You're so progressive

My last post was about verb tense. Exciting stuff I know. As a follow up, I’d like to discuss the progressive form of each tense.


So what’s progressive form? Well, it means that the action of the verb is continuing or progressing. It will contain some version of the verb to be and a present participle (an ‘ing verb).

Examples:

   Present                I am walking / He is walking

   Present perfect    I have been walking / He has been walking

   Past                    I was walking

   Past perfect        I had been walking

   Future                I will/shall be walking

   Future perfect    I will/shall have been walking

“Mary is counting the money.”

“While John was walking to the store, he tripped over a stone.”

Now, tie it in with perfect tense and it gets all sorts of confusing:

“Jane will have been camping for three days come this Tuesday.”

“By the time John got to the store, Mary had been counting all the money.”

So, if progressive means the action is continuing and perfect means the action has completed, then which is it?

Trust me. I know how confusing it is. It took me a little while and a lot of thinking to wrap my little brain around this concept. It’s all about timing.

Let’s take the first example:

“Jane will have been camping for three days come this Tuesday.”

This is the progressive form of future perfect tense. What this says is that Jane is currently camping (the continuing “progressive” part). On Tuesday, three days of camping will be completed (the completed “perfect” part).

Right now the action is ongoing, but it has a definitive end.

Let’s take the second example:

“By the time John got to the store, Mary had been counting all the money.”

This is the progressive form of past perfect tense. The past perfect tense means that something happened in the “past” past and is complete. However, throw the progressive form in there and it changes everything. This example says that Mary had already been counting the money before John got to the store (the past perfect part), but she is still counting all the money (the continuing “progressive” part).

So why is it so complex? Because now, you can say almost anything happened at any time and is either completed or still going on at any other point in time in one compact sentence instead of a whole paragraph.

Instead of saying:

“Mary started to count the money. John got to the store. She continued to count.”

You can condense all three into our example:

“By the time John got to the store, Mary had been counting all the money.”

Now, don’t get all excited and start condensing all your sentences into the progressive form. There is a time and a place for everything and if you start using the progressive form to emphasize timing throughout your work, the other events start to take a backseat. Then, when you do have an important scene, where timing is crucial, the reader won’t notice.

Even in our example, Mary and John are not the important elements. The fact that Mary is counting the money as John got to the store is the part that has emphasis. Perhaps that’s what we wanted to accomplish and perhaps it’s not.

Only use it when timing is important and that’s what you’re trying to emphasize. This is where a lot of writers get caught. They think they can condense their writing, but end up changing the focus of the sentence. Is it important that John went to the store, or that Mary hadn’t finished counting by the time he got there?

It’s your story. You decide what’s important.

Why are you so tense?

Verb tense. Wow. Am I really going to talk about verb tense? As a matter of fact, I am. Besides the basic present and past (and sometimes future), I really don’t give tense much thought on a day to day basis. It just comes out of my mouth when I speak and if it sounds right, I use it. Now that I’m writing, I sound it out in my head to see if it “sounds” right, but it would be much better if I wrote it correctly to begin with.

So, I started to re-educate myself on basic grammar and even if I knew the rule, I wanted to learn what everything was technically called. For whatever reason, I latched onto tense first. Here’s what I scrounged up.

There are six tenses.

   Simple past               I walked

   Simple present          I walk

   Simple future            I will/shall walk

   Past perfect              I had walked

   Present perfect         I have walked

   Future perfect          I will/shall have walked

Okay, simple tense I understand quite well. I grasp all three simple tenses and use them correctly and effectively every day. Perfect tense, however, is a different story.

First of all, what does “perfect” mean? Why call it past “perfect” tense? Because perfect means completed. When I say, “I had walked,” it means that I walked at some point in the past and I completed my walking. Here are a few examples:

“I walked to the store.” – This is open ended. You could still be walking or at the store.

“I had walked to the store.” – Implies you walked to the store, did you what you needed to do and you are no longer there.

What about future and future perfect?

“When I’m done with dinner, I will walk to the store”. – this says that you are going to finish your dinner and then you are going to walk to the store.

“When I’m done with dinner, I will have walked to the store.” – This says, by the time you are finished with dinner, you will be at the store.

The examples aren’t exactly how we would naturally word something when we speak or write, but do you see the difference in the meaning by changing from future to future perfect?

Recently, I have been running into the past perfect tense a lot. Many writers will if they use past tense, which is the norm (although, not necessarily a standard). What happens when someone in the past is talking about something further in the past, like a flashback (sometimes jokingly referred to as the “past” past tense)?

