Category: vocabulary

This week’s random topic is something that’s been gnawing at me for a while. I’ve been batting it around, trying to come up with a good way to explain it, and I think the catch is there really isn’t a good way to do it. This is one of those slightly-more-advanced writing things I either understand or I don’t. If I do… I probably already know to avoid it.

Anyway let’s see if I can stumble through some analogies and examples and hopefully make this a little clearer.

You’ve probably heard the term framing once or twice. It has to do with how I choose to present things in a story. If my character is talking about something, how they’re saying it is part of the framing. So is how people react to it—in both out loud and unspoken ways. How I choose to describe it in the text says a lot about it, too. Framing can involve a lot of subtext, and a lot of not-so-sub text.

(also, just to be clear, we’re not taking about frame stories which are something else altogether that I’ve meant to ramble on about for a while now)

So let’s jump storytelling forms for a moment and I’ll give our first example.

In moviemaking (and photography) people talk about framing a shot. This is a very similar idea. If I’ve got Phoebe on camera, it’s how I’m choosing to set up this shot. How are going to set the edges of the shot? What’s in the background or foreground? How close are we to her? What angle are we seeing her from? Is the camera static or moving? And if it’s moving, how is it moving?

How I frame the shot affects how we, the audience, perceive this shot. It’s an added layer of meaning. A sort of visual subtext, if you will.

Here’s an example I’ve given you a few times before. Let’s say our scene is the young lovers dashing up to the bedroom. One pushes the other down on the bed and then does a sexy, laughing striptease for them. Easy to picture, yes?

However… we’re going to frame this with a handheld camera, looking though the crack between the closet doors. As the shirt gets tossed and those pants are wiggled out of, the camera can tilt one way or another, so the audience can see as much as possible. Where things land, what state of undress people are in. But, y’know… all through that narrow crack.

And this has suddenly become different scene, hasn’t it? Not so fun and sexy anymore. Now we’re just waiting to see who—or what—comes bursting out of that closet. because there’s definitely something in that closet, right? They wouldn’t be framing the shot this way if there wasn’t somebody in there watching all this happen.

That’s kind of the key point I’m awkwardly getting at here. Things can get weird in movies when there’s a big disconnect between what’s going on in the scene and what the subtext tells us is going on in the scene. One of them will usually override the other, and since movies are a visual format, the camerawork—the framing—can override any spoken text pretty easily.

Now, a lot of time this is deliberate. That scene I just described above (and a few hundred just like it) is a pretty standard horror movie shot, especially for slasher movies. The unknown killer watches from the closet. Or maybe just that pervy voyeur they’ll yell at when he stumbles out of the closet (and then they’ll throw him out of the room and he’ll be the one who gets killed). Point is, the storytellers (in this case, the filmmakers) are deliberately subverting what should be a sexy scene by framing it in a way that make it very creepy.

Thing is… it isn’t always that way. If you’ve ever followed along with Saturday geekery on Twitter, you know one of my common complaints is when inexperienced filmmakers try to copy a shot from another movie without really understanding why it worked in that movie. I’ve seen folks do the “peeking out of the closet” shot or the “looking through the window from outside” shot and they did it because, well, that’s how you film sexy scenes in horror movies, right? Wasn’t it super hot when she was swaying at the end of the bed and pulling open her…wait, what? You thought it was ominous? Why? Now suddenly the film is stumbling because the sexy scene is creepy as hell but it was supposed to just be… well, sexy.

And the audience will sense this screw-up. Even if we don’t always know the syntax or conjugation, so to speak, we know enough filmic language to realize something wasn’t landing right there. We’ll figure out eventually from context (y’know, when something doesn’t come out of the closet), but that stumble is going to break the flow and throw us out of the movie as we try to figure out what’s actually going on. Was this a creepy scene or a sexy scene or what? How were we supposed to feel about it?
And we can frame things in our writing, too. We can layer in that subtext through our characters and their reactions, our story structure, even just with with our vocabulary choices. We can make insults sound like compliments, word something innocent so it could be flirty, make it really clear how weak that guy making the loud, angry speech is.

