Pro-Tip! Ditch your thesaurus

Don’t get me wrong.  Thesauri (thesauruses?) are great.   They certainly help build your vocabulary in the early days of playing at writing.  They can jog your memory about words you already know, give you new definitions for words you think you know, and expose you to words you’ve never seen.  As children, we’re taught not to overuse words, and in those cases, the thesaurus was a very handy tool.  But as our writing grows up and we look around at the prose of our friends and literary neighbors, we start to get this … feeling.  I’ve said it.  I think you’ve probably at least thought it:

Somebody found their thesaurus, huh.

It isn’t very nice, but why shouldn’t it be?  Aren’t we supposed to be finding new words to express our ideas?  Why is it that when it’s obvious that a writer has made liberal use of a thesaurus, there’s this immediate curl of distaste in our mouths?

Well, first off, we all want to be considered amazingly gifted, and when words are your Thing, words are what you should know, very well and without help.  Eh.  Knowing words used to be my schtick in high school, but at a certain point, knowing words is second to knowing how to evoke something with words.

Let’s forget about that fairly obvious negative connotation and look a little more deeply at what a Thesaurus does to your writing.  As with anything in the real world, there are positives and negatives.

Thesaur-YES:  Going to your thesaurus when you realize you’ve used the word “mud” too many times can give you a wealth of options.  Some of them just don’t work.  Some of them you’ve never heard of.  Toss both right away.  Some of them work, but don’t add anything because the two definitions are completely interchangeable (which is actually quite a rare case in our delightful English language).  Toss those as well.  Focus on the ones that almost work.  Yes.  Almost.  If you have to reach too hard to make them work within your prose, ditch them.  But quite often you will end up with something non-cliched and wonderfully surprising, because you had to think more creatively about the problem.  What does “muck” add to the situation that “mud” doesn’t?  Well, the smell for one thing.  The possibility that horses or other animals had once traveled the path your main characters are on?  The grounding and simple notion that within any deep pit of mud are loads of dead and decomposing somethings that in turn give you a lovely basket of further ways to characterize this “mud.”

NO-saurus: It’s all well and good if that is all you use the thesaurus for – to remind you of these other words you know you knew but just couldn’t remember.  Gourd, I know I can barely remember my own address.  But if you can think of these words and what you’re trying to do is reach for something surprising and new and no one else has ever thought to describe mud as “argillaceous earth,” all you’re doing is giving your reader a chance to roll her or his eyes and/or go “I didn’t know this was a science article.  What’s ‘argylacious’ mean?”  We’re stopped by it rather than enchanted.  And we’re turned off.  And anyway, argillaceous earth is clay and not mud, which is just another pitfall of the thesaurus.

Ahem.  My point.

Ditch your thesaurus.  Rely on words you know, and if they aren’t quite right, make them right, creatively.  Every time you reach for the thesaurus (or thesaurus.com bookmark), take a moment and consider whether you already know the answer to this particular problem.  If it isn’t mud, but reminds you of mud, so you want a different word for mud?  Figure out why it reminds you of mud first.  You could be talking about chocolate, and forcing yourself to draw the connection between them can only enrich your prose.

That being said, as always: If it doesn’t work, ditch it.

I won!

So there was this contest at the PPM blog.  And I won!  Well okay, I didn’t win win.  I only won the random drawing part.  But that’s still winning because there’s a prize and there’s entering and that’s all that’s needed for winning, right?  Anyway, I am receiving in the mail a copy of Your First Novel, which is good because I already have the other one in the giveaway and the person who (actually) won claimed it.  When I get it, I’ll post a review.

I’m also getting three others in the mail soon.  One is about writing groups and how to make them succeed, which I got based off PPM’s weekly Writer Interview a couple of weeks ago with writer Becky Levine.  3am Epiphany I got to help me battle the mythological writer’s block, and also just because I respond really well to prompts.  The Art of War for Writers claims to deal with pretty much every step of writing from plotting and characters to querying and dealing with rejection and envy.  Woo envy.  Again, when I get and read through these, I’ll post reviews.

