Tag Archives: being writerly

Mechanics, Technique

Fix-It Friday: Fixing overstuffed sentences

Two weeks ago, we looked at a couple overstuffed sentences—sentences where I was putting too much information in, and tripping up my readers. fifI learned my lesson about overstuffed sentences from editor & RITA-award winning author Alicia Rasley, when she line edited four sentences for me (emphasis added):

Don’t make your reader work so hard to figure out what you’re getting at. Try writing it plainly first, to make sure you’re getting it across, then embellish. But really, I think you’re trying to do too much for one paragraph. This might not have bothered me in two paragraphs or three, if you took your time and really explored what was happening . . . . If that’s too attenuated, see what’s important to keep and make sure everything is clear.

As I’ve said before, sentences should work hard for us as writers and serve several purposes. But there’s a limit to how much you can pack into a sentence or paragraph and still be intelligible to readers.

Another really important point here is that dense (= packed) writing isn’t always better. Sometimes it makes the reader feel dense (= stupid). If something is really important to the story action or the character, often that weight should be matched by the amount of real estate that event gets.

Or as Alicia put it,

If it’s worth stating, . . . it’s worth developing or exemplifying or showing. . . .

I know I’m always saying, “Take it slow.” But don’t try to compress too much.

So, how should we fix our examples from last week?

#1: blow up the emotion

How must the buildings that were so familiar she hardly noticed them look to Father O’Leary? Three years ago, she compared the Gothic chapel, its stone façade flanked by blazing maples in a carpet of lawn, to her parents’ church in city center. At the time, St. Adelaide seemed a suburban oasis; three weeks ago she was disabused of that notion.

“I’m sure it’ll get to feelin’ like home soon enough,” she murmured.

Along with other excellent feedback from editors Alicia & Theresa and other commentators, the passage in question eventually grew—the first paragraph (three sentences) expanded into three paragraphs (eight sentences):

He scanned the whole scene, as if surveying the squat brick school, the rectory, the Gothic chapel’s stone façade flanked by blazing maples in a carpet of lawn. The dismay in his expression dissolved with his satisfied nod. St. Adelaide must seem like a suburban oasis to him.

Three weeks ago, Molly had been disabused of that notion. Now the idyllic scene carried a sinister undertone so strong she couldn’t bear to look at it anymore. She hadn’t even noticed when the maples turned red.

Father O’Leary sighed and looked to her. How could she tell him the truth and shatter his illusion? “It’ll get to feelin’ like home soon enough,” she murmured.

I agreed that this event was important enough to give it more real estate in the book—but it’s not like I devoted an entire chapter to this. Just a few more sentences here made the passage clearer and gave it greater emotional impact.

Note that I decided the reference to the past (three years ago) was not actually worth including, since it distracted from the present—it wasn’t important enough to explore, and thus it probably wasn’t important enough to include.

But you don’t always have to blow it up quite that much. Sometimes, breaking up the action and simply fixing the sequencing is enough.

#2: sequencing and clarity

This is an actual sentence from the first draft of my WIP:

I slip onto the back porch, but the door latch I’m expecting to hear behind me doesn’t come by the time I reach the stairs.

My problems with this:

  • Awkward wording, especially “the door latch I’m expecting to hear behind me doesn’t come”
  • Is the door latch an object? “I’m expecting to” doesn’t tell us right away
  • Most of all, the sequencing is all over the place. She leaves, we don’t see her shutting the door, there’s a sound (or object?), she’s expecting the sound—oh, wait, there’s no sound, stairs?
  • Seriously, where did these stairs come from?

Here’s how I actually fixed it:

I slip onto the back porch, letting the door swing shut behind me. But by the time I reach the stairs down to the yard, the door still hasn’t latched.

The ideas are all still there, but now I’m explaining what happens in order, without skipping steps. She goes onto the porch and shuts the door. She reaches the stairs (which go somewhere that makes sense now) and realizes the door hasn’t latched. Voilà.

And the word count difference? Five words.

Neither of these are going to win a Pulitzer 😉 but perhaps the serviceable lines should be even more smooth to keep your reader moving on to the big stuff, right?

Onward!

#3: breathing room

Those fears and feelings, raw and vulnerable, echoing through me, must be why I finally have to pull back to wipe away my tears.

Also a line from my WIP, this is just a few paragraphs after the above. Kind of a lot to digest all at once, isn’t it?

Again, the change is really simple here, and right to the point: that’s just too much for one little sentence to handle, so we make it two. My fix:

Those fears and feelings, raw and vulnerable, echo through me. Finally I have to pull back to wipe away my tears.

Is it less powerful as two sentences? I don’t think so. In fact, there are some things I like about it better. Instead of stuffing everything into one thought (for what reason?), we give the two important thoughts there a little more room to breathe. It gives each of them a little more time to make an impact.

Oh, and the word difference? -3.

What do you think? Have you found any overstuffed sentences in your writing? How do you fix them? Come share!

