If you’re writing speculative fiction with different races, it’s a good idea to use different speech patterns for the different races. Races may use different words to refer to the same thing, or may have ‘sayings’ they use often. Perhaps one race tends to ramble on in long sentences and the other tends to speak in a way that is short and to the point. One race could be marked by the fact that they never use contractions.
These elements help to distinguish one character from another, and establish the characteristics of different cultures, thus deepening your world building. However you decide the characters of a particular race or species talk, stick to that in all your dialogue for that species.
If you’re writing historical fiction, be sure that your dialogue uses the speech patterns of your chosen era and that you don’t refer to things or concepts that have not appeared yet.
Dialect
Famous books have been written with characters speaking exactly as they sound when they speak, so obviously some people have no trouble reading books where the dialogue is written that way. Ai, ‘owever, ‘ave a bet of trouble wif anyfing written too ‘eavily in dialect an ai nah ai’m naht thi ony woan. Since I have a huge number of books to choose from today, I’ll simply pass over any with dialogue written this way. It makes a book hard to read.
Even those who’re comfortable with dialect, or not bothered by it, will have to stop sometimes and re-read, or read slowly to work out what is being said. Once again, you’ve made the reader aware that they’re reading. Your words have come between them and the story. I also feel that it’s a little insulting to the reader to assume that they can’t keep the accent in mind without having it laid out explicitly.
So what do you do when you want to show that a person speaks with a thick accent or in a particular dialect? As with many of the things I’ll speak about in this book, it’s a matter of degree. I, ‘owever, don’t ‘ave trouble wif dialogue written in light dialect, an’ I know I’m not the only one. The important point to understand, and the one that causes overwriting if we don’t understand it, is that readers don’t need everything spelled out. They get it without you labouring the point.
So when you introduce a character, you can say that they have a thick accent and perhaps write it more fully during the first few sentences so readers get the idea. After that, you lighten it up so the dialect doesn’t make the reading a chore. Readers will remember their dialect from other cues in the book like the setting, the slang and more specifically whenever another character mentions their accent or misunderstands them because of it.
Example.
Carter frowned. ‘What do you mean, ‘go around the ‘hull’’? I don’t see any ship.’ He glanced at Adele to see if she’d seen it. She shook her head.
‘Thuz no shup,’ Paul said. ‘Ut’s a hull, mate, you know … a hull. A small mountain.’
‘Small mountain?’ Carter couldn’t believe it. ‘You mean a hill?’
‘That’s what I said; ay, mate.’
‘No, you didn’t, you said a hull.’ Carter fixed him in the eye, daring him to deny it.
Adele giggled, slapped her hand over her mouth and turned away.
‘Pah. You’re just mocking my kewe uccunt.’
‘Nah,’ Carter shook his head, ‘you stumped me and me sheila good and proper.’
This actually happened to me when I was visiting New Zealand. I was born there and lived there until I was twenty-four, but the accent of a man who gave me directions was so strong that I truly couldn’t understand what he meant by ‘hull.’ He thought he was saying ‘hill’, but it sounded like ‘hull’ to me. He thought he was directing me around a hill, I thought he was directing me around the hull of a ship.
Carter’s use of the word ‘stumped’ (dumbfounded) and ‘sheila’ (girlfriend–no capitals because it’s a slang word for a woman, not an individual woman’s name) might give you a clue to his nationality. Kiwis and Aussies like to rib each other over their accents. If you’re from any other part of the world, the humour in this example may well escape you.
The point here is that a section that focuses on a character’s accent is one way of making it clear how thick an accent is without you having to write it out.
But, of course, if everyone speaks the same way in your book, no one will draw attention to it in that way, so the idea is to write just a few key words in dialect—the ones that people notice most—as I did for Kiwi Paul above.
If you feel the dialect is really important, you can ‘thicken’ it up again occasionally at a point where the character’s accent may naturally become more pronounced—perhaps when they’re excited or angry—but think of the reader; don’t make reading a chore.
Don't Overuse Character's Names & expressions
Check your dialogue for over use of ‘well’, ‘oh’, ‘right’, ‘ah’ and so on. Use these rarely. Although characters in real life do use ‘well’ and other such words before they speak, and it’s fine to use them occasionally, they aren’t necessary in written dialogue and can easily become cumbersome.
Also, don’t use character’s names often in the dialogue, unless it is for a specific effect. It’s rare when speaking in life, and, again, soon becomes cumbersome.
Example:
‘How are you this morning, George.’
‘I’m well, thank you, Mary.’
‘George, I have something to tell you.’
‘What is it, Mary?’
3
Cut the Clutter
After looking at the big picture and making the changes required at that level, you can move onto the first stage of line editing, which is succinctly summed up in the term ‘Cut the Clutter.’