But…

If we’re not careful when we do this, we can end up with that same stumble I was just talking about inexperienced filmmakers causing. If Yakko just insulted Phoebe but my word choice makes it sounds a little too much like a compliment, even though we know Yakko wouldn’t compliment her… well, wait, what’s going on? Or if everything structure-wise says this is when I learn if Phoebe is the super-werewolf or not and instead it’s revealed that we first went to the Moon in 1969… I mean, that’s not remotely the answer we were looking for. It’s not even really an answer. It’s just a random fact. Is it even relevant to this story? And why is it in italics? Why are we emphasizing it? Did somebody think the Moon landing was in some other year?

I know this is one of those things that sounds kind of silly and self-apparent, but I’m surprised now often I’ll come across it. A writer pretty clearly trying to do X, but they’ve set everything up as Y. Unusual framing. Odd vocabulary. Weird emphasis. Things that feel like they’re meant for a different version of this scene. And like with the films, I think these writers are trying to copy something they saw work, but haven’t quite worked out why it worked.

And that’s why this is a tough thing to explain. It’s hard for me to say “make sure you’re using the right subtext for your scene” when I don’t know the scene or the subtext you’re currently using or the effect you’re trying to create with it. It’s going to be different for every writer, every project, every scene.

Okay, I know this hasn’t been super-helpful, so let me toss out a few last suggestions that should make it easier to avoid this issue.

1) Know what words mean—This should be a serious basic for any writer. A bad habit most of us start with is running across words we don’t know and kinda getting their meaning from context, and then using them as we kinda think they’re intended. Which, no surprise, can cause real confusion for people who actually know what the word means. And that’s not even taking into account that I might spell it wrong and spellcheck swaps in some other word altogether. Which I also don’t know.

2) Know how this is supposed to make my readers feel– is this a sexy page or a scary page? Funny or creepy? Should my readers be tense or fascinated? If I don’t know how this bit’s supposed to make them feel, how can I get any sort of emotion across on the page? Bonus—knowing this should also help me figure out if any moments are particularly jarring. Not in the way I might want.

3) Work on my Empathy– I’ve said it before and it’s still true. I need to understand how other people are going to react to things. If I don’t have a good, honest sense of how this character’s going to be received, how that line of dialogue’s going to go over, how my readers will react to this beat or that reveal… well, it’s going to be tough to tell a story. I need to be able to put myself in other people’s shoes so I can take a look at my work and say “Wow… if I do it like this, the readers are totally going to think someone’s in the closet watching Chris and Pat.”

Anyway… this was a little rambly, but hopefully you got something out of it.

Next time… look, I’ll be honest. I’m not sure there’s going to be a post next week because I’ve got a four or five hour drive on Friday and then a talk about worldbuilding. Plus—if you hadn’t heard– I had a new book come out last week and I’ve been a bit overwhelmed. Which means now I’m playing a bit of catch-up. But I’ll try to get something out, if time allows.

Until then… go write.

Holy crap how is this year almost over? Why is time moving so fast? What did all of you do? Who touched the red button?!?!

So, not to keep mining the past, but I wanted to talk about one more thing that came up at the SDCC Writers Coffeehouse. During the Q & A someone asked what I generally think of as an “impossible” question—although just looking at that written out I really should find a better term. See, it’s not so much that these questions are impossible to answer, it’s that there’s really only one person who can give a definitive answer. And it’s usually the person asking the question.

Y’see, there are questions that are very specific to my story, and the “correct” answer for me probably isn’t going to be the same correct answer for you. Things like, how many characters should I have in an ensemble? What’s the correct point of view to use? How much sex is too much? How much detail do I really need? See what I mean? There’s no real way to answer that unless I know the whole story, how it’s written, the context things are happening in…

Somebody at the Coffeehouse asked (paraphrasing from memory here) “how many made up words can you have in your first couple pages before an editor stops reading?” And my immediate answer was, well, I couldn’t really answer that. Again, the right answer for me won’t be the right answer for you, and said answer’s going to change from book to book.