“John wanted me to take a shower, but I had taken a bath already.”

“Although Mary had eaten earlier, her stomach growled.”

“By the time Jane reached her house, she had worked up a sweat.”

Since the writing is already in the past, to point out something that happened further in the past, we used past perfect.

There’s a catch in there. Sometimes, you can use “had” and past perfect too much. In today’s written world, if the meaning is there and there is no implication otherwise, you don’t have to get all fancy. To take a previous example:

“Mary asked me where I got the milk. I told her that I walked to the store this morning.”

Or

“Mary asked me where I got the milk. I told her that I had walked to the store this morning.”

Technically, the reader will pick up the same meaning from both examples because of the context. If you are writing a long flashback and “had” is all over the place and becoming annoying, it’s okay to drop it if the meaning remains the same or if the reader knows from the context that it’s happening in the “past” past, but be very careful, because it’s very easy to change meaning unintentionally.

“When I got to the house, my ice cream melted” – I got to the house, THEN my ice cream melted. Messy house.

“When I got to the house, my ice cream had melted” – My ice cream melted by the time I got to the house. Messy car ride to the house.

As always, everything in moderation and check for meaning. We writers sometimes know what we are trying to say, but don’t get it down on paper the way we think we do. This is especially true when working with the perfect tense.

I feel so weak (Part I)

In my quest to improve my grammar and overall writing style, I stumbled on a reference to weak words. Not realizing that words could be strong or weak, I slogged forward into the unknown.

As it turns out, words that are vague or frequently used, so that they lose their forcefulness, are considered weak. Who knew? Well, a lot of people, apparently, but I had missed the memo. I had found yet more words that were grammatically correct, but were frowned upon by the writing community.

Determined to find a listing of these words to strike them out of my vocabulary, I found quite a lot of differing answers as to what a weak word actually was. Sure there are standard words, but sometimes it just comes down to what you use often and how you use it. I know one phrase I tend to write when limited on my point of view is, “seemed to” or “seemed as if”.

“Mary seemed to agree”

“Jane seemed as if her heart were breaking.”

I’m not in Mary or April’s point of view, so we can’t really know what they are thinking. Seems like a good alternative, right? Well, let’s see if we can make it stronger.

“Mary nodded her head in agreement.”

“Jane’s heart breaking cries echoed down the street.”

I had to reword a bit, but it’s stronger and more descriptive. You can now picture Mary agreeing or Jane’s tears.

A recent story I wrote needed to be edited. “Perfect time to test out my weak words!” I thought. My plan of attack consisted of me going through the story once for plot holes, once for grammar, then once again for style. When I thought I had everything edited to perfection, I did a search for the following words.

• Walked
• Looked
• Was
• Seemed
• As if
• Silent (I knew I used this word at a lot)
• Quiet (this one too)

What I found really opened my eyes. Here I had a story that, in my mind, was polished and done. I did a search and realized how many weak words I still had left in there. I edited several sentences and now feel even better about my story.

Notice that silent and quiet are not necessarily weak words, but I knew I had used both several times in a 7,900 word story. Just by virtue of being repeatedly hit over the head with the words, the reader is going to get sick of hearing how quiet/silent it is and the words will lose their strength. What I had done was make a strong word into a weak one by overuse. (Not to mention that it’s annoying when writers use the same word over and over…and over.)

Okay, so we covered overuse, but what about vague words? Words like seemed, looked, walked, turned, etc. are vague. What sounds better?

“He walked down the street.”

Or

“He sauntered down the street.”

Which gives you a better mental image of the man? How about..

“He flew down the street like the fires of hell were licking at his toes.”

Much better than just…

“He ran down the street.”

Of course you don’t have to get so flowery, but my point is that if you aren’t so vague, you’ll paint a clearer picture of what’s going on in the scene.

Yeah, you could use adverbs, but I’ve already discussed their evils. It’s much better to use a strong action verb instead.

This might mean you have to get a little creative in your wording, but isn’t that the point? You don’t want your writing to be boring do you? Get creative. Have fun with it.

In all things, moderation

"To avidly learn is what keeps life interesting," Elisabeth expounded excitedly.  She spent the rest of the day thoughtfully musing over the lessons she'd learned.  The next blog post was written with much excitement.

Did I miss anything?  Can you pick out all the rules I just broke?  I've gone over a few of the more popular rules in my last few posts.

• 'ly adverbs
• Active vs. passive voice
• Show vs. tell
• Dialog tags
• Split infinitives

There are plenty more rules out there.  One of them, that was pounded into me in high school, was not to use "There are".  But these were rules that I'd come across recently and that were still under debate or being discussed.

