So much for nouns. Now, what about verbs?
The ones you want are the active ones—the verbs that show something happening. Walk wide around the others!
Specifically, the verb to be is weak, in all its shapes and forms and sizes.
Why?
Because it describes existence only—a static state.
Your story stands still in any sentence that hangs on such a verb. Nothing happens. The situation just “is,” and for its duration your reader must in effect mark time, shifting wearily from one foot to the other while he waits for the story to get back under way. “She was unhappy” may be true enough; but where does it go? What’s “she” doing? What specific behavior reveals the unhappiness and hints at remedial action to come? “Sam was in the chair” states its case in even drearier terms than “Sam sat in the chair.” Incorporate a bit of action into the picture, and impact sharpens: “Sam slumped in the chair,” or “Sam twisted in the chair,” or “Sam rose from the chair,” or “Sam shoved back the chair.”
To repeat: Active verbs are what you need . . . verbs that show something happening, and thus draw your reader’s mental image more sharply into focus. For a vivid, vital, forward-moving story, cut the to be forms out of your copy every time you possibly can. “The trooper was pounding” is never as strong as “The trooper pounded.” And when you get down to a really passive approach, such as “The table was pounded upon by the trooper”—well!
Worst of all to be’s forms is the past perfect tense. You can recognize it by the word had—a red flag of danger in your story every time.
For had describes not just a static state, but a static state in the past: “He had traveled far that day.” “I never had realized how much I loved her.”
Each had makes your story jerk, because it jars your reader out of present action and throws him back into past history.
Perhaps the jerk is only momentary, as when a lazy writer sticks in a bit of exposition: “John stared at her. He had always wondered why she took the attitude she did. Now, she left him no choice but to force the issue.”
Here the jerk, the shift backward, is hardly noticeable. But throw in enough such, enough hads, and your story grinds to an aching, quaking halt. Forward movement stops. Your reader finds himself bogged down in history.
This is the kiss of death. No one can change what’s already happened. To waste story time on it is, at best, an irritation. What your reader wants is present action—events that have consequences for the future; characters shaping their own destinies. If he doesn’t get this sense of forward movement, he turns to another, more skillfully written yarn.
But isn’t past history sometimes vital in developing your story?
Of course. We’ll discuss how best to handle it when we deal with flashback techniques in Chapter 4. For now—get out your blue pencil and eliminate those hads!
—At least, eliminate as many as possible, within the bounds of common sense. Sure, you’ll need some for legitimate purposes: as transitional words to help you move in and out of the aforementioned flashback situations, for example.
In other cases, however, simple rephrasings will solve the problem.
Thus, a few paragraphs ago, we mentioned that one John “had always wondered,” and so on. Yet the line would read better—and cut the offending had—if we said, “Why did she take the attitude she did? It was time to get to the root of it.”
In general, the trick is to bring the past forward into the present, so that you describe what happens in past tense instead of past perfect.
To that end, translate recollection into action, or link the two tightly together. If your heroine once had loved your hero, make that fact an issue in the here-and-now: “He held her shoulders rigid. ‘Do you love me?’ ‘You’re being ridiculous!’ ’You used to. At least, you said you did.’ ”
Or perhaps:
“Her eyes were still the same, Ed decided. Her eyes, and her mouth.
“Thoughtfully, he wondered how she might react if he tried to kiss her, the way he did that long-gone night there by the river.”
A little practice on this kind of thing works wonders. Try it!
So much for verbs. What else is there?
Pronouns: words that substitute for nouns—he, she, it, they, we, and so on.
What is there to say about them?
Watch your antecedents!
That means, be sure that each pronoun refers back to the right noun.
“This time, the girl asked Jane to loan her a dollar for lunch. Sighing, she gave it to her.”
Like who gave what to whom? Or, are you becoming as confused as I am?
So much for pronouns.
Adjectives are words that modify nouns . . . help you to nail down meaning more precisely. When you describe someone’s face as a “gaunt, hewn caricature,” the adjectives differentiate it markedly from a chubby face, a sour face, a babyish face, or what have you.
Same way, blonde is a rather general category. You narrow it when you make the gal a brassy blonde, or a raucous blonde, or a hard-faced blonde, or a blowsy blonde.
How about a brassy, raucous, hard-faced, blowsy blonde?
Yes, you can run anything into the ground if you really try!
So much for adjectives.
Adverbs? They modify verbs . . . describe the manner in which an act is performed: angrily, wearily, animatedly, gloomily, delightedly, smilingly.
It does get a little tiresome, doesn’t it?
Remedy: Wherever practical, substitute action for the adverb.
“Angrily, she turned on him”? Or, “Her face stiffened, and her hands clenched to small, white-knuckled fists”?
“Wearily, he sat down”? Or, “With a heavy sigh, he slumped into the chair and let his head loll back, eyes closed”?
Vividness outranks brevity.