Photo credits: tools—HomeSpot HQ; overstuffed beef ravioli—George Hatcher

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Mechanics, Technique

Fix-it Friday: Overstuffed sentences

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Line-editing is now part of editing my book Fix-It Fridays!

fifWay back in our Secret Sauce Series, we talked about overstuffed sentences—sentences where we’re trying too hard to appear writerly, putting too much information, being entirely too clever, and just generally confounding our readers.

Once upon a time, I must have held a subconscious belief that a “real” writer made their sentences work two and three times as hard. That’s probably true in a way—each action of a story, each scene and maybe each sentence can accomplish more than one thing.

But instead, I took that to mean that the more complex a sentence, the better. But that’s simply not the case. Yes, sentences should work hard for us as writers and serve several purposes. But there’s a limit to how much you can pack into a sentence or paragraph and still be intelligible to readers.

Here are a couple such overweighted sentences from my own works:

#1 (the passage that taught me this lesson!)

How must the buildings that were so familiar she hardly noticed them look to Father O’Leary? Three years ago, she compared the Gothic chapel, its stone façade flanked by blazing maples in a carpet of lawn, to her parents’ church in city center. At the time, St. Adelaide seemed a suburban oasis; three weeks ago she was disabused of that notion.

“I’m sure it’ll get to feelin’ like home soon enough,” she murmured.

And #2

I slip onto the back porch, but the door latch I’m expecting to hear behind me doesn’t come by the time I reach the stairs.

And #3

Those fears and feelings, raw and vulnerable, echoing through me, must be why I finally have to pull back to wipe away my tears.

Next time (Sept 13 27!), I’ll share how I fixed them—but first, what would you do? Come share!

Photo by HomeSpot HQ

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Technique

Secret sauce: stuffing too much into one sentence

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This entry is part 14 of 16 in the series Spilling the secret sauce

Once upon a time, I must have held a subconscious belief that a “real” writer made their sentences work two and three times as hard. That’s probably true in a way—each action of a story, each scene and maybe each sentence can accomplish more than one thing.

But instead, I took that to mean that the more complex a sentence, the better. I think the problematic present participial phrases we looked at last week can be a symptom of the same problem: trying to stuff too much into one sentence. (And also, trying to sound writerly.)

Learning my lesson

I’ve long been an avid reader of the blog edittorrent, run by editors Theresa Stevens and Alicia Rasley. Almost four years ago, they asked for victims volunteers for on-the-blog edits, and I signed up with a short sample, a few sentences that were giving some of my beta readers problems.

And Alicia told me exactly why (emphasis added):

Don’t make your reader work so hard to figure out what you’re getting at. Try writing it plainly first, to make sure you’re getting it across, then embellish. But really, I think you’re trying to do too much for one paragraph. This might not have bothered me in two paragraphs or three, if you took your time and really explored what was happening . . . . If that’s too attenuated, see what’s important to keep and make sure everything is clear.

Yes, sentences should work hard for us as writers and serve several purposes. But there’s a limit to how much you can pack into a sentence or paragraph and still be intelligible to readers.

Another really important point here is that dense (= packed) writing isn’t always better. Sometimes it makes the reader feel dense (= stupid). If something is really important to the story action or the character, often that weight should be matched by the amount of real estate that event gets.

Or as Alicia put it,

If it’s worth stating, . . . it’s worth developing or exemplifying or showing. . . .

I know I’m always saying, “Take it slow.” But don’t try to compress too much.

Now, if it had just been me, I probably would have dismissed this advice as a general principle, applying it only to this passage and skipping merrily along with my writing life. However, it seemed to me that one of the recurring themes in Alicia’s awesome line editing series was to slow down and draw out the implications and impact of events in our writing, really showcasing our characters.

Applying the special sauce

These sample edits were done on a passage of 4 sentences:

How must the buildings that were so familiar she hardly noticed them look to Father O’Leary? Three years ago, she compared the Gothic chapel, its stone façade flanked by blazing maples in a carpet of lawn, to her parents’ church in city center. At the time, St. Adelaide seemed a suburban oasis; three weeks ago she was disabused of that notion.

“I’m sure it’ll get to feelin’ like home soon enough,” she murmured.

Along with other excellent feedback from Alicia & Theresa and other commentators, the passage in question eventually grew—the first paragraph (three sentences) expanded into three paragraphs (eight sentences):

He scanned the whole scene, as if surveying the squat brick school, the rectory, the Gothic chapel’s stone façade flanked by blazing maples in a carpet of lawn. The dismay in his expression dissolved with his satisfied nod. St. Adelaide must seem like a suburban oasis to him.

Three weeks ago, Molly had been disabused of that notion. Now the idyllic scene carried a sinister undertone so strong she couldn’t bear to look at it anymore. She hadn’t even noticed when the maples turned red.

Father O’Leary sighed and looked to her. How could she tell him the truth and shatter his illusion? “It’ll get to feelin’ like home soon enough,” she murmured.

