Believable Fiction: Too Little, Too Much

Believable Fiction: Too Little, Too Much

Taken from Description and Setting

By Ron Rozelle

We could call this month's workshop “Minimalism vs. Excess”, but that would imply that this will be all about short sentences like Ernest Hemingway is known for, opposed to long, rambling sentences like many of William Faulkner’s. That perception would be misleading, since there is nothing inherently wrong with using very short or very long sentences, as long as you use them well and correctly.

By “too little and too much” I’m referring to wide pendulum swings of not giving readers nearly enough information to bring them into your story, or telling them considerably more than they need, or want, to know. Your job as a writer is to stay in the middle ground, and sometimes that proves to be a delicate bit of maneuvering.


Dealing With Clutter

In Stephen King’s “On Writing”, he tells of an epiphany he experienced in high school when he got back a page of copy from an old newspaper editor who had just hired him. About half of the text was crossed through, and what was left was what King had intended to say in the first place. The editor then imparted this gem of wisdom:

”When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,” he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is to take out all the things that are not the story.”

This month we’ll look at some elements of fiction that are fertile ground for “things that are not the story,” and at some ways to avoid letting clutter creep into your fiction.


Dialogue Tags

These little fellows—. . . said Mary, . . . he answered, . . . she replied—are often necessary, but not nearly as often as writers seem to think. They carry enormous clutter potential.

If there is any way not to use them, don’t, and keep adverbs out of them.

It’s necessary to distinguish who’s talking at the start of a conversation, but after that the reader should be able to keep up without identifying each speaker by name, over and over again. It get trickier if more than two speakers are involved, because more tags will be required. Even with several characters babbling, if you’ve done a good job of describing them, giving unique personalities and voices, they readers will know who is speaking by what they are saying, and you won’t need dialogue tags very often.

Now, about those adverbs. Try this example:

”My goodness,” Eloise said hopefully, “that is good news, don’t you think?”

“Not really,” John responded sadly. “It might all come to nothing.”

This conversation is quickly coming to nothing. If the writer wants Eloise to be hopeful, and John to be sad, they she should have them do hopeful and sad things, and show the action instead of telling an emotion. Or the writer should describe them as hopeful or sad. Even better yet, let their words stand for themselves; Eloise’s dialogue words are hopeful, and John’s response to it is sad. The reader is able to tell their moods without being told. You don’t want to insult your reader’s intelligence by repeating yourself unnecessarily.


Clichés

Where clichés are concerned, fewer isn’t good enough. You should aim for none. To say in you fiction that the landscape is pretty as a picture or a character is quiet as a church mouse is just bad writing.

Using clichés in dialogue sometimes works. A character who spews them out might add a little needed comic relief in your story, but having more than one person do it is a bad idea.

If the image portrayed by a cliché is one that will be useful for your description, they come up with another way to say the same thing. There are plenty of other—and better ways—to say your character is inebriated than resorting to saying he’s three sheets to the wind. Clichés are nothing more than a crutch, and they keep you from coming up with your own original descriptions.


Repetition

Repetition works its way into our writing quite naturally, since most people tend to repeat themselves in conversation, and if something is weighing heavily on our mind, we rerun things over and over in our thinking. However, in writing repetition stands out.

The adverb is a common culprit because it is so very useful. They are just too handy, and sometimes keep us from giving a better description. Most often they are telling modifiers, and they keep us from showing a trait in a character, place, or situation. For instance, if you wanted to say that a character ate her dinner quickly, that might be all you want to say about it, and it will certainly suffice. But, if she is shoveling it down at breakneck speed, and that fact is important to your plot, they you should show her doing just that—in as much or little detail as is necessary for your scene.

One adverb in particular—very—is quite possibly the most common single-word violator of the clutter rule. If we want a house in our novel to be larger than most houses, we say it is very large. For a writer who wants to write well, that is very bad. The way to make that house bigger is to use appropriate words and phrases to convey what you mean.

The most common repetition error is when a writer uses a word or phrase he has already used. If you say that a character ordered smoked salmon for lunch, and in the same paragraph say that he smoked a cigarette while he waited for his check, that’s using the same word too often, and too closely together. The reader hears the same thing both times, and the wording keeps your phrasing from flowing smoothly.

