Year: 2014

           I almost went with “Cheaper By The Dozen” for the title, but I figured there was no reason to make you all remember that little piece of pop culture.

           I’ve been watching people talk about editing lately in a few different online groups.  More to the point, about the need for more of it in certain corners of the industry.  A side-thread in one of those conversations was about one fellow determined to get his book edited by Thursday so he could get it up on Amazon by Friday.

            Anyway, that got me thinking about easy edits.  The type of stuff that we all let slip though while we’re writing and the experienced folks know to then get rid of in their first round of revisions.  I’ve mentioned some of them before in a broad strokes sort of way, but it struck me that maybe I could even boil this down further.

            So here are a dozen specific words I can cut from my manuscript.  Not all the time, but a fair amount of it.  A lot of them lead to other words, too—they’re indicating a larger problem—so once I get rid of these it’ll probably mean a few words on either side of them go away, too.  Which means I’ll end up with a leaner, stronger story.
            Yes, you’ve probably seen me mention lots of these before.  I even linked to some of the other posts in case anyone might want more explanation.

            Ready?

That—I’ve mentioned that a few times here, so I won’t bore you by explaining it yet again.  Needless to say, I always do a thatpass while I’m editing and end up removing about 80-90% of them.  While I was revising Ex-Purgatory, I cut over 130 thats—more than half a page of them!

Decided—This word is almost always filler.  Maybe not conscious filler, but it’s almost always filler that can be cut.  If Yakko decides to do something and then he does it, I’m just eating up words again.  We all make hundreds of decisions and choices every day, but most readers want to hear about the action, not the decision to take an action.  The action itself implies the decision was made. 

Listen/ Look—If I start a line of dialogue with look or listen, I’d bet that three out of four times that line either states something plainly apparent or it’s an infodump. Which means either these lines aren’t adding anything to the story or they’re adding something I could express better through subtext or actions.

Obvious—If something isn’t obvious, it comes across as arrogant to say it is.  So I shouldn’t use the word obvious, because the character (or writer) in question is going to look like a jerk.

            On the flipside, if something is obvious, they I still don’t need the word.  Things that are obvious are… well, obvious, so it’s just wasted words for a writer to tell us so.

Appeared/ Seemed/Looked – These three words show up in phrases like “appeared to be” or “seemed to be” or “looked like.”  Not always, but quite often. The thing is,  appeared to be and its siblings don’t get used alone.  They’re part of a literary construction where the second half of that structure is either an implied or actual contradiction to the appearance.  So when I’m saying “Yakko seemed like the kind of man you didn’t want to mess with,” what I’m really saying is “Yakko seemed like the kind of man you didn’t want to mess with but really he was a pushover who fainted at the sight of blood.”  And what I meant to say all along was just “Yakko was the kind of man you didn’t want to mess with.”

           If I’m not trying to establish a contradiction, using appeared to be and the others isn’t just wasted words– it’s wrong.  So cut them

Was – I always search for was, because it tends to point at weak verb structures.  It’s when I’ve got “Wakko was running” instead of just “Wakko ran.”  It’s a small tweak, but it’s one that gives my writing punch because it makes all my actions read just a bit faster.

            Also, this can save me from the awkward problem of simultaneous actions, when my chosen verb form ends up creating a chain of things happening at the same time rather than a sequence of events.

As you know—I’ve talked about these three words a few times before.  They’re awful.  Just awful.  I won’t say this is the worst way to get the facts out to my readers—I have full confidence there’s a writer out there now working on a worse way—but I’d put this in the 99-out-of-100 category. 

            If I’m saying “as you know” to you, it means you already know what I’m telling you… so why am I saying it?  Why waste words blatantly lecturing about something that you and I both know?  Yeah, you might have amnesia, but if you do then you don’t know… so why am I saying “as you know” to you?

            If these three words pop up together more than once in my manuscript, odds are I’m doing something horribly wrong.

            And there you have it.  A dozen words you can search for and slice away.  Editing made simple.  Well, some of the editing.  I didn’t even mention my more common somewhat syndrome words.

            Next time, it’ll almost be Valentine’s Day, so I guess I should talk about love and all that stuff.

            Until then, go write.

            Many thanks for all your patience while I was busy having my teeth drilled out .  Hope you enjoyed Thom’s rant last week and he didn’t hurt your feelings too much.  No matter how you felt it about, rest assured… you were having more fun.

            But enough of my whining…

            …whining like a high speed drill on enamel…

            This week I said we’d talk about Robocop.  The original, not the remake.  I haven’t seen the remake yet, so I can’t comment on it.  Well, not in a non-nerdy, non-whiny way…

            And we said enough whining…

            I wanted to talk to you about a common problem that can lead to a lot of issues in a story, no matter what the story is.  It doesn’t matter if I’m writing sci-fi (like Robocop), romance, horror, fantasy, or an intense little character piece—this can kill my story.  And, in a way, it’s something I’ve talked about here before.