Now that I've researched and gone over each one, I can say I have a much better understanding of why each rule was put in place.  I know most of the negatives and the positives for each one.  However, I still dislike the word "rule".  I'd much rather use "guideline".

The very word rule implies that there are never any exceptions.  Each "rule" I've gone over recently most certainly does have exceptions (depending on who you talk to).  Guideline implies that you should do it a certain way where ever possible, but there are times when you should do it another way.

Just following some of these guidelines has improved my writing exponetially.  For example, here is my original opening paragraph to my book:

 

Her first thought was, Oh hell no!  Kat had just woke up to find herself tied to a chair in an old, dimly lit basement that smelled like gym socks.  The last thing she remembered was walking down to the corner store to get the milk that her harebrained sister, Kit, forgot.  Kit was always forgetting everything and Kat, as usual, tried to fix it.  This time, however, it landed her in this basement.  Great.  Just great.

Lots of telling, adverbs, etc.  Here's what I have now:

The smell of old gym socks assailed Kat’s nose, waking her. She opened her eyes and scanned her surroundings, trying to figure out what had happened. A florescent light flickered overhead, casting the room and its dingy contents in intermittent darkness. Realizing that her hands were tied behind her and that she was in a strange basement, her first thought was, Oh hell no!

Kat struggled against the ropes, chafing her wrists. It made no difference, she wasn’t about to stay here, no matter how raw and bloody her wrists ended up.

She remembered walking home from the corner store, a bottle of milk in her hand, then a sharp pain on the back of her head. Her harebrained sister, Kit, had forgotten to stop by the store again. As usual, Kat had tried to fix the situation, going out after the milk on her own. This time, however, Kat’s fixing landed her in this basement. Great, just great.

It could still use some work, but it's better.
 
Here's what I've concluded.  Moderation is the key.  Using the guidelines will help inspire a higher level of writing.  Never settle for poor writing.  Anything can be re-written.  The big question is, is it being re-written for the betterment of the piece?

Sure I can follow all the rules, but by following all the rules, did I just lose the voice that makes me unique?  Is my writing now bland and sound like everyone else's?  Or have I added to the description and drawn the reader further into the story?

Only you can answer that question about your own work.  Often we get caught up in writing for other people.  What will the agents like? The Editors?  The audience?  Sometimes we forget why we started writing to begin with.

Of course, keeping the rules in mind will help when dealing with editors and agents, but also remember that you are writing for you.  Write what makes you happy.  In the end, you're the most important reader.

"Dialog tags?" I muttered

What are dialog tags?  I'm glad you asked.  Dialog tags are these nifty little words that tell the reader who's speaking.  The most common is "said" as in "He said" or "She said".

Mary said, "But that doesn't make sense."

John said, "Sure it does."

Mary asked, "How can it?"

John explained, "Simple, you just…"

 

More industrious writers sometimes use more descriptive dialog tags.

Mary panted, "I just ran ten miles."

John gasped, "And you didn't collapse?"

Mary grinned, "Not all of us are as out of shape as you are, John."

John muttered, "I'm not out of shape…"

 

Now, what's the big deal?  The basic rule is to not use them or if you do, use them sparingly.  Well, how do you know who's talking?  That's a good question.  Take the above example:

Flushed from her run, Mary halted in front of John.  She bent over and placed her hands on her thighs, panting. "I just ran ten miles."

"And you didn't collapse?"  John's eyes nearly popped out of his head.

"Not all of us are as out of shape as you are, John."

"I'm not out of shape…"

 

There, no tags, yet the reader knows who's speaking AND it was descriptive.  I'm not saying it's great writing, but it's an example.

Okay, here's the debate.  Those that like to use tags like to use them to add description to their writing.  Using "He screamed" is a lot more descriptive than "He said" and adds another dimension.

Those that don't like to use them say that they are distracting and interrupt the flow of the dialog, especially the descriptive tags.  This group feels that using "said" (and MAYBE "asked") actually blends in better than descriptive tags and the eye passes over all the "saids."  That said, they should still be used as sparingly as possible.

I can see both sides.  Yes, they do interrupt the flow and they should be used very sparingly, but sometimes it works better if I use a "she whispered" instead of an alternative.  Yes, I could rewrite it, but sometimes it's even more distracting describing everything before someone says something.

The argument is that the dialog should show everything, so you don't need description.  If someone is angry, their words should show it and so you don't need a "he spat" or "he pouted".  For the most part, I agree with this.  But how do you show when someone whispers?  Okay, I guess the other character could lean in and / or ask them to speak up.  Even a "They spoke in hushed tones." and then start the dialog would work.  I'm sure there's a way to do just about anything, but is it better for the story and the plot?

