Tag: Plans

Building Sentence Structure with Style

Hitting a wall with a hammer. With a bowling ball. With a dead seagull. With the codpiece of Beelzebub. Switching back between them, alternating thuds with trinkets and tokens, skulls and bones.

Yeah, we’re pulling out a variety of eclectic items to do the hitting and thudding, but have we done anything worthwhile? Let’s shift this to inferior writing: No matter how you dress it up, no matter what trickery you employ, if your writing style comes across as drones of drumming thuds, then you need to rethink your place in the universe.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

Hey Writing All Wrong,

I was happy to see that you’re accepting some writing samples again. (Editor’s note: No, we’re not.)

Since you obviously hate fantasy writing, I present a more modern opening. It doesn’t take place in a castle, so don’t be too hard on it:

“Barron entered the dimly-lit hallway. His fingers ran over chipped paint. He walked over the shattered glass. The light blinked vaguely through the narrow corridor. He tiptoed further. Blood pooled more thickly around each step.”

“He pulled out a forgotten flashlight. The shattered (Ok, we’re done.)”

—Cranston Holloway, Kansas City, Mo.

Cranston, you mistake me for a hater. I don’t hate fantasy writing (ok, maybe I do). I hate bad writing. Genre fiction has become a sinkhole for those of poor talent, bad form, and no sense of how the writing craft works. But nevermind that. I’ll be pulling another item from the inbox to rail on this soon enough.

Good writers, good readers, good people will read between the lines and under the words. Whether you’re aiming for an economic style or a direct approach, you’re not a stylist if your style is dull, redundant, and tiresome.

If your prose reads like you filled in some cheeky “Novelist’s Mad Libs,” then it’ll show, and it’s going to show your book to flight out the window. (Noun) – (verb) – (place). (Noun) – (verb) – (thing). (Noun) – (verb) – (thing or place, take your pick). (Noun) – (verb) – (adverb, ah) – (something boring). (Kill) – (me) – (now).

Don’t write like you’re hitting a wall with a variety of syncopated thuds. It’s not art. It’s lame. Change it up.

If I wanted to throw this writing sample into a better trashbin before taking it out to the dump, I’d recommend tying a few things together. How about using rare and unheard of things like “compound-complex” sentences? If we’re looking at a basic remix:

“Barron entered the dimly-lit hallway. His fingers ran over chipped paint while he walked over the shattered glass. The light blinked vaguely through the narrow corridor. Blood pooled more thickly around each step he tiptoed further. He pulled out a forgotten flashlight to peer into the shattered (ok, I’m done again)”

Even without coffee, that edit just flows better.

“But I don’t want it to floooow, I want it to, uh, not flow!” Then what, idiot? Want it to stall? Read it again. It still plods along with a pace foreboding. By contrast, let’s hand it to Fake Henry James:

“Barron, having entered the hallway dimly-lit, one which beckoned his fingers to run over chipped paint during the walk upon shattered glass; this, a corridor with light blinking vaguely illuminating the blood pooling around each tiptoe of a step taken further, pulled out a forgotten flashlight to peer into the shattered (sorry, we’ve gotta pull this plug)”

Have you ever caught yourself thudding along before snapping into proper writing? If not, there’s still time.

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com) and followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong). If you want to hire Fake Henry James, please enquire within.

Chapter Chatter: Creating Choice Chapters

Chapter 1: Necessity

On writing chapters, one must account for breaks in a story’s progression.

Chapter 2: Practicality

Chapters ought to flow in tune with the ebb and flow of the narrative.

Chapter 3: Introduction, as Usual

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

Chapter 4: Question

Does my book need chapters?

—Bob Brown, Cleveland, Ohio.

Chapter 5: Reply

Good to hear from you, Mr. Brown of Cleveland. I wish your team the very best next year. I can only hope “the very best” isn’t 2 wins of 16.

As for your question: Uh, maybe? Some do, some don’t. Depends on what you’re writing, who you’re writing to, what sub-genre (sludge-crimefighter-noir) you’re peddling. Take the Bible — in English, chapters. In Greek, no chapters, no chaser.

Chapter 6: Chapter Chatter

(Ok, stop that)

Every element of writing should be purpose driven, including the chapters. You include them with a purpose, or you omit them for a purpose. There’s no in-between, no cream filling for this Oreo. I’ll list the pros and cons.

Pro-Chapters: “A Chapter Away Keeps the Doctor Away. (Because doctors hate fiction, or something)”

1. Marks logical breaks in action, shift in focus, switching of scene. A no brainer. You didn’t write the story in one sitting, and it’s likely not good enough to be read in one sitting. Break it down.

2. Handy for narratives from multiple viewpoints. See: House, Bleak. If you want less of a challenge for your reader, switch views as you switch chapters.

