I am often amused, sometimes annoyed by the level of debate on the internet, the way weak writers, self-published writers will pontificate as if they actually know what they are doing.
Do I know what I'm doing?
You judge. I've won a dozen writing competitions and picked up $11,000 in prizes. I've placed twice second and once fourth in the UK's prestigious Bridport Prize (it gets 4,000+ entries). I've published five novels, one of which was short-listed for an international award, and well over three hundred short-stories and articles and NONE in womags! I've led a group of writers (usually 10-20 at any one time) for ten years and between them they have won around 120 first prizes. In 2006 they won 26 first prizes. Maybe, MAYBE, I know what I'm talking about?
I should add that I write literary short fiction or serious general fiction but that I've placed five crime novels and a dozen or so humorous stories. Bootcampers and ex-Bootcampers have sold womag stories, romances, science fiction, crime, humour, chicklit, and one a bodice-ripping western romance. So my advice can be shown to work for total raw beginners (some eye-bleedingly hopeless when they start), for improvers, intermediates and advanced, well-published writers.
I DO know what I'm talking about!
So why then do we get these arguments about, let's say "Alex Keegan's view on dialogue openers" or "Alex Keegan's view on the use of adverbs and adjectives"?
We get arguments because those on the other side of the fence DON'T LISTEN. Because they paraphrase (and often actually misrepresent what I say) and then, because they cannot beat the sound advice, beat up the false misrepresentative paraphrased "advice".
In my article published in The Internet Writers Journal and The New Writer I asked the question: Would you prefer a cool, dark, Guinness or a Guinness? I also asked would you rather make slow, delicious love or have a quickie? It's here, by the way:
http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/feb05/keegan36.htm
"Cool, Dark" above is NOT a case of a writer choosing a weak noun needing to modify it (because it's weak.) Instead it's a case of a writer carefully extending, expanding, elongating a sentiment, partly to make the sensuousness more "sticking", and partly to actually "open up" the basic sense into one which involves more senses and approaches the visceral.
If I was marking this in a story I would mark it with a tick, not a cross (unless I felt the context made it cliché) but I might well, elsewhere blue-pencil ten or more adjectives and adverbs.
So what about that quickie? Well, firstly, "quickie" is a strong noun, it says it all (more or less). "Making slow, delicious love" is NOT "a quickie". And note too how sLow, deLicious, Love, is stretched, expanded and slowed semantically (by the actual meanings of the words), and by similar consonant and vowel sounds and feeling. It's what I like to call the colour and music of the words.
At another time we might want the words to be staccato, hard, short and sharp: kick, duck, smack, black.
Compare that to undulating mellifluousness.
Gary Provost in Make Your Words Work says: "The adjective, no doubt, is the most maligned part of speech, and for good reason. For every adjective that is improving a sentence, ten are being written to the detriment of the sentences they inhabit."
In the Elements of Style, William Strunk suggests that adjectives are "The leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words."
First of all note that. Note I quote it. Note I've quoted it before.
Note I have NOT said "all adjectives are bad". I reserve such statements for womag stories, as in, 'All womag stories are bad,' (except that is too kind.)
Now note this re-statement of the twice-stated statement:
For every adjective that is improving a sentence, ten are being written to the detriment of the sentences they inhabit.
THAT is the point. Routinely, commonly, virtually all beginners use pathetic, shitty nouns and tatty vanilla verbs and ladle on almost-as-shitty adjectives and adverbs as if somehow the two litres of thick, gooey gravy will cover up the fact that the so-called fillet steak they are pretending to offer is actual a camel's rancid penis.
But-but-but-but cries beginner, there was this book, see, and THAT had lots of adjectives! So what? So WHAT if John Banville can pack in the modifiers and call a rusty iron gate "a filigree of rust"?
So WHAT if Doris Lessing once opened ONE of her novels with dialogue? What about the other ninety-nine?
Remember the phrase exceptions prove the rule?
Beginner SHOULD attempt, extended periods where they do not use adverbs and adjectives "AT ALL".
Note, the above does not say they are banned.
Note the above is NOT saying, "Here is a quick-fix rule from a box of ten."
What the above is saying is: Try to write without adjectives and adverbs, because, if you do, you will realise how often, almost automatically, you choose thin, weak nouns and verbs. By stopping you using modifiers for an extended period we are teaching you to seek out stronger nouns and stronger verbs. The use of stronger nouns and verbs almost always makes for stronger writing.
Why can't I say, "Use adjectives sparingly"?
Because no-one has defined "sparingly"!
Carver would say sparingly means one a year. John Banville (spit) would say, "If the reader is conscious and sane, I obviously didn't use enough."
Why can't I say, "Use adjectives sparingly"?
Because half the beginners I've ever met think "sparingly" means only use one adjective for every noun.
The POINT is this. When you use a verb and then an adverb to qualify it, how easily did that verb come? Is that the same verb as 99.99% of people would use to describe the car coming out of a side road? Was it boring? Is that why you poured on gravy?
Was the verb SHARKED (Martin Amis) or was it "pulled out"?
Did you write (YAWN) "the car pulled out cautiously into the traffic"?
Why not "tip-toed" or "tip-toed into the traffic like a three-year-old in her mother's shoes"
Which bit of language is ALIVE?
If you are a beginner, I tell you now, you use too many adjectives. You use too many adverbs.
If I tell you to stop doing that, that doesn't mean you won't grow up to write "wonderful stories" full of mellifluent prose.
What it means is, that given enough time and practice you will learn that yes, you really did over-use adjectives and adverbs, and you'll discover, every time you go to remove that adjective or adverb you "can't".
Why "can't" you?
Because without the adjective that noun is a bit vague. Without that adverb that verb is ambiguous or insipid. NOW you see it.
But I "insist" the modifier has to go. You go back to your lexicon and dig out a far better noun, a much better verb. Suddenly the wishy-washy, so-so same-ish, plain vanilla, brown-paper writing you did earlier now has a bit of bite, a bit of power.
Oh, you think, maybe what Miss Duffner said wasn't actually very good advice…
Eventually (but only if you are beaten sufficiently to make you think) you will place your modifiers on the page, for specific effects. They will be doing important work. They will not be casual, tossed-in modifiers, but ones that are there because the combinations are more powerful, less bald, than the unmodified noun and verb. Or maybe the modifiers are there to stretch time, to slow down the reader, to give other impressions beyond the immediate line.
Here, a mining village in the rain, an old guy is waiting for his equally-old buddy (who is sick and won't be coming).
We could write.
Dai's bored. Where's Fred? Late again! Hah! He drinks his pint, stares at the rain. Tum-te-tum, he drums his fingers.
Maybe that would work (bit too good to be a womag story?)
But if the story is meant to be "slow, sad, dying," then maybe:
Saturday afternoon and Dai Griffiths sits with his finger-polished roll-up tin. He is patient, fixated, listening. His tongue protrudes slightly as he makes careful, half dog-end, half Old Holburn, delicate, thin cigarettes.
It is raining outside the pub and along the valley side snake-terraced roofs glisten. The afternoon light closes.
Rivers run down from the top of the mountain, down the steep side roads, black with coal dust. The rain is like stair-rods now and the Cwm road is welly deep. Running boot-steps splatter past the open pub door and Dai’s black and white terrier looks up. The dog is spotted with splashed black water and moves slightly. Without looking, Dai puts out a hand. The dog lowers its head back onto Dai's feet.
Here the extensions are DELIBERATE. A specific effect is sought. The writer wants the reader to enter that same, slightly melancholy "what can we do?" mood of a wet Saturday with nowhere to go, no hope.
The passage should be investigated.