The Disease of Overwriting
‘The writer who breeds more words than he needs, makes reading a chore for the reader who reads.’ Dr Seuss.
‘Writers we in time call ‘great’ tend to follow all the rules of good writing. Spare, interesting, easy to read, easy to understand to the point we forget that we are reading.’ G J Berger, award-winning author of South of Burnt Rocks, West of the Moon.
‘Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon.’ William Zinsser in his classic text, On Writing Well.
Writing cluttered with extraneous words is called overwriting. Uncluttered writing says clearly what the author is trying to convey, and it gets to the point without bogging the reader down in deadwood that only bores, distracts, or confuses our readers.
When I gained representation for the first novel in my YA series, my agent asked me to cut 18,000 words from it. I thought that meant that I would have to remove part of the story, but she assured me that if I went through and simply cut unnecessary words, I could do it without losing any content and end up with a much improved book. She was right, and I was amazed at how many extraneous words I found.
So the first step in your self-editing should be cutting the clutter. Removing unnecessary words will make your writing tighter and clearer. Often authors say the same thing several different ways, but you don’t have to tell the reader anything that is already obvious or will be in the next paragraph.
To the fledgling writer, overwriting may feel rich or poetic—it did to me too when I started out, before my first editor friend set me straight. I have even seen a reviewer of a severely overwritten book call it poetic. Hmm. But it isn’t, and we can make sure that our writing does not suffer from this disease by following a simple rule: cut unnecessary words. Cut out any language that is vague, repetitious, or pretentious.
Cut Adverbs
Try to write without adverbs and certainly keep them to a bare minimum. They tell, rather than show. Replace them with one verb that says the same thing, (e.g. instead of saying he ‘looked angrily’, say ‘he glared’) or simply delete the adverb. If you’ve set the situation well before the adverb, they’re rarely needed. If they seem necessary, then your writing may be
lacking something. Ask yourself how you can write the scene so that the action the adverb describes is obvious without using the adverb.
Example:
Overwritten: He ran angrily across the lawn.
Revised: He stomped across the lawn.
Stephen King insists that good writing doesn’t need adverbs because the reader gets the idea from the active writing of the scene. He says that adverbs indicate lazy writing.
Cut Adjectives
Double adjectives should be the first to go. If you look at them objectively, you’ll often find that one of them is obvious, or that they’re saying the same thing in different ways. Sometimes, but rarely, a double adjective is necessary. One example I use in the Diamond Peak series is a calm, clear mind. The clarity and the calm are different aspects of the mind state the protagonists must cultivate if they’re to defeat the demons. Calm is not enough and neither is clarity, hence I needed the double adjective.
But often we don’t need adjectives at all, and prose can easily become bogged down if they’re used too liberally. So check each one and ask: why is it there? What does it add?
Overwritten: The bright, golden sun warmed us.
Revised: The bright sun warmed us. (Suns are golden. Readers know this so you don’t need to say it’s golden.)
Or, if the brightness isn’t particularly important for the story, remove both adjectives and write: The sun warmed us.
Or, if the brightness is important, consider whether it might need more explanation to get across what you want to communicate: Though too bright for our light-starved eyes, the sun warmed us. Yes, this is more words, but if they’re necessary to express what you want to say, then they aren’t extraneous. Whether you emphasise a word or use it at all depends on why the word is there. What is its purpose? What are you trying to say?
Overwritten: The dark night hid the shed from view.
Revised: The night hid the shed from view.
(Nights are always dark, so you don’t need to tell us that it’s dark.)
Also consider: The night hid the shed.
Is ‘from view’ necessary? The answer will depend on context, but often such phrases can also be cut.
Reduce Long Clauses
Reduce long clauses:
Overwritten: The cat who was in the backyard was playing with a mouse.
Revised: The cat in the backyard was playing with a mouse.
Reduce Phrases
Reduce phrases to single words where possible:
Overwritten: The woman at the start of the line tried to climb the fence.
Revised: The first woman tried to climb the fence.
Avoid Empty Openers
Avoid ‘There is’, ‘There are’, and ‘There were’ as sentence openers. ‘There’ adds nothing to the meaning of a sentence:
Overwritten: There is a toy in every packet of Weetbix.
Revised: A toy is in every packet of Weetbix.
Overwritten: There are two dogs in the yard.
Revised: Two dogs are in the yard.
Don’t Overuse Modifiers
‘Very’, ‘really’, ‘totally’, and other modifiers add little or nothing to the meaning of a sentence.
Overwritten: When she got home, Janice was very tired and really hungry.
Revised: When she got home, Janice was exhausted and hungry.