In other writerly news, I have finished a very long chapter 5 for something, and jeez.  This chapter should not be 9000 words long.

Cheery-bye, mortals.

Literary Agents

My writer’s group is called the Finisher’s Club, and we are devoted to seeing works through to the end.  To that end, we do from time to time talk about finding agents, and I do a bit of research looking for advice.   How could I miss the Guide to Literary Agents blog? Here you will find a list of real life pet peeves as told by agents looking over chapter 1s.  It spans a second page, so be sure to click over.   In a separate experiment, the 7 most common reasons people stop reading a book were explored: an actress read out of randomly chosen books and panelists were asked to put up their hands when they’d have stopped reading.  Afterward, the reasons were discussed and handily summarized here, for your ease.

The site is full of useful articles regarding submissions and getting published, and I will have to explore it more thoroughly.

Cheers!

Foreign Aid

I’ve needed to update for a while now, and I promise I’m getting to it; I’m moving.  In the meantime, the folks over at peevishpenman have a really excellent blog going about writing.  Some of it I agree with, some of it I find interesting but will choose not to employ in my own writing.  I wanted to share an article hosted there by Michael Crawley.  Read it, peruse other articles, follow the ppm twitter, do as you wish.  For my part, I will absorb the gems of interest I find there and turn them to mine own devious intentions.  (While you’re at it, follow my twitter as well: agelade.  I’ll probably follow you back.)

In other news, I fear I’ve given away too much in the latest bit of chapter 4, but Denise assures me that it only makes her desperate to know answers – and at this point I must tell you that she was the first person to be told the whole story, on a train from New York City in July 2008.  That she feels spurred on to read something she already knows the basic plot of makes me feel squishy. 

It should also be said that I’m considering taking article submissions for this beast, since I’m obviously unfit to keep up writing every week.  (I still promise to try, once the internet is screwed in at the new house.)  I already have the first article lined up, and it’s due to come out next… uh, month some time.  We’re both so busy!

In the meantime, keep ravin’.

… get it?  Ravin’?  Like a writing desk?  I really thought it was obvious until it became clear that no one reads that from the title of this blog.  Sigh.

Ado About Nothing

I have a long list of posts I want to write about the act of writing, about words, or about the lack of writing, but today I can happily write about having actually written!

In other words, chapter 4 is coming along wonderfully now that I’ve decided certain things are going to happen.  Once again, things are knitting together the way they often did in book one – that is, without much effort on my part.  Two large chunks for later in the chapter are already written and will need only minor tweaks to fit into the flow, and I’m thrilled because that means chapter 5 will be upon me soon, and after that, the world!

Or something.

Chapters 1-3 need huge revisions, which I remind myself of whenever I find I’m too proud of myself for having put letter after letter.  They’re boring and don’t further the plot and I can certainly find more interesting ways to put people where they need to be.  But after getting myself appropriately de-cheerified, I find solace in knowing that words are getting down on paper.

In other news, I drew a map of the Institute and I’m very happy with it.  No guarantees it’ll stay this way, but for now it’s what I’m using to move my little soldiers around.

Words I Hate: “Seem”

Seem:

–verb (used without object)

1. to appear to be, feel, do, etc.: She seems better this morning.

2. to appear to one’s own senses, mind, observation, judgment, etc.: It seems to me that someone is calling.

3. to appear to exist: There seems no need to go now.

4. to appear to be true, probable, or evident: It seems likely to rain.

5. to give the outward appearance of being or to pretend to be: He only seems friendly because he wants you to like him.

All right, so the hazards of the word “seem” are a pretty elementary issue to “educated” writers, but I’m not an educated writer, and this blog isn’t geared for them.