At least, sometimes.
So much for adverbs.
To live through your story, experience it, your reader must capture it with his own senses.
He may see it more clearly if it bears a perceptible relationship to something he has experienced before.—That is, if it’s similar or in contrast to some phenomenon out of his own past.
Comparison, the books call it. Metaphor. Simile.
You use it when you refer to a hoodlum as a “shambling gorilla of a man,” or to a dancer as a “sprite,” or to a tank as a “mechanized avalanche of steel.” The surf on the beach may be white and thick as cotton candy; or cotton candy as airy and evanescent as surf on a sunny beach.
Used skillfully, it’s another excellent device to help make your copy come alive.
A matter of meaning
What’s in a name?
A good deal more than Shakespeare gave it credit for in his famed remark on roses, apparently. Else why would Hollywood rechristen the Gertie Glutzes of this world, prior to launching them into stardom?
In the same way, there’s a good deal more in any word than meets the eye.
The issues involved are somewhat less than simple, as any semanticist will be happy to explain to you in three or four brief volumes. But for our purposes here, we can get by nicely with just one key fact: People’s feelings come out in the words they use.
The way the experts describe this is to say that the words in question have both denotation and connotation.
Denotation means the word’s “actual” or “dictionary” meaning.
When, in addition to this “actual” meaning, a word implies or suggests something further, the things it implies or suggests are its connotations.
These connotative or implied or associated meanings frequently hold overtones of approval or disapproval; and too often, the overtones outweigh the word’s “actual” meaning.
Take a word like propaganda. In simplest terms, it denotes information, put forth in a systematic effort to spread opinions or beliefs.
Thus, whether it’s classed as good or bad should depend on whether you agree or disagree with the opini
ons or beliefs in question. But in practical terms, and on a grass-roots level, the very word has acquired connotations of falsehood, distortion, dishonesty, and misrepresentation. Consequently, to label any material as “propaganda” is to put a blighting negative stamp on data and cause alike.
Strike, steed, politician, student, Okie, soldier, stenographer—they’re just words, apparently, with reasonably clear-cut denotations. But such are their connotations—and the connotations of thousands of other words, to boot—in large segments of the population as to create a distinct hazard for the writer. For if he fails to take account of their implications, their emotional overtones, he can alienate a host of readers without even being aware of what he’s doing. Let him describe the wrong character as sullen or wanton or coarse or ineffectual or finicky, and he may unwittingly damn the man far worse than if he had called him a thief.
So beware! Pay attention not just to words as words, but also to the feelings they mirror when people use them.
Where do scripts go wrong, language-wise, beyond the points already covered?
Here I have no comprehensive answers, let alone data that can be classed as definitive. But awkwardness does develop in certain special areas often enough to be worth mentioning.
Thus,
a. Sentence structure grows monotonous.
b. Subject and verb are separated.
c. Adverbs are placed improperly.
d. Words and phrases are repeated inadvertently.
e. Correct grammar becomes a fetish.
f. Meaning isn’t made clear instantly.
There are more, of course; too many more. But these will do for a start.
The solution to each problem is largely a matter of common sense.
Take monotonous sentence structure, for example.
It demands little genius to recognize that too many short sentences, or long sentences, or simple, or complex, or periodic, or loose, or what-have-you sentences are likely to grow tiresome.
The answer, obviously, is to introduce variety—variety of length, form, style, and so on. Many a tired old declarative sentence (He stalked off without a word) has been given a lift via rearrangement of its elements (Without a word, he stalked off) . . . rephrasing (Grim, wordless, he stalked off) . . . addition of some bit of action (Pivoting, he stalked off) . . . or of color (Face a cold mask of menace, he etc.), or the like.
On the other side of the fence, beware variety for variety’s own sake. The moment syntactical acrobatics attract attention to themselves, they also detract from your story; and that’s a sure road to disaster.
Why do subject and verb become separated?
My guess is that occasionally we all tend to get tangled up in the maze of our own thinking. How else can you account for some of the monstrosities you see in print?
Here’s an example from a student manuscript: “The girl, in spite of her confusion and the hazard offered by the razor-edged shards of glass from the shattered window, somehow broke free.”
Girl is the subject in the above sentence; broke the verb. Yet they’re separated by twenty words of modification, and the separation renders the sentence distracting and confusing.
Is the separation needed? Or could our reader perhaps survive a different version: “Confusion seemed to overwhelm her in that moment. The razor-edged shards of glass from the shattered window offered an added hazard. Yet somehow, the girl broke free.”
The lesson here is, don’t try to cram too much into one sentence; and the issue lies less in length than it does in content. Any time you feel the need to explain some aspect of your basic sentence, take pause. Odds are that what’s bothering you really calls for an additional sentence or two or three, so that you can keep your developing line of thought straight and clear and simple.
Improper placement of adverbs grows from a failure to understand placement’s effect on impact, probably.