In addition to being on the lookout for common words and phrases that you’ve repeated, also be aware of uncommon words that you might repeat. Scatterbrained will probably work only once in an entire novel. Scatterbrained, and other words you can think of, are just too unique to be used effectively more than once. Also, be aware the same thing can happen with phrases like ”Oh, my God!”


Didacticism

More than a few professional writers are also teachers, and sometimes it’s hard to keep teaching out of our fiction. If it does creep in, and becomes too apparent (that is, if the object of writing becomes instruction rather than storytelling) then it’s given a name: didacticism.

If you wish to impart a lesson, don’t stop the flow of the story and give a lesson. Maybe your characters can learn it from one another—in dialogue or perhaps a letter. Or you can make references to it in your narrative.

Readers of historical fiction expect to be given bits and pieces of history, but they won’t follow you through a history lesson. Another thing readers won’t tolerate is being preached to, which is a form of didacticism.

Ethical teachings or implications are like symbols when it comes to writing. If they need to be there, or if the readers wants them, they will emerge naturally from the story. It’s not your job to point them out. Summing up your story with some character or the narrator cataloguing the virtues of a person or the rightness of an action or situation is much too over the top; you might as well conclude with “and the moral of this story is . . . .” The moral of this story is that you don’t need to tell the moral of the story. If there really is one, show it—in the story itself.


Verbosity

Verbosity is another way of saying longwinded, wordy, rambling, and verbose. None of these words describe good writing. Whether your writing is clear or verbose depends on your individual writer’s voice. Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove is a huge novel that consists of a heck of a lot of words, but the story is told in a crystal clear voice. Therefore, the story is not verbose.

Becoming enamored with grandiose descriptions and excessive language is a pitfall that modern writers should avoid. Two centuries ago, a writer may have said that a character “may have taken the exaggerated view” but, today you’d be better off saying that he is lying. Unless you’re writing historical fiction in a voice of that era, you readers will not tolerate having to struggle through your wordiness. Readers want language that is clear, descriptive, and moving.

Another type of verbosity that should be avoided at all costs is the use of the passive voice. People don’t talk that way. Nobody is going to wander up to the water cooler at work and seriously say, “a fine football game was watched by me yesterday afternoon.” Neither should you use passive voice in the telling of your story, or in your dialogue.

The reader knows that if you are a writer, you know how to use a thesaurus—and you have one, or access to one online like www.m-w.com or the web relationship of words at www.visualthesaurus.com. Using big words doesn’t come off nearly as impressive as you might think.


Wandering Off-Track

In terms of setting and description, this means that you are always aware—at every stage of your story and your writing of it—of the specific time and place and of what needs to be carefully described and how you intend to do it.

When you determine that you’ve strayed off your course, you can avoid wandering off in the wrong direction. But, bear this in mind: it might not be the wrong direction. It’s quite possible that straying off your point might be a good thing. I’ve had interesting characters and situations pop up that I hadn’t planned at all. If this isn’t the case, you’ll have some clutter to cut in your rewrite stage.

When writing South Pacific Either Rogers or Hammerstein wrote a peppy little song called “Getting to Know You” for a young Navy lieutenant to sing to his Polynesian lover. The other member of the writing team thought it was ridiculous for a naval officer to sing a song like that, so they scrapped it and wrote another song. But they saved the original song, and it ended up playing a perfect role in a later work called The King and I.

Don’t be too quick to throw things away. That story of a child waiting for a school bus on a rainy day might not at all fit the story you removed it from, but it may be just what you need in another one.


Useless Information

Description simply for the state of description is clutter. Any details that you provide should help your reader to better see a character, place, or situation better. The antique china cabinet that you inherited from your aunt might be a joy to describe, and you might do it extremely well, but unless it moves the story along the description has no place in your story.

When writing your story or novel, always consider what the reader needs to know. Remember, when you describe something or someone, you are intentionally calling the readers’ attention to that thing or person. Therefore, they have the right to assume that the thing is of some importance and that they will reemerge in the story. If there is a gun in act one, it should go off by act three.


When the Best Description Is No Description

Sometimes the best way to show something or tell something is not to show or tell at all. It's always a good idea to let the reader do some of the work in your fiction, and still is especially true when it comes to description.