Where might an adjective or an adverb be cut? Would it hurt the piece? What about, for example, "his tongue protrudes slightly"? You could probably get away without the modifier, but here it's OK, slows things down (and we want things to be slow) and it's a tiny bit more specific. There is no easy replacement verb for protrudes-slightly.
Finger-polished roll-up tin is not "excessive modification". Instead, here the modification is close-detail which gives a lot of back-story and character-detail. Anyone who had a dad who rolled his own can SEE that tin and smell the baccy (and maybe have his heart-strings tugged as he remembers Gramps.)
Splashed black water is again specific while at the same time being onomatopoeic. The point is there's real purpose here, not casualness.
Whereas these two:
He wondered what the sex would be like. She thought it would be good. When she asked him, "Do you think the sex will be good, Harry?" he knew it would be great. But that was later.
Let's get right-down to the point. These city-types don't dick about.
They are go-getters, with-it, fast-moving.
So is the text.
Saturday, 12 May 2007
This weekend...
This weekend saw 11 stories posted
(meaning we need 88 critiques by Monday midnight)
So far we have 41 critiques, one story already cleared with its "8" and one story on 6 crits.
This is called a WRITING GROUP!
(meaning we need 88 critiques by Monday midnight)
So far we have 41 critiques, one story already cleared with its "8" and one story on 6 crits.
This is called a WRITING GROUP!
Friday, 11 May 2007
Drugs in Boot Camp?
They must be on SOMETHING.
Story deadline is tonight at 10PM but already we have had posted, five stories, five criques, and this in a week where they have been flashing.
Why is it that the harder they work, the better they write?
Are the cobwebs on the TV a clue?
alx
Story deadline is tonight at 10PM but already we have had posted, five stories, five criques, and this in a week where they have been flashing.
Why is it that the harder they work, the better they write?
Are the cobwebs on the TV a clue?
alx
Quick! Quick!
This is an old (specifically dated) article with a new postscript
Today is November 18th 2002. On October 13th I made a bet that I would write fourteen stories in six weeks and that at least ten of them would place in decent outlets. So far I have written nine short stories, three new articles
and one piece of creative non-fiction, thirteen pieces. This is at the same time as running two Boot Camp writing schools with approximately one hundred posts a day.
I have six days to write my fourteenth piece (and I’m writing it now!)
So the work is rushed, yes? Rubbish, yes? You can’t write quality at ninety miles an hour! Wrong!
William Saroyan shot to fame with his story The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze, published in Story Magazine. Saroyan then told the editors he would write thirty short stories, one a day for thirty days, which he would send to them to illustrate the problems of the short-story writer. On one of the thirty days Saroyan wrote three shorts and in the month he wrote thirty-six stories. All rubbish? No!
Bennet Cerf of Random House took twenty-six of the thirty-six stories and published them as a book to critical acclaim. (Saroyan was annoyed they didn’t take all thirty-six!)
Speed of writing does not necessarily mean poor quality. In fact, I contend that the faster we write often the better the quality. It’s by the letting go, by rushing past the psychic guards that we best access the raw and bloody, the deep inside stuff, the true meat of writing, the soul.
Matthew Arnold said “Produce, produce, produce, for I tell you, the night is coming!” Georges Simenon must have taken that advice! Allegedly he lost count of the number of lovers he had, but in ten years as a young man he wrote 200 pulp novels and countless short stories before settling down to write the Inspector Maigret series. It seems Simenon was slowing up by then. In the period 1931-1972 he averaged a mere two-and-a-half novels a year. Perhaps those lovers were keeping him busy.
The beat writers like Jack Kerouac wrote quickly, unplanned, spontaneously. Sometimes it was raw, some critics thought too raw, but works like Visions of Cody; Doctor Sax; Maggie Cassidy; Pic, and The Subterraneans still grace our bookshelves alongside Kerouac’s classic On the Road. Allen Ginsberg’s HOWL, utterly honest, rushed from the gut, was so stunning it exploded on to the market and still sells steadily today.
John Creasey wrote a dizzy 562 books under 28 pseudonyms. Were they classy literature? Well, no, but most of us would die to produce such slick, readable, interesting stories. With such an output, Creasey barely took breath writing 10,000 words a day, and it has been said, he wrote formulaically and often riddled his work with clichés. Awful, yes? Well, he sold eighty million books worldwide and has books on HRF Keating’s list of the 100 best-ever crime novels. Some failure! And by the way, before selling his first book, Creasey had 743, yes seven HUNDRED and forty-three rejection slips.
Prolificity doesn’t mean lack of quality, nor need writing fast preclude art.
Joyce Carol Oates doyen of the short-story in the US has written 45 novels, 9 non-fiction books, 8 books of poetry and 26 collections of shorts in a career only just about to reach its fortieth year. J G Ballard wrote 26 novels as well as over a hundred superb short stories; in twenty years Harlan Ellison wrote forty-two books, three dozen scripts, and eleven hundred short works.
Boot Campers are required to produce a short-story every two weeks. When we first started, an incredible six years ago, one writer argued that it was impossible to produce a decent story in six months. Her most prolific year had produced three unsold stories. A year later she won a first prize of $2,000 for a "two-week" Boot Camp story.
It can be done. Working hard and under pressure, can, in and of itself, produce a special kind of mental energy, a stirring of the deep juices, a buzz, a rush to make more words appear. No, not every story is destined for The New Yorker, but then how many are when you plod out two or three a year?
When we set goals, tough, almost impossible goals, the goal itself can be a motivator, the mere finishing of a draft a reward in itself. Simply doing can bring its own rewards and doing it intensely changes the way we think and see the world. Writing intensely we become fired up, magnetic, eager, and it’s as if the world knows we are a vessel. Stories come to us. Ideas fly in the window. It’s tiring but it’s exhilarating, and the words just keep coming!
And it really, really can be art. Ginsberg said, “Ageless art has always been spontaneous. Ozymandias, Shelley’s poem about time and eternity, was written in ten minutes as an exercise to show that he could do it right.
The idea that spontaneity is something that’s new-fangled, or the abstract expression of strange modern ideas is ridiculous. It’s the oldest thing in poetics, just like vocalisation is older than print.”
So, I argue, writing quickly, can unleash energies and power you didn’t know you had. But on top of this, fast, spontaneous writing unleashes an original, unfettered, closer-to-the-truth you, the magical, the surprising, the special, the art that’s in us all.
Saroyan said that when he was seized by a story he needed to write it quickly. If he didn’t do it there and then, it might leave him. He took less than a week to write each of his plays. In an interview he smiled when describing a play The Paris Comedy he wrote for Darryl Zanuck. “I took thirteen days because there was so much partying going on at that time.”
Boot Campers are put under pressure, not merely to write, but to read and critique other stories. It’s an impossible job and some fall away. So why volunteer for such pressure? Saroyan: “Sometimes, without pressure, work doesn’t get done at all. You abandon most readily those works which have no destination other than your own wishes. There’s no editor or producer standing there waiting to make you see a job through. In fact many writers are held back by setting themselves too-high standards. They get a novel one-third done and give up because they think it’s not good enough.”
We should welcome pressure, set ourselves goals, achieve those goals. We should write every day in a fervour, a fever, and grow that self-awareness, that comes from writing all the time. We don’t write all the time? Yes we do. When we are not writing we are still writers, looking, thinking, smelling, sucking in the world, and in the lesser moments (between those glorious hard-working, passionate spurts) we should live off the magical, inspired, near-ecstatic times when we are typing.
To access the demons, the angels, the truth, the real core of being, we must have lust, utter, racing passion. Quicker, quicker, deeper, hotter.
Tom Robbins said, “Get yourself into that extreme state of being next to madness. You should always write with an erection, even if you are a woman.”
