Words to leave out

Keeping to the theme of the last post, today I'm going to list some words you should leave out of your writing.  After you finish a piece, go through with the word search function and see how many of the following you can remove.

Note: I will revisit this post from time to time as I think of new ones (i.e., come across them in my own writing).

very--A strange word in that it does the opposite of what you think it does.  You think it amplifies or emphasizes, but it actually diminishes.
Dr. Brown's new car was very shiny, very sleek, and very fast.
Dr. Brown's new car was shiny, sleek, and fast.
See?  All those verys slow the reader down.  Take the advice of Depeche Mode: Very is very unnecessary; it can only do harm.

begin to, start to--Normally, people don't begin to do something, they just do it.
The wolf approached me, drooling and snarling.  I turned and started to run ran.

just--This is a problematic one for me.  Nothing wrong with the word, I just seem to use it once or twice a page when I write.  I think I just don't realize I'm putting it in.  I just have to use the word search when I'm done and I can eliminate three-quarters of the justs.

saw, look--Nothing wrong with these words.  They're good, solid words that will appear many times in your writing.  However, they can be a little boring.  See if you can't replace a few of them with eye, focus, gape, gaze, glance, observe, ogle, regard, scan, spy, view, watch, etc.  Don't take this too far though--the goal isn't to bedeck your manuscript like a royal crown!  A little goes a long way.

actually--Thanks to Dana for a link to a similar post!  From that I got the idea for actually.  I checked my own WiP with this and found 8 actuallys.  Four could be crossed out without changing or harming the sentences; actually, improving them.  Two were in dialogue and could stay; two more were truly transitions between sentences.  Whether because she hadn’t heard or was ignoring him, Sully wasn’t sure.  Actually, it was all as new to him as to her.

What to Leave Out and What to Put In

Now that I'm working on my third novel, I find that I'm willing to leave out a lot more stuff.

How did a character get from one place to another?  Who cares?  We know they have legs, they probably walked.

How did a character learn a piece of information?  Unless it's a secret, it's probably general knowledge in their locale, or maybe they heard it through the rumor mill.

How did two characters become romantically involved?  Sometimes it's important to show this, other times it's enough to show they're interested in each other.  Then, when we rejoin them at a later time, it's natrual they should be a couple.

A lot of this boils down to this: Don't belabor the obvious.  Don't bore the reader with details she can easily assume.

On the other hand, I've read books where some important piece of business takes place off stage while the narrative follows some character at a dinner party or driving a car or something.  (This especially seems to afflict the soap opera strips on the newspaper comics page, where Judge Parker or Mary Worth are always arriving on the scene right after something interesting happened.)

Here are some general rules on when to leave it out or include a scene:

Leave in
- Important character development
- Fights, arguments, conflict
- Action that moves the story along
- Unusual, weird, don't see that every day

Leave out
- Spatial movement.  Just go to the scene where something is happening, and we'll assume the characters know how to get there.  The exception, of course, is where the travel itself is important to the plot.
- Logically necessary but obvious developments.  It may be important that a character, say, has a fully-stocked refrigerator, but you don't need to show us the shopping trip.
- Sex.  For some reason sex is usually pretty boring to read in books.  Maybe because it interrupts the plot action?  Just give us a hint that it's about to happen, and then move on.
- Boring things.  Even if they're necessary for the plot, try to find a way to cut a scene that feels boring.  Maybe have the next scene start right after the necessary but boring scene took place, and have characters mention that it happened.

Here's a rule of thumb: If it bores you when you're writing it, it will bore the reader when she reads it.

What I'm Reading: Esther

Can you name the two books of the Bible named after women?  OK, you read the title of this blog post, so you got Esther.  The other is Ruth.  I read Esther as part of my Lenten reading this year and found it fairly delightful.  I'd say both of these are among my favorite Bible books.

Esther takes place during the Babylonian exile, when the Jews had been dispersed from the Holy Land and were living in various cities in the Babylonian, later Persian, Empire.  The Persian King Xerxes loses his wife and after a period of mourning, searches the empire for a new woman to become his queen.  The extraordinarily beautiful Esther attracts his eye.  On the advice of her cousin, Mordecai, who is a high official in Xerxes's court, she does not reveal her Jewish ethnicity.

