Banished!

Banishment has a spicy etymology, associated with outlawed, cursed, prohibited, or exiled. 

Here’s the start of a list of what you might usefully banish from your novel.

~ Fatigued and fatiguing scene and especially chapter openings. 

Start with a hook. Every time. John Green opens The Fault in Our Stars this way:

Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.

Not “My mother’s appraisal was that I was depressed.”

~ Drooping middle.

Glen C. Strathy says that “The middle is just as important as the end.” You need subplots, varied settings, escalating tension, and foreshadowing of every character arc. Make the middle matter.

~ No deus ex machina.

Yes, agents and publishers prefer novels to come in under 100,000 words. You’re already past that, so you—just stop. Always convey at least some resolution, and without any cavalry.

~ Offstage action.

Tough as it might be to write sex, confrontation, explosion, or violence, let your readers experience the exciting parts in real time. Don’t collapse or summarize set scenes or drama.

~ An endless list of supporting characters.

How many is too many? That’s unanswerable. What is? Fewer characters are better.

~ Dead metaphors.

They offer all the imagery of stars on a summer night, and that truth is as good as gold.

~ Mixed metaphors.

They irritate like as an invisible memory glittering in your heart.

~ Passive voice.

There have not been found that many reasons for it to be used by you.

~ Double Negative.

It isn’t right not to use double negatives. See what happens?

Tip: Banish both listlessness and clutter. Exile them from the pages of your book.

No Talking, Please

This isn’t about being quiet while a professional speaks, or not whispering when you’re bored, or being the good listener nearly everyone aspires to be. It’s about being a novelist.

Tip: Although some novels are offered orally, novels are written—not spoken.

That means if you’re writing the way you talk, stop! If you’re transcribing what you hear, stop! If you long to meticulously record what people actually say to each other, stop!

For better or worse, the composing of a novel has preciously little to do with what’s said in the real world, how well you capture that, or what your friends and family share. Even when they’re seriously pissed off.

Why not keep in mind some of these disparities between the spoken and written word?

1. Real conversation is really boring. Really often. Especially on paper.

Understandably, people daydream lots when even their most beloved family members address them. They have to. If not, they could potentially perish during the onslaught of tedious, redundant, tangential, and judgmental details. Lengthy conversation is often tolerable. Minds wander. Images appear. Grocery lists are written and rewritten. Toleration of wordy prose? Not so much. 

Be realistic. Be fair. Be thoughtful. Don’t force your readers to skim.

2.  In the real world, conversation involves audience response.

For the writer, this is both blessing and curse. It’s a blessing because you can skillfully circumvent all the ploys listeners employ. It’s a curse because since your audience contributes little or nothing: you have to do all the work.

When people converse, they ask questions. What did you mean? Why didn’t she answer? Even, who’s Neil Chambray? Novel readers can’t ask questions. They get it. Or don’t. And if they don’t get it often enough, you know what happens.

3. Extensive physical cues enhance real-world dialogue.

That’s what makes Skype popular. The audience interprets visual cues, notes tone of voice, recognizes the shift from merry to serious. For better or worse, one of the novelist’s tasks is making what characters say so concrete and comprehensive that readers believe they can see the dialogue they’re hearing.

4. Outside of fiction, listener expectations are remarkably low.

Aware that people are speaking extemporaneously, and that unless we’re at a meeting or lecture, we’re willing to accept this individual’s foibles, we accept a rather significant amount of repetition, backtracking, irrelevance, hyperbole, self-congratulation, obfuscation, and ambiguity. After all, we want to know what this person has to say. We persevere, knowing the irritation is finite. In fiction? If this happens too often, well, it’s easier to choose another novel than another friend or family member.

5. Especially in speech, crummy word choice and sentence structure are more frequent than occasional.

Casual speech, even from the wittiest, most brilliant and eloquent, has severe limitations. There is the prevalence of passive voice. Mixed metaphors make us so colorblind that we fail to detect the true colors of sound bites. Between you and I, the rules of grammar isn’t always impeccable, especially after an extra glass of wine. On paper, spoken idioms that sound just right become ships careening into each other because it’s a dark and stormy night. 

Writing a novel is nothing like “telling a story.” Save the talking for conversation with your friends.

