your manuscript for publication ensure you have
always followed the Action before Reaction rule. Look at each sentence and
scene, checking that an action motivates the POV character BEFORE they react.
His/her reaction should then follow with initial feelings first. The hit of
adrenaline or fear will prompt reflex reactions. Flinching, fighting, fleeing,
and anger, come before the character thinks rationally. Then we have deliberate
actions taken. Planned actions or speech such as a plea for help or a threat,
follow the first feelings and reflex reactions. For example:
Motivation: The
dragon dropped to the ground in front of our hero.
Feeling: Fear
coursed through our hero’s veins.
Reflex: He
grasped his sword, rasping steel free from leather before he dragged air into
his lungs.
Deliberate Action:
Fleeing didn’t rate a mention. Standing his ground our hero glared into the
beast’s dark eyes. “Now or never. Meet your nemesis.”
For more information on this subject, check out Randy
Ingermanson’s “Writing the Perfect
Scene”.
Once confident all actions have motivations, and scenes have
hoped for outcome, conflict and problem, followed by response, problem and
choice. Each scene should push the plot forward in at least five ways. These
can incorporate the concepts used for modeling any well-structured scene. They
include conflict, crisis, calamity, consequence, change, conclusion,
Watch that each of these ideas are met in some way to ensure you
don’t have excess words that deviate from the plot. In a rich, riveting
manuscript each sentence, paragraph, and scene is vital to the story.
Four: Cull Words To Avoid
Excess words are superfluous to good writing. Any author you
meet will have a list of words they try to avoid. Reasons vary, and so will the
length of the list. The list tends to get longer as you learn more about
writing. I have listed some here. There are reasons to go with them that we can
discuss more deeply later if you are interested. Please share your favorite
‘bad’ words if I have left any out.
Avoid: ‘To
be’ and variations of the verb (has been, should have been). Passive voice can
weaken any fantasy tale. Give your readers more. Let them see and hear what is
going on and become a part of the scene by using the five senses.
Weak: He
was angry.
Strong: He
clenched his fists and ground his teeth.
Stronger: Anger
tightened every muscle, pumped adrenaline through each vein.
Avoid: Had,
That, Up, Down, Really, Almost, Just, So, Went, Actually, As, Suddenly,
Beautiful and Handsome. These words are used without thought, but often do
little to improve a sentence. When a fantasy author is polishing their
manuscript, they should go through and remove any case where these words are
unnecessary.
‘Had’ places the action in the past. That is often unnecessary.
To bring immediacy to their writing fantasy authors will strive to keep action
and interest in the present.
Weak: He
had done his best.
Strong: He
did his best.
Weak: He
had to find the answer in the scroll.
Strong: He
must find the answer in the scroll.
Avoid:
Adverbs those pesky words ending in ‘ly’ that don’t strengthen the verb. Find a
stronger verb. For example:
Walked slowly … strolled
Ran quickly … sprinted
Yelled loudly … shouted
Avoid:
Thought, Felt, Wondered, Pondered, Sensed, and Hoped. When writing in character
driven POV, these words intrude on the reader. Try and eliminate the need for
them.
Weak: He
felt the cold rain against his skin.
Strong: Cold
rain chilled his skin.
Weak: She
thought the beast looked exhausted.
Strong: The
beast looked exhausted.
Stronger:
Exhausted, the beast’s head hung, flanks heaved, eyes looked dull and listless.
Avoid:
Excess words. Words that add nothing to your story. Go through the manuscript
and look for extraneous words. These are words that fail to add meaning or
clarity to your work. In the example above, we have ‘yelled loudly’. ‘Loudly’
is unnecessary here, not because it is an adverb, but because ‘yelled’ by
itself infers a loud shout. Consider, explosive eruption, frightening
nightmare, draconian dragon, illuminating light, raging wrath, fearless
courage, aching hurt…You get the idea.
Weak: He
sprinted at top speed.
Strong: He
sprinted.
Weak: She
knelt on bended knees.
Strong: She
knelt.
Weak:
Riding on feisty horses, they rode into the sunset.