Also, here's a little pet peeve of mine (and I know several others are in agreement with me on this).  Sometimes these descriptive tags don't make sense.  The most common one to bring up is:

He laughed, "And that's when I told him, that's no goat, that's my wife."

How can you laugh and speak at the same time?  You can't (at least not well).  Either you are laughing or you are speaking.  How to fix this?  It's just a matter of adding a period instead of a comma.

He laughed. (period and begin new sentence.)  "And that's when…"

If you are going to use descriptions for tags, please please please take this into consideration so that your tag at least makes sense.  In the above version, he laughed and THEN he spoke.

To boldly split an infinitive

I asked myself a question that spurs most of my researching.  "What the heck is a…?"  In this case, I wanted to know what the heck a split infinitive was.  What indeed.  My next question was, "What makes split infinitives so evil?"

Ironically enough, I wrote a masterful split infinitive in the very forum post that caused me to ask the question to begin with.  I didn't even realize what I had done.

"My goal is to one day, many years down the road, have some of this…"

So, what is a split infinitive?  Heck, I don't even know what an infinitive is let alone how to split it.

Infinitives are the base form of a verb usually proceeded by "to".  Examples:  "to be", "to go" or "to run".

Split infinitives are where you split the "to" from the verb by adding words in between:

"I would like to, eventually, leave this place."

 

"To leave" is split by "eventually".  A way around this is:

"I eventually would like to leave this place."

 

So my original example of where I split an infinitive, without even trying, could be rephrased like:

"My goal, one day many years down the road, is to have some of this…"

Now, why are split infinitives so evil?  That's a question that has been under debate for a very long time.  There are good arguments on both sides of that fence.

In simple terms, the split infinitives are evil crowd thinks that the "to" should never be separated from the verb.  It's grammatically incorrect and just plain wrong.  Don't do it.

The pro-split infinitives crowd says that it's not really grammatically incorrect and we only think it's wrong to split it because that's what's been pounded into our heads.  The rule goes back to Latin where it is grammatically incorrect to split an infinitive.  Problem with that line of logic is that in Latin infinitives don't have the equivalent of "to."  So it's impossible to split them, even if you wanted to.

There are other pro/con arguments and I could make this an extremely long and boring post.  Don't worry, I won't do that (at least not more than I usually do).

Where do I stand?  As with the other rules I've been learning, my feeling on the matter is to try not to do it.  It might not be grammatically incorrect, but it is still considered poor style.

However, one of the most famous split infinitives just wouldn't sound the same and the rhythmatic flow would be hurt if it were "fixed."  This is for all my Star Trek geek friends out there!

"To boldly go where no man has gone before."

To go is split by "boldly".  But, it just doesn't sound right and it loses impact any other way:

"Boldly to go where…"

"To go boldly where…"

So yes, avoid them, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

The business of show (not tell)

One of the first rules I ever encountered was:

Show, don't tell.

Again, my mind screamed, "What does that mean?!"  Aren't we writing stories and, therefore, telling a story?  So isn't it always telling?

Well apparently not!  Here's what I learned.

Telling is more…well…telling the reader what happened, whereas, showing allows the reader to read it firsthand.  For example:

Telling - John called the sheriff and told him about the crime.

 

Showing - John picked up the phone and dialed the sheriff.  "Yes, Sheriff?  There's been a crime."

 

See how the showing example involves more action? It's a boring little detail, but possibly necessary for the plot that John call that sheriff.  They both relay the same message, but the showing version draws the reader in and involves them in the action instead of just telling them about it.

There is quite a debate about show vs. tell.  The theory is that showing is more intense and will draw the reader in.  Telling will just bore the reader to tears.

A fact that I found interesting is that showing didn't really become popular until the early 1900s.  Before that, the standard was to tell.  So what I wonder is, how much of these rules are really just a product of the preferences of the readership at the time?

I was reading a book series where the author just loved to tell everything.  Lots of telling and very little showing.  I love the world and the plots were okay.  However, I had to put the book down several times and nearly stopped reading altogether because the telling got old quick.  The only reason I kept reading was because the world the author created was extremely detailed and my OCD kicked in and I wanted to finish the series.  That and the later books got a little better on that front.

I won't get into a big debate here because that's been done and redone too many times.  My goal for this post is just to point out what Showing/Telling is and to state that it's the preference these days to show and kick tell to the curb.