A good story, a great story, when it comes, is an outpouring of the soul. The connection is made, the dam is breached. Stop and the connection will be broken, the dam repaired. James Dickey the poet and also author of the superb Deliverance talked of his seventeen hour stretches at the typewriter.
“I want to go full blast towards the light at the end of the tunnel. I want to get there. Sure, when I’ve got there I may sit on what I’ve got or fiddle with it, but if the essential of it is out, all is down on paper, wow is that a great feeling. When you’re writing like that you know the work has the potential of being good right the way through.
“With luck and all that work, you can get the thing to where no word can be changed without diminishing the piece. When you sense this opening, this situation, you have to push. You want to get there because you know it, smell it. It can be done.”
Dylan Thomas may have spent days, weeks, worrying over the placement of a comma, but great songs have been conceived and written in ten minutes, just like Ozymandias. Wonderful stories have not existed at breakfast and been part of our literary history by tea-time. Try it. Let rip, change. Lock the doors, turn up the music, rock the house and write, write, write! Unleash!
*
Two hours ago, this article didn’t exist. My target of fourteen pieces in forty-two days was still to be achieved. I have six more days to go and this, my fourteenth piece is done. Now tell me dear, reader, what are you reading?
1,500 words
Postscript.
When I wrote these pieces I was under merciless attack on a daily basis. I was managing to run Boot Camp (a 25-Hour a day job) and was running another ten writers trying out the BC system. And of course, I had the kids to look after.
I wrote:
Topless Beach
Dee, a Dancer, Too Blue
There Was a Time
From the Tenth to the Eleventh on the occasion of my Passing
Seven Hills, a Postmen, Silly Money
Miguel Who Cuts Down Trees
Officiate
Ugly
Jacob Perry
Admin
Crash
Edwin Sly's Last Letter
Marmalade Dear?
Night Out
A Bad Man Tapping
Judgement Day
How to Steal Stories
The Novice Screenwriter Refuses to Conform
Quick! Quick!
There are two first prizes in there, a $200 second prize, three articles that placed twice and one that placed once. In all 16 publications. Cadenza, The New Writer, Southern Ocean Review, The Alsop Review, The Internet Writers Journal... There are three unpublished pieces which I still rate in my best work and will win a prize somewhere. IMO it's not difficult to write a 1,500 worder a day, if that's where you want to write. Waiting for the muse is nonsense. The muse lives inside every one of us and is tempted out by work.
Today is November 18th 2002. On October 13th I made a bet that I would write fourteen stories in six weeks and that at least ten of them would place in decent outlets. So far I have written nine short stories, three new articles
and one piece of creative non-fiction, thirteen pieces. This is at the same time as running two Boot Camp writing schools with approximately one hundred posts a day.
I have six days to write my fourteenth piece (and I’m writing it now!)
So the work is rushed, yes? Rubbish, yes? You can’t write quality at ninety miles an hour! Wrong!
William Saroyan shot to fame with his story The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze, published in Story Magazine. Saroyan then told the editors he would write thirty short stories, one a day for thirty days, which he would send to them to illustrate the problems of the short-story writer. On one of the thirty days Saroyan wrote three shorts and in the month he wrote thirty-six stories. All rubbish? No!
Bennet Cerf of Random House took twenty-six of the thirty-six stories and published them as a book to critical acclaim. (Saroyan was annoyed they didn’t take all thirty-six!)
Speed of writing does not necessarily mean poor quality. In fact, I contend that the faster we write often the better the quality. It’s by the letting go, by rushing past the psychic guards that we best access the raw and bloody, the deep inside stuff, the true meat of writing, the soul.
Matthew Arnold said “Produce, produce, produce, for I tell you, the night is coming!” Georges Simenon must have taken that advice! Allegedly he lost count of the number of lovers he had, but in ten years as a young man he wrote 200 pulp novels and countless short stories before settling down to write the Inspector Maigret series. It seems Simenon was slowing up by then. In the period 1931-1972 he averaged a mere two-and-a-half novels a year. Perhaps those lovers were keeping him busy.
The beat writers like Jack Kerouac wrote quickly, unplanned, spontaneously. Sometimes it was raw, some critics thought too raw, but works like Visions of Cody; Doctor Sax; Maggie Cassidy; Pic, and The Subterraneans still grace our bookshelves alongside Kerouac’s classic On the Road. Allen Ginsberg’s HOWL, utterly honest, rushed from the gut, was so stunning it exploded on to the market and still sells steadily today.
John Creasey wrote a dizzy 562 books under 28 pseudonyms. Were they classy literature? Well, no, but most of us would die to produce such slick, readable, interesting stories. With such an output, Creasey barely took breath writing 10,000 words a day, and it has been said, he wrote formulaically and often riddled his work with clichés. Awful, yes? Well, he sold eighty million books worldwide and has books on HRF Keating’s list of the 100 best-ever crime novels. Some failure! And by the way, before selling his first book, Creasey had 743, yes seven HUNDRED and forty-three rejection slips.
Prolificity doesn’t mean lack of quality, nor need writing fast preclude art.
Joyce Carol Oates doyen of the short-story in the US has written 45 novels, 9 non-fiction books, 8 books of poetry and 26 collections of shorts in a career only just about to reach its fortieth year. J G Ballard wrote 26 novels as well as over a hundred superb short stories; in twenty years Harlan Ellison wrote forty-two books, three dozen scripts, and eleven hundred short works.
Boot Campers are required to produce a short-story every two weeks. When we first started, an incredible six years ago, one writer argued that it was impossible to produce a decent story in six months. Her most prolific year had produced three unsold stories. A year later she won a first prize of $2,000 for a "two-week" Boot Camp story.
It can be done. Working hard and under pressure, can, in and of itself, produce a special kind of mental energy, a stirring of the deep juices, a buzz, a rush to make more words appear. No, not every story is destined for The New Yorker, but then how many are when you plod out two or three a year?
When we set goals, tough, almost impossible goals, the goal itself can be a motivator, the mere finishing of a draft a reward in itself. Simply doing can bring its own rewards and doing it intensely changes the way we think and see the world. Writing intensely we become fired up, magnetic, eager, and it’s as if the world knows we are a vessel. Stories come to us. Ideas fly in the window. It’s tiring but it’s exhilarating, and the words just keep coming!
And it really, really can be art. Ginsberg said, “Ageless art has always been spontaneous. Ozymandias, Shelley’s poem about time and eternity, was written in ten minutes as an exercise to show that he could do it right.
The idea that spontaneity is something that’s new-fangled, or the abstract expression of strange modern ideas is ridiculous. It’s the oldest thing in poetics, just like vocalisation is older than print.”
So, I argue, writing quickly, can unleash energies and power you didn’t know you had. But on top of this, fast, spontaneous writing unleashes an original, unfettered, closer-to-the-truth you, the magical, the surprising, the special, the art that’s in us all.
Saroyan said that when he was seized by a story he needed to write it quickly. If he didn’t do it there and then, it might leave him. He took less than a week to write each of his plays. In an interview he smiled when describing a play The Paris Comedy he wrote for Darryl Zanuck. “I took thirteen days because there was so much partying going on at that time.”
Boot Campers are put under pressure, not merely to write, but to read and critique other stories. It’s an impossible job and some fall away. So why volunteer for such pressure? Saroyan: “Sometimes, without pressure, work doesn’t get done at all. You abandon most readily those works which have no destination other than your own wishes. There’s no editor or producer standing there waiting to make you see a job through. In fact many writers are held back by setting themselves too-high standards. They get a novel one-third done and give up because they think it’s not good enough.”