Strong: On
feisty horses, they rode into the sunset.
These are obvious, but keep the idea in mind when you look at
your work.
Avoid:
Overusing pronouns. He, she, and it, overused can cause confusion. If the
sentence doesn’t work, rewrite. Confusion can lose your flow and continuity in
one flawed sentence. Try to keep pronouns and their subject clear and precise.
The danger of uncertain reference can affect the use of ‘it’ and ‘they’.
Only a few of the knights owned
warhorses. They needed to find mounts.
‘They’ seems to refer to the knights who already had horses, or
the warhorses themselves, rather than the knights who did not own warhorses.
Uncertain reference can also affect ‘he’ and ‘she’.
“He told him he must help him
saddle the horse.”
Here the reader has no idea who is saying what to whom. Avoiding
the pronouns can clarify the situation but leads to a stilted style of writing
and is probably better to rewrite the sentence.’
“Connor told Dean that Dean
must help Connor saddle the horse.”
Better, but rewriting the sentence will make it less clunky.
“Connor needed to saddle his
horse. He told Dean to help him.”
Or…
“Connor needed to saddle his
horse. He told Dean to help”
Or…
“Connor needed to saddle his
horse, so he asked Dean for help.”
Or you could use dialogue.
Connor turned toward Dean.
“Help me saddle the horse.”
For the sake of clarity, the fantasy writer should place a
proper noun before its personal pronoun.
Five: The Senses
Painting the image includes incorporating information from the
five senses. Sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch/texture, and emotion all help
add authenticity to the fantasy setting. Including these pieces of information
need not involve a huge info dump. The fantasy author should develop the skill
of introducing snippets of information in narrative or dialogue without blocks
of descriptions.
Sight:
Remember to address the reader’s visual imagery: What can they see?
Smell: Their
olfactory perception (smell): taste, smell and air quality.
Sound: Audio
response: noise, background noise, voices, music, wind, rain, waves etc.
Touch:
Textures, from clothing to cobblestones, every extra piece of info adds to the
world you are creating.
Emotions: The
most important information the reader needs is to know how each character is
feeling or reaction to the situation. The POV character can ascertain emotion
through body language and tone of voice, facial expression and gestures. One
interesting thing to remember is that we take only 10% of our impressions from
the words we hear. The rest of our impressions are from those other factors,
like body language and tone of voice. These are the writer’s allies and vital
to expressing a character’s emotion.
Hope you find something useful
here. These are ideas for the initial polishing of your manuscript. The more
often you polish the better the shine. Keep note of new ideas on how to improve
your work. Take note of critique comments and ask questions if in doubt. Often
discussion can clarify a problem before it becomes a habit.
AMY ROSE DAVIS posted this article on Fantasy Faction… I find it very useful.
Amy Rose Davis
As a marketing writer and freelance copywriter, I
spent several years trimming sentences and blurbs to fit in newspaper ads and
on postcards, brochures, and other marketing collateral. Then I started writing
fiction again. Oh, the joy! I could wax poetic about anything, not worrying
about wordcounts or keeping things trim and tidy. And since I write fantasy,
well, certainly my readers would want big, fat, wordy novels to keep them busy.
Right?
Well…No.
Don’t get me wrong—I’ll still slog my way through a
massive fantasy tome if the story captivates me, and I won’t care if it’s
upwards of 200,000 words. But if the book is full of extraneous words,
sentences, paragraphs, scenes, arcs, characters—you get the point—I’ll drop it
like a hot dragon’s egg.
So what’s the difference? A lot of things, but for
today, I want to focus on the extraneous words in individual sentences. I see
these words in all kinds of writing—published, unpublished, and independently
published. Many of these words and phrases are easy to simply search and
destroy, and eliminating them will make the difference between beginner-quality
narrative and professional, polished prose.
“That”
Eliminate or work around the word “that” to tighten
your sentences. Consider some examples:
Wordy: I wish that I could cast
spells.
Better: I wish I could cast spells.
Better: I wish I could cast spells.