Write Tight--But "Right"

The title rhymes and all, but what might being “right” with your words mean? First, if your intended audience doesn’t enjoy it, something’s off. Take classic novels. Or, for many readers, don’t take them. Because, as Mark Twain put it, the classic is “a book which people praise and don’t read.” 

That’s not right. Neither is a book lauded for its brilliance but too incomprehensible for most of us to tackle. James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake may well be a masterpiece. But if hardly anyone reads it, did Joyce get it “right”? What’s intimidating or tedious is hardly a turn on. So.

~ Accessibility.

This plays a huge role in writing “right.” If readers neither understand what you’re saying nor care when they don’t, something’s very wrong.

~ Guidance.

Inference and confusion are two entirely different animals. The first may initially seem a bit unfamiliar. Yet it resembles something you want to understand; it suggests something positive, even if you haven’t figured it out yet. Confusion, though? That’s a nasty animal. It neither looks nor smells good. Tempt your readers with clues. Provide transitions. Give enough information, but not too much. Because that’s not such a delightful beast, either.

~ Tautness.

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius the buffoon informs us that “brevity is the soul of wit,” then proceeds to go on and on. And on. And on. Point taken. Are you writing tight?

     Not if you’re smitten with passive voice.

     Not if you make the same point first generally, then specifically—or the reverse.

     Not if you adore (i.e. fall in love with) wordy verbs.

     Not if you usually use three words when one would do.

     Not if punctilious grammatical correctness clutters up your prose.

Correct forms like “has been competing” can feel as irritating as self-righteous political correctness in the real world. Be clear, not pompous or archaic.

Tight writing reduces clutter. Down with weak words (“is,” “be,” “am,” etc.); imprecise detail (three metaphors or images because each is inadequate); or clarifying what we prefer to infer.

That’s the script: clear, focused, taut. Tight yet right.

But here’s the thing about all those writing rules, no matter who espouses them As Picasso said, “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” How else can you—with a splendid blend of objectivity and passion—decide when to break them? 

Tip: Mediocre writers follow every rule. Good writers know when to break them.

The Sentence

The sentences that compose novels aren’t analogous to the ingredients in cupcakes.  Because some wonderful sentences say very little. Others convey a great deal despite cliché, repetition, clumsiness, or worse. The good news? While there’s no manual for acquiring voice and vision, everyone can improve at syntax. And probably everyone should. Who wants to bake cupcakes with inferior ingredients?  Or write a novel deadened with a lousy sentence here or there?

Folks agree more about quality in cupcakes than sentences. Genre, reading rate, tolerance for ambiguity, enthusiasm about complexity, ear for rhythm, and other factors all contribute. And novelists won’t improve syntax by saying, “Well, it sounds okay to me.” A writer’s tolerance for “okay” is often greater than a reader’s. Put yourself in the ear of someone who didn’t write the sentence.

Listen. Really listen. Without rationalizing or shrugging off. That’s the first step toward prose like Neil Gaiman’s description of Fat Charlie seeking a more accurate name:

He would introduce himself as Charles or, in his early twenties, Chaz, or, in writing, as C. Nancy, but it was no use: the name would creep in, infiltrating the new part of his life just as cockroaches invade the cracks and the world behind the fridge in a new kitchen, and like it or not—and he didn’t—he would be Fat Charlie again. — Anansi Boys,

Sentences needn’t be long or complex to resonate. In Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier uses the external world to capture the internal:  “The memory passed on as the light from the window rose toward day.” Tracy Chevalier’s creates character in The Lady and the Unicorn with “Jean Le Viste’s jaw is like a hatchet, his eyes like knife blades.”

Which elements do all these sentences share in common?

Rhythm.

Create sound patterns without relying on passive voice or words that fail to supply both meaning and sound. Read authors you love aloud. Read your own work aloud.

Economy.

            If it’s not adding, it’s subtracting. Make every word work.

Verbs.

            One good verb can replace a chain of adjectives and adverbs. Energize.

In the end, though, the sentence is as elusive as Amy Tan’s description of love in The Hundred Secret Senses

It floods the cells that transmit worry and better sense, drowns them with biochemical bliss. You can know all these things about love, yet it remains irresistible, as beguiling as the floating arms of long sleep.