But about a week later it struck me there is a way that we, as writers, can at least get a sense of if something’s disruptive or not. And that’s by being aware of the flow of our work. So let’s talk about that a little bit.

I think we’re all aware of flow on one level or another. I first heard the term from a writing coach named Drusilla Campbell, but I knew what she was talking about as she explained it. Paraphrasing a bit more, she described it as why some books you can’t put down and other books make you think about how  the laundry needs folding.

I’d say flow is equal parts pacing, tone, and empathy. It’s about me understanding what’s going to jar my reader, either by nature of structure or material or vocabulary. What’s going to make them pause to remember these are just words on a page and not actual events. It’s about me stepping out of the way and not trying to be seen as the author. Letting people read my story rather than analyzing it. Really simply put, flow is what keeps people in my story instead of, well, knocking them out of it.

And that brings us to using words we’ve made up. Could be a simple portmanteau or clever bit of wordplay. Maybe terms from a technology we made up. Or a secret dark order. Maybe even a whole language. But I have to be careful, because  there’s a good chance I could kawonk someone right out of the story if I’m using a lot of words I’ve made up.

You all see what I did there, right? Or maybe you didn’t. Kawonkis a nonsense pile of letters I threw together, but in context you kind of understood what I was saying with it almost immediately. Some of you may not even have really registered it as a made up word and just read it as a funny onomatopoeic sound effect or something.

But something can only work in context when I understand the context. So the more words I swap out with made up ones, the less chance there is of my readers understanding what I’m trying to say. Like if I told you we needed to kawonk this dreeenil ptoob before we niknik ptar the cheegles. I mean, if we hit a sentence like that we’re going to instinctively stop and start parsing the structure to figure out what this whoa I just broke the flow, didn’t I?

And even if there is plenty of context, it can get annoying to read something where I’ve decided to substitute existing words with made up ones for no real reason. Say, for example, people in my fantasy world all duel with scheevs. Some are cheap and crudely made, some are works of art, but most people have one. You see, a scheev is a narrow, double-edged blade about 24 to 30 inches long (originally iron or bronze, but mostly steel now), with a strong grip, some sort of protective guard or crosspiece between the blade and the grip, and often a small counterweight at the base that also locks the blade in place. And if you’re thinking, wait, did I just spend a whole paragraph describing a sword you are correct.

Except here they’re called scheevs. For… reasons.

And again, imagine how frustrating that paragraph would be if instead of bronze and steel it talked about droker and ogyed, flokks instead of inches, and an oppomass instead of a counterweight. Hopefully I didn’t make up my own numerical system, Think about pausing to dig through all of that and try to glean a meaning out of it and realizing we’re just talking about goddamn swords.

I don’t know about you, but that’d bring things to dead halt for me as I groan and rub my eyes.

‘Cause here’s the thing we always to remember. Weird as it may sound, the words I use don’t really matter. I mean, of course they’re important and they’ll bring nuance to the story. But that’s my point—the story is what matters. The charactersmatter. The plot matters. The actual words are just a delivery device. They’re the corn chip getting all that delicious salsa and guacamole into or mouths. And if I’m focusing a lot of my time and energy on coming up with a new way to say corn chip, that’s a good sign something’s probably going wrong in my writing.

I’m not saying don’t make up words. I mean, I put squale out there into the world. But there should be a reason for them being in my story, and the reason should be better than “I wanted to make things sound different.” Ultimately, they should be adding to my story, not distracting from it. Definitely not knocking me out of it to diagram sentences, glean meaning, or just grind my teeth in frustration.

Next time…

Okay, this was super late, so next time will be in three days. And I’ll probably be talking about the holidays.

Until then, go write.

Let’s be honest, we’re not going to get a lot more in before 2022, so try to make it count.