The rest of us could use a friendly warning that this word is not just insidious, but robs us of opportunity.  It’s everywhere in our speech, a product of our growing reluctance as a society to make claims that can be proven wrong.  “She seems to like it” saves us from making an actual judgment call and later being proved wrong.  No one likes to be embarrassed.  This pervacity (a word I just made up) makes it difficult for an unpracticed writer to catch instances of the word in his or her narration, moreso when the narration is a close third-person from one character’s point of view.

And why would a writer want to catch instances of it?  If we use the word all the time, isn’t it natural to put it into our writing?

Here we enter into another little bit of Zen Writing which warrants its own post at a later date.  In brief: as much as my personal style of writing gets as close in on a character as possible without actually being first person, I am acutely aware that the story is essentially second-hand.  The mechanics of the story don’t have opinions on what happens.  Third person narration can’t tell the difference between someone doing one thing and seeming another.  It’s up to the reader to make the jump.  It’s up to the writer to prompt the jump with facts.  Which brings us to:

The word “seem” robs a writer of the opportunity to act.  What’s more interesting?  “She seemed to like it” or “She looked up, eyes shining, mouth grinning, but her shoulders drooped tellingly.”  Relying on “seem” to make the reader’s mind up is a trap to be avoided.  Go through and pick them out, and see if there are ways to illustrate how something seemed to be how you’ve described it.

Exceptions. As with any “rule,” there are exceptions.

Yeah.  As I said, we say “seem” a lot.  Because our real life stories aren’t second hand, we don’t narrate having noticed things.  This instinct can translate reasonably to dialogue and first person or even close-third person pov.  In dialogue, it reads as uncommitted and unsure, so use caution. First person stories are obviously dependent on the opinion of the viewpoint character.  I would encourage in that case having the narrator notice things and then come to the conclusion that the target may not actually be happy or whathaveyou.  And if the person really is happy?  Unless the narrator really feels she might be lying, just say she’s happy for cryin’ out loud.  This is the writer’s equivalent of the advice given to brand new actors – don’t edge onto the stage sideways, taking little uncertain steps.  The audience will see you’re nervous.  Have a goal and take certain steps to get to it.  No one will know how terrified you are.  I promise.

An Introduction to a Layman’s View of the Art

And just how is a raven like a writing desk?  There’s no answer, but it’s telling of the human character that people keep trying to solve the riddle anyway.  It’s one of the things I love most about writing.  Noveling, short-story telling – it’s really a collaborative effort between the writer of such a thing and those reading it.  As each word adds to the reader’s imagined landscape, it changes, and it’s never ever going to be the way the writer intended.

My philosophy on dealing with this issue is not to deal with it.  Accept that your vision is yours alone and move on telling it.  Rather than leeching away the magic and wonder of the story you weave, each person’s new interpretation only adds layers to it.  Better yet if they talk amongst themselves afterward, sharing and adding to each other’s imaginings.

A hallmark of a children’s book is its lack of description.  It seems contradictory, that while the rest of a child’s play-time is painted over in bright colours with definite, identifiable shapes, her reading life should be almost without definition entirely.  It’s not the case.  By eliminating the wordy description of most adult novels, the child’s mind is free to create her own reality within the scope of the story.  (Obviously this excludes such books with sentences like “The brown bear looked at the red fox,” which are clearly instructional and can barely be said to be “stories.”)

This isn’t to say that I prefer children’s books.  I enjoy having a complex scene invoked for my sometimes too-busy mind.  But no matter how detailed and well-crafted the description is, my vision of the scene will never match the author’s.

So don’t try so hard, all right?  And forget that tendency to describe the exact way fingers are resting on coverlets.  Forget about defining each laboured breath or uttered groan of pleasure or pain.  Those things happen while more important things are taking place.  If you’ve done that part well, these details will fall into place without being slowed down by actually describing them.

Words are by their nature inexact, because they rely upon the interpretation of both speaker and hearer.  I love words not in spite of this, but in acceptance and appreciation of this.

Accept that your vision will forever remain yours and embrace that each new reader recreates it as something new, each and every time they read it.  That is the way to satisfaction in writing.