3. Covers gaps of time in a single bound. Know how much time you can reasonably fit in between chapters? Up to 1,086 years tops. Not too shabby.

4. Suspense…

5. Masks the lack of consistency with vignettes, asides, spare parts cobbled to make a tale. Case in point: if you took the chapters out of Moby Dick, you’d be left with a great, weird, hypermodern book instead of a great weird book.

6. Deliberate obfuscation. Considering the previous note, adding more chapters than are necessary makes for an intentionally disorienting ride. And sometimes you want that reader to vomit from disorientation than to perish in the bile of boredom and its constituents.

Anti-Chapters: “No Shirt. No Shoes. No Chapters. No Problem. (Except you’re a homeless writer)”

1. Speed. Ever take a road trip without stopping for anything? Stops are for slops. Get there faster. Chapters do stutter the experience. If you want the whoosh in your writing, drive that straight shot. No potty breaking.

2. Temporal distortion. Life punctuates with day, night, sunset, sunrise, apocalypse, recrudescence. Cutting out the backbone of chapters gives you freedom to move in and out between time and space. There are no hands on this clock, but time moves. Somewhere.

3. Temporal limitation. If you’re telling a long story in a short amount of time, then chapters aren’t going to be your thing. Move along. They’re not the droids you’re looking for.

4. Shorter stories — they don’t need chapters. If this is a NaNoWriMo work, then chapters are surplus to requirements. They didn’t add to the word count, you know.

5. Challenge where there is no challenge. If you write in plain style, not a frill on the wardrobe, then your tale doesn’t need chapters. It’ll thud along happily without them.

6. Deliberate obfuscation. (Yes, this again.) Where there are no breaks where there should be chapter breaks, there lies confusion. And in some cases, that’s just the ticket.

What guidelines or rules do you have for writing chapters?

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and chaptered to the point of chapping.

New Year’s Revolutions

Welcome, New Year. You have no idea what you’re getting into.

We’re a day into 2012. By now, over half of the New Year’s resolutions have already been broken. Don’t eat the entire bag of Cheetos. Don’t get drunk enough to swallow your own vomit. Be responsible. Lose fifty pounds. Write.

And what you fail in resolution, you fail without making revolution.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

Writing All Wrong,

What are some good New Year’s Resolutions for writers in 2012?

—Avinash Dvarakanath, Paterson, N.J.

No resolution trumps a New Year’s revolution. Go beyond “resolving” to do things. History has time and again proven that man’s resolve is insufficient to effect change. But a revolution? Ah, now we’re talking.

Revolution 1: Influence

If you’re like the rest of us, you’re human. If so, you’re susceptible to influence both good and bad. Don’t let yourself be influenced by lesser writers who entertain you on Twitter or by those who garner the acclaim of the masses of mediocrity. Take care in who you let bleed into your writing, consciously or otherwise.

Revolution 2: Substance

Stop drinking soda, drink more coffee. Beyond that, make your stories speak of stronger substance. Better to spend a month firming up the raw substance (topic matter, character, lucid plot) of storycraft and write for a day than to write for a month on a day’s worth of meager substance.

Revolution 3: Sustenance

Read stronger books. Classics, idiot. Enough with the vampire/zombie tales for now.

Revolution 4: Balance

All write and no play makes Jack an incomprehensible mess of an artist (and possibly a killer psycho ravaging the Stanley Hotel). You need life balance more than you think you do.

Revolution 5: Violence

Whatsoever thou doest, do with all thy might. Sometimes you need to get your hands dirty, bloody even, if you’re looking to make it happen in 2012. Cancel that dog-walking therapy this year. Skimp on birthday shopping if time is better used for writing. Shower coldly in the morning. Those who have moved earth with vehemence are those who grow the gardens to splendor.

Revolution 6: Relevance

You can be relevant and have your flash-in-the-pancake, or you can shoot for a slice of the eternal. Note: this means your vampire/zombie/undead fiction is going to be stale in a decade, more dead than when you wrote it. Read that last line again. A quick buck is less than a penny down the road.

Revolution 7: Obstinance

If you found, founded, or find something that works, it’s OK to keep doing that. The motive d’jour is change. Don’t change for change’s sake. If you’ve got enough to blast you beyond the stratosphere, then stick to what fuels that rocket. Be daring. Be unchanged.

Revolution 8: Abstinence

You don’t always need a word count each day to be a writer worth writing. You don’t always need support groups. You don’t always need to enter flash fiction contests. You don’t always need the tantalizing tickle of someone famous. You don’t always need blog hits or re-tweets. Abstain from such. Keep writing.

Revolution 9

A classic. (And you probably saw that one coming.)

What revolutions do you plan for 2012?

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and revolutionized for takeoff.