Successful novelists and breaking the rules...

Susan B · Aug 19, 2007

So I've been trying to train myself to edit out all those things that are supposed to be the instant kiss of death: the weak "to be" verbs, "that" in any form, adverbs, too many adjectives. (Very tough to do!)

I picked up a recent issue of a writing magazine featuring the 5 Edgar finalists for best new mystery/suspense novel of the year. Very interesting profiles of each writer, including the opening lines of the nominated books.

So here's what I found in the first sentences:

Writer # A: "There are..." (Followed by: "I am...")

Writer #B: "My (noun) was (adj), (adv,adj) and (adj).

Writer #C: "There are..."

Writer #D: "I've heard that...."

Writer #E: Avoided any of the above problems. First sentence begins with someone looking into the sky. But it does include an adverb, and in a phrase where it's already implied, according to one of those style books. (Planes/birds "circling slowly" in the sky.)

I was left laughing, shaking my head. Only one of these, Writer #E, avoided what are supposed to be egregious errors. So much for the "rules."

(It did occur to me to wonder who won. So I checked. Writer E

Helps you keep perspective, I guess.

Susan

Jamesaritchie · Aug 19, 2007

Susan B said:
So I've been trying to train myself to edit out all those things that are supposed to be the instant kiss of death: the weak "to be" verbs, "that" in any form, adverbs, too many adjectives. (Very tough to do!)

I picked up a recent issue of a writing magazine featuring the 5 Edgar finalists for best new mystery/suspense novel of the year. Very interesting profiles of each writer, including the opening lines of the nominated books.

So here's what I found in the first sentences:

Writer # A: "There are..." (Followed by: "I am...")

Writer #B: "My (noun) was (adj), (adv,adj) and (adj).

Writer #C: "There are..."

Writer #D: "I've heard that...."

Writer #E: Avoided any of the above problems. First sentence begins with someone looking into the sky. But it does include an adverb, and in a phrase where it's already implied, according to one of those style books. (Planes/birds "circling slowly" in the sky.)

I was left laughing, shaking my head. Only one of these, Writer #E, avoided what are supposed to be egregious errors. So much for the "rules."

(It did occur to me to wonder who won. So I checked. Writer E

Helps you keep perspective, I guess.

Susan

Huh? I think you're seeing problems where none exist.

Esopha · Aug 19, 2007

Did you read all the way through each novel? Maybe Writer E just had a more compelling story.

Or, you know, maybe not.

JoNightshade · Aug 19, 2007

Once you know the rules, you're allowed to break them.

Susan B · Aug 19, 2007

Jamesaritchie said:
Huh? I think you're seeing problems where none exist.

Exactly! That's the point.

But some of the sources you read can put new writers (like me) in a panic about using any of those things I mention. Ever. Or at least in the opening pages of a book, where it would be grounds for an agent to stop reading. (The agent who wrote "The First Five Pages" does say this. A useful book, though, for self-editing.)

So it served as a reminder to me to maintain a little perspective. Thought others might appreciate it.

(No, haven't yet read any of the books, just bought one of the books mentioned. Just found the article recently.)

Susan

Shadow_Ferret · Aug 19, 2007

Susan B said:
So I've been trying to train myself to edit out all those things that are supposed to be the instant kiss of death: the weak "to be" verbs, "that" in any form, adverbs, too many adjectives. (Very tough to do!)

I keep hearing these "Don'ts" too, a lot of times in posts on here.

And yet, nearly every book I read, many of them best-sellers, all contain adverbs, thats, etc. and etc.

The even contain all the stage direction descriptions I've heard you should avoid, such as, nodded, smiled, shrugged, etc.

Susan B · Aug 19, 2007

Shadow_Ferret said:
I keep hearing these "Don'ts" too, a lot of times in posts on here.

And yet, nearly every book I read, many of them best-sellers, all contain adverbs, thats, etc. and etc.

The even contain all the stage direction descriptions I've heard you should avoid, such as, nodded, smiled, shrugged, etc.

I know! Now I feel I have this irritating critic in my head who keeps pointing it out to me :-(

rugcat · Aug 19, 2007

Don't think of them as rules. Think of them as guidelines. A book written which adheres scrupulously to any set of rules is likely to be bland, stiff, and sterile.

Being able to find the right proportions and rhythms -- active v passive voice, when adjectives and adverbs are appropriate and when they're not, when a tag is needed and when it is superfluous - all these things are part of the craft of writing and of one's distinctive voice.

Ravenlocks · Aug 19, 2007

I think a lot depends on your voice and your story. Ultimately what it all comes down to is whether your writing works, not the mechanics of HOW it works. Personally I use all the stuff you mentioned, and I use it a lot because that's how I write. I think if you like it and you know how to do it, go for it. Nobody's going to reject a rockin' story and rockin' new writer because you used the passive voice.