The comments section has been pretty dry lately, so I’ve gone digging through my list of “things to talk about,” trying to come up with a semi-interesting topic. I was about to fall back on recycling some general writing/publishing stuff from one of the other blogs I used to keep and then I thought “hey, you know what we haven’t talked about lately? Spelling!”

More importantly, when computers try to spell.

Three really common features these days are autocomplete, autocorrect, and spellcheckers. I’m betting the device you’re reading this on has at least two of them. Maybe all three. There’s also a good chance you’ve shut at least one of them off. Because…. well, they’re not that ducking great when you get down to it. Yeah, sure, some of them build up custom dictionaries or preferences, but even those can have issues.

Truth is, the more complex and nuanced we get with language, the less these things work. Because they’re tools. And that’s what tools do. They don’t replace skills, they just help focus them.

Think of it this way. I’m guessing you’ve got a hammer, right? Maybe it’s in that drawer in the kitchen (or was it in the office…?). Maybe you’ve got a little emergency toolbox with some basics in it. Maybe you’ve got a big rolling tool chest out in your garage with four different hammers and a rubber mallet and that other hammer you loan out to people who come over and ask if they can  borrow your tools. Anyway, wherever it is, you’ve got a hammer, right?

But we accept that a hammer only does so much. Owning a hammer doesn’t instantly mean I can now build a bookshelf or a rocking chair or a new deck out back. I’m more handy than some folks thanks to a few years of film and theater work, but I’ve got two friends who are professional carpenters and they both make me look completely unqualified to even own a toolbox.

And we all get this, right? The tool doesn’t amplify ability or replace it. It just allows me to use that existing ability better. If I didn’t have the skills to build a rocking chair before buying a hammer, owning one’s not going to change anything. And if I’m convinced holding a hammer suddenly does give me abilities and skills… well, I’m probably about to hurt myself.

(weird fun fact—the majority of cases where men lose a finger or toe involve them using a new tool. Seriously)

Spellchecker is a tool. So is autocorrect. And autocomplete. They can make things faster and more efficient, but only if I know what I’m doing in the first place.

For example…

faze vs. phase – one of these you grow out of

feet vs. feat – one of these is a measurement

losing vs. loosing –one of these is a release

week vs. weak—one of these is not that strong

bear vs. bare—one of these is a bit revealing

sconces vs. scones—one of these you eat

All of these are words I’ve seen recently in articles, headlines, and so on. And in every one of these cases… they should’ve been using the other one. But if I’m trusting my spellchecker to know more than me, it’s just not going to end well.

Seriously, computers are ducking idiots. They really are. Remember when I talked about Watson, the IBM supercomputer that was specificallybuilt to understand language and nuance and crush opponents on Jeopardy? Do you remember how his success rate ended up working out?

If Watson isn’t going to be able to pick up the slack, why would I think the spellchecker they bolted on to my word processor at the last minute is going to be better?

Learn to spell. If I want to do this professionally, it’s not enough to have the tools. I need the knowledge that makes them useful. Cause if not… I’m just hammering away wildly.

Next time…

Honestly, the next thing on my list is an overdue update of the FAQ. But to be honest, nothing’s really changed since the last time I updated it (well, nothing I can talk about, anyway). So I’ve got… hmmmmmm, well a question about plot we didn’t get to during the WonderCon Writers Coffeehouse. Or maybe talk about my old trunk novel a bit?

Any preferences? Drop ‘em down below.

And then go write.

This is something I’ve talked about several times here on the ol’ ranty writing blog, but I realized I haven’t talked specifically about it in, well, many years. Too many years, really. Definitely not since I’ve tried to lean away from the more ranty, accusatory tone I tended to write in back at the start of this.

Look, reading all those movie scripts made me pull out a lot of hair.

I talked a month or so back about the idea of a contract between author and reader. There’s one other aspect to that contract, a sub clause, and I think it’s one of those “so obvious we don’t think about it” sort of things. To be blunt, nobody’s picking up one of my books to hear from me. Or to see me.