So, show and NEVER tell.  Of course that gets my brain whirring.  I swear, just use the word "never" and that alone will jumpstart my little brain and get me thinking of examples where telling would be more appropriate.

What if, my brain asks, there's a long passage of time, say a road trip, where nothing really happens, but it's important to know so that the reader knows there's a passage of time, not to mention how they got to be 500 miles from where they started.

How about something like:

The road trip to Phoenix was uneventful.  John and Mary made the trip in record time.

That's definitely telling and, depending on the plot, possibly necessary to the story.  This doesn't bore the reader into a coma with showing scenes of them driving in silence for 500 miles, occasionally stopping for gas and bathroom breaks.  Yes, that's exciting stuff!  Maybe, to really spice things up, they buy Funyuns at one of the gas stations. Perhaps there was a Cheetos vs. Funyuns debate.  Oh boy, now we're talking some action. If we're really lucky, there'll be a showtunes scene.

Yeah, the reader doesn't need to know all that detail.  Who cares if they had Cheetos or Funyuns (or both for that matter)?  It's not necessary to the plot.  It's just extra fluff.

The pro-show side of the audience is now screaming at me.  A counter-argument to this tell example would be to put in a scene break and then show what happened.  Supposedly, this is a dying artform.

John grinned.  "It's decided.  We're going to Phoenix."

(scene break)

John pulled the car into the driveway.  He turned to Mary and said, "Wow, it sure is hot and dry here in Phoenix, but we made that trip in record time."

Mary nodded in his direction, but remained silent, obviously still upset.

John opened the door and stepped out, muttering under his breath.  "I still think Cheetos beats out Funyuns any day of the week."

 

Okay, so I added a bit of flair to that example.  I couldn't help myself.  It doesn't have to be so cheesy, but it's just an exaggerated example to prove the counter point to the telling point I made previously.

I thought up another example from one of my own works in progress.  I have a scene where the main character goes to the bathroom.  I know she's fictional, but I wanted to give her a little privacy, so I didn't show her actually using the facilities, I told.  I know, I know…put the cuffs on and lock me up in writers prison immediately!  And before you ask, yes it was necessary for the plot that she go to the bathroom.  If you must know, it proves how tight security needed to be and, ironically enough, showed her lack of privacy during that particular time.

The counter point to my point was that just because you show doesn't mean you have to add more words.  It doesn't have to be all purple prose and flowery.  Sometimes simple is better.

So instead of the several sentences I used to tell about the process, I could have just written something like:

"I'll be right out here if you need anything."  Denny's voice came from the other room, the open bathroom door affording little privacy.  Her sister stood in the doorway, in view of them both.

Under her sister's watchful eye, Kat attempted to go about her daily bathroom routine without being too self-conscious.  Geez, does everyone need to see me pee?

 

Believe it or not, this version is quite a bit more concise than my telling version.  The above example is showing and it's actually a lot less verbiage.  Okay, okay, there is a little bit of telling still in there, but it's much less than before.

So…maybe there's something to this whole show, don't tell thing.  Just don't tell the pro-show people that.

The blog was written in the passive voice...

Active voice vs. passive voice is one of those things that I'd heard bantered about, but never truly understood.  I gathered that it was a way of writing and that it was preferable to write actively as opposed to passively.  That's about as far as I ever got.

According to Wiki:

The passive voice is a grammatical voice in which the subject receives the action of a transitive verb. Passive voice emphasizes the process rather than who is performing the action.

But what does that mean?  I didn't really know.  So I did a little homework and found out that active voice is when someone does something to something.  Passive is when something happens to something else, possibly by someone.  And yes, there is a difference!  Examples:

Active – John picked up the paper

Passive – The paper was picked up (by John – optional)

Notice how when using the active voice, John is the subject.  John is doing something to something.  It's direct.  He picked up the paper.  The sentence revolves around John and what he's doing.  Go John!

When switching to passive, the paper is now the subject.  Something is happening to the paper.  The paper isn't doing anything.  It's just sitting there waiting for something to happen to it.  John is optional at this point.  Who needs John anyway?

Passive voice is used more in business and/or scientific papers.  Like when writing about a reaction to some chemical interacting with another, example:

Active - Charlie poured the chemical over the other, causing a reaction.  (Charlie is causing the reaction by pouring)

Passive – Chemical A was poured over Chemical B, causing a reaction. (Now it's Chemical A's fault that Chemical B reacted)

 

In the above example, the chemicals and their reactions have more significance than who actually poured one over the other, so poor Charlie being left out is probably a good thing in the scientific world.  Here it would be better to go with passive voice.

There are many more examples where passive is used, but I'm going to try to stick to fiction.