Barbarique said:
They're even easier to break if you don't clutter your head with 'em in the first place.

They are, but you're not likely to do it successfully.

southernwriter · Aug 19, 2007

Susan B said:
So I've been trying to train myself to edit out all those things that are supposed to be the instant kiss of death: the weak "to be" verbs, "that" in any form, adverbs, too many adjectives. (Very tough to do!)

I picked up a recent issue of a writing magazine featuring the 5 Edgar finalists for best new mystery/suspense novel of the year.

I was left laughing, shaking my head. So much for the "rules."

Oh, yeah! This is one of my pet peeves. :rant:

I'm one of those people who blogs about "the rules," and especially about all the times I've seen published authors break them successfully. There's Susan Minot's Evening, which I think is a movie now, starring Meryl Streep. She uses no quotation marks whatsoever. Some sentences don’t even end in periods. It’s full of passive sentences and the use of “was.” She even has the protagonist get "out" (not off) of a guy's lap, and sit "in" (not on) a chair. Not the kind of cushy chair a person can sink into, but a kitchen chair. The same word is often repeated in the same sentence or the same paragraph. The effect is ethereal. It won an award (can’t find the specific one at this moment, sorry), and got rave reviews.

Then we have blogging agents tell us there are certain story beginnings that are too cliche to ever consider publishing: dream sequences, characters waking up in the morning, characters beginning their daily routine . . . Just about every publishing professional’s blog I read condemns these beginnings as amateur. Then one day I’m reading Anna Genoese’s blog, and in it, she praises author Alix Strauss who wrote The Joy of Funerals. I like the title, and I tend to follow those kinds of links to see what’s so hot about the writing that an editor or agent likes it well enough to promote it on his or her blog, so that’s what I did; I followed the link and began reading an excerpt. And guess what? It begins with a dream sequence, followed by the alarm going off, and the main character’s morning routine.

When I hear "rules" I’ve never heard before, I pull books from my shelves and thumb through them randomly to see if other authors have committed the same offense. One blogging editor used to have a cow whenever someone used the word "was." She said it’s telling, not showing. I pulled a pile of books from my shelf and scanned through them. And guess what again? Every one of the best-selling books I pulled was full of "was." I scanned a few pages at random, sent them to the blogging editor, and asked for clarification. New rule: don’t do that. It pisses them off.

I think it was the same editor who deplored the use of “and then,” in prose, labeling it "lazy and bad writing." This was a rule I had never heard before, so it remained fresh in my mind, and I began to see “and then” everywhere, when I had never noticed it before in my life.

Another rule of which I was unaware, concerns the use of “suddenly,” as in “suddenly, such and so happened.” And wouldn’t you know, as I opened books randomly in my search for "was," I saw it, plain as day, in Memoirs of a Geisha (page 87 in the paperback edition): “Then suddenly, from beyond where the rat was chewing, a head raised up and Hatsumomo was looking straight at me.” We have a “then suddenly,” and two “was.” Someone remind me. How many copies did this novel sell? How much money did Arthur Golden make from the movie deal?

It just so happened that on the same evening, I was catching up on entries in Kristin Nelson’s blog. As we all know, she’s probably one of the most influential agents in the business. On the 17th of July, 2006, she posted an entry, New York State of Mind, where she praised a particular author, and said if she were queried by someone who wrote as well as said author, she would sign them in a second. I followed the link to read an excerpt from Jody Picoult's Nineteen Minutes. She is good. Very good. But in that little excerpt, guess what I found? Go ahead. Guess. I found no less than five "and thens" in a short excerpt. I can almost guarantee every one of her books was edited by a professional editor who apparently didn’t give a damn about her use of “and then.”

The best rule in writing I've ever heard, and the only one I still try to follow is, "Write well. Query widely."

CheshireCat · Aug 19, 2007

Shadow_Ferret said:
I keep hearing these "Don'ts" too, a lot of times in posts on here.

And yet, nearly every book I read, many of them best-sellers, all contain adverbs, thats, etc. and etc.

The even contain all the stage direction descriptions I've heard you should avoid, such as, nodded, smiled, shrugged, etc.

Who is relating all these "rules" to you guys?

Avoid "stage direction" movements like nodding or smiling? What's up with that? I mean, you don't want your characters bobbing and jerking all across your stage like puppets, but the reader can't see movement unless you describe it.

Sometimes, people nod. They smile. They shrug.

Unless you use movements as dialogue tags ("Yes, I agree," she nodded.) what's supposed to be wrong with them?

Shadow_Ferret · Aug 19, 2007

CheshireCat said:
Who is relating all these "rules" to you guys?