A lovely sentence floods the senses, too, by wedding content to presentation. What makes some sentences “irresistible”? That’s beguilingly unknowable. But the mystery of sentence beauty isn’t permission to disregard it. Keep chasing the solution to that mystery. By revising.

Tip: Make your sentences as “beguiling” as possible. All of your sentences.

Spring Cleaning

It’s a traditional activity for good reason. Over time, things pile up, and the season of renewal gives many of us—writers and otherwise, a chance to refurbish when we have the most energy we ever will.

So get going. Clear up those smudges that block the view. Identify debris; either dispose of it or place it where it belongs instead of piling up wherever you dropped it. Finally, clear out all the stuff that accumulated. How long since you assessed what’s on display for those entering your world?

A significant task, like sprucing up a home, yard, or novel, can feel too big for a single swipe. Instead of getting discouraged, divide the tasks into logical parts. That’s not only manageable. It’s downright inspiring. Start by assessing what you might revise for a sounder foundation.

• Structural clean up

~ Are your characters multi-dimensional?

~ Does a dilemma drive your novel?

~ Do the events of your plot flow causally into each other? Do you ever rely on coincidence?

~ Have you developed your idea into a High Concept, one with universal appeal and emotional

   intensity?

That’s the big picture. But a picture’s only as good as the individual elements composing it.

• Detail clean up

~ Does this description add?

~ Do you position information in the best place?

~ Do you transition between details?

~ Do you ever “tell” and then “show,” or “show” and then “tell”?

~ Does each detail perform more than one function, i.e. speaker attribution plus escalating

   tension?

If specifics are crucial, so is how you convey details to readers.

• Sentence clean up

~ Are any passages wordy?

~ Do you seek active verbs that don’t require prepositions, i.e. illuminate instead of “light up”?

~ Do you emphasize by contrasting long, flowing with short, punchy ones?

~ Do you resort to passive voice when you needn’t? There are (sic) few instances when you

   need it.

~ Are you using “and” too often, and are you not noticing and thus are you also wasting words

   and weakening causality with that habit? Once you notice, it’s not a hard habit to break.

Tip: Let spring infuse new growth into your characters and their world.

The Novelist and “Their” “Grammer” (sic)

Not to be fractious, but isn’t grammar even more trivial than fractions? After all, fractions help you cope with 3/8 teaspoon of baking soda when doubling or halving your muffin recipe. Far more practical than cringing over offering guests less or fewer muffins. Readers are a novelist’s guests, and many simply couldn’t (or the inaccurate “could”?) care less. For many people, grammar evokes the nightmarish high school memory of diagramming sentences.

Admittedly, diagramming sentence won’t polish your prose. Still, the impracticality of that exercise doesn’t justify discarding the elegant system that grammar represents. Even if diagramming sentences won’t improve your novel, grammar certainly might.

Here’s why.

~Perfect pitch.

Some folks lack it with language, just as others do with music. You wouldn’t inflict your off-key singing on a bunch of strangers, would you? Between “you and I” (sic!), consider protecting your readers from sounds that make them cringe. If the reader’s cringing, the reading’s not much fun.

~ Hierarchy.

Subordinate (“however, “but,” “if,” etc.) or coordinate (“and,” “also,” etc.) words indicate significance. Seemingly trivial word choices convey that some things are equal and others not. Intentionally or not, the clauses you create express relationships—including run-on sentences. Subordination captures causality at the sentence level: if the protagonist does this, then that happens. Doesn’t that deserve your attention? And your reader’s?

~ Syntax.

Grammar sensitizes you to what your sentence underscores. Aside from distance and wordiness, the real problem with passive voice is misplaced emphasis. If the bat is used by the girl, don’t you imply that the bat matters more than she does? Relationships between words (grammar!) accentuate or minimize. Noticing parts of speech encourages greater reliance on verbs instead of (yikes!) modifying everything with (sad) adjectives or adverbs (sadly).

~ Parallelism.

Though part of syntax, this construction deserves separate mention. Grammar reveals whether you’ve missed an opportunity to connect, echo, and create unforgettable patterns. After all, what if Lincoln had said, “The government that represents the people, which is the one they help to run and is thus capable of giving them what is needed… “shall not perish from the earth.”

Tip: Here’s a secret. Grammar is exactly as important as it’s cracked up to be.

