Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 1

jules · May 7, 2005

Roger J Carlson said:
Hey, that gives me an idea for another program: Adverb Eliminator.

OK, that's it. Too many things I want that you can't easily do with existing word processors. I'm going to start work on 'novelkit', a piece of software I've been planning for a while, and you just gave me an idea for a useful feature: automatic highlighting and counting of the various parts of speech.

I've found a piece of software ( Link Grammar ) that seems reasonably accurate at identifying them (it even picks up made-up words used as adjectives or adverbs!) and could be built into it.

lenora rose said:
Britain tends to be more forgiving of extra flowers in prose than the US

Is that true? I've never really noticed much style difference between British and American authors, to be honest with you. But perhaps there's a greater divide in different genres (genre expectations form style as much as the author's natural use of language, I think); my reading tends to be limited to either very popular/well received books or SF/fantasy.

LightShadow · May 7, 2005

Adverbs have their place, and often it's in action type situations of a novel. As for Rowling, I just love her. I recognize that her style is not one I could get away with, nor do I want to, but it's still fun reading. Thing is, some complain that I am too serious when I write. They ask, "don't you have a sense of humor?" I overtly answer metaphorically and seriously, "I have five senses, and humor is not one of them." What? That made no sense. I'll have to smell that one out.

jules · May 7, 2005

"He watched the other boys covertly."

I certainly agree with keeping this one. There's no other good way of describing that; "He spied on the other boys" has a very different feel to it, and implies (to me) an ongoing state rather than a single event.

astonwest · May 7, 2005

Lenora Rose said:
I cut adverbs as often as I can, but still have a novel whose opening sentence has an adverb. I held a gun to that adverb about four different times, and it always talked me out of the cut.

(The sentence in question is "He watched the other boys covertly.")

Myself,I'd rather see it than be told...regardless of the -ly.
for example, "He snuck brief looks at the other boys."

DreamWeaver · May 7, 2005

black winged fighter said:
"A lark sang in the willow near the brook" is bare of adjectives, and if an entire book were written this way, I would lose interest quickly. However, I use passages like this one to break up my more descriptive writing and move the story along.

Thanks, that's close to what I was trying to show, though I oversimplified it. Your point is well taken.

I didn't mean everyone should avoid all adjectives whatsoever. I try to save mine for important places to move the plot along, or to add detail to thematic elements, or of course for those places where only an adjective fits. The example I used was skewed toward background detail. And of course reading preferences and writing styles differ; if they didn't, book stores would be much, much smaller than they are

.

I started paying attention to adjectives after taking a introductory course in French literature, in French. One technique for finding a jumping-off place to analyse a poem was to simply list the words in it as verb, noun, adjective, adverb (plus whatever other categories you might find useful, such as pronouns or conjunctions). I was amazed at how incredibly few adjectives I found in the medieval troubadour's love poems we studied. Quite an eye-opener.

Kris

LightShadow · May 7, 2005

Sometimes they (adjectives) are necessary to flower it up. Writing is magic. Just read the first page of Fahrenheit 451 for an example. His adjectives swim in a swarm of fireflies, blackened and changed by an orange flame in a gorging fire; as he would say, but it works because it's not the elimination of them, but how he uses them. Also notice that there is not a single -ly adverb in the whole lot, yet on the second page two jump up in the first sentence of the new scene (neatly, luxuriously)

reph · May 7, 2005

Lyrics of pop songs have hardly an -ly adverb, but they get an emotional reaction.

LightShadow · May 7, 2005

Yeah, but ooh baby baby doesn't come across as well in literature.

DreamWeaver · May 7, 2005

reph said:
Lyrics of pop songs have hardly an -ly adverb, but they get an emotional reaction.

I started running pop songs through my head after reading that. Now, my specialty is classic rock, but in the songs I thought of right away, you were absolutely right. Not a whole lot of -ly adverbs, and not a whole lot of adjectives, either. Not NONE, just not a lot. Wonder if country is the same? Bet opera's not! But I'm getting outside your parameters.

Of course, the two anti-examples that jumped immediately to mind were "Killing Me Softly With His Song" (not sure that's the right title) and "Little Red Corvette".

Kris

MacAllister · May 7, 2005

Opera is largely dialog and interior monologue (arias)

reph · May 7, 2005

"And must I now begin to doubt
Who never doubted all these years?
My heart is stone, and still it trembles,
The world I have known is lost in shadow.
Is he from heaven or from hell,
And does he know
That granting me my life today
This man has killed me even so?
I am reaching, but I fall..."

From Les Misérables, a musical but a rather operatic one, in which the lyrics reveal character and advance the story like anything. This excerpt has not one modifier of the kind we're talking about.

maestrowork · May 7, 2005

This is one of my favorite song lyrics. There's hardly any use of the "ly" words and adjectives are down to the bare necessity...