We should welcome pressure, set ourselves goals, achieve those goals. We should write every day in a fervour, a fever, and grow that self-awareness, that comes from writing all the time. We don’t write all the time? Yes we do. When we are not writing we are still writers, looking, thinking, smelling, sucking in the world, and in the lesser moments (between those glorious hard-working, passionate spurts) we should live off the magical, inspired, near-ecstatic times when we are typing.
To access the demons, the angels, the truth, the real core of being, we must have lust, utter, racing passion. Quicker, quicker, deeper, hotter.
Tom Robbins said, “Get yourself into that extreme state of being next to madness. You should always write with an erection, even if you are a woman.”
A good story, a great story, when it comes, is an outpouring of the soul. The connection is made, the dam is breached. Stop and the connection will be broken, the dam repaired. James Dickey the poet and also author of the superb Deliverance talked of his seventeen hour stretches at the typewriter.
“I want to go full blast towards the light at the end of the tunnel. I want to get there. Sure, when I’ve got there I may sit on what I’ve got or fiddle with it, but if the essential of it is out, all is down on paper, wow is that a great feeling. When you’re writing like that you know the work has the potential of being good right the way through.
“With luck and all that work, you can get the thing to where no word can be changed without diminishing the piece. When you sense this opening, this situation, you have to push. You want to get there because you know it, smell it. It can be done.”
Dylan Thomas may have spent days, weeks, worrying over the placement of a comma, but great songs have been conceived and written in ten minutes, just like Ozymandias. Wonderful stories have not existed at breakfast and been part of our literary history by tea-time. Try it. Let rip, change. Lock the doors, turn up the music, rock the house and write, write, write! Unleash!
*
Two hours ago, this article didn’t exist. My target of fourteen pieces in forty-two days was still to be achieved. I have six more days to go and this, my fourteenth piece is done. Now tell me dear, reader, what are you reading?
1,500 words
Postscript.
When I wrote these pieces I was under merciless attack on a daily basis. I was managing to run Boot Camp (a 25-Hour a day job) and was running another ten writers trying out the BC system. And of course, I had the kids to look after.
I wrote:
Topless Beach
Dee, a Dancer, Too Blue
There Was a Time
From the Tenth to the Eleventh on the occasion of my Passing
Seven Hills, a Postmen, Silly Money
Miguel Who Cuts Down Trees
Officiate
Ugly
Jacob Perry
Admin
Crash
Edwin Sly's Last Letter
Marmalade Dear?
Night Out
A Bad Man Tapping
Judgement Day
How to Steal Stories
The Novice Screenwriter Refuses to Conform
Quick! Quick!
There are two first prizes in there, a $200 second prize, three articles that placed twice and one that placed once. In all 16 publications. Cadenza, The New Writer, Southern Ocean Review, The Alsop Review, The Internet Writers Journal... There are three unpublished pieces which I still rate in my best work and will win a prize somewhere. IMO it's not difficult to write a 1,500 worder a day, if that's where you want to write. Waiting for the muse is nonsense. The muse lives inside every one of us and is tempted out by work.
Friday Morning
I can't come now I'm doin me apples
That Tony, face-to-face, what a gent!
Anyone seen my 72 Wild swans
I'll swing fer yer I will
Married and not even pregnant, there's posh for you
A fortnight of Mondays
Always a shining light, now just shining lights
Modern Pottery
A Wild Justice
As I walked out that morning
I wanted to buy a pair of stags but they were two deer
Zombies and Nazis
I was Kaiser Bill's Batman
A stitch in time saves nine
Never a borrower or a lender be
She was dead pretty she was
OR
What spires, what farms are those?
They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young
I know that I shall meet my fate, somewhere among the clouds above
I remember the rooms that have had their part in the steady slowing down of the heart
The work of hunters is another thing
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
Let the boys bring flowers in last year's newspapers
Here, now, we forget eqach other and ourselves
I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox
A snake came to my water-trough
While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity
it is not the acquisition of any one thing
I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach
On every thought I have the countless shadows fall
That Tony, face-to-face, what a gent!
Anyone seen my 72 Wild swans
I'll swing fer yer I will
Married and not even pregnant, there's posh for you
A fortnight of Mondays
Always a shining light, now just shining lights
Modern Pottery
A Wild Justice
As I walked out that morning
I wanted to buy a pair of stags but they were two deer
Zombies and Nazis
I was Kaiser Bill's Batman
A stitch in time saves nine
Never a borrower or a lender be
She was dead pretty she was
OR
What spires, what farms are those?
They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young
I know that I shall meet my fate, somewhere among the clouds above
I remember the rooms that have had their part in the steady slowing down of the heart
The work of hunters is another thing
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
Let the boys bring flowers in last year's newspapers
Here, now, we forget eqach other and ourselves
I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox
A snake came to my water-trough
While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity
it is not the acquisition of any one thing
I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach
On every thought I have the countless shadows fall
Thursday, 10 May 2007
Prompts for 22:00
Love is a thin goat staked out in a clearing
Seeing you makes me want to lift up my top
You are the bread and the knife, I'm butter
In Raglan Lane, in the gentle rain, I saw love again
Words plucked out of the air
Perhaps you will tire of me, says my love
If I was not myself, I would be somebody else
like fruit, like shining fruit
There but for the clutch of luck, go I
I can't get it out of my mind, out of my mind
Yes, I can hear. It hurts
Anyone who touched her would be sorry
I would never recommend a shallow stream
I'd rest a bit, and then I would muddle around
The ferryman lay drunk in his boat
Who are you? asks my mother
All winter, your brute shoulders
Ther will be dying, there will be dying
You always wore brown
Our hats were extremely soft
I decide to keep my penis on, but disregard the rest
The radio station is filled with goats and chickens
Seeing you makes me want to lift up my top
You are the bread and the knife, I'm butter
In Raglan Lane, in the gentle rain, I saw love again
Words plucked out of the air
Perhaps you will tire of me, says my love
If I was not myself, I would be somebody else
like fruit, like shining fruit
There but for the clutch of luck, go I
I can't get it out of my mind, out of my mind
Yes, I can hear. It hurts
Anyone who touched her would be sorry
I would never recommend a shallow stream
I'd rest a bit, and then I would muddle around
The ferryman lay drunk in his boat
Who are you? asks my mother
All winter, your brute shoulders
Ther will be dying, there will be dying
You always wore brown
Our hats were extremely soft
I decide to keep my penis on, but disregard the rest
The radio station is filled with goats and chickens
Dinner's Ready!
01,375 Words May 01 Tuesday
01,023 Words May 02 Wednesday (Flash & Poem)
01,157 Words May 03 Thursday (Long Poem etc)
01,052 Words May 04 Friday
01,000 Words May 04 Friday (EDIT, article drafted 15:49)
00,600 Words May 05-06 (Two Poems)
02,621 Words May 08 (Article)
00,738 Words May 08 (Flash)
00,988 Words May 09 (Flash)
01,227 Words May 10 (Story)
11,781 Words Total 1,781 Words ahead of schedule
01,023 Words May 02 Wednesday (Flash & Poem)
01,157 Words May 03 Thursday (Long Poem etc)
01,052 Words May 04 Friday
01,000 Words May 04 Friday (EDIT, article drafted 15:49)
00,600 Words May 05-06 (Two Poems)
02,621 Words May 08 (Article)
00,738 Words May 08 (Flash)
00,988 Words May 09 (Flash)
01,227 Words May 10 (Story)
11,781 Words Total 1,781 Words ahead of schedule
20+ Prompts at 6PM
You weren't well or really ill yet either
I loved it then, and I still love it now.
Yep…looks like a tank to me Corporal
I didn't doubt for a moment you were dead
Kozinsky rumpled his brow
If you are lucky in this life you will get to help your enemy
The telescope could zoom to an object from a mile away
The murderer had been injecting her remorselessly
But this doesn’t make sense.