Avoid "stage direction" movements like nodding or smiling? What's up with that? I mean, you don't want your characters bobbing and jerking all across your stage like puppets, but the reader can't see movement unless you describe it.

Sometimes, people nod. They smile. They shrug.

Unless you use movements as dialogue tags ("Yes, I agree," she nodded.) what's supposed to be wrong with them?

Who is? I got a lot of these rules reading threads in this very forum.

The way I see it, all those rules are written by literature professors in their ivory towers and literature critics searching for the next great piece of literature. The problem is, READERS don't know about these rules and in the end it is the readers that decide what is successful, not the guys in the tweed suits, smoking pipes, and talking through gritted teeth in pseudo-cultured tones.

johnrobison · Aug 19, 2007

I never read any test on "how to write a book" and I wrote my story blissfully unaware of all the rules you mention. And I still ended up OK. Not one reviewer has mentioned a single rule that I, in my total ignorance, must have broken.

Focus on the story, not the rules.

Novelhistorian · Aug 19, 2007

southernwriter said:
. “Then suddenly, from beyond where the rat was chewing, a head raised up and Hatsumomo was looking straight at me.” We have a “then suddenly,” and two “was.” /quote]

I understand the cold sweat that comes over you when you've read someone pointing a finger at bad writing, and you think it's you. I've had that feeling often. But the example here, as with the five the OP cited among the Edgar nominees, don't seem that bad to me.

First of all, in this one, "was chewing" and "was looking" aren't passive. (There was a recent thread about this recently.) They're the past tense of a continuous or progressive verb (depending on your terminology). Just how else would you narrate an action that took place in the past, during more than a single, discrete moment? That was comes in handy, sometimes.

As for the Edgar contestants, I fail to see what's wrong with them. If you jumped on any story as soon as you saw a there are or I've heard that, you'd throw out a lot of good fiction. Oh, God, there's an adverb! Trash that author! Besides which, two of the five examples were in the first person, and if they're to represent the way someone speaks, you've gotta allow a little leeway.

I think writing's hard enough without worrying whether the next relative pronoun will trip you up in an agent's eyes. I've had those same nightmares, particularly after the batch of queries is in the mail, but the only thing I can say is, Relax. If you write well, and your story holds the reader's attention, nobody's going to throw a style book at you.

Susan B · Aug 19, 2007

southernwriter said:
Oh, yeah! This is one of my pet peeves.....The best rule in writing I've ever heard, and the only one I still try to follow is, "Write well. Query widely."

Oh yeah. Amen!

Danger Jane · Aug 19, 2007

Anything works if it's well-executed.

A good writer can pull off starting a book with a dream sequence. A bad writer cannot. Maybe this is one of those starts the agents scream about most because a lot of people start this way--and most submissions are rejected, correct? So the agent gets tired of them. But a good dream sequence that sucks the reader in...then nobody's criticizing the dream sequence, because it worked.

Ravenlocks · Aug 19, 2007

I remember chatting with some other writers about the use of "suddenly" (which I use and plan to keep using as appropriate) and someone came up with this golden sentence which I've never forgotten: "Gradually the creature leapt out of the closet."

southernwriter · Aug 19, 2007

Ravenlocks said:
I remember chatting with some other writers about the use of "suddenly" (which I use and plan to keep using as appropriate) and someone came up with this golden sentence which I've never forgotten: "Gradually the creature leapt out of the closet."

Spews sweet tea on the monitor and rolls on the floor laughing. :roll:

southernwriter · Aug 19, 2007

Novelhistorian said:
southernwriter said:

. “Then suddenly, from beyond where the rat was chewing, a head raised up and Hatsumomo was looking straight at me.” We have a “then suddenly,” and two “was.”

First of all, in this one, "was chewing" and "was looking" aren't passive.

Click to expand...

I wasn't finding fault with anyone's writing, just passing on what the editor, who did not distinguish between one "was" and another, said was bad writing.

wayndom · Aug 19, 2007

Susan B said:
So I've been trying to train myself to edit out all those things that are supposed to be the instant kiss of death: the weak "to be" verbs, "that" in any form, adverbs, too many adjectives. (Very tough to do!)

Writer # A: "There are..." (Followed by: "I am...")

Writer #B: "My (noun) was (adj), (adv,adj) and (adj).

Writer #C: "There are..."

Writer #D: "I've heard that...."

Writer #E: Avoided any of the above problems. First sentence begins with someone looking into the sky. But it does include an adverb, and in a phrase where it's already implied, according to one of those style books. (Planes/birds "circling slowly" in the sky.)

First, you should be editing out passive verbs ("to be" verbs, as you call them), "that" (not every "that," only superfluous ones, as in, "...so that he'd know..." which should be, "...so he'd know..."). Just because successful writers get away with crap doesn't mean your own writing won't be improved by removing crap.