Passive Voice and the Novelist’s Voice

Novel readers don’t ask for much: A powerful plot. Compelling characters. A voice you could listen to forever.

What don’t novel readers ask for? A novel where there is a plot based on decisions that should be made by characters who are being described by a narrator resulting in a voice that is passive. There is (good construction to avoid) no justification for that!

Novelists rarely incite that much irritation. But the sentence does illustrate the connection between passive voice—and no voice. In “The Pleasures and Perils of the Passive,” Constance Hale identifies both kinds of voice: “Most (though not all) verbs have a property known as ‘voice,’ which can be either active or passive. The voice of a verb is different from both the common notion of voice (the timbre produced by a person’s vocal cords) and the literary notion (the ineffable way the writer’s words work on the page).”

Stephen King delivers this warning in “Why and How to Avoid Passive Voice”:  “You should avoid the passive voice. I’m not the only one who says so; you can find the same advice in ‘The Elements of Style’.  Messrs. Strunk and White don't speculate as to why so many writers are attracted to passive verbs, but I'm willing to; I think timid writers like them for the same reason timid lovers like passive partners. The passive voice is safe.”

Safe or not, the passive voice is wordy, cumbersome, and unintentionally comic: “The ball was hit by the girl.” Will that release your voice? Seriously?

To find your voice, you must first counteract insecurity and self-consciousness, then enchant through syntax, music, diction, rhythm, figurative language, and on and on. Why add an awkward, usually displeasing construction that makes all that harder?  Because exceptions exist (though preferably not expressed as “There are exceptions”).

~ Would a sentence become unclear or ungainly if you traded subject for object?

The Emperor was attacked by an enraged people, starving and humiliated, whom he’d recently enslaved in a victory that generated, song, poem, statue and—revolution.

~ Do you intentionally seek distance? Ambiguity? A certain tone or rhythm?

There are truths few humans can endure, truths awaiting someone to voice them.

How to choose when to give in and use passive voice?

Tip: Imagine that each passive sentence costs $50,000. Then spend your cash wisely.

After all, W.H. Auden proclaimed, “All I have is a voice.” And that’s all anyone has.

Write Fast and Revise Later, or…?

There’s something to say (see Anne Lamott) for getting to “the end” and doing the worrying later. That way you have a completed draft behind you.

There’s also something to say for avoiding what ultimately seems so discouraging or despicable that revision resembles cleaning out the Augean Stables.

Finally, there’s something best of all to say for choosing something in-between. Why write chapters without scene goals, paragraphs without focal points, and sentences so tortured that even the author can’t decipher the meaning? Why compose an entire whole novel in passive voice while repeating, dragging out, and “telling”? Nor would it help to write so sloooowly that you lose all faith in what originally motivated you. What can you do instead?

~ Make a plan.

This might be a scene goal outline, a storyboard where you write whatever scene turns you on that day, character arcs for everyone important, or even an old-fashioned outline. It doesn’t matter what plan you choose or whether you later change it radically. It only exists to help you produce prose neither ghastly nor too polished for your first stab.

~ Keep a schedule.

Life, as they say, happens. Accidents, birthdays, trouble coming in threes, flu, migraine, date night, and so on. Why pretend that you won’t have dozens of reasons to prevent churning out pages? Create a reasonable, realistic commitment, i.e. x hours a week or y hours a day. Then you won’t have to pretend.

~ Advance both the plot and the number of pages.

It won’t help to have thirty exquisite pages if they’re all you’ll have for the next few years. If your time is precious, don’t squander it reworking material that you’ll change after you know your characters and their journey—because your first draft is done.  Don’t proceed as if you know nothing about how novels work. Also don’t proceed as if you must immediately accomplish everything you know about how novels work.

~ Follow the dream.

Write this book because you love it. If you don’t, maybe you’d rather find a better day job instead. Feed the dream. Don’t starve it by worrying about everything you’ll have to fix. Productivity and passion blend beautifully. Negativity and passion do not.

~ Decide what a strong first draft means to you.

If you can define that without rationalizing, you’ll know just what you need, how much revising you should do right now, how much later. Only you know how good is “good enough.” Set the standard. Follow it, even if you’re having a wildly bad—or good—day.

Tip: You know your process better than anyone. Honor it, but get the first draft done.