I agreed that this event was important enough to give it more real estate in the book—but it’s not like I devoted an entire chapter to this. Just a few more sentences here made the passage clearer and gave it greater emotional impact.

Note that I decided the reference to the past (three years ago) was not actually worth including, since it distracted from the present—it wasn’t important enough to explore, and thus it probably wasn’t important enough to include.

What do you think? Have you ever overstuffed your sentences? Come share!

Photo credits: overstuffed beef ravioli—George Hatcher; red maple—Rudolf Ammann; both via Flickr/Creative Commons

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Technique

Secret sauce: the obsession with being a “writer”

This entry is part 12 of 16 in the series Spilling the secret sauce

I’m probably not the only one who for some strange reason envisioned himself or herself the author of the Next Great American Novel. Literary fiction is the only “real” type of writing, right?

(Um, no! Duh! Somehow, I still fall into this trap sometimes!)

So, sometimes . . . as “me active compensatory feature” (thank you, Ringo), I’d try maybe just a little too hard to sound like a “real” writer. You know the symptoms, right?

Sounding “writerly”

I absolutely love how author/former literary agent Nathan Bransford defined the difference between writing and being writerly (emphasis mine):

Writers describe. They illuminate and clarify. When you’re writing you’re painting the proverbial picture in the proverbial reader’s head.

When you’re being writerly, your writing is making things less clear with clever word play.

It isn’t just contrived sentence structure or imagery that hurts you. Diction—word choice—can be used to look like a “good” writer. Instead, you just end up sounding writerly. Or as agent Ann Collette tweeted in her Today’s Twelve roundup of queries:

And what does that mean? Ann elaborated a little:

Get it? Get it?

The “right” word

Just knowing the “right” word doesn’t necessary make it the right word (tautology FTW!). When we look up an obscure term for our research in our setting, it might be right in the sense that it describes it accurately—but even if it’s right in that sense, if your audience doesn’t know the term, it won’t help them visualize it. Then is it “right”?

In a day of instant information, readers really do put down books to look stuff up. I even documented a time I did that here on the blog: a novel I was reading named an obscure medical device, as if that would be enough for us to picture it being used as a weapon. It was not, I opined, the right word because I couldn’t visualize the pivotal weapon throughout the scene and, frustrated, put the book down to hop on the Internet. (And being me, it was some time before I got back to it, most likely.)

As a writer, I went through this with the word “inveigle” in one manuscript (okay, since we’re confessing: I’ve been through it a lot in pretty much every manuscript, but this is one of those stories). I found it in a thesaurus and the definition looked right.

I decided to ignore the fact that pretty much everyone I had read it—intelligent, college-educated people who really like me—tripped over that word and pointed it out. It was Capital-R-Right and nobody was going to convince me otherwise. After all, isn’t reading how we grow our vocabularies? Didn’t I see, like, one blog comment once where someone said they liked a book to teach them some new words??

If the logic sounds tenuous, it was. Finally, after yet another friend mentioned that word, I went on a hunt for that word in the wild. This is something you should always do with new words. (Google, how I love you.)

And what did I find? It seemed to have a connotation I definitely didn’t want there. It hurt, but I cut that word—because it wasn’t as right as I thought. And since then, I’ve cut a few more words that might send readers running for their dictionaries—because I don’t want to pull them out of the story, but mostly because they weren’t in the characters’ voices anyway.

Not being writerly

Fortunately, Nathan Bransford also offers guidelines on avoiding “writerliness.”

Whenever you’re unsure about including a metaphor or an evocative description, ask yourself: Does this make the scene clearer? Or am I including it because it’s clever/original/was fun to write?

Different writers have different tastes, but count me down in camp clarity.

Me too. That isn’t to say your writing, even in genre fiction, shouldn’t be clever, original or fun to write. Of course it should! But again, if it becomes harder for the reader to understand, take a hard look at the passage.

The right word, phrase, or image:

  • is clear!
  • has the right definition (denotation)—real editors absolutely DO use dictionaries, even when they don’t really doubt the definition or usage.
  • is as vivid, powerful and succinct as the context needs
  • carries the right connotation
  • is right for the character’s voice
  • is right for the genre/book: you absolutely can have “art prose” in “genre fiction,” but it must be consistent with the tone, subject, character, etc.—and it needs to be consistent through that book (or POV)
  • is right for the general reader, carrying him or her along with the story instead of pulling him/her out

You can get away with breaking maaaybe one of those axioms with a word or phrase, and even then, you shouldn’t do that too frequently—so choose carefully. And remember that every time your reader has to set your book down to look up an obscure term or reread a sentence to try to picture what you’re writing, there’s a better and better chance that he won’t continue reading, frustrated that you keep talking over his head.

Make your reader forget that he’s staring at black marks on a page and get him visualizing your story instead!

What do you think? What’s “writerly” to you?

Photo credits: quill—Charles Stanford; dictionary—Harry

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