All posts by Jordan

Technique

Stealing words

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I think we’ve all been at least a little tempted. We’re reading our favorite author or the latest, greatest novel and we see a beautiful phrase that perfectly expresses an action we use in our story. It’s lyrical and fresh and captures it clearly and succinctly. We’re so happy we don’t have time for writer envy!

Can you use those words?

Well, sure. If it’s something short enough and common enough, it may not even be that big of a deal. I came across the phrase “swallowed a sigh” in a book and adopted it to change up with “sighed inwardly.” It’s short, expresses a common action and is plain enough that I doubt it matters where I saw it first. (In fact, I’d be surprised if that author hadn’t read it somewhere.)

But, of course, you can’t plagiarize whole scenes or paragraphs. No. Bad. Don’t.

Lately, though, I’m noticing such great, fresh descriptions that I want to steal bits and pieces of them all the time (or maybe just collected them in a book). Of course, if I do that, the line won’t be as fresh in either book—and I’m just taking that line one step closer to a cliché. It would be ideal, of course, if I could come up with something equally good and fresh and creative (or better)—but now I’m being influenced and intimidated by that phrase.

So where do you draw the line? When is it okay to steal/”adopt” a phrase for your work?

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Mechanics

The virtue of repetition

Is it just me, or does it seem like we’ve been trained never to repeat a word—resort to a thesaurus before you dare to use the word “mob” three times on a page (because “criminal organization” has that same punch, doesn’t it?). It’s like we’ve been programmed to excise all uses of the same word from our writing (thesaurus = well worn!) and, frankly, sometimes repetition is rhythmic and even lyrical. Parallelism—beginning multiple sentences the same way? Anathema!

Or, more likely, anaphora. Sentence- or phrase-initial repetition is an age-old rhetorical device:

Mad world! Mad kings! Mad composition! — Shakespeare, King John, II, i

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right… — Abraham Lincoln

[W]e shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender. — Winston Churchill

And that’s just one type of rhetorical repetition. I applaud repetition for a good purpose—cadence, humor, contrast. Lather, rinse, repeat!

Dwight V. Swain (Techniques of the Selling Writer, 33) points out the best way to make sure that your repetition is understood as intentional—the Rule of Three. Use something twice and it looks accidental, but go for the third time “and after, if you don’t carry it to absurdity,” Swain adds), and we have to assume you meant it.

Granted, we must also be careful we don’t overuse words and phrases. (Churchill’s full paragraph from that speech contains 11 “we shalls,” including 7 “we shall fights.” Was that overdoing it? Probably not—especially since that was delivered orally. Written out, it might feel a little less impressive and a little more redundant.) There are definitely times when we inadvertently repeat words. Crit partners (and Find & Replace—I’m loving Word 2007’s Reading highlight) are great for catching those.

When you repeat a word, do it on purpose. If there’s no better word for that situation, see if you can repeat that word for some effect—rhythm, sonority, humor.

What do you think? How do you repeat words—and make it clear you’re repeating those words on purpose?

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News & Contests

Call for guest posts

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I’m gearing up for another series—this time on writing resources. One thing I totally forgot to do was ask for guest posts in my last series, so this time I don’t want to repeat that mistake. Today I’m asking for guest bloggers to help with my next series (because we’re all tired of listening to just me, right 😉 ?).

Here’s a bit more on what I’m looking for:

  • For this series, posts on:
    • Writing craft books that really helped you
    • Writing classes or teachers that made a big difference
    • Workshops or conferences that made an impact
    • Writing friends or critique groups that affected your writing (for the positive!)
    • Posts that focus on both the experience of reading/participating as well as the actual lessons learned.
  • Posts between 300 and 800 words in length (though I’m flexible on the long end).
  • A short bio (up to three sentences) of the author (ie you) with up to three links. (Links are allowed in the post itself, too, but if I get too much of a sense of self-promotion I may edit them.)

If you’re up to the challenge, send the post in the body of an email (if you can code in HTML, I’ll love you forever; if not, just include the URL of the links) to contact at jordanmccollum.com . I’ll probably only have room for the first three posts, and I’d need them by Friday, March 19. If that’s too little notice, don’t worry, I’ll have another call for guest bloggers at the end of May (if not before).

But for future reference, if ever you’d like to do a guest post here, go for it! I may not always post them—but don’t worry, I don’t do the whole no-response-means-no thing, so you’ll be free to use a post somewhere else. If you’re not familiar with guest blogging, check out my article on maximizing your guest blogging, as well as this more recent post on guest blogging from Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.

Questions, comments and suggestions for future series welcome!

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Technique

Other creative outlets

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Writing, obviously, is a creative outlet. Sometimes it’s the kind of outlet we plug into for more energy, and sometimes it’s the place we release all of our creative energy.

But for me, writing isn’t my only creative outlet. It’s probably my favorite, but I have a lot of other creative pursuits that sometimes vie for my time. After I finished the last major round of revisions, for example, I’ve been catching up on my knitting (two years of UFO—unfinished objects) and practicing the piano again. (Oh, yeah, and I’m a mom, so that’s pretty create-ive, right?)

Sometimes I need these other outlets—they can help me work past a block in my writing or search for new ideas. They can help reenergize me when I’ve poured all my energy into writing and feel burned out or just a little drained. (And some of them I can’t leave alone or something bad would happen.)

On the other hand, sometimes they’re just more demands on my time. And frankly, most of the time, I’d rather be writing. So they get neglected again.