            As it happens, this issue’s been summed up by a few people in one simple sentence.  These are the eight worst words a writer can hear.  There’s no way to put a positive spin on them.

            What are these deadly words…?

            You’ve probably heard that old chestnut about the tree falling in the forest.  If there’s no one there to hear it, does it still make a sound?  Let me ask you this—is Jason Voorhees still scary if no one’s in the forest for him to kill?  Is that candlelit dinner on the rooftop still romantic when it’s just sitting there?  Are explosions that action-packed if there’s no one running away from them?

            I’ve said many, many, many times that my story depends on my characters.  A good character has to be relatable, believable, and (on some level) likeable.  If my characters are just thin, undeveloped stereotypes, they’re just empty placeholders.  If spies are hunting Man #3, it doesn’t mean anything.  If I tell you they’re after Bob, it’s a little better, but not much.  Once you hear they’re after Jason Bourne, though, now this suddenly means something.

            This is the big problem with “starting with action.”  That was a storytelling mantra for years.  “Start with action—don’t make us wait to be interested.”  It didn’t help that some people misunderstood “action” to mean explosions rather than just “something happening”.  Thing is, like I was just saying, action is meaningless if I don’t know the stakes and I don’t care about the characters.  It might grab me for a moment, but I need someone to latch on to, to identify with, to care about. 

            Consider this.  I’m betting you’ve seen a commercial or headline for the news sometime in the past couple of days.  Odds are, with the extent of news coverage and the way it leans toward the sensationalist—you’ve probably seen something along the lines of “five dead in a house fire” or “two killed in shooting” or something like that.   Sound familiar?  You’ve probably seen at least a dozen variations on this  since  New Year’s, yes?

            How many of these stories stuck with you?  Can you name any specifics from any of them?  Can you even remember when you saw them?

            Odds are, the reason you can’t is because you weren’t connected to them in any way.  The news was starting with the events—the action—not with the people.  And it bored you. 

            It’s okay to admit it’s boring.  We can all be awful people together.
            There is no way I can make a story work if the reader doesn’t care about the characters.  None.  It doesn’t matter how amazing my futuristic predictions are, how clever my zombie origin is, how fantastic my descriptions are.  If there aren’t any fleshed-out characters, it’s just trees falling in the forest.

            Now, there are a few exceptions to this, but they’re finesse things.

            Many years back, I read an interview with Paul Verhoeven about the original Robocop(see, I told you we’d get back to it).  The journalist was questioning him about the extreme (at the time) levels of violence in the film—most notably when Murphy is blown apart little by little with shotguns until Clarence Boddiker gets bored and puts a bullet in his head.  How could Verhoeven justify this?

            It was pretty easy, actually.  As the director explained, he only had two scenes with Murphy to establish him as a character before killing him.  Not much at all.  And while he did good things with these scenes, he realized that the death scene could be used, too, to trick his audience a bit.  By giving Murphy a brutal, utterly nightmarish murder—the kind of death any decent person wouldn’t wish on anyone—he immediately built sympathy for him.  We don’t know much about Murphy when he dies, but we know he sure as hell didn’t deserve that.  It’s the same technique used by a lot of horror stories, especially slashers and torture porn.  We might not care about the specific character, but we can identify on a basic human level and know this is an awful thing.

            Again, though… it does take a little finesse.  I can maybe do this once or twice, tops. After that, my readers are going to be numbed to that shock. 

            And then they’re not going to care anymore.

            So remember to build great characters that your readers care about.

            And then do awful things to them.

            Next time, speaking of awful words… I wanted to rattle off a few more.

            Until then, go write.

            As you probably noticed, there was no ranty blog last week.  All the publicity stuff for Ex-Purgatory ate up a ton of my time.  And this week is fallout from that plus a bunch of dental issues I won’t bore (or horrify) you with.

            Thankfully, Thom offered to dive in and make some helpful tips for editors, and for writers who might be suffering from poor editor-ship.

—————————

            Usually, Pete tries to talk about the craft of writing, and the many, many pitfalls he’s seen as both a casual reader and as a judge for some hifalutin’ screenwriting business. One of the things he’s asked for is a continuance of this tradition, but this blog will be a little different. If you’re reading this, Pete wasn’t only busy, but has allowed it.

            I’m talking to the readers today. Not your everyday, run of the mill readers, but participants in writer’s circles and beta readers instead. If you take time out of your busy, busy schedule to read for content and to provide meaningful critiques, I’m talking to you. If you’re receiving these critiques, I might be talking to you, too.

            During the course of these readings and critting, there are some phrases which make the rounds I wish to all that everybody, everywhere holds holy I could remove. They’re next to useless, and sometimes, downright insulting. If you use these phrases, but not in the way I’m about to mention, relax. Down, Simba. I’m not talking to you.