The washing sways on the line, sparrows sing
here I am in my garden laughing
I thought they had no goddamn tanks anymore.
Snow is falling on the boulevard
The Sergeant retorted thoughtfully.
The crack of opening bed-sheets, starch in the nostrils
He sounded like a grizzly bear with a stinking hangover.
Let us go then, you and I
Sighing and moving the reflective goggles, hanging limply around his neck like misplaced adjectives
Joe Davis, eight-five, winters old, still alive
The awesome glare of the desert sun immediately dulled to a pleasant orange hue
To be in the presence of such a great writer
Your protagonist is not at home right now
We are talking of the great things
You were the inspiration
A man should clear a space for himself
The fox pushes on, softly, blindly
I loved it then, and I still love it now.
Yep…looks like a tank to me Corporal
I didn't doubt for a moment you were dead
Kozinsky rumpled his brow
If you are lucky in this life you will get to help your enemy
The telescope could zoom to an object from a mile away
The murderer had been injecting her remorselessly
But this doesn’t make sense.
The washing sways on the line, sparrows sing
here I am in my garden laughing
I thought they had no goddamn tanks anymore.
Snow is falling on the boulevard
The Sergeant retorted thoughtfully.
The crack of opening bed-sheets, starch in the nostrils
He sounded like a grizzly bear with a stinking hangover.
Let us go then, you and I
Sighing and moving the reflective goggles, hanging limply around his neck like misplaced adjectives
Joe Davis, eight-five, winters old, still alive
The awesome glare of the desert sun immediately dulled to a pleasant orange hue
To be in the presence of such a great writer
Your protagonist is not at home right now
We are talking of the great things
You were the inspiration
A man should clear a space for himself
The fox pushes on, softly, blindly
Thursday, Two Flash Blasts. 18:00 and 22:00
For those so inclined
two sets of prompts tonight
18:00
22:00
alx
two sets of prompts tonight
18:00
22:00
alx
Thursday Prompts
Read More Light! More Light!
by Anthony Hecht
here the first line shown is actually the dedication.
The first line proper begins "Composed in the Tower"
http://plagiarist.com/poetry/2403/
Hecht is here on Wilkipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Hecht
and here
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/hecht/hecht.htm
and here are some more Hecht poems
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/hecht/onlinepoems.htm
and here
http://www.powells.com/review/2001_09_06.html
by Anthony Hecht
here the first line shown is actually the dedication.
The first line proper begins "Composed in the Tower"
http://plagiarist.com/poetry/2403/
Hecht is here on Wilkipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Hecht
and here
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/hecht/hecht.htm
and here are some more Hecht poems
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/hecht/onlinepoems.htm
and here
http://www.powells.com/review/2001_09_06.html
Wednesday, 9 May 2007
Get Yer Retaliation in First
Thursday's Article Posted Early
01,375 Words May 01 Tuesday
01,023 Words May 02 Wednesday (Flash & Poem)
01,157 Words May 03 Thursday (Long Poem etc)
01,052 Words May 04 Friday
01,000 Words May 04 Friday (EDIT, article drafted 15:49)
00,600 Words May 05-06 (Two Poems)
02,621 Words May 08 (Article)
00,738 Words May 08 (Flash)
00,988 Words May 09 (Flash)
02,800 Words May 10 (Article)
13,354 Words Total 3,544 Words ahead of schedule
01,375 Words May 01 Tuesday
01,023 Words May 02 Wednesday (Flash & Poem)
01,157 Words May 03 Thursday (Long Poem etc)
01,052 Words May 04 Friday
01,000 Words May 04 Friday (EDIT, article drafted 15:49)
00,600 Words May 05-06 (Two Poems)
02,621 Words May 08 (Article)
00,738 Words May 08 (Flash)
00,988 Words May 09 (Flash)
02,800 Words May 10 (Article)
13,354 Words Total 3,544 Words ahead of schedule
Adjectives: Descriptors & Modifiers
There are an awful lot of writers, sometimes decent, or even good writers, who simply don't know how they do it. Until recently that was how I described my relationship with poetry. Occasionally I could write a publishable poem, once I won a poetry competition, but what I did, how I did it, that was almost a total mystery to me.
If I felt a poem was not quite right and I tinkered, I was just as likely to ruin that poem as improve it. I could read a famous, "great" poem and think it nothing, or read a poem, think it wonderful and then be told it was crap, and sometimes shown WHY it was crap.
Because I had a reasonable facility with the English language, and some sensibility, and (to some extent) a writer's soul, it was possible for me to sometimes stumble into a poem. Not a great poem but OK, in a minor-minor poet way of things.
The above is just to make the point that being published means SQUAT in terms of being able to teach. I have heard the most appalling tripe come from the mouths of "famous authors". It's such a shame that certain authors cannot simply admit they are lucky, that they work in half-light, feeling their way.
Recently I have been discussing whether there are "rules" in writing. One such "rule" often cited (ie misrepresented) is the idea of "no adjectives" or "adjectives are bad" (ditto adverbs).
I say misrepresented because what is usually said is not "no adjectives" but no unnecessary adjectives. Second, the anti-adjective storm-troopers (of which I am one) make the point that when you modify a noun it's often because the noun you chose initially was too vague, or generic.
Quiet big = big
Very big = huge
Extremely big = gigantic
Unbelievably big = he was so big he had an oil-tanker in his bath.
Beginning and intermediate writers make many mistakes, and those mistakes are so often repeated that creative writing tutors have posited the opposite to those mistakes phrased as don't, shouldn't and (maybe) never.
95% of the time these so-called "rigid statements" are followed by explanations, exceptions, codicils, but the loopy-loo "rule-bashers" choose to ignore these facts and argue headlines. Worse, the 95% of beginners who act like total idiots never read past the first line or two and they very soon are able to argue (incorrectly) that they were told something as if it was an absolute law.
Let me see if I can restate the law in a more complete way.
Modifiers, that is adjectives modifying a noun, or adverbs modifying the meaning of a verb, or adverbs modifying an adjective are often unnecessary. These modifiers often (but not always) result from a week choice of core word (a weak noun or a weak verb or a less than specific adjective) and thus result in "more words to describe the same things or events" which almost always but NOT always, results in inferior writing, baggier, less powerful, less concise, more ordinary. There MAY be cases where a good writer, after deliberation, chooses the imprecise noun with added adjective, or the thin verb with additional adverb for clarity. This may be to illustrate character, to create emphasis, or a certain rhythm, to slow down or speed up a passage, but in general, know this. Beginners always use far too many adverbs and adjectives, often use weak nouns and verbs. When accomplished writers do this, they realize they are doing it and do so because they are thinking at an even higher level. Your rule, therefore is: Scan your work ruthlessly for EVERY modifier and where there is one ask, "Is the noun the best noun, is the verb the best verb?" Then ask, "IF I replaced the noun-verb with a more encompassing one (and thus lost the modifier) would the piece be improved or damaged?"
Feel Better Now?
One particular writer I'm thinking of (chicklit) has argued that this particular rule is nonsense and that "If you simply go and read a lot of good books you'll see they are PACKED with adjectives and adverbs."
Well, maybe, but please remember that a great deal of published work is crap (eg: 95% of chicklit, 99.999% of womag.)
But the next question is this. IS SHE RIGHT?
I decided to go and check. Because I am a lazy bastard I thought I would try Cuckoo by Alex Keegan. Not because I think it's a great book. I wrote it FIFTEEN years ago when I was a mere stripling and still didn't understand words like "modifer" and "theme" and "POV" who I thought was a Russian.