What other creative outlets do you have? How do you use them? How do you balance them all?

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Technique

What do you leave out of (or in) the first draft?

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Accepting that first drafts aren’t final drafts is a big milestone at the beginning of the journey to becoming a writer. The first couple things we write, we think that we have to—and will—get it perfect on the first pass through. It’s devastating to receive the news that our draft isn’t perfect—or even that good. It’s disheartening to think that what we thought needed a minor word-level edit actually needs a major character-and-plot-level overhaul.

But finally, we accept that our first drafts are just that—first drafts—and our writing is found in the rewriting of it. And for most of us, that means we don’t put quite as much effort into our first drafts, focusing more on getting the broad strokes down than getting the phraseology perfect.

So when we’re drafting lazy, of necessity, we leave in some things that we know we’ll only end up taking out later—or we leave out some things that we know we can add later.

A few examples:

  • Leave in:

    • clichés
    • scene summaries (of scenes you do intend to show in real time)
    • near-match words
    • scenes that may or may not turn out to be tangents
    • the boring bits
  • Leave out:
    • descriptions
    • dialogue
    • punctuation
    • grammar check
    • spell check
    • voice (I think we may talk more about this later in the week)

What do you leave in or out of your first drafts?

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Technique

Draft lazy, revise to perfection

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This is just an idea I came across while blogging this week. Many times, we pressure ourselves to write beautiful, literary, vivid, compelling tales on our first try—our first attempt at a manuscript, or our first draft. We let that blank page sit there while we search for a fresh, creative way to express that our character is tall/short/angry/sad/sarcastic/etc.

Note to self (and everyone else): stop it. Stop worrying about getting it right—nay, getting it perfect—on that first attempt.

The purpose of drafting is not to write it all down in its final, publishable form. The purpose of drafting is to write it all down.

The fact is that pretty much no one writes a perfect first draft. The skill of writing is seldom found in the drafting. It’s found in the stick-to-it-iveness to rewrite, the skill to identify the basic and clichéd and to search for a new way to say it—but not at the detriment of actually getting it all on the page.

One of my critique partners put this really well after her husband imparted some priceless advice (emphasis added):

“You also can’t make chicken salad out of an invisible chicken.” Then, after dispensing this tidbit worthy of Confucius, he went off to watch ESPN. I sat in stunned silence. This made it so clear to me! He was right of course. I can’t fix something or make it what I want if it’s still in my head. It was his nice way of telling to quit whining and write the darn thing down.

So we all now have my permission: draft lazy. Use clichés and trite expressions if you can’t think of anything better quickly. If you can’t find the “right” word on the tips of your fingers (or with a quick thesaurus & dictionary check), use the wrong-but-close one. (Feel free to mark anywhere you do this so you remember to fix it later.)

Is this just making more work for yourself in the revision process? Maybe—but then again, you can’t revise and perfect something you haven’t written yet.

What do you think? Do you draft lazy?

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Technique

When the right word is wrong

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Sometimes, the right word isn’t the more succinct option. For example, I once (just once) read a medical murder mystery. In the climactic action scene, the villain picked up a [obscure medical device] and snuck up on a character.

BAM. I put the book down and hit the Internet. (Okay, I actually finished the scene. I wanted to see if I could figure it out in context. Nope: I was mightily confused because [OMD] played a big role in the scene—the villain injured the character with it, I think—and I had no idea what [OMD] might look like or how it’d make that kind of wound.)

So I looked up [OMD] (she used the name, of course, but I don’t remember it). Pretty wicked looking thingy. Knowing that it had an inch-wide metal spike might have helped me a.) not be so confused and b.) actually worry about the character.

Granted, the word was probably in the character’s realm of knowledge. But we have to balance the characters’ vocabulary against the audience’s: even if your character can use the word jabot in conversation, if your audience can’t understand it, is it the right word?

Conversely, there are reasonable limits to our pandering. One of my favorites here is a friend of mine who had her work critiqued by a college-level creative writing class. One member of the class told her not to use a word because he didn’t know what it meant. The word? Betrothed.

What do you think? Does every word have to be transparent to the lowest common denominator? At what level do we need to do more to describe or explain something our characters never think about?

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Technique

Finding the right word

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It seems like we writers are always in search of something: a great idea, the right plot, the next scene, time to write . . . And it’s been this way for a long time. More than a hundred years ago, Mark Twain described one such writerly-pursuit:


The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter—it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.
– Letter to George Bainton, 10/15/1888

Of course, there are a few basics that make a word “wrong”: misuse, for example—homonyms, malapropisms, and trying to use words that we think we know what that means, right? (Dictionaries are our friends!)

Frequently, the “right” word is the one that describes vividly, powerfully and succinctly. Instead of “the brightly-colored, flashy, convertible Italian sports car,” we say “the red Lamborghini.” The Lamborghini comes with eleven cupholders connotations that convey more than a laundry list of adjectives. An “abyss” is a stronger emotional picture than a “hole.”

We also have to take into acccunt our characters. If it’s in a character’s voice, it should suit the character, his personality, education level, regional speech, cadence, vocabulary, time period, etc.

Of course, sometimes the “right” word is wrong. (But we’ll talk about that tomorrow.) Obviously, there’s way more to finding the right word than avoiding errors and lists that detract from our meaning instead of add to it. What do you think? What makes a word “right” or “wrong”?

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