I mean, sure, they like a lot of the characters and worlds I’ve created. Some folks probably (hopefully!) like my style enough that they’re willing to try something new from me. But they still don’t want to see me. They want the story, and they definitely don’t want me getting between them and it.

Now, this doesn’t mean I’m going to follow you home from the bookstore and stick my hand between you and the page or sing nonsense in your ear. It’s just that nobody wants me distracting them from the fact they’re reading my story. They just want to sink into that world and get lost.

Yeah, of course, on one level you know I crafted each of those sentences and paragraphs, chose where all

the breaks

should go, but we have this quiet understanding that I won’t be leaning over your shoulder asking “Did you like that? Did you see what I did there? Wasn’t that clever?” You just want to immerse yourself and forget about the world for a little bit. Or at least get to look at it from a neater angle.

That was jarring, wasn’t it? That weird paragraph break? It was only two lines, but it broke the flow for a second, and you stopped hearing my voice and started hearing your own instead. Probably saying something like “was that a mistake? Is he doing beat poetry? Was he trying to do something funny there?”

And this is the worst thing that can happen to a writer. I don’t want you thinking about me. I want you to be thinking about Hector and Natalie and the people they’re running away from. If you’re noticing me, thinking about what I’m doing… it means I’ve done something wrong.

Think of it this way. It’s the difference between the tough guy in a story who commits unimaginable acts of excessive violence to look tough… and the tough guy who doesn’t need to commit those acts. The one we understand is more impressive without seeing a blatant demonstration. Being able to restrain myself is usually more impressive than how excessive I can be. Less of us is more of the story.

So here’s four easy ways I can keep my literary head down.

Vocabulary— When I started out, I know I desperately wanted to show I had a better vocabulary than the average person. Because that’s a hallmark of a good writer, yes? I didn’t want to use common, pedestrian words, the words just anyone would use. I was a skilled anecdotist, after all, not some mere amanuensis.

And let’s be honest—I wasn’t alone. This is a phase a lot of us go through as we’re starting out. We latch onto (or more often, look up) obscure and flowery words for our literary masterpiece, as if we’re going to get a quarter every time the reader has to look something up. And if the reader doesn’t enjoy going to the Miriam-Webster site every three paragraphs? Well that sounds like their problem, doesn’t it? Not my fault you’ve got such a limited vocabulary.

Truth is, any word I choose just to get attention—to prove I don’t need to use a common word—is the wrong word. Any word that makes my reader stop reading and start analyzing from context is the wrong word. I can try to justify my word choice any way I like, but nobody’s picking up my book hoping for a vocabulary lesson. When a reader can’t figure out what’s being said for the fourth or fifth time and just decides to toss my manuscript in the big pile on the left… there’s only one person to blame.

(It’s not them, in case you had any lingering thoughts on the matter)

Structure— Just like obscure vocabulary, convoluted structure’s another common sign of writer ego. One of the most common forms of this is insisting on grammatical perfection. This usually mean a lot of rigid, formal text and very stiff dialogue. It’s when I get so insistent on proving I know the correct way to structure a sentence my words end up sounding forced and artificial. Also worth noting the flipside of this which is insisting I don’t need to follow anygrammar or spelling conventions. Punctuation? Capitalization? Those are tired tropes for losers.

The second most common sign is needless complication. I can admit I used to write—or try to write—sprawling, impenetrable prose. Sentences that went on and on. Descriptions that never ended. It took someone two pages to step through a doorway because we had to know what kind of socks and underwear they were wearing and what flavor toothpaste they preferred. If they were mentioned in the text, I had to remind you of these facts and how they were posed at the exact moment they spoke. Believe me, if something could be explained or described in less than ten words, I’d find a way to do it in at least fifty.

And while I never got quite that bad, there are also some writers who choose arcane story structures or points of view or tenses. Just because they can. Things will go from non-linear first person musings to omniscient third person flashbacks to second person song lyrics and then to a telepathic gestalt mind that only speaks in one of those single, three page sentences I was just talking about. There’s nothing wrong with any of these things, in a general sense, but so often they’re not there to serve the story. It’s just an attempt to look cool and do cool things. If I want to do something like this, I should be able to explain why I’m doing it. And the explanation needs to better than “y’know… reasons,” or I’m just going to leave my readers confused and frustrated as they get knocked out of my story again and again.