Haman, a vain and cruel man, becomes chief advisor to Xerxes.  This gives him a lot of power, which he loves to lord over others, demanding they bow and scape to him.  Mordecai refuses to do so, however (the implication, I think, is that he only bows to the Lord).  Haman's ego is pricked, so he formulates revenge against Mordecai.  He tells Xerxes of a people in his empire who have different customs and do not follow the imperial laws.  Shouldn't the king pass a law to annihilate these people? he asks, without specifying who they might be.

Xerxes, who doesn't seem too actively involved in running his empire, agrees, and written proclamations are sent to cities across the land that on a certain date, Jews shall be killed and their property plundered.  So Mordecai has Esther arrange a banquet for King Xerxes and Haman, and at that banquet, she tells the king that she and her people have been slated for annihilation.

When the king hears this, he demands to know who is responsible, and Esther points out Haman and reveals that she is a Jew, and Haman has led the king to sign the order for the death of her people.  King Xerxes has Haman killed, and his order is relieved.  To commemorate this occasion, the Jews even still celebrate the holiday of Purim every year during the Jewish month of Adar (that is, late February or early March).

There's quite a bit more complication, but this is the essence of the story, and it's a joy to read.  It's one of the few books of the Bible with a real sense of humor--a subplot concerning Haman's assumption that the king wishes to honor him on a certain occasion, when really he wishes to honor Mordecai, is particularly funny.  If you are interested in reading the Bible, but you think it would be dry and boring, give the wry, ironic book of Esther or the gentle, wise book of Ruth a try.

What I'm Reading: Complete Peanuts, 1977-78

The Complete Peanuts is a project to publish every strip of Charles Schulz's Peanuts, from its inception in 1951 to its final panel in 2000.  It's a gargantuan undertaking, and a new volume covering two years is issued every six months.  The project is up to the mid-1980s, but I'm a little behind and have only reached 1977-78.

We're deep into the period when Snoopy had superceded Charlie Brown as the main character.  In this volume, I'd say Snoopy appears the most times of any character by far, followed by Peppermint Patty.  Charlie Brown may possibly even be beaten by his sister Sally, who has a longish story arc at summer camp, as well as numerous week-long arcs and daily gags.

Charlie Brown's only long arc is a good one, though.  After the kite-eating tree eats one too many of his kites, Charlie takes a bite out of it, only to be sued by the EPA for dental assault.  He runs away to another neighborhood, where as it happens, a baseball team of little kids is looking for an older kid to be their coach.  He takes the job on, sleeping in a cardboard box at night and coaching by day, but when the time for their first game comes, the opposing team turns out to be his own team from the old neighborhood.  His old team refuses to play on grounds that they would step on the little kids, and Linus informs Charlie that the EPA has dropped its suit.  I think this sequence rivals any of Charlie Brown's long arcs.

As is typical of the later, Snoopy-dominated years, Peanuts has a much more whimsical tone in this volume than in its earlier, neurotic period.  I believe this volume is the first one in which we've seen Snoopy's Beagle Scout troop, composed of Woodstock and other bird friends whom he leads on wordless, fanciful adventures.  His brother Spike comes to visit in a long arc, and there are, I think, three arcs where Snoopy plays doubles with Molly Volley, a hyper-aggressive tennis maniac who is perpetually, loudly disappointed by Snoopy's missed shots and double faults.  There are also numerous strips with Snoopy as a writer, banging out hackwork on his typewriter, one of my favorite of the running gags.

Since we've gotten past the classic volumes covering, say, 1956-1970, each new volume has caused me to question whether I'd get the next.  I suppose I will get the 1979-80 volume.  Beyond that, I expect diminishing returns.  I'm positively dreading the sad, late years when Schulz's hand turned shaky and the art declined, the storylines a morass of recycled annual gags and baroque explorations of Snoopy's extended clan.  But we haven't gotten there yet.

This volume, if not as sharp as the earlier years, still provides a pleasurable re-acquaintance with the beloved characters (including cameo appearances, for the sharp-eyed, of Shermy and Violet!), new characters Molly Volley and the very cute Eudora, and quite a few highly entertaining story arcs.  If you're looking for any of the best-known strips, you should probably stick to an earlier volume, but this is good an example as any of the gentle, later strips.