Before we continue, some terminology. I don't know if there are correct, conventional words but I will call adjective that modify an unspecific noun "modifier-adjectives". But where adjectives expand an understanding and there is no natural condensation of the word-pairing I will call these descriptor-adjectives or meaning-expanding adjectives.
Here's the start of Cuckoo. This may not be the printed version. It's the one on my PC.
Cold Monday morning, six o'clock. November. Brighton sea front had to be grey, windswept and damp. It was, but as far as Caz Flood was concerned, it was the only place, the perfect place to be. Yesterday she had been a beat copper, a woodentop, today she was a DC, a detective constable, and nothing, but absolutely nothing, could stop her now.
She sat on the stairs in white bikini briefs, her eyes flashing. Today! Yes! And now four quick miles to run before breakfast! She pulled on a pair of cushioned white socks and knee length Lycra leggings, then her club shirt, bright enough to hail a passing ship, and finally she slipped into a pair of lightweight Asics trainers before creeping down the stairs and out the door. At the last moment she grabbed a pair of white cotton running gloves, her only concession to the day.
Her flat was in a side street, an easy downhill to the front. She moved lightly on the balls of her feet, almost a dancer as she jogged towards the sea. The cold had hit her like a fist in the face when she opened the door, but already she was sharp and excited, the wind making her more alive, her face lit up by its edge. She wore no bra the one thing running cost her was her boobs and she could feel her skin bristling as her body heat began to rise. In a minute she wouldn't feel the cold and in two more she would be warm enough to push for two quick miles. She felt glorious. Finally, but definitely, her world had taken shape. It had taken her six hard years since university, but this was where she had aimed to be, in her own place, earning decent money, fit, independent, in the right job and now, moving up.
She ran east, towards the old Dolphinarium, passing bay windowed guest houses, increasing her leg speed until she was running at six minutes a mile. On Tuesdays and Thursdays she did the middle part of her run the hard way, on the shingle beach for strength, but today she could glory in speed. The street lights were still on and would be for another ten minutes, but their yellow wash was already fading in the red orange early morning light breaking over the rooftops.
At the Dolphinarium she crossed the road, pushing up the gentle hill for two minutes before turning back. A few cars were out now, cruising like animals on the dewed road, but she was running very hard, straight along the front, and hardly saw them. A panda car rolled by slowly, tooted once, then kept pace with her. She ignored it until she reached her mile marker, then turned her head as she slowed. She was grinning, hardly out of breath as she said good morning. The driver was a ten year PC just starting to get fat. He spoke, saying that her tights fitted very well. Smiling at him with near perfect teeth, she told him to piss off.
“Oh dear, above us mortals now are we, Detective?” the driver said.
“No, Harry,” she said, “just the ones who can't take no for an answer!”
His radio was squawking and he grinned, “OK, Blondie, have a good one anyway.” He pulled away quickly. She could see him answering the call as he U turned back towards town.
“This is a great job,” she thought, “even if nobody on the force knows what a new man is!”
Cold Monday morning, six o'clock. November. Brighton sea front had to be grey, windswept and damp. It was, but as far as Caz Flood was concerned, it was the only place, the perfect place to be. Yesterday she had been a beat copper, a woodentop, today she was a DC, a detective constable, and nothing, but absolutely nothing, could stop her now.
"Morning" is unspecific while at the same time specific. We all understand "morning". But here we add "cold". Yes its an adjective, but there is no specific noun meaning "cold-morning" so cold here is a descriptor-adjective expanding meaning. But it is not there because the author did not use a good noun.
Monday is descriptive. If there were specific words for Monday-morning, Tuesday-morning (eg Monmorn, Tuemorn) then would you not, reader, ask why I didn't say Cold MonMorn?
Grey, windswept, damp. Again these are descriptor adjectives. Here they expand our vision of Brighton sea-front (and the rhythms and emphases matter) but they are not there because the author was weak.
ONLY place? Perhaps there's a single noun meaning "only place". If there is, it MIGHT be better here. Ditto "perfect" in "perfect place". But here, it's clear that only place, perfect place are used as escalating emphasis and at least partly represent the thought patterns and attitudes (and maybe voice) of the main character.
BEAT copper. Here "beat" expands and explains. "Copper" (policeman) might be read as detective, traffic officer, scene-of-crimes, but "beat-copper" is really a double-barreled noun.
ABSOLUTELY nothing? For one thing, nothing is nothing and there is technically, no difference between "nothing" and "absolutely nothing". But the difference is again an escalation of emphasis and a reflection oc character, thought-patterns and speech-patterns.
So how many unnecessary modifiers were there?
She sat on the stairs in white bikini briefs, her eyes flashing. Today! Yes! And now four quick miles to run before breakfast! She pulled on a pair of cushioned white socks and knee length Lycra leggings, then her club shirt, bright enough to hail a passing ship, and finally she slipped into a pair of lightweight Asics trainers before creeping down the stairs and out the door. At the last moment she grabbed a pair of white cotton running gloves, her only concession to the day.
White is a descriptor.
Four quick miles (incorrect English) is (a) a shorthand for "four miles run quickly" and (b) a reflection of runner-speak, ie characterization.
CUSHIONED WHITE socks is an expansion of socks, and again there is no single noun that captures that feeling. The adjectives also stretch out the "time required to dress" and focus on the character.
Knee-length Lycra Leggings.
Again descriptors, expanding our understanding because there are no commonly-known words (nouns) for this apparel.
CLUB shirt. A descriptor but also useful as it expands character. We know she is a club runner.
Lightweight Asics, specifics, added knowledge rather than modification of a weak noun. I could have used "Asics racers" but would lose a large proportion of the readership. Lightweight racers indicate a more serious runner, by the way, thus expanding character.
WHITE COTTON running gloves. Specifics and expansion rather than modifiers required because the noun was pathetic.
Her flat was in a side street, an easy downhill to the front. She moved lightly on the balls of her feet, almost a dancer as she jogged towards the sea. The cold had hit her like a fist in the face when she opened the door, but already she was sharp and excited, the wind making her more alive, her face lit up by its edge. She wore no bra the one thing running cost her was her boobs and she could feel her skin bristling as her body heat began to rise. In a minute she wouldn't feel the cold and in two more she would be warm enough to push for two quick miles. She felt glorious. Finally, but definitely, her world had taken shape. It had taken her six hard years since university, but this was where she had aimed to be, in her own place, earning decent money, fit, independent, in the right job and now, moving up.
EASY downhill. This is interesting because the adjective here barely refers to the street. It has more to do with Caz's attitude, or runner-speak. Thus it's a shorthand for something like: The side-street sloped gently and was easy to run up or down without expending too much effort.
LIGHTLY on the balls of her feet. Is there a more succinct way of saying this? Jogged is awful as is skipped, and "tip-toed" is wrong. Again, the core word is simply not available. Note, also, the rhythms.
BUT DEFINITELY seems to modify finally. Yes it does but its purpose is, once again, an escalation of emphasis, the "voice" of the opening.
SIX HARD years. This is not a modifier of "years". Instead it's another condensation of something ike "six years where she had to work hard to.."
She ran east, towards the old Dolphinarium, passing bay windowed guest houses, increasing her leg speed until she was running at six minutes a mile. On Tuesdays and Thursdays she did the middle part of her run the hard way, on the shingle beach for strength, but today she could glory in speed. The street lights were still on and would be for another ten minutes, but their yellow wash was already fading in the red orange early morning light breaking over the rooftops.
East, a descriptor/expander
Bay-windowed, ditto, and adds texture.
Middle, absolutely necessary word to isolate a specific part of the run
STILL on, indicates that it's light and they could have gone off. Is there another way to say this without a lot more words?
Yellow is a descriptor, yellow wash is fresh.
Red-Orange Early (morning light) is once again an expansion, a descriptor phrase which adds interest and texture.