Said—Sad admission, kind of going with the vocabulary point up above. For many, many years I didn’t use said. Said was, in my opinion, the lowest common denominator of dialogue descriptors. It’s the kind of word used by writers who weren’t going places, writers not destined for greatness, like I clearly was. Not only that, I’d try to never us the same descriptor on a page twice. So in my early work my characters would respond, retort, exclaim, demand, muse, mutter, sneer, snap, shout, snarl, grumble, growl, whimper, whisper, hiss, yelp, yell, exclaim, or ejaculate. 

Oh, grow up. It was a common dialogue descriptor for years. Really.

Of course, once I finally got to sit down and talk with a professional editor and show him a few pages, this was the very first thing he commented on. Truth is, nobody notices said on the page. It’s an invisible word. Yeah, of course there’s going to be times when my characters are hissing or shouting or gasping. But I should save those words for then so their impact hasn’t been used up and weakened. The vast majority of the  time… stick to said.

Names—If used in moderation, names are also invisible. If you think about it, they’re just a shorthand note for the mental image of my character or MacGuffinor whatever. And they help us keep things straight if I’ve got a bunch of people all talking together.

It’s worth mentioning many fledgling sci-fi or fantasy writers feel the need to rename a lot of things. Or everything. Characters have all-new, correct-for-this-world names and so do their pets. And their gods. And their elements. And their system of weights and measures, their money, their units of time…  It’s great worldbuilding, but I’d guess 83% of the time this is just wasted words.  My elaborate sci-fi empire won’t collapse if I call mind-to-mind communication telepathy, but it might if I keep calling it intralobeech, which, as we all know, is short for “intralobe speech.”

Which, as we all know, is telepathy.

Always remember that moderation is key. Even a simple name like Bob can stack up and get distracting really quick. Which is why the ancient ones created…

Pronouns–when those proper names start to stack up, we switch to pronouns.  Just like names are shorthand for story elements, pronouns are shorthand for those names. When nouns start to clutter up my writing, they’re there to leap in and shoulder the weight.  It’s how Hector becomes he, that mysterious island becomes there, and a Hudson Hornet becomes it.

The catch here is I need to make sure my pronouns are clear. No questions exceptionally clear, ‘cause the moment someone gets confused about which her I’m referring to, they’re going to stop reading my story and start studying the page. We’ve all had to do that, right? Feel our way though a paragraph so we’re clear who she is. Or work backwards through the dialogue, trying to figure out who’s speaking which lines. I’m always super-careful with pronouns, because I don’t want that happening to anyone in my books.

Again—pronouns good. Pronoun confusion—bad. And it’s a writing rule you can apply to real life.

So there they are.  Four simple ways to keep our collective heads down so readers don’t see us standing there. Staring at them. Waiting to be noticed.

Y’see, Timmy, every time I make my reader hesitate or pause just for a second, I’m breaking the flow of the story. I’m encouraging them to skim at best, put the book down at worst. My reader should forget they’re paging through the latest Peter Clines novel, hopefully forget they’re reading altogether. And the easiest way to make that happen is for them not to see the writing.

It’s tempting to wave our arms and shout and try to get the reader to admit they can see us, but all this does is ruin things for everyone. It’s like Sherlock Holmes showing how he came to his amazing deductions or a magician explaining their greatest illusion. That moment is when the whole thing falls apart.

As writers, we need to go unnoticed. We want our characters to be seen and our dialogue to be heard, yeah. We want our action and passion and suspense to leave people breathless, absolutely.

But we’re just distractions.

Next time… hmmmmm. Not sure. I’m open to requests or suggestions if anyone has any. If not, I might tell you about a conversation I recently had with someone about getting published.

Until then… don’t let me see you writing.