            You may have to forgive me if I become… animated during the writing of this blog. These things tend to get my hackles up.

            If this is the limit of your advice for any bit of a critique, you’re doing it wrong. Please, readers, if you feel the urge to spout this piece of… advice, attach an example of what you mean. Or at the very least, be specific about what it is you wish to see and not be told.

            For instance, if the writer has written “John felt nervous,” and your reply is SDT, throw your writer friend (or circle-mate) a bone and give some examples. Don’t you think if the author in question had thought of a way to show it, he or she would have?

            It’s so bad that in my capacity as editor, I find myself cringing when I come to an instance where I want the author to show something. Somehow I power through, but always, always leave an example.

            Yes. This one kind of sets my blood aflame. That was in an early critique I’d gotten; I disremember the reason. It might have been opening with a dream sequence. But the least helpful thing I read that day was, “This would work if you were Harlan Ellison, but you’re not.” You know what, you silly bitch? Before Harlan Ellison was Harlan Ellison, he wasn’t. The same holds true for Stephen King, for Clive Barker, for Cormac McCarthy, for goddamn anybody else. We all start small.

            I guarantee you, the guy up the street who has a woodworking shop wasn’t… uh, insert famous carpenter who isn’t Jesus here… the first time he picked up a hammer and saw. He was clumsy with his tools, and maybe if you look close, you’ll see he’s missing part of one of his fingers where he learned a bloody lesson. But now he has his own place, doing what he loves for a living, and fashioning memories for other people using those same tools he was clumsy with on day one.

            You don’t say. Man has only been telling stories for thousands of years. I would never have thought the same thing might pop up in more than one story.

            Clichés exist for a reason. They work. The work involves taking a pile of clichés and using them in a way that turns them on their heads, if need be, or exactly as they were intended. What? Yes. Sometimes it is a dark and goddamn stormy night. Don’t tell me that doesn’t happen, I’ve lived in Seattle. There most definitely is a calm before the storm. People don’t realize they’re holding their breath until whatever they’re holding it for is over. This really happens. And while some of these things are over-represented in fiction, that’s no reason to shun them.

            The same holds for monsters. As I’ve said before, not every instance of a monster needs to be a stunning new breakthrough in horror technology. Dracula hasn’t lost a scary step in 116 years; the vampire was done right the first time. (Yes, I know Dracula wasn’t the first. If you have to keep telling people this, maybe it’s because he was the first done really well.) The same holds for zombies and werewolves and man-made creatures of doooooom.

            For my money, the last worthwhile advance in horror technology came with “The Call of Cthulhu” and the idea of an uncaring, inhuman universe where we’re not the apex predator.

            But I digress. Things have been done before. If that’s your beef, maybe suggest ways the author could keep his or her cliché but use it in a better way.

            Not everything mentioned in a novel will be essential to the plot, or to the overall story, or to character development. While it’s true that a lot of the bestest books and movies tie everything together in a neat little bow, some of them do not.

            Look at The Blues Brothers. Everybody loves that movie. Don’t they? Well. I do, and that’s enough for me. Where was I?

            Right. Take The Blue Brothers, if you will. That movie is just full of so much win, and there are parts in the beginning that link to parts at the end, and little bits in-between that talk to you when you see them reappear. “They broke my watch,” I laugh and laugh every time I hear that.

            But there are unrelated things. “Did you get my Cheeze-Wiz, boy?” What the hell is that? Is it important? Does it shed some light on Elwood’s character that, yes, he did in fact bring the Cheez-Whiz? No. No, it doesn’t. “Orange whip?  Orange whip?  Three orange whips?”  Does it matter what he ordered? No, it only mattered that the VP of the company asked to be included, and John Candy is a funny, funny man.  “Fix the cigarette lighter.”  Did that ever come back to haunt them? Hells, no, it didn’t. “Breaks my heart to see a boy that young goin’ bad.” Did that kid come back and help out? Or hurt the cause? Or was he even in the sequel? It’s in this paragraph for a reason.

            No, that’s not one of the phrases, that’s just me, trying to figure out how to bring this to a clean-ish close. There are plenty more noxious phrases, but Pete doesn’t like these to be too long. Hey, if there’s reason, and he says yes, I’ll do another one. But for now, let me leave you with this.

            Beat readers and critiquers, you fulfill a vital part of the writing process. All the acknowledgements you read include people just like you, and authors rely on you to be straight with them, and to do what you can to help. From my own experience, the few works I do have out in the world would have been poorer indeed without the input of my beta team and the Permuted Pit and Pendulum critique groups.

            So, yes, you’re needed. Try not to be dicks about it.

Here’s a little sample of the Ex-Purgatory audiobook, read by Jay Snyder.

Pick up the whole thing over at Audible.com…