Every author, new or experienced,
has a crutch to lean on. For some, it's formulaic plots that are
rehashes of prior books. For others, it's repetitive, lifeless
dialogue. Others use words and phrases repetitively, so much so, it
stands out on the page and interferes with the story. This is the
crutch I most want to address.
I've noticed that particularly
newer, less experienced authors do this. I found it in my own work
when I went back to edit some of my early books for publication.
There is, first of all, a compulsion to tell every little action.
For example:
Suddenly angry, Wil, whose back was to the door, turned around, ran
to the door, flung it open and began to run through the door.
If I did my job right in this
scene, I've established the fact he's got an explosive temper. We
know by prior discussion & dialogue that Wil is growing angry.
All that aside, what's wrong with this sentence?
For starters, it tells too much.
We may not know Wil has his back to the door, but is that really
necessary? Not unless we are establishing a confrontation. In which
case, it should be brought up sooner.
Second, if his back is to the
door, we know he's got to turn around to get to it.
Third, he's pretty much got to open the door if he's going to run through the doorway.
Unless he's interested in hurting himself, he's not going to run through
the door.
Fourth, he's not beginning
to run. He began that
movement at the start of the sentence. That's a conclusion to the
action, not a beginning.
Let's look at a better way to say
that. We establish that Wil is in the room, his back to the door,
confronted by someone who makes him angry. We see his anger grow and
his exit is a culmination to that growing anger.
Wil flung the door open,
exiting angrily.
Flinging open the door, Wil
rushed out.
Spinning on his heel, Wil
flung open the door and dashed out of the room.
Any
of these options, and many more, could be incorporated. He's angry
and he runs out. I kept the word flung/ flinging, because it
is a very specific action verb. He didn't open that door calmly, he
whipped it back, possibly putting a hole in the wall. It expresses
his anger and desire to leave quickly.
Many
inexperienced authors chain themselves to inexpressive verbs. They
rely on the old standbys and spice them up with a bunch of adverbs.
Not that I dislike adverbs – I'm very fond of them. But don't use
them instead
of a good verb.
Hearkening
back to the sentence above. You'll notice that one thing I said was:
began to run through the door
This
is something I saw in my own work and I see in others. It's often
exchanged with
started to
I
have no idea why authors do this. I can't even tell you why I did it
myself. In fact, I still find myself doing it from time to time. If
anyone can explain it, I'd love an answer. In the meantime, I simply
need to make a concerted effort not
to use it.
Instead
of saying – He
began to run or
He started to run
– the sentence should be He
ran –
pure and simple. No beginnings or starts necessary. He
ran for the door.
Another
crutch I often see with this is overuse of the word then.
It's most often seen in a sentence where a series of actions are
strung together.
Example:
The
woman began to scream, then started to run, then fell down and then
started to cry.
My
example seems like overkill, but trust me, as an editor, I've seen
worse. So much is wrong with this sentence, let's pull it apart
before we put it back together.
First
of all – why do we need then
at all? It's extraneous. These actions are happening in a series,
therefore, we know that this happened before that happened. So, we
pull out then.
We're left with:
The
woman began to scream, started to run, fell down and started to cry.
That's
a lot of beginning and starting. So, let's pull them out too.
The
woman screamed, ran, fell down and cried.
What we're left with is a little
sketchy, so let's go back and add to it.
The
woman screamed. Running away, she fell down and started to cry.
Here,
you notice I put started to cry back in. Why? Because she wasn't crying before.
Falling initiated the tears. In this instance, using started
to
works in the sentence.
Finding our crutches isn't always
easy. We need fresh eyes or a more critical viewpoint. Printing the
pages helps a lot with this, as does reading something aloud. For
some reason, the words look different when they are on a printed page
and mistakes are easier to spot. When you read aloud, your brain has
to make sense of the words in a different way. You've added a new
component – speech – to the process. You listen to the words as
well as see them and it's easier to pick up on repetition or left out
words, grammatical mistakes and awkward structure.
A writer doesn't have to be an
English teacher in order to tell the story, but it's mandatory to
have a working grasp of the language. Recognizing an error, and how
to correct it, is essential. It's also important to identify the
crutches and remove them, as much as possible, from your work.
© Dellani Oakes