In the short story by Saki called "The Interlopers", two old enemies find themselves trapped under a fallen tree deep in the forest on a cold winter night. While waiting for one of the groups of men to find them, they manage to resolve their differences, and to bring their generations-old feud to an end. When they finally hear a commotion on the ledge above them, one asks the other, who has a better view, which group of men has come:

"Who are they?" asks Georg quickly, straining his eyes to see what the other would gladly have not seen.

"Wolves."

Chilling isn’t it. And the main reason it’s so chilling is something the author doesn’t do. He doesn't describe the horrors that we know are waiting. After all, the men are trapped, the wolves undoubtedly hungry; you get the idea. The gnarling bloody business could have been described in detail. Saki isolates the final word with no instructions or suggestions about even how it is delivered by the speaker. It might be a shout, a pleading, or even a whisper.

Having your scene play itself out in a totally generic site that has few details--no descriptions of landscape, interiors, or what the weather is doing, and no clue regarding past, present or future--will take away from what should be good fiction work.


A Checklist for Clutter

If you need to put a checkmark beside any one of these items when reading through your manuscript, then you've got some clutter to modify or dispose of:

Repetition of words or phrases

Useless tag lines (he said happily)

Too many adverbs

Too many adjectives

Modifiers that mean the same thing

Useless information

Useless characters

Too much description

Too verbose

Too didactic

Resorted to a cliché


Nothing short of just plain bad writing will slow your reader down or stop him faster than having to wade through clutter. The other major problems is not giving him enough information or bring detail on board in the first place. Drifting too far in one direction or the other will weaken or destroy what you want to be a fine bit or storytelling.

Prompts and Exercises

1. Pull out one of your manuscripts and begin looking for places where you have used description. Consider for each place, how your story might benefit by having less description there, or none at all. Let the impact on the reader be your guide. You might omit some fine writing, but your story will be better for it. Post your new version in the forum with a link to your previous draft of the same part of your story.


2. Relying on your writer's craft, and your fine workmanship, write a short phrase that will work better than each one of the following clichés. Remember the object here is to remove the cliché, and retain the image or description that it created.

1. Don't let her pull the wool over your eyes.

2. He's drunk as a skunk.

3. His eyes are like a deer's caught in car headlights.

4. Suddenly, the girl felt light as a feather.

5. Toby, mad as a hornet, slammed down his fist.

6. When it comes to handiwork, he doesn't know his head from a hole in the ground.

7. Elliott when that, when it came to his boss, he was right behind the eight ball.

8. What goes around comes around.

9. You can't teach an old dog new tricks.

10. Que sear, sera.


3. Dialogue Tags: these statements have dialogue tags that could be considered excessive. Rewrite this section to use fewer words but portray more expression. Get rid of unnecessary "he said, she said".

This is taken from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Because this was written in another century, some repetition on names has been used which is no longer considered necessary. Change the original to use fewer name references without losing who is speaking. You may change the details if you like.

The table was a large one. but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it. "No room! No room!" they cried out when they saw Alice coming. "There's plenty of room!" said Alice indignantly, and she sat down at a large armchair at one end of the table.

"Have some wine," the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.

Alice looked around the table, but saw nothing but tea. "I don't see any wine," she remarked.

"There isn't any," said the March Hare.

"Then it wasn't very civil of you to offer any," said Alice indignantly.

"It wasn't very civil of you to sit down without being invited," boomed the March Hare.

"I didn't know it was your table," said Alice: "it's laid for a great many more than three." Alice was getting irritated.

"Your hair wants cutting," said the Hatter. He had been looking at Alice for some time with great curiosity, and this was his first speech.

"You should learn not to make personal comments," Alice said with some severity: "It's very rude."


Please begin a new static item with a title that suits your choosing. You can create one, two, or three--and you may respond to as few or as many of the prompts as you like.

When you have completed your prompt responses, please post a link in the bitem: format at our Ultimate Writer's Group Forum Page. This gives the teachers an opportunity to see how many people are participating, lets others view your contributions, and shows your courage in participating. It's difficult to share sometimes, but we can learn from other's writings as well as our own.

Follow this link to the forum:

Invalid Item  This item number is not valid. #1192102 by Not Available.

If you'd like to use the student tag of this workshop to add to your posts and emails, it is an image, and the number is 1250861. It looks like this, and if you need help making it work for you, drop and e-mail to [e-mail]. Also let me know if any sections need more clarification.

Good writing to you!