To get maximum effect, put adverbs at the beginning or end of the sentence: “Angrily, he walked away.” Or, “He walked away angrily.” Though special cases may justify “He walked angrily away,” or the like, most often the effect of the modifier upon the reader is lost.
Unintentional repetition of words or phrases is the product of careless copy-reading.
Thus, in one line, your hero “moved blindly up the sagging staircase.” Three lines later, “Blinded by the leaping flames,” your heroine falls. Which is a natural enough mistake, but one that should be corrected as a matter of routine.
What about the occasions when you want repetition, in order to achieve a particular effect?
Three’s the charm, as the old folk-saying has it. If the same word appears twice, it looks like an accident. But the third time (and after, if you don’t carry the device to absurdity) your reader assumes it’s intentional and for a reason: “It was a day for color. Not just one color, but many. The color of Sandra’s lips. The color of Ed’s worn blazer. The color of sea and sand and sky.”
Grammar as a fetish?
To keep rules in proper perspective, violate them by design only.
That is, make them tools for manipulation of your reader’s emotions. If that takes sentence fragments, non-punctuation, stream-of-consciousness, and one-word paragraphs, by all means use them. Winston Churchill blazed the trail for all of us when he spoke his mind to the purists who insisted that no sentence end with a preposition: “This is one rule up with which I shall not put!”
So, deviate if you must. But do it with malice and by intent, not accident.
And, most of the time, stay within the rules. Your readers will feel more at home that way!
Our sixth and final point is all-encompassing, of course.
It’s also the most important of the lot: Meaning must be made instantly clear. If your reader has to read a sentence twice to make sense of it, you’re in deep trouble.
I can’t overemphasize this point. Oh so many would-be writers denounce the stupidity of readers who won’t or can’t understand. But what do all the screams accomplish? Stupid or not, the reader still gropes and fumbles and, finally, gives up, unless the idea gets through.
That incredible, pompous, egocentric gem from the pen of a “literary” novelist, “I write. Let the reader learn to read,” would be funny, were it not so ridiculous as to be tragic. To refuse to write so that a mass audience can understand you, and then rage because that same audience rejects you, is about on a par with insisting that grade-school youngsters learn their ABC’s from college physics texts. Most professionals accept it as their job to devise ways to communicate with their readers, regardless of said readers’ level. After all, if you feel too superior, you can always go hunt a different market!
And so it goes with words and language. They’re tools. All your writing life, you work with them . . . using them to tie your reader to your story.
This book will touch on words and the use of words a hundred times, in a hundred different contexts. And it still won’t say one one-hundredth of what needs to be said.
But for now, let’s assume that you’re properly impressed with words’ significance, and therefore stand ready to move on to a related but somewhat more involved aspect of the subject . . . the application of language to the manipulation of reader feelings.
Is that important?
I won’t kid you. It’s the foundation stone on which you as a writer stand or fall.
CHAPTER 3
Plain Facts about Feelings
A story is a succession of motivations and reactions.
The preceding chapter tells you how to communicate with your readers.
With words.
What should you as a fiction writer communicate?
Feelings.
Feeling is a thing you build through manipulation of motivation and reaction. To handle it properly is a matter at once both simple and complex. How and why intermesh. Problems arise that involve orientation, psychology, chronology, procedure.
Once you’re made aware of basic princ
iples, however, application becomes well-nigh instinctive: easy and natural as breathing.
The key is to understand completely where each and every step fits in.
What are these steps?
1. You decide what’s good and what’s bad.
2. You give your reader a character for a compass.
3. You create a story world.
4. You inject an element of change.
5. You draw motive power from cause and effect.
6. You pin down development to motivation and reaction.
7. You make motivation-reaction units shape emotion.
8. You measure copy length with tension.
9. You learn to write in M-R units.
Here we go!
How to tell good from bad
How do you decide whether a thing is good or bad?—Everything is good and/or bad, you know, in varying degrees and depending on circumstances.
Take a rainstorm, for instance. Is it good or bad?
How about a bombing raid? A strike? A seduction? A divorce? A marriage? A cigarette? A chocolate bar? A job?
Now it doesn’t matter whether you’re living with the abovementioned phenomena, or merely writing about them. In either case, before you can answer any queries intelligently, you need two things:
a. The specific instance.
b. A yardstick.
Thus, in the case of our rainstorm, we must consider such items as how much rain, how severe a storm, where, when, and so on. Specifics all. Added together, they constitute the specific instance.
Every story deals with a specific instance: this girl, that boy, the murder down the block, old Mrs. Martin’s death, the wifeswapping of those couples out on Little River. A story that attempts to stay at the level of generality is both impossible and a self-contradiction.
But no matter how specific you get; no matter how tightly you nail your topic down, the data have no meaning until you find a yardstick—a standard by which to measure and, above all, evaluate them.
Techniques of the Selling Writer Page 4