But like others, I think you've perhaps taken too broad a view at weakening language. I have no idea what's wrong with "There are..." and the fact that it's followed by "I am..." doesn't make the "problem" any clearer to me.

In the case of "I've heard that..." if the sentence continues, "women are smarter than men," then without "that," it becomes, "I've heard women..." and sounds like the sentence is describing sounds women make. Not every "that" is superfluous.

Adverbs do tremendous damage to prose. The more adverbs you put into a sentence, the weaker it becomes. That's really, truly, demonstrably, certifiably, absolutely, positively, very, very, very true. But that doesn't mean you can never have an adverb in any sentence, or that every sentence is weakened by every adverb in it.

Maybe the problem you're having is that you're concentrating too much on a specific list of words and phrases, instead of looking for whatever weakens your writing. When I'm editing, I stop after removing an offending word or phrase to see if the writing got stronger or weaker. It almost always gets stronger, but there are exceptions, and you have to recognize them, too.

wayndom · Aug 19, 2007

CheshireCat said:
Who is relating all these "rules" to you guys?

Not exactly the same rules as some of the oddball things I've read in this thread, but rules against passive verbs, too many "that's," etc?

Strunk and White, for one. Sol Stein for another. Many, many other books on editing and rewriting.

And they're right. The things they warn against do weaken writing, and though there are, as the cliche goes, exceptions to every rule (a self-contradiction, but we won't go into that), any writer who wants to be successful is a fool to ignore them.

Learn the rules, learn when and where they apply and when and where they don't, and your writing will improve. And knowing when a rule doesn't apply is different from "getting away with" breaking it.

wayndom · Aug 19, 2007

Oh, and note to Southernwriter: I've never heard anyone ever say there was anything wrong with "was." That just sounds totally preposterous, and I'll stick my neck out here and say I can only assume the blogger is a pompous fool.

Atlantis · Aug 19, 2007

I think when writers start getting in a panic about every single insignificant word they put into a sentence they loose some of their creative spirit. I understand its important to follow the rules in this industry, but when people start getting in a fuss about having too many descriptive words in a sentence or counting every time they use the word "that" or "was" or "and" it just becomes stupid. Write the damn book. If we spend every second worrying about our use of descriptive phrases or proper grammer, nothing would ever get done. All we'll do is rewrite everything again and again and loose all our hair in the process.

javili · Aug 19, 2007

They aren't rules. That's one thing that marks the difference in people trying to learn from people who are writing professionally: they are looking for laws and secrets to make them better.

I'm a baseball player and a journalist. In baseball there are rules. There are books that tell you what the rules are. You can't break the rules without penalties.
There are also thousands of people telling you, do this, do that, don't ever do that, step here, hold your shoulder like that, don't pull against a left-handed fielder, whatever.
Those aren't rules. They are tips and advice. Most of them are a total bunch of crap. I go to the batting machines at a cage in town and kids are all over me, trying to get tips. I can point out a few things they're doing wrong, but I can't make them into .300 hitters. I was born a .300 hitter. What do I know?

In my work, there are manuals of style. I don't really have to use them because I'm a columnist and sort of star in certain fields of investigation and have my own style. There are rules around the office, some are posted on the wall. Others you just learn. Don't say anything about Dona Maria's hair. Don't write anything good about the Convergence for Democracy. I can break those rules.

(Well, I could. Except the last one I broke got me fired. But that's complicated.)

Beyond that, you have a chingo of people telling you all this stuff about how to write and to cover your beat. It's mostly crap.

I read on these forums and people say "don't use adverbs" "don't use passive voice" don't to this, do that.

It's NOT rules. It's advice. Most of it is crap, most of it comes from losers. Or from people who feed on being near writing but aren't very good at it. They are passing on what they learned while they are desperately trying to get better at it.

The writers who are successful don't really think of those things, and just write. And they don't "get good at the rules so they can break them" because they've already figure out there are no rules.

If there are, where do you by the rule book?

Ravenlocks · Aug 19, 2007

Atlantis said:
I think when writers start getting in a panic about every single insignificant word they put into a sentence they loose some of their creative spirit. I understand its important to follow the rules in this industry, but when people start getting in a fuss about having too many descriptive words in a sentence or counting every time they use the word "that" or "was" or "and" it just becomes stupid. Write the damn book. If we spend every second worrying about our use of descriptive phrases or proper grammer, nothing would ever get done. All we'll do is rewrite everything again and again and loose all our hair in the process.

And that was that! Woohoo, I got 'em all into one sentence! I even got "that" in twice!

Successful novelists and breaking the rules...

Accordion Dreams

bam pow zap.

has finally arrived

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How novel.

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Mostly purring. Mostly.

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How novel.

Born Under a Bad Star

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