At the Dolphinarium she crossed the road, pushing up the gentle hill for two minutes before turning back. A few cars were out now, cruising like animals on the dewed road, but she was running very hard, straight along the front, and hardly saw them. A panda car rolled by slowly, tooted once, then kept pace with her. She ignored it until she reached her mile marker, then turned her head as she slowed. She was grinning, hardly out of breath as she said good morning. The driver was a ten year PC just starting to get fat. He spoke, saying that her tights fitted very well. Smiling at him with near perfect teeth, she told him to piss off.
Gentle is like the word "easy" described earlier, a runner-thing.
Dewed road. Please write and tell me if there's a noun for road-slightly-wet
Hardly here is another shorthand. It does not mean Caz didn't see them, but that she paid little attention.
Rolled by SLOWLY.
This is one place where a verb "rolled" might be replaced by "idled" or "cruised" but here the intention was a car virtually out of gear, just rolling, slowly.
NEAR-PERFECT teeth is again, an expansion, not a weak modifier because the writer chose a lousy noun.
“Oh dear, above us mortals now are we, Detective?” the driver said.
“No, Harry,” she said, “just the ones who can't take no for an answer!”
His radio was squawking and he grinned, “OK, Blondie, have a good one anyway.” He pulled away quickly. She could see him answering the call as he U turned back towards town.
“This is a great job,” she thought, “even if nobody on the force knows what a new man is!”
pulled away QUICKLY… that is the car pulled away quickly, or shot off. There may be a verb for what I felt happened here, a sharp pull-away but not screaming wheels and burning rubber, more CONTROL.
GREAT job here reflects Caz actually thinking. If there was a noun to exactly represent this concept she would still say "Great Job"
New Man is really a composite noun.
So the author suggested that "any book" would be packed with modifiers (Oh no, you don't mean she meant NECESSARY ADJECTIVES, do you?) and it seems that failed at the very first check (more will follow)
If I felt a poem was not quite right and I tinkered, I was just as likely to ruin that poem as improve it. I could read a famous, "great" poem and think it nothing, or read a poem, think it wonderful and then be told it was crap, and sometimes shown WHY it was crap.
Because I had a reasonable facility with the English language, and some sensibility, and (to some extent) a writer's soul, it was possible for me to sometimes stumble into a poem. Not a great poem but OK, in a minor-minor poet way of things.
The above is just to make the point that being published means SQUAT in terms of being able to teach. I have heard the most appalling tripe come from the mouths of "famous authors". It's such a shame that certain authors cannot simply admit they are lucky, that they work in half-light, feeling their way.
Recently I have been discussing whether there are "rules" in writing. One such "rule" often cited (ie misrepresented) is the idea of "no adjectives" or "adjectives are bad" (ditto adverbs).
I say misrepresented because what is usually said is not "no adjectives" but no unnecessary adjectives. Second, the anti-adjective storm-troopers (of which I am one) make the point that when you modify a noun it's often because the noun you chose initially was too vague, or generic.
Quiet big = big
Very big = huge
Extremely big = gigantic
Unbelievably big = he was so big he had an oil-tanker in his bath.
Beginning and intermediate writers make many mistakes, and those mistakes are so often repeated that creative writing tutors have posited the opposite to those mistakes phrased as don't, shouldn't and (maybe) never.
95% of the time these so-called "rigid statements" are followed by explanations, exceptions, codicils, but the loopy-loo "rule-bashers" choose to ignore these facts and argue headlines. Worse, the 95% of beginners who act like total idiots never read past the first line or two and they very soon are able to argue (incorrectly) that they were told something as if it was an absolute law.
Let me see if I can restate the law in a more complete way.
Modifiers, that is adjectives modifying a noun, or adverbs modifying the meaning of a verb, or adverbs modifying an adjective are often unnecessary. These modifiers often (but not always) result from a week choice of core word (a weak noun or a weak verb or a less than specific adjective) and thus result in "more words to describe the same things or events" which almost always but NOT always, results in inferior writing, baggier, less powerful, less concise, more ordinary. There MAY be cases where a good writer, after deliberation, chooses the imprecise noun with added adjective, or the thin verb with additional adverb for clarity. This may be to illustrate character, to create emphasis, or a certain rhythm, to slow down or speed up a passage, but in general, know this. Beginners always use far too many adverbs and adjectives, often use weak nouns and verbs. When accomplished writers do this, they realize they are doing it and do so because they are thinking at an even higher level. Your rule, therefore is: Scan your work ruthlessly for EVERY modifier and where there is one ask, "Is the noun the best noun, is the verb the best verb?" Then ask, "IF I replaced the noun-verb with a more encompassing one (and thus lost the modifier) would the piece be improved or damaged?"
Feel Better Now?
One particular writer I'm thinking of (chicklit) has argued that this particular rule is nonsense and that "If you simply go and read a lot of good books you'll see they are PACKED with adjectives and adverbs."
Well, maybe, but please remember that a great deal of published work is crap (eg: 95% of chicklit, 99.999% of womag.)
But the next question is this. IS SHE RIGHT?
I decided to go and check. Because I am a lazy bastard I thought I would try Cuckoo by Alex Keegan. Not because I think it's a great book. I wrote it FIFTEEN years ago when I was a mere stripling and still didn't understand words like "modifer" and "theme" and "POV" who I thought was a Russian.
Before we continue, some terminology. I don't know if there are correct, conventional words but I will call adjective that modify an unspecific noun "modifier-adjectives". But where adjectives expand an understanding and there is no natural condensation of the word-pairing I will call these descriptor-adjectives or meaning-expanding adjectives.
Here's the start of Cuckoo. This may not be the printed version. It's the one on my PC.
Cold Monday morning, six o'clock. November. Brighton sea front had to be grey, windswept and damp. It was, but as far as Caz Flood was concerned, it was the only place, the perfect place to be. Yesterday she had been a beat copper, a woodentop, today she was a DC, a detective constable, and nothing, but absolutely nothing, could stop her now.
She sat on the stairs in white bikini briefs, her eyes flashing. Today! Yes! And now four quick miles to run before breakfast! She pulled on a pair of cushioned white socks and knee length Lycra leggings, then her club shirt, bright enough to hail a passing ship, and finally she slipped into a pair of lightweight Asics trainers before creeping down the stairs and out the door. At the last moment she grabbed a pair of white cotton running gloves, her only concession to the day.
Her flat was in a side street, an easy downhill to the front. She moved lightly on the balls of her feet, almost a dancer as she jogged towards the sea. The cold had hit her like a fist in the face when she opened the door, but already she was sharp and excited, the wind making her more alive, her face lit up by its edge. She wore no bra the one thing running cost her was her boobs and she could feel her skin bristling as her body heat began to rise. In a minute she wouldn't feel the cold and in two more she would be warm enough to push for two quick miles. She felt glorious. Finally, but definitely, her world had taken shape. It had taken her six hard years since university, but this was where she had aimed to be, in her own place, earning decent money, fit, independent, in the right job and now, moving up.
She ran east, towards the old Dolphinarium, passing bay windowed guest houses, increasing her leg speed until she was running at six minutes a mile. On Tuesdays and Thursdays she did the middle part of her run the hard way, on the shingle beach for strength, but today she could glory in speed. The street lights were still on and would be for another ten minutes, but their yellow wash was already fading in the red orange early morning light breaking over the rooftops.
At the Dolphinarium she crossed the road, pushing up the gentle hill for two minutes before turning back. A few cars were out now, cruising like animals on the dewed road, but she was running very hard, straight along the front, and hardly saw them. A panda car rolled by slowly, tooted once, then kept pace with her. She ignored it until she reached her mile marker, then turned her head as she slowed. She was grinning, hardly out of breath as she said good morning. The driver was a ten year PC just starting to get fat. He spoke, saying that her tights fitted very well. Smiling at him with near perfect teeth, she told him to piss off.