Is it cloak 'n dagger
Could it be spring or fall
I walk without a cut
Through a stained glass wall
Weaker in my eyesight
The candle in my grip
And words that have no form
Are falling from my lips

These dreams go on when I close my eyes
Every second of the night I live another life
These dreams that sleep when it's cold outside
Every moment I'm awake the further I'm away

Lenora Rose · May 8, 2005

astonwest said:
Myself,I'd rather see it than be told...regardless of the -ly.
for example, "He snuck brief looks at the other boys."

Aston: I might agree in other circumstances. But in the context... suffice to say, the line you wrote wouldn't work. Wrong rhythm is the key one, but also sufficiently different implications as to be painful. ("Watched", even covertly, doesn't resemble "snuck brief looks".)

Turst me, there are a lot of ways I've written and rewritten that opening scene... probably twice as many as there have been drafts of most of the rest of the novel.

That line never changed. It wasn't always the opening line, since I was previously stupid and included about four pages of just explaining backstory before it. But it, in itself, has not altered.

Zane Curtis · May 8, 2005

When I critique the works of inexperienced writers, I end up recommending cutting adjectives and adverbs about half the time. But often people get the wrong idea. They think I'm saying all adjectives and adverbs are a bad thing. It's bad when adjectives pile on top of each other in great festering heaps, often so that there are more adjectives in a sentence than nouns and verbs. It's bad too when weak verb-adverb pairs start to take the place of strong verbs. Sure, there is a difference between "walk quietly" and "slink", but why would you want your character to do something as tedious as walk quietly, when he could creep, or stalk, or sneak, or any number of other interesting things?

Generally, the way I look at it is this. There can be adverbs and adjectives in a piece of writing, but they have to justify themselves. When I'm editing my writing, every adverb and adjective has to go before the Spanish Inquisition and account for itself. If it doesn't contribute more than a trivial distinction, then it's out. White snow? As opposed to what? Yellow snow? It's gone. Red snow? Now there's a meaningful distinction for you -- and a vivid image.

Adjectives and adverbs have to pay their way.

Zane Curtis · May 8, 2005

Lenora Rose said:
Aston: I might agree in other circumstances. But in the context... suffice to say, the line you wrote wouldn't work. Wrong rhythm is the key one, but also sufficiently different implications as to be painful. ("Watched", even covertly, doesn't resemble "snuck brief looks".)

Turst me, there are a lot of ways I've written and rewritten that opening scene... probably twice as many as there have been drafts of most of the rest of the novel.

That line never changed. It wasn't always the opening line, since I was previously stupid and included about four pages of just explaining backstory before it. But it, in itself, has not altered.

In this context, I think I'd agree with you. "Covertly" is sufficiently meaningful to justify itself. And if it was, say, the only modifier in the paragraph, nobody would look twice at it... except other writers critiquing your work, looking for something to pick apart.

Zane Curtis · May 8, 2005

James D. Macdonald said:
If, when you've pointed your pistol at the adverb's head and said, "Ask yourself, punk, do you feel lucky?" the poor little word makes a case for its survival, you can let it stay.

Well, what do you know. Uncle Jim's already said what I just said. No flies on him.

maestrowork · May 9, 2005

If you have no better way, absolutely not, than to say "he watched covertly" then for cryin' out loud, write "he watched covertly." Not every adjective or adverb should be executed in cold blood. Some are very useful: for example, to move things along, especially in summary form.

But if there's another way to show us how he watched them covertly, and put us there, make us watch him watch the boys "covertly" then PLEASE make us do that. Help us see it. Help us feel the way he watched them covertly. Make your character act! To do less is to be lazy.

astonwest · May 9, 2005

Lenora Rose said:
Aston: I might agree in other circumstances. But in the context... suffice to say, the line you wrote wouldn't work. Wrong rhythm is the key one, but also sufficiently different implications as to be painful. ("Watched", even covertly, doesn't resemble "snuck brief looks".)

Without seeing the rest of the following text, it's difficult to gauge what was going on...but as maestro pointed out, showing is always a bonus...

My first lines always end up being vague (and quite often end up being dialogue, go figure):

"That was hell."
"I'm telling you, I don't know what you're talking about."

debraji · May 9, 2005

show don't tell vs. psychological depth

Maud Newton, in her terrific blog (http://www.maudnewton.com/blog/), talks about the conflict between the writing class dictum, "show, don't tell," and really examining the character's mind. She found that the novel she was writing was too focused on externals.

For years I've struggled to write in a clear, straightforward style unencumbered by adjectives, adverbs, and especially abstractions. I've avoided the passive construction, opting always for active verbs: he kicked, he punted, he slept, he killed her. Feelings, I've thought, and emotional states, should be rendered through action, through concrete detail. The protagonist may feel sad, but the writer does not say that. She notes that the protagonist's stomach tightens, that he frowns, that his eyes turn far too often to a portrait of his dead mother.

