Aug18

Much ado about writing

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Much ado about writing

My apologies to those who are only into this blog for the Jiu-Jitsu, all two of you.

I’m finally breathing again now that I’ve turned in my final draft of Wish YOU Were Here, the sequel to Wish I Was Here. I’ve also been sewing together pieces of Book 3, Wish We Weren’t Here, and reviewing audiobook drafts of Book 1.

I had plenty of time to work on Book 2 and wasn’t stressing it much, thinking it would be a cinch. But when it comes to editing, knowledge isn’t power, it’s added frustration.

Some things are simple to correct. You don’t need “very,” “really,” “even,” just,” and oftentimes “that.” I eliminated those. They are just really very much unneeded. I’m not sure how they got in there in the first place, aside from me writing like a normal human.

Same goes for filler words such as, “There was/were” and “It was/were.” An example: “There was no one around” becomes “No one was around.”

Another tip: You don’t need “and then.” One or the other will do.

I also had to search for “pet phrases” and get rid of their overuse. For me, that was “despite myself” because, despite myself, I use that often.

Then there’s the no-adverb rule. Sometimes that’s easy to solve, such as: “In the reflection of the window, I witnessed Isaac lift an arm and sniff. He made a face and quickly put his arm down dropped his arm.”

At other times, I don’t see a simple solution, so [the horror!] I let the adverbs lie, despite having read that at least one agent will reject a manuscript at the sight of a single adverb.

More challenging is following the tried and true writing rule of telling instead of showing. (Relax, people. That was a joke.) The trickiest part is facial expressions, which meant looking up how someone appears when they’re amused, for instance, rather than just saying they look amused. (Bonus points if you noticed I used “just” again.) For instance, “His expression turned from anger to alarm” became, “To my satisfaction, his narrowed eyes widened.”

Another writerly bugaboo is not having the same or nearly the same word, or even a homophone of the same word, twice on a page. Here was my problem: “He ran his fingers through his hair, making it stand upright. Standard Isaac.”

I could change “standard” to “classic,” but I used “Classic Isaac” in book 1. Which is the greater sin? So I tried changing standard to typical, but that sounded negative, which isn’t what I was going for. “Usual” doesn’t have the right feel, either. I went round and round with synonyms before finally changing “stand upright” to “stick up at an angle.”

All this left me thinking, How long have I spent on this?!

Here’s another example. “With no time to waste, my hands on his shoulders, and a foot on the handrail, I jumped. Isaac held me aloft by the waist as I stretched my arms and legs, planting my feet near the ceiling on one side and my scarf-covered hands on the other.”

In case you missed it, I had both “waste” and “waist,” so I had to change waste to lose.

There’s also my reference to a sticky seatbelt. Then, a couple of paragraphs later, I say, “Can we stick with this car?” Does anyone notice or care about these things?

Here’s another no-no: “He removed the cup lid, scooped out ice with his fingers, folded the napkins around the ice, and held it against his bad eye.” Who sees the problem? If I use “and,” it indicates he did all those actions at once, even though he obviously didn’t. Using “then” winds up with the problem of using then as a conjunction, which it’s not. I could break this into smaller sentences to alleviate that problem, but come on! Can we just (just!) read like normal humans?

Again, who would notice these things? But I’m trying to be fastidious now so I don’t have another incident like Book 1 when I got the formatted copy back from the publisher and requested a ton of changes. My eyes were so fresh after so long away, they were practically in diapers. (Oops. Adverb.)

My beta readers hadn’t raised these alarms. In fact, none of them caught that I had changed the first name of a character (Richard to Robert). That’s not even a rookie mistake on my part. That’s towel boy. But my readers were just presumably [just, adverb, and beginning a sentence with a contraction, oh my!] enjoying the story.

I’ve also ended sentences with prepositions all the heck over the place. Rules of the craft are important and all, but at a certain point, you gotta take the stiffness out and let the writing be.

The average reader isn’t paying attention to these things. I don’t need to win over an agent or even a publisher. So, I’m trying to find the middle ground of following the rules to a tee and not killing myself making it “perfect” by all these standards.

What do you all think? Do you try to follow every last rule, or do you keep it human?

I know, I know. Give us trivia and pepper the post with pics! I’m too worn out. Next time!

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39 responses »

  3. I’m waiting for the fourth book in your trilogy.

    As a poet I find it important to know, and understand all the rules about writing. Then promptly break all of them. To me the important thing is to understand why you’re breaking a rule and when breaking it makes the story telling better. Sometimes an author’s style or voice is about when they change the rules so the writing sounds like them and not a thesis for an English course.

    and honestly most readers wouldn’t know the difference between a preposition and a dangling participle.