Speaking of fiction, it's usually better to go with the active voice.  Most stories are character driven to an extent.  Switching to passive voice keeps focus on objects and away from the characters and what they are doing.  Example:

Active – John picked up the lamp and threw it against the wall.

Passive – The lamp was picked up and thrown against the wall (by John – optional).

 

The active example is very violent.  We can tell that John is mad about something and taking out his frustrations on the innocent lamp.  (We've shown he's angry without having to say so, but more on that in future posts!) The focus is on John and his actions.  The lamp is secondary.  It could have been anything that John happened to be close to.  Just happened to be a lamp.

The passive example loses some of its umph.  We don't really get that John was upset, but more that the lamp got smashed to smithereens.  It's all about the lamp.  The fact that John threw it is inconsequential.  In essence, you just took a possible main character and made him take backstage to a lamp.  Must be some lamp! Maybe it's Tiffany's…

So, passive is bad, very bad.  Must never write in the passive voice! Never ever!

This is where my brain started whirring like it usually does when I hear the word "Never".  As a story teller, what if you WANT the focus to be on the lamp?  What if John IS inconsequential?

What if Mary owns the lamp and it's her most prized possession?  John is just some random guy who happens to be there and we're never going to see him again.  He doesn't even have any lines!  He just comes in and smashes the lamp and leaves Mary heartbroken.  In this case the lamp really is more important than John in the grand scheme of things.  Who cares about John and his anger management issues when Mary's priceless lamp has been smashed?!

It brings me back to the infamous example:

Active – The car struck the child.

Passive – The child was struck by the car.

 

Which is more important?  The car or the child?  On which do you want to put more emphasis?  I'm sure if you were the child or a parent then you'd put more emphasis on the passive version.  Even though it's passive, it's more emotional and dramatic.

So how do you go about finding out if you are using passive voice?  There's always going to be a form of the "to be" verb.  Examples:

The lamp was thrown

The lamp will be thrown

The lamp is being thrown

The lamp had been thrown

The lamps were thrown

The lamps have been thrown

Etc.

 

If you are writing in the past tense, do a search for "was".  A lot of times, you'll find some passive voice strewn in the midst if you find "was".

Now, here's what I really learned.  There's nothing wrong with passive voice.  It's grammatically correct and as long as you use it correctly, it's fine.

However…same as with 'ly adverbs, you can do better.  Let's take a few of the examples above and rewrite them, but keep the same meaning:

The lamp was thrown against the wall.

 

What do we really want to point out here?  We want to point out that Mary's prized lamp is being smashed.  So why are we focusing on the lamp again?  Don't we really want to focus on Mary's feelings?

Mary watched in horror as John threw her prized lamp against the wall.

 

Or even the less flowery/purple prose version:

Mary watched her lamp hit the wall.

 

How about:

The child was struck by the car.

The child's face filled with terror as the car's tires screeched on the pavement in an attempt to stop in time.

 

Or the even less flowery/purple prose version:

The child went limp as the car hit her.

 

Either example, the direct one or the purple prose version brings more to the story than what the passive example brought.  Focus was brought back to the main character and how they were feeling/reacting.  Each example was more dramatic and descriptive.

Long story short, passive isn't evil, but just because it's not evil doesn't mean it can't be rewritten into something even better.

'ly Adverbs/Adjectives. Are they really so bad?

Two things happened that sparked my curiosity about this little guideline.

1. Someone critiqued a story of mine and mentioned that I should get rid of an “ly” word.
2. I was lurking on some writer’s forums and they were joking about using “ly” adverbs.

My initial thought was, “Is it bad grammar to use ‘ly words?” That didn’t make sense to me. Why have the words if it’s incorrect to use them?

Faced with a puzzle, my interest only grew from there. I did a web search and ran across several grammarians who are adamantly against using these infamous ‘ly words in fiction.

The information on the websites boiled down to the fact that they are NOT incorrect grammatically. It IS considered bad writing to use them, in fiction especially. They are perfectly acceptable in the eyes of those grammar police out there. However, the thought is that adverbs and adjectives are superfluous and detract from the verb or noun that they are attempting to enhance.

I read many examples and many arguments for and against. I thought back to my own writing and realized I have a nice big smattering of ‘ly adverbs/adjectives throughout. But still, what’s so bad about them if used properly? Many published and famous authors use them profusely.

The main arguments against are:

• They are usually redundant and because of that redundancy, detracts from the potency of the point you were trying to make in the first place.
  
  Example: He angrily stomped away.
  
