foolish_m0rtal | Jun. 25th, 2011

Jun. 25th, 2011

Eliminate moving parts

Now I'm an engineer, and one thing they tell us is the instability of a bunch of moving parts. This is why my cell phone is a single solid piece with no moving parts (Blackberry). This is why all of us are going batshit over the solid state hard drives verses the traditional hard drives with the disks and read/write heads. Moving parts have hinges and connectors, which are stress points that are vulnerable and breakable.

These break points should be eliminated in stories that require certain tones. For example, let us look at a prime piece of example fic from yours truly:

He had a little house in Worshire where many of the other professors lived; it wasn’t too grand and a bit smaller than the others since the other professors were older and had wives and children to accommodate, so they were allowed a bit more space.

Okay, so this isn't the worst example I've seen, but it could still be cleaned up. I count two stress points that could be dealt with. Is it significant to the story that he lives near the other professors? This is more of a context thing, but the answer is yes, so we need to keep some of the information from this 'moving part.'

Let's look at the next bit. Do we care that the other professors are older and have more room? Not really. That information is only there to highlight the fact that our main character is young, has no family, and lives in small quarters. This immediately tells us a lot about his financial and social life, which is pretty much the point of the sentence. So if we get rid of moving parts, we might have something like:

He lived in Worshire like most of the faculty and had a little house suitable enough for a young unattached professor with no wife or children.

Different, but better and less distracting. Note that having a fragmented sentence structure can actually help in more hazy abstract tones. You want that sense of breaking and disjointedness. Keeping within the rules of grammar, go with it. Otherwise, try to eliminate the stress points.

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Don't sacrifice clarity for conciseness

We've finished talking about paring off the fat, and now I'm going to tell you to add it back. To reference Fitzgerald, I lean more towards being a taker-outer than a putter-inner. (No, that is not supposed to be a dirty joke) If I think something is too verbose or distracting, I will take it out and put it in my junk pile, which I will talk about later. In extremes, this has landed me in a hell of a lot of trouble in the past. Let's take a look at another sentence from the same fic:

He knew it was Jonathan’s bed because a pair of dark leather gloves had been carelessly left on the bedside table but he would have much rather preferred the bed to look messy as if Jonathan had just climbed out of it and walked out, though he knew the immediacy of the housekeeping was a credit to the meticulous nature of the maids in Drescher’s inn and made a point of saying so.

This sentence, what the hell is it?! There are a lot of things happening at once, and I don't know what the hell is going on. Don't be afraid of short sentences. Always make it clear who is talking and where things are taking place. The spatial sense of a reader is important to the clarity of your story.

He knew it was Jonathan’s bed because a pair of dark leather gloves had been carelessly left on the bedside table, but he would have much rather preferred the bed to look messy as if Jonathan had just climbed out of it and walked out.

Full stop. That is one captured moment of spatial information. The reader knows where the main character is, and what he's thinking. In the story, Jonathan has been missing for three days, so the sentence also shows some anxiety on the main character's part. Good job. In the next sentence, there is a long distance between the 'he' in the beginning and the end bit ('made a point of saying so') that is vague enough to be unsettling. If you find your eyes going back to the beginning of the sentence, the meaning is not clear. Either break it up or clarify it.

However, he knew the immediacy of the housekeeping was a credit to the meticulous nature of the maids in Drescher’s inn, and he made a point of saying so.

Yes, great. We aren't mentally scrambling for information, nor have we lost the rhythm or attention in the story.

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So I've read all sorts of books and articles talking about what it takes to be a good writer. There have been philosophical things like, 'let it come to you' etc and hard practical advice like punctuation and pacing. (this one is closest to what I want to get across) Comparatively, I haven't been writing for a very long time, but there are patterns I've seen again and again with my own writing as well as other people's work.

Hopefully I can articulate some of the practical and the philosophical and make it worthwhile. Keep in mind that it is perfectly fine to disagree with anything I'm saying. There are probably a whole lot of editors who will disagree with me, but this is just my own style, and you have your own. I most likely have a lot of egregious grammar errors. Actually, why am I telling YOU guys how to write? I am clearly enough of a mess.

Eliminate moving parts
Now I'm an engineer, and one thing they tell us is the instability of a bunch of moving parts. This is why my cell phone is a single solid piece with no moving parts (Blackberry). This is why all of us are going batshit over the solid state hard drives verses the traditional hard drives with the disks and read/write heads. Moving parts have hinges and connectors, which are stress points that are vulnerable and breakable...
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Dealing with people of the same gender
Oh no. Two characters of the same gender have the audacity to interact with each other in your story. The pronouns are everywhere. What do you do?
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Adverbs are not your friends
You probably knew this, but I missed the boat, so I will talk about it to reinforce something I am coming to terms with mylself. Adverbs are not your friends. My temp editor once quoted Stephen King and said that that the road to hell is paved by adverbs. Eliminating them can make your work tighter, cleaner, and stronger.
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Do your research
Seriously. I cannot stress this enough. Do your RESEARCH. There is nothing worse than reading a story by an author who hasn't bothered to learn the details of a character's job or setting. It shows to me that the author doesn't have time or respect for her readers and worse, for her own story. Why should I spend some of my time reading someone's work when the author hasn't put in that same time?
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Hide your research
Right, so at this point you're asking, "What is this bitch's deal?" You've done all of this research for a story, and now you want to show that you've done the work, right?
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Don't be afraid to scrap your story
Yeah. I know. Here's a tissue.
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Love your writing
The people that are saying, "Well, duh" --good for you. Sure, we've all gone back and said, "Oh, this writing sucks." Congratulations, you've just leveled up.
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Note: Story excerpts used in the examples are from the continuously edited still-not-quite-perfect story The Cornish Manuscripts, part of the Notes of an Antiquary story series.