What I'm Reading: The Graveyard Book

The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman, tells the story of Bod Owens, a boy who is raised in a graveyard.  His entire family is killed when he's a toddler and he himself escapes only by lucky accident.  When he wanders into the local cemetery later that night, the resident ghosts take pity on the child and grant him the "freedom of the cemetery."  The Owenses, a kindly ghost couple from the 18th century, become his new parents, and a mysterious spectral being named Silas his guardian.

You might think a book about such a situation would be morbid but in it doesn't feel that way at all, largely because Gaiman writes his characters with a lot of warmth and generosity.  The ghosts are regular, pleasant people, for the most part, and treat Bod with more kindness than he ever finds in the world of the living.  For his part, Bod helps the ghosts as well, giving the Owenses the chance to be parents that they never had in real life, finding a proper headstone for a witch burned at the stake in the 1600s, and providing a playmate to children who died young.

The main point of fascination in the book is just how the afterlife works, and Gaiman does not disappoint in either quotidian life or mythology.  We meet an endless succession of graveyard denizens from different eras going about their business, each with his own archaic vocabulary and worldview, who together make up an insular but complete mini-town of the dead.  Then there are ghouls who enter the cemetery through a particular unkempt grave, an ancient demon far beneath the hill who has guarded an ancient king's treasure for 10,000 years, and all sorts of other mystical creatures and spirits operating in the next plane.

Eventually, Bod grows up and must venture out into the world of the living, where he discovers the man who killed his family is still on the hunt for him.  I leave the why, and what Bod does about it, for the reader to find out, but I will mention that the things he learned to do from the dead in the cemetery--fading from the view of the living, entering dreams, and other exotic powers--give him a fighting chance against the sort of ruthless foe who has no qualms about killing a small child.

I would recommend this book to anybody with a taste for fantasy.  The writing is beautiful without being ornate, the subject matter fascinating, the tone dignified.  It is YA and thus aimed at teen-agers, but I see no reason an adult of any age wouldn't enjoy it.  For that matter, I think the material is safe enough for more mature younger readers as well, say an eight-year old who has made it through The Hobbit.  Rather than being scary, the book really demystifies life after death, and may even be a comfort to an older child with a lot of questions about death and what comes after.  I previously knew Gaiman only from his Sandman comics, and am happy to see his talent translate so readily to prose as well.

The Importance of Not Flinching

Now we come to what I think is the most important rule of all for a writer: Don't flinch.

Everything you see and experience can be used in your writing, but you must have your eyes open to see it.  Be aware of your surroundings.  Listen to what others say, and how they say it.  Don't talk much yourself, but draw others out on what they think and believe.  Be open to new experiences, different ways of doing things.  Travel.  Become friends with different types of people.  Even if it's hard, even if you're shy, do it for your writing.  Don't flinch.

Sometimes you'll see something happening that's wrong.  If you can alter it, by all means intervene.  But maybe you can't really do anything about it, or your interference would only make things worse.  If you're a writer, your job isn't over in that case.  Keep looking.  You can use it later.  When others learn of it, they may have the means to act.  Whatever you do, don't flinch.

When you start writing, and you're putting your thoughts and ideas on paper, you may come to a part that's emotionally difficult.  Maybe your characters will say ugly things, or uncomfortable events may transpire.  Let them.  This is the part that others need to read.  They need to know others have thought those thoughts, or felt those feelings, or had those things happen to them.  The ugliness and discomfort need to be out in the open.  If it's ugly and needs to be killed, how can you do that if you can't even see it?  But sometimes, something you thought was ugly turns out to be beautiful once you really look at it.  You have to see it to know.  Don't flinch.

Perhaps you're writing escapist fiction.  Shouldn't you leave the ugly and uncomfortable out?  After all, people sometimes just want to read something for fun without all that real world stuff in there.  You'll have to use your judgment, but I would point out that some of the world's great escapist literature had a lot of uncomfortable truth.  Think of Huckleberry Finn, on one level a boys' adventure story, on another a penetrating look at attitutes towards race.  And even in escapist fiction, characters still have to follow their own nature.  Plots still have to unwind plausibly.  Sometimes that means they don't quite go where you want them to.  Don't flinch.