  Okay, so he’s stomping, and typically when someone is stomping, it is implied that they are angry. The ‘angrily’ is an extra word that’s not necessary.
  
  
  
• They take away the strength of the verb they are trying to enhance and usually only create more vagueness.
  
  Example: He quickly ran away.
  
  How quick is quickly? Is he Olympic dash quick or need to pace yourself for a marathon quick? The word ‘ran’ already implies that he’s moving quickly. Actually adding the word ‘quickly’ brings more questions and vagueness. Other verbs could be used here that would add more description and meaning. Like, “He rushed away,” “He hurried away,” “He ran away so fast that he broke the speed limit.”
  
  


• It’s considered poor writing. Now this is the one that got me thinking. I can see the points of the other two arguments, but I could also see using ‘ly words that would add more description instead of detracting from the sentence. How is it considered bad writing?
  

Mulling all these points over, I went back to the first paragraph in my book. Sure enough, the second sentence had one of those little buggars in it.

“She had just woke up to find herself tied to a chair in an old, dimly lit basement that smelled like gym socks.”

Still not completely understanding why I needed to, I thought about how to go about rewriting this. I tried many different things in my head. After all, ‘dimly lit’ is not redundant. It’s simply explaining that it’s actually not very well lighted. I don’t care about the potency of ‘lit’ because the room isn’t really lit.

I toyed with the sentence and tried out a few rewrites:

Taking out the ‘ly word - “…old, lit basement…” But it isn’t a lit basement. It’s not dark, but it’s not bright either. This implies that it’s bright. No good.

Leaving the ‘ly word without the ‘ly and taking out the word it enhanced – “…old, dim basement…” This just didn’t sound right to me. Yeah, it was accurate in describing the basement, but it just didn’t flow for me.

Changing the sentence completely – “She had just woke up to find herself tied to a chair in an old basement that smelled like gym socks. A fluorescent light flickered above, casting the room in intermittent darkness…”

…And that’s when the lightbulb in my head came on. I had my “ah ha!” moment and complete understanding hit me.

It’s not that it’s bad grammar or poor writing. It’s that you can do so much better. Yeah, I can use “dimly lit basement”, but, with a little more effort, I created a sentence that was so much more descriptive and hands down better (yeah, it still needs work in other areas, but that's for the next post!). I still got my point across and my writing was drastically improved.

So is it wrong to use ‘ly adverbs/adjectives? No. Is it better to not use them? Yes. I know it’s hard if you’re like me and used to using them all the time, but my writing is leaps and bounds better when I don’t use them.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s very hard to not use them. I actually have to use my brain and think of better, more accurate verbs (i.e. "He gripped" instead of "He tightly held"). I have to stretch myself. But then, isn’t that the point? I did want to be a better writer. The exercise of tossing all those ‘ly adverbs/adjectives definitely helps me towards that goal.

Now, every time I run across a ‘ly adverb/adjective, I think to myself, “You can do so much better than that.” And I can.

Rules? There Are Rules?

I'd been plugging away at now two, not just one, novel.  My mind was reeling with plot lines and characters and all sorts of fantastical things.  It's probably the most fun I've had in quite some time.  It was extremely easy to get sucked into these other worlds my mind thought up.

So, it was with a bit of reluctance that I started to research more about the techniques, styles and rules of writing.  I wanted to write, not study about writing! 

My biggest fears regarding writing were that I hadn't known grammatical rules and that I was breaking them all over the place and not even aware of it.  This was the fear that I was determined to overcome with education.  Having been self taught with most things in my life, I viewed this as no different.

I viewed it as a challenge and I hit it head on.  Not even knowing where to start, I stumbled across several websites.  A few were helpful, many were not.  Finally, my fingers clicked across The Critique Circle website.  Everything until then had been just words and definitions, most of which still didn't make sense to me even after reading it several times over.  I was truly a beginner.

I joined this new website I had found and proceeded to lurk in a manner that would impress any industrious forum troll.  It was here, among other ordinary people who had similar questions, that I started to finally understand what I was missing.

It wasn't that I didn't know the rules of grammar.  Actually, I did and quite well.  I just didn't know the terms.  The mere mention of participles, modifiers and compound phrases sent me running for the hills in fear, when I really knew what they were, at least in the abstract.

What I didn't know, and still have a hard time with, were the writing rules.  When I started writing, in my mind if it was grammatically correct, then that's all that mattered.  Turns out there's a whole world of rules and guidelines that have very little to do with grammar.  This revelation opened my eyes quite a bit. 