Be Precise & Avoid Redundancies
Replace redundancies (phrases that use more words than necessary to make a point, or words that repeat the same idea twice) with precise words. Unnecessary words are those that add nothing (or nothing significant) to the meaning of our writing. They merely distract from our ideas and make reading like pushing your way through a forest, instead of walking on the path.
Common phrases that mean little, if anything:
all things considered
as a matter of fact
as far as I am concerned
at the end of the day
at the present time
due to the fact that
for the most part
for the purpose of
in the event of
it seems that
Commonly heard redundancies (cut the word in brackets):
(absolutely) essential
(advance) planning
(all-time) record
(armed) gunman
(brief) moment
(completely) annihilate
descend (down)
sit (down)
(entirely) eliminate
introduced (for the first time)
(mental) telepathy
(outside) in the yard
(temporary) reprieve
Other words and phrases you can usually do without:
began to
started to
would
should
in order to
because of
caused him/her/it to
decided to
Also check if the following are really necessary:
that
then
after a moment
Do you need that preposition?
stand (up)—one always stands up, so there is no need to add it.
sit (down)
smile (on his face)
touched (with his fingers)
nodded (with his head)
gave a wink (of the eye )
Frame Your Metaphors
Frame your metaphors in plain writing. Too many metaphors and similes can choke the writing and slow the narrative. It’s like placing a lot of artworks in close proximity without frames to set them off; you can’t see them properly and your enjoyment of them is compromised.
Example:
The sun gilded the billowing clouds with ribbons of bright gold. Below her, waves thumped against the jagged rocks like a rock band, and cars roared up the road like fire breathing dragons. To her right, emerald green fields spread like velvet over verdant hills, and ill-foreboding crags of black granite reared before the ghostly spires of the mountain in the distance.
There are some lovely metaphors and similes in that passage, but having them all in the same paragraph with no plain writing between them makes reading it a little like wading through honey.
The following is easier to read:
The sun gilded the billowing clouds with ribbons of gold. Below her, waves thumped against the jagged rocks, and cars roared up the road. To her right, emerald fields spread over verdant hills, and ill-foreboding crags of black granite reared before the ghostly spires of the distant mountain.
The lost words add, rather than detract, from the passage.
Don’t Try to Impress
Leonardo da Vinci said, ‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication’, and this is true in writing as in many other disciplines. Aim to say what you want to say as clearly and succinctly as possible. Unnecessary complexity just makes it harder for readers to work out what you’re trying to say. So don’t use big words or lengthy phrases when a simpler one is clearer or more precise. It isn’t impressive; it’s clumsy. Find the best words for the job.
Overwritten: Doctors who are participating in the conference should be empowered to participate in the food selection process.
Revised: The doctors should be able to choose their own food.
Don’t Say the Same Thing Twice.
Don’t restate something that is already clear.
Overwritten: “What? I don’t understand?” George said, confused.
Revised: “What? I don’t understand?” George said. (It’s clear from his speech that he’s confused, so you don’t need to say it.)
Overwritten: The sun set, sinking behind the hills.
Revised: The sun sank behind the hills.
Also check that you haven’t repeated the same idea in different ways in consecutive paragraphs.
Check Back-story
A good general rule is no more than one paragraph of back-story at a time; at the most, two. Otherwise, it can turn into what’s cal
led an info dump—an obvious dumping of information. Information and back-story naturally tends to be told rather than shown, so your readers’ engagement level can drop if you have too much of it in one place. Readers tend to want to skip big chunks of back-story or information and get on with the present story, so you need to handle these elements skilfully.
First, decide what is really necessary for the reader to know, then put those points into the story at the place where the reader needs to know as single sentences or paragraphs within the action, rather than placing all the information or back-story in big chunks. Authors know everything about their characters, but the readers don’t need to know everything that the author knows; a mere hint at something is often sufficient for them to get the idea. Readers can assume one thing from another, and explaining everything in great detail is not only unnecessary but also can be an insult to their intelligence.
That two people meeting have a shared history can be hinted at through their facial expressions, the tone of their voices, and veiled references to the past. Parts of what happened between them can be revealed at various times and the readers can piece the story together for themselves. Not delivering it all as one chunk makes a mystery out of it. The reader wonders what their history is and finds fragments of the answer interesting, whereas if you simply tell them everything up front before it has become relevant and before they’ve had a chance to wonder, it's unlikely to be as interesting.
This doesn’t mean that whole chapters can’t be about the past, they can; they just need to be relevant to the main story, written in an engaging fashion and have sufficient dramatic tension to hold a reader. As always, these are guidelines, not rules. But be careful where you place the back-story—it’s not a good idea to stop for back-story in the middle of a battle, for instance. That will only frustrate the reader who wants to know the outcome of the battle. Wait until after the battle.
The Elements of Active Prose Page 7