Dealing with people of the same gender

Oh no. Two characters of the same gender have the audacity to interact with each other in your story. The pronouns are everywhere. What do you do?

I've seen a lot of clever creative things people have done to get around this (maybe because a lot of what I read is slash, cough), and many times they sound awkward. Things people do:

A) Keep describing the character
Matthias Harsh the antiquary becomes 'the antiquary' or 'the historian.' Worse, sometimes he becomes 'the blonde man' 'the bespectacled man' or 'the younger man.'

B) Make the character the other man
Literally, the character keeps being described as 'the other man.'

People are always afraid of using the characters' names too much, but often times it sounds the cleanest. In this case, it's all about perceived proximity and point of view. Who is included in your limited third-person (if you're doing limited third-person)? How close are they to the second character?

Sometimes if the characters are distant, using the above two techniques is perfectly fine. The problem happens when the characters are ~~fucking~~ acquainted more closely and that distance isn't there. Use the characters' names. It's fine. As a reader, I am seldom annoyed with a repetition of names, but I am often annoyed by a repetition of awkwardly managed techniques A and B. I just want to know the subject of the sentence, and then I'm off. I don't care how many times 'Jonathan' is repeated in a paragraph if it helps my clarity. If Matthias Harsh the antiquary is the character for limited third-person, I can read 'he' and 'Jonathan' in a regular sentence and know exactly which pronoun belongs with whom.

He had met Jonathan Cosway through a friend from undergraduate named Wimbley, who had introduced him as a visiting cousin from Cornwall interested in mediaeval folklore.

Mm, who is 'him'? Is Jonathan Cosway from Cornwall, or is Matthias Harsh?

He had met Jonathan Cosway through a friend from undergraduate named Wimbley, who had introduced the dark-haired man as a visiting cousin from Cornwall interested in mediaeval folklore.

Kind of awkward. I do care who is being introduced in the sentence. I don't care how many times Jonathan has dark hair. There are more subtle ways of describing a character's physical attributes in a story, but that is a blog for another day.

He had met Jonathan Cosway through a friend from undergraduate named Wimbley, who had introduced Jonathan as a visiting cousin from Cornwall interested in mediaeval folklore.

I am peachy keen with this. I know who is being introduced, and I don't really notice the name repetition.

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Adverbs are not your friends

You probably knew this, but I missed the boat, so I will talk about it to reinforce something I am coming to terms with myself. My temp editor once quoted Stephen King and said that that the road to hell is paved by adverbs. Eliminating them can make your work tighter, cleaner, and stronger. Fun drinking game. Do a Find in your story for 'ly' and take a shot for every adverb you find. When you are in the hospital getting your stomach pumped, resolve to use less adverbs.

This article actually makes a better case for it than I probably can, so I would recommend you look at that first.

We return to our faithful bad fic:

“You’ve been to Rome?” Harsh asked enviously.

I'm being lazy relying on the adverb to finish out the sentence. I'm wasting space I could be using to develop the main character. Alternately, I could just truncate the sentence at 'said.' Readers rely on the bits after the closing quotes to find out who's talking. Their main focus is on the dialogue, and so should yours. Right, but what if I want something more? How do I replace the adverb?

“You’ve been to Rome?” Harsh asked, unable to keep the hushed envy from his voice.

This tells us something about Harsh's character and is more fully developed. I am a great perpetrator of using adverbs with the word 'said,' which is something I need to work on. If you're using adverbs to bolster other sentences, consider stronger words. For instance:

James had naturally inherited all the family’s money and property after their father had died and didn’t seem to understand that Harsh enjoyed earning his own salary and living in the tiny professors’ quarters.

We have been told in a previous sentence that James is Matthias's elder brother, and the readers already know the story is set in steampunk Victorian Britannia, so the elder brother inheriting is something that already comes with the territory. Using 'naturally' does not help anything. If anything, it just adds another word to a sentence that doesn't need it. (This is me being a 'taker-outer.')

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Do your research

Seriously. I cannot stress this enough. Do your RESEARCH. There is nothing worse than reading a story by an author who hasn't bothered to learn the details of a character's job or setting. It shows to me that the author doesn't have time or respect for her readers and worse, for her own story. Why should I spend some of my time reading someone's work when the author hasn't put in that same time?

So you don't know anything about the subject. Join the club. This is the new age. There is internet. There is Google. I don't know how many times people have actually saved me. Interviewing people who are familiar with the subject of your research is a great way to get some first-hand resources, and they are generally willing and flattered that you want their expertise. Soak up as much knowledge as possible, and don't let lack of knowledge deter you from the story.

Not doing the research also won't help you at all when it comes to writing your story. I remember doing about a month's worth of research on paleontology, dig sites, and the American northwest for a Jurassic Park fic, and that really helped me get into the right mindset for writing the fic. I had the general structure of the environment already set up, and all I had to do was walk into it. It was one of the smoothest experiences I've ever had writing a fic.

Research WELL. If your character is an engineer, you can't just have him say, "Haha, I see you've done the Pythagorean Theorem incorrectly There, I've solved your problem." Skimming the surface with research is almost as bad and embarrassing as doing no research at all. If it's too complex for you, it's probably going to be too complex for your reader, and you can abstract it out. The readers aren't actually focused on the engineering problem but the fact that the character can solve it. You don't have to go into details and try to get full marks, but you need to know the background of what the character is talking about.

In short, there is no such thing as too much research.

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