One of the first rules I came across was not using adverbs.  My logical side wanted to buck the system.  Why have words if you shouldn't use them?  That just didn't make sense to me.  And what the heck is passive voice and why shouldn't I use it?  Showing?  Telling? 

I quickly gathered more terms that I feared.

Gathering what courage I could muster, I dived in and have since wrapped my brain around quite of few of these rules.  Although, I still want to call them guidelines rather than rules.  To me, the word rule implies no deviance at all.  In reality, authors deviate from these rules all the time, some successful and some not.  What I have realized is that the rules/guidelines are there for a reason, many of them good reasons.  They are there to strengthen and enhance writing by not letting writers get lazy.  By following some of these rules/guidelines in my own writing, I've made my writing better by leaps and bounds if only because it made me think. They gave me a fresh perspective when looking at my writing and allowed me to grow.

Over the next week or two, I'll go over a few of these rules/guidelines that  learned and accepted.  Some of them include: 

• Use of Adverbs/Adjectives (especially the dreaded 'ly' ones).
• Using active vs. passive voice.
• Showing and not telling.
• Using tags in dialogue.
• Split infinitives (this falls a bit more into the grammar side of things. It's still a big debate, but it came up while I was doing this other research.  So here it shall remain!)

On a personal note, or also known as: Who the hell am I?

This post is a little more personal and a lot less focused than most of the other posts I'll be making. I figure getting who I am and what brought me to this point is a good springboard for what's to come. It also gets all the personal stuff out of the way in one fell swoop.

I loved writing stories (and a bit of sappy poetry) ever since I was just a little itty-bitty thing. Going through school I realized very quickly that grammar was not my strong suit. I got math awards left and right, but seemed to have a mental block when it came to diagramming a simple sentence. Not phased, I made the decision to work extra hard and learn all those rules and their crazy names.

That's about the time I switched schools. Turns out, the school I transferred to was done explaining rules and expected all the students to apply them expertly. According to my English teachers, I should have learned all that years ago and if I didn't know it by now, I never would learn.

Hiding my lack of knowledge in shame, I struggled and resorted to playing it by ear. If it "sounded" right, I wrote it, then prayed it was correct. Getting graded papers back was always an extremely painful and embarrassing process. I'd get them back riddled with red pen marks telling me about the numerous errors I made, but not why it was incorrect or how to fix it.

I would pour over each mark, trying to figure out what rule I'd broken. After years of this torture, I finally gave up. Then it was just a matter of pretending and going by the "sound."

Since then, I've gotten a lot better. I'm now a successful business professional who relies on her communication and writing skills on a daily basis. Entering the business world had helped me with spelling and punctuation. I had gleaned a few more grammatical rules as time went on, but I was still terrified of doing what I wanted to do. Write fiction. After all, writing a business letter is entirely different than writing a novel. Different rules apply in several cases. What's acceptable, and expected, in the business world is often frowned upon in fiction circles.

I had always been a good story teller. A bit long winded (as this post can attest), but my stories made sense and usually made people laugh. A few months ago, I decided that the only way to do what I really wanted was to bite the bullet and face my fears. Facing down years of traumatic experiences with schools and teachers, I gathered my courage and started scouring the internet.

I came up with a few ideas and just started writing. Yeah, what I wrote sucked, but I enjoyed every second of it. The more I wrote, the more I learned. My writing got better, still not great, but better. I went back and edited my story, improving it each time I re-read it. Eventually, I got to a point where I needed more. I needed outside help.

I stumbled across a very supportive group (http://www.critiquecircle.com) and forced myself to submit one of the stories I'd been working on. I knew I needed a lot of help in several areas, but there's no way of improving those areas unless I went for it.

The responses I got were amazing. Even though they shredded my story to pieces, they told me what rules I'd broken and how to fix it. They gave me examples and suggestions. Suddenly some of those elusive rules started to make sense. There was no judging or condescension. I noticed a drastic improvement in my writing almost immediately.

Since then, I've been pouring through forums and discussions, absorbing everything I can. Honestly, a lot of the conversations go so far over my head, I don't even see a smoke trail. But hidden between all the intellectual discussions are questions from other people who struggle just as much as I do. Some got answers and some didn't.

It was then that I realized that I'm not alone. There are others out there that were never taught or weren't able to learn correct writing rules and techniques for whatever reasons. I'm not the only one that didn't know what a split infinitive was or that there are so many possible points of view when writing a novel/story that there are whole books written on the subject.

So that's where I am and who I am. I'm a 37 year old wife and professional who is hoping to add "writer" to the list of things in that statement. If I can help someone else by explaining what I learned in terms that someone like me can relate to and understand, then that's even better.