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    • I may write a spinoff, so the joke’s on you, Andrew. 😛

      You’re right on about the rules. I found myself relieved when reading dialogue. I could break all sorts of rules because people speak how they speak. Rules be darned. 🙂

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  5. Richard/Robert, oh I’ve done that before, especially when I’ve put my novel down and then picked it back up after a long break. Oh goodness, this writing thing is hard work. I think the key to editing is to make it easy for the reader, but not so simple that it takes the fun or your style out of the story. Oh yea, the challenge is balancing all those things. I’m sure you’ve got this. Can’t wait to see the finished product!

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    • Yes! So much easier to spot the errors when you haven’t had your nose in the book for a long time. These last few days I’ve felt like I wasn’t really seeing anything while I read. I could practically recite the book by heart. I’m just hoping not to put the poor layout guy through it like I did last time. Hopefully the third book will be smoother in this regard.

      Did I know you were working on a book, Brian? Have you shared this on your blog? More! Tell us more!

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  6. i go my own way, as you can tell by my blog. that being said, i’ve never written a book. my guess is that it’s good to have a feel for the rules, but still use your own style. what feels right. the fact that none of the betas pointed these things out tells you wrote and how you wrote, was accepted by the readers.

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  8. To me, that’s the fun of writing. I’ve never written a book, or a piece longer than two pages, but I can spend hours, even days, on the fewest of words. I think I’d go insane doing this on a larger scale. Keep up the good work, Ilsa!

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  9. I just really don’t even know how to comment on this post. There were so many choices it was a hard decision.
    Your perfectionism is probably good, but don’t let it enslave you. Most of these nitpicky things you mention may not be caught by the average reader because what we want (or at least what I want) is a good story. Your first book was great and I’m confident this one will be at least as good, if not better. But, as an afterthought, perhaps your attention to these little details is what makes your stories easy to read…

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    • Hmm. That’s good food for thought, Herb. And thank you for enjoying the first book. I hope the second won’t disappoint! It’s much more of a “guy’s book,” I think, so that may give me an edge in your demographic. 😉

      Also, great opening lines. 😛

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  10. I have two challenges. One is keeping it human and natural while at the same time I try to follow these rules, because I want to write well. The other one is: the “show, don’t tell” rule is so much more difficult in German, at least in my opinion. English has sooo many verbs, I wish we had these in German!

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  11. You follow the grammar rules, you’re going to piss somebody off. You break the grammar rules, you’re going to piss somebody off.

    I guess you have to choose who you want to piss off. Life sure is tough, isn’t it? 😉

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  12. I have to ask… what do editors have against have against adverbs? I tend to get annoyed when people don’t use them. I understand very and really can become redundant but I tend to yell at the tv when I hear someone say ‘walk slow’. And don’t get me started on Apple’s think different campaign.
    😒

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    • Those aren’t the lack of using adverbs so much as a lack of good grammar. That drives me bonkers too, RG! And supposedly (adverb!) we’re supposed (same word!) to use stronger verbs. But honestly, (ly!) there isn’t always a stronger verb that can get the job done. Adverbs give flavor, IMO.

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  13. I’d say the goal of every piece of writing is to convey a story, idea, or even technical information with clarity. Depending on the genre, there may be humorous or descriptive flourishes. But the goal is avoid any writing that’s so grammatically egregious, confusing, or awkward that it pulls the reader out of the story. English is constantly evolving, including grammatically. No one cares about prepositions ending sentences or sentence fragments anymore, especially as the voice in novels becomes more informal and conversational. Less than 10 years ago, “startle” was only used as a verb when in past tense, e.g, “She was startled.” Now that so many YA books are written in present tense, I read “I startle,” in half the books I read. It feels like nails on a chalkboard to me every single time. It pulls me out of the story every single time. But I doubt actual young adults even notice.

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  14. I’m laughing and nodding the whole way through here, Ilsa. So relatable! And I’d entirely forgotten (until I read about your Richard/Robert whoops). There is a character in Slivers….I changed her name and darn if she didn’t continue to pop up with name #1 — even after I was sure I made all the changes. I’m not gonna type her name here. I’m afraid I might be a Voldemort kinda thing. “She who should not be named”.

    And…you could’ve been in my writers group last week. We spent an inordinate amount of time focused on “that”, “was/were” and pesky adverbs. It’s so funny how we all fall into traps of our own making, right?
    Love you much…and please don’t follow every rule. I had someone tell me this week that my writing was “cheeky” and my “voice” comes through. I don’t think it was a compliment! 😟❤️😟

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