To use abstraction in a story, to directly explore a character's feelings or psychology, is to violate an unspoken rule that contemporary fiction should be as much like a screenplay as possible. Storytelling increasingly is influenced by film. The physicality of characters, rather than their emotional states, is paramount. And to probe a character's inner life in any but the most detached, ironic way, is to engage in a quaint, outmoded Nineteenth Century custom. It's the literary equivalent of using a shaving mug.

But she finds that limiting herself external descriptions representing interior states has become...too limiting.

See her May 7th post, "Characters' internal lives." Really good reading.

James D. Macdonald · May 9, 2005

It all depends on how important the covert watching is. If it's very important you can write a whole scene showing him watching covertly. If it's not so important, you can say "he watched covertly" and get on to the important stuff.

James D. Macdonald · May 9, 2005

If your novel is about inner states, then by all means write about inner states.

Incidentally -- I use a shaving mug, and got my younger son a shaving mug (with a nice badger-bristle brush) for Christmas.

The rule isn't "show, don't tell, regardless," it's "use the best tools to tell the story."

NicoleJLeBoeuf · May 9, 2005

Report on the State of Publishing Today

Popping in here for a moment (which I hope will not be my last for another two weeks) to ask:

Anyone seen this?

Publisher #2 came forward with a larger offer (a two-book deal) and a promise to position Richard’s third book as its lead title—major promotional support whose stated goal wasn’t just to break Richard out but to establish him as a brand-name author and get him “on the lists.” Given the change underway at his original publisher, the move to Publisher #2 seemed a no-brainer.

As it turned out, it nearly ruined his career.

(Found via Maud's Blog.)

In summary, as best as I can make out: Supportive small publisher changes editors at the same time as big name publisher comes a-callin'. Our Hero switches ships. Big name publisher soon after signs a big name author and thenceforth fails to keep promises made to Our Hero when it had come a-wooin'.

At first blush it sounds similar in tone to other "my publisher done me wrong" stories that I've come to view with suspicion. But I don't have enough experience to always spot when the author's complaint is or is not valid, when the author's story reveals missteps he could have avoided, &etc. Which sort of Sad Sad Story is this? The sort with which we should sympathize and from which take warning? Or the sort to which we should respond with sardonic reference to the smallest of violins? (Or a little from both columns?)

E.G. Gammon · May 9, 2005

Jim,

I just started writing my first novel (that's not linked to my novel series) and I had a question. The story is about the effect magic has on a group of teenagers (I told you a little more about it in a PM I sent you a few days ago). I want to start the story with all of the friends together and then once I get to Chapter 5 or 6, I want to devote the focus of one chapter to one character, continuing this format, with each character getting their own chapter (the most important characters would get 2 or 3). Then by the last few chapters, I want to shift the focus back on them as a group as the story is resolved. Would it be ok to do something like this? I don't want to shift points of view, just the focus of the story. I guess the primetime show "Lost" would be a good example of how the structure of my novel would be, because each episode has most of the characters, but the focus is only on one of them.

E.G.

James D. Macdonald · May 9, 2005

E.G. Gammon said:
Would it be ok to do something like this?

I don't know why not. Like anything else, it all depends on how well you do it.

Try. If it isn't working, you do something else in the next draft.

Now write your book... you won't know what you have until you reach The End.

James D. Macdonald · May 9, 2005

NicoleJLeBoeuf said:
At first blush it sounds similar in tone to other "my publisher done me wrong" stories that I've come to view with suspicion.

It's a fact: Bad things happen to good authors. Bad things happen to good books. Don't for a minute think this business is all fun and games and good times.

We don't know all the factors (was his next book part of a series?) or who the publishers were. Given what we know: The author made a good decision. With his editor departing there's a good chance his next book would have taken a hit in any case.

It sounds like the new publisher took a major hit in the Cash-on-Hand sweepstakes when they signed the big name. No one had expected that when they signed "Richard."

Not every bet you make will win. Your job, on the business side of writing, is to make the best bet you can with the information you have.

No one says you have to be a one-publisher author. I publish around. I know that any publisher out there can, at any moment, go crazy, melt down, go into a tailspin, or suddenly decide to switch focus.

As an author, remember what Granny told you: Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 1

Bored fanatic

defender of the blahs!

Bored fanatic

2 WIP? A glutton for punishment

Shakespearean Fool

defender of the blahs!

Fig of authority

defender of the blahs!

Shakespearean Fool

Tired and worried.

Fig of authority

Fear the Death Ray

Renaissance Vixen

Dried Frog Pill Dispenser

Dried Frog Pill Dispenser

Dried Frog Pill Dispenser

Fear the Death Ray

2 WIP? A glutton for punishment

Your Genial Uncle

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a work in progress

Your Genial Uncle

Your Genial Uncle