Maybe you're writing a book for children.  Of course there is material that's inappropriate for kids.  That's why fairy tales disguise uncomfortable truths in magic.  Once you break it down, is there any story, anywhere, harder and more clear-eyed than Hansel and Gretel?  Perhaps Lolita, but not much else.  And it's a fairy tale!  Even when writing for children, don't flinch.

Once kids are older, they can handle a lot, probably more than you think.  I well remember the smart kids in the seventh grade passing around Flowers in the Attic.  That book was truly lurid, with themes of bondage and incest, but we ate it up.  Probably not the healthiest thing for us to read, but we weren't corrupted.  If anything, it provided us a few pieces in putting together the puzzle that was sex.  It doesn't matter that it was trashy, we knew that, and knew it wasn't something emulate.  We were wide-eyed, and willing to consume anything that might help us understand.  Better were the YA novels of, say, Judy Blume.  Heavy, sexual subject matter, but treated with sensitivity.  That's how you should do it.  But whatever you do, don't leave it out.  Don't flinch.

In the post on writing breakout novels, I think I mentioned how that book describes debut novels, and novels by authors who haven't broken out, as feeling small.  I believe one key to overcoming the smallness is being willing to turn the light of fiction on those dark corners that many are afraid to peer into.  Even if monsters lurk there, even if ghosts pop out, whatever you do, don't flinch.

What I'm Reading: Hell Phone

I typically read a few YA or middle grade novels a year, usually when my wife, a YA librarian, finds a book she thinks I'll find funny.  But since my WiP is a scary middle grade novel, I recently asked her to bring some YA horror home.  One of the first ones she picked out is Hell Phone, by William Sleator.  I think she got it because for me, all cell phones are hell phones.  OK, maybe I'm something of a Luddite.  But on to the book.

In Hell Phone, Nick is a hard-working teen from a family without much money.  He wants a cell phone so he can call his girlfriend, and when he sees an ad for cheap cell phones at a skeevy convenience store, he goes in and walks out with the cheapest one they have.  Now the problems start.

Whenever Nick turns the phone on, he gets mysterious calls from individuals who sound malicious or victimized.  Then too, there's the phone's game section, with selections he's never heard of before: Torture Master and Don't Look Back.  Soon, he's following the instructions of one of the callers, Fleck, who claims to be trapped in hell, but thinks he can get out if Nick will gather some electronic items and connect them to the phone.  The phone seems to weaken Nick's willpower, and his changed personality causes a rift between he and his girlfriend and mother.

When Fleck threatens his girlfriend (and reveals details about her no stranger would know), Nick steals the necessary items to keep her from coming to harm.  After he puts them together, a beaten and bloodied man appears in front of his mom's trailer.  As you might guess, releasing Fleck from hell was not a good idea.  Fleck involves Nick in a conspiracy to gain a large inheritance, and is not above murder to get his way....

The book is definitely a page-turner, and I notice Sleator manages to include conflict on every page--as we've seen in previous entries on this blog, that is a requirement for breakout novels.  And there are some really cool scenes, especially later on, when we get a glimpse of hell itself.  Ultimately, I found the story disappointing, though.  The biggest flaw is the characters.  Even Nick is not especially well-rounded, and none of the characters besides him are anything other than one-dimensional types.  The setting too is under-developed.  It sort of feels like a small-town, but we don't learn anything about it other than the most generic indications of "trailer park", "high school", "avenue", and "apartment complex."

Also, the central device of the novel is a problem.  We never find out exactly why the cell phone works!  There's some handwaving about Fleck being a computer expert and his connection to its previous owner (who does show up), and certainly it's creepy not knowing much about the phone, but in this case I think we need to know more.  If it were some sort of ancient artifact from Hell, a reader could accept that we don't know how it operates.  But a cell phone is modern, coldly scientific.  So what makes it effective in the mystical realm of Hell?  Is it cursed?  Was there a ritual performed to make it work?  We don't really know.

In the end, I might recommend this to a teenager with a particular interest in horror and who has already read everything by Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, R.L. Stine, etc., or somebody who, like me, really hates cell phones.  But a general reader can skip it with no qualms.