Wordy: Steel that comes from Eirya is
sharper than steel that comes from Taura.
Better: Steel from Eirya is sharper than steel from Taura.
Best: Eiryan steel is sharper than Taurin steel.
Better: Steel from Eirya is sharper than steel from Taura.
Best: Eiryan steel is sharper than Taurin steel.
Bonus points if you can eliminate an entire phrase
before the word “that!” I usually see this sin more in business writing, but it
could easily creep into first drafts of fiction.
Wordy: The fact was that thousands of
infantrymen died in the battle.
Better: Thousands of infantrymen died in the battle.
Better: Thousands of infantrymen died in the battle.
Wordy: It was commonly known that the
pub was a front for many illicit dealings.
Better: The pub was a front for many illicit dealings.
Better: The pub was a front for many illicit dealings.
“Almost as if”
This phrase is one that feels like fingernails on a
blackboard to me. I think it hedges, and it feels passive. Plus, other words
often must be added to the sentence to make the phrase correct.
Wordy: The sun touched the horizon
almost as if it were a hesitant lover.
Better: The sun touched the horizon as a hesitant lover.
Better: The sun touched the horizon as a hesitant lover.
Wordy: She looked almost as if she
were going to cry.
Better: She looked like she would cry.
Best: She blinked back tears.
Better: She looked like she would cry.
Best: She blinked back tears.
Okay, I cheated a little on that last one. I’m always
in favor of finding a stronger verb that shows rather than tells.
Redundant Adverbs and Adjectives
I posted about adverbs two weeks ago, so I won’t rehash
the rules on those. However, I think it’s worth noting an issue that can crop
up for both adverbs and adjectives: Redundancy. What do I mean?
He was a lanky, gaunt man.
Pick one—lanky or gaunt. Both words mean similar
things. I see this error a lot with writers who seem to be striving for
vocabulary awards. One $25-word is enough.
She tiptoed quietly into the room.
Would she tiptoe any other way? If you’re going to use
an adverb, make sure it doesn’t repeat an idea you just conveyed.
“Just” and Its Conversational
Counterparts
I blame this sin on blogs, e-mails, and the plethora
of conversational writing on the Internet. And I confess—“just” is my own
personal demon. My fingers type it automatically, and I have to search and
destroy. Here are a few more you can search for: Really, very, honestly, seriously, both, there
was/there is, began, started, continued, about, kind
of, sort of.
“Was” with an –ing verb
I’m not a “was” hater, but beginning writers often
couple “was” with an –ing word, which is a weak construction. The solution is
simple: Change the verb form and eliminate “was.”
Wordy: She was dancing to the music
of the drum and pipe.
Better: She danced to the music of the drum and pipe.
Or: She danced to the drum and pipe.
Better: She danced to the music of the drum and pipe.
Or: She danced to the drum and pipe.
I cheated again. We know from context that the drum
and pipe are making music because she’s dancing. You can tighten your sentence
by eliminating “music of the.” However, I will say that I like the poetry of
the second sentence better—the rhythm of it appeals to my ear and eye. But
then, I have an unholy love of prepositional phrases. Which brings me to the
next point…
Prepositional Phrases
There are times when I love a good string of
prepositional phrases. I think they add a poetic rhythm to writing when not
overused. But when it comes to trimming word counts and making sure our writing
is as tight as possible, it’s worth searching for some key prepositional
phrases. You can often eliminate or combine them to tighten your sentences.
Look for key phrases such as of the, to the, on
the, in the. Those particular offenders indicate a string of
prepositional phrases in my own writing; you may discover other offenders in
your own work.
One caution: This level of editing is for later stages
of your work. Don’t worry about tightening word count in first drafts or even
second and possibly third drafts. In creative mode, just get the story down. On
your first couple of edits, look at big things—structure, character, plot.
There’s no reason to tighten flabby sentences when you might cut the entire
scene! However, once you’ve revised your story to the very best it can be on a
structural level, these edits will help you eliminate flab and give your work a
polished, professional shine.
After all, if you’re going to write a
200,000-word epic, you may as well make every word count.
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