“Oh dear, above us mortals now are we, Detective?” the driver said.
“No, Harry,” she said, “just the ones who can't take no for an answer!”
His radio was squawking and he grinned, “OK, Blondie, have a good one anyway.” He pulled away quickly. She could see him answering the call as he U turned back towards town.
“This is a great job,” she thought, “even if nobody on the force knows what a new man is!”
Cold Monday morning, six o'clock. November. Brighton sea front had to be grey, windswept and damp. It was, but as far as Caz Flood was concerned, it was the only place, the perfect place to be. Yesterday she had been a beat copper, a woodentop, today she was a DC, a detective constable, and nothing, but absolutely nothing, could stop her now.
"Morning" is unspecific while at the same time specific. We all understand "morning". But here we add "cold". Yes its an adjective, but there is no specific noun meaning "cold-morning" so cold here is a descriptor-adjective expanding meaning. But it is not there because the author did not use a good noun.
Monday is descriptive. If there were specific words for Monday-morning, Tuesday-morning (eg Monmorn, Tuemorn) then would you not, reader, ask why I didn't say Cold MonMorn?
Grey, windswept, damp. Again these are descriptor adjectives. Here they expand our vision of Brighton sea-front (and the rhythms and emphases matter) but they are not there because the author was weak.
ONLY place? Perhaps there's a single noun meaning "only place". If there is, it MIGHT be better here. Ditto "perfect" in "perfect place". But here, it's clear that only place, perfect place are used as escalating emphasis and at least partly represent the thought patterns and attitudes (and maybe voice) of the main character.
BEAT copper. Here "beat" expands and explains. "Copper" (policeman) might be read as detective, traffic officer, scene-of-crimes, but "beat-copper" is really a double-barreled noun.
ABSOLUTELY nothing? For one thing, nothing is nothing and there is technically, no difference between "nothing" and "absolutely nothing". But the difference is again an escalation of emphasis and a reflection oc character, thought-patterns and speech-patterns.
So how many unnecessary modifiers were there?
She sat on the stairs in white bikini briefs, her eyes flashing. Today! Yes! And now four quick miles to run before breakfast! She pulled on a pair of cushioned white socks and knee length Lycra leggings, then her club shirt, bright enough to hail a passing ship, and finally she slipped into a pair of lightweight Asics trainers before creeping down the stairs and out the door. At the last moment she grabbed a pair of white cotton running gloves, her only concession to the day.
White is a descriptor.
Four quick miles (incorrect English) is (a) a shorthand for "four miles run quickly" and (b) a reflection of runner-speak, ie characterization.
CUSHIONED WHITE socks is an expansion of socks, and again there is no single noun that captures that feeling. The adjectives also stretch out the "time required to dress" and focus on the character.
Knee-length Lycra Leggings.
Again descriptors, expanding our understanding because there are no commonly-known words (nouns) for this apparel.
CLUB shirt. A descriptor but also useful as it expands character. We know she is a club runner.
Lightweight Asics, specifics, added knowledge rather than modification of a weak noun. I could have used "Asics racers" but would lose a large proportion of the readership. Lightweight racers indicate a more serious runner, by the way, thus expanding character.
WHITE COTTON running gloves. Specifics and expansion rather than modifiers required because the noun was pathetic.
Her flat was in a side street, an easy downhill to the front. She moved lightly on the balls of her feet, almost a dancer as she jogged towards the sea. The cold had hit her like a fist in the face when she opened the door, but already she was sharp and excited, the wind making her more alive, her face lit up by its edge. She wore no bra the one thing running cost her was her boobs and she could feel her skin bristling as her body heat began to rise. In a minute she wouldn't feel the cold and in two more she would be warm enough to push for two quick miles. She felt glorious. Finally, but definitely, her world had taken shape. It had taken her six hard years since university, but this was where she had aimed to be, in her own place, earning decent money, fit, independent, in the right job and now, moving up.
EASY downhill. This is interesting because the adjective here barely refers to the street. It has more to do with Caz's attitude, or runner-speak. Thus it's a shorthand for something like: The side-street sloped gently and was easy to run up or down without expending too much effort.
LIGHTLY on the balls of her feet. Is there a more succinct way of saying this? Jogged is awful as is skipped, and "tip-toed" is wrong. Again, the core word is simply not available. Note, also, the rhythms.
BUT DEFINITELY seems to modify finally. Yes it does but its purpose is, once again, an escalation of emphasis, the "voice" of the opening.
SIX HARD years. This is not a modifier of "years". Instead it's another condensation of something ike "six years where she had to work hard to.."
She ran east, towards the old Dolphinarium, passing bay windowed guest houses, increasing her leg speed until she was running at six minutes a mile. On Tuesdays and Thursdays she did the middle part of her run the hard way, on the shingle beach for strength, but today she could glory in speed. The street lights were still on and would be for another ten minutes, but their yellow wash was already fading in the red orange early morning light breaking over the rooftops.
East, a descriptor/expander
Bay-windowed, ditto, and adds texture.
Middle, absolutely necessary word to isolate a specific part of the run
STILL on, indicates that it's light and they could have gone off. Is there another way to say this without a lot more words?
Yellow is a descriptor, yellow wash is fresh.
Red-Orange Early (morning light) is once again an expansion, a descriptor phrase which adds interest and texture.
At the Dolphinarium she crossed the road, pushing up the gentle hill for two minutes before turning back. A few cars were out now, cruising like animals on the dewed road, but she was running very hard, straight along the front, and hardly saw them. A panda car rolled by slowly, tooted once, then kept pace with her. She ignored it until she reached her mile marker, then turned her head as she slowed. She was grinning, hardly out of breath as she said good morning. The driver was a ten year PC just starting to get fat. He spoke, saying that her tights fitted very well. Smiling at him with near perfect teeth, she told him to piss off.
Gentle is like the word "easy" described earlier, a runner-thing.
Dewed road. Please write and tell me if there's a noun for road-slightly-wet
Hardly here is another shorthand. It does not mean Caz didn't see them, but that she paid little attention.
Rolled by SLOWLY.
This is one place where a verb "rolled" might be replaced by "idled" or "cruised" but here the intention was a car virtually out of gear, just rolling, slowly.
NEAR-PERFECT teeth is again, an expansion, not a weak modifier because the writer chose a lousy noun.
“Oh dear, above us mortals now are we, Detective?” the driver said.
“No, Harry,” she said, “just the ones who can't take no for an answer!”
His radio was squawking and he grinned, “OK, Blondie, have a good one anyway.” He pulled away quickly. She could see him answering the call as he U turned back towards town.
“This is a great job,” she thought, “even if nobody on the force knows what a new man is!”
pulled away QUICKLY… that is the car pulled away quickly, or shot off. There may be a verb for what I felt happened here, a sharp pull-away but not screaming wheels and burning rubber, more CONTROL.
GREAT job here reflects Caz actually thinking. If there was a noun to exactly represent this concept she would still say "Great Job"
New Man is really a composite noun.
So the author suggested that "any book" would be packed with modifiers (Oh no, you don't mean she meant NECESSARY ADJECTIVES, do you?) and it seems that failed at the very first check (more will follow)
Broken Shadow
I got a nice flash out of that lot!!
Finished 30 seconds before dinner was on the table.
Finished 30 seconds before dinner was on the table.
Dunnit!
18:31
I expected a blank day but posting the flash prompts I just had to bang something out.
The result a 988 word flash so more or less that keeps me 1.5K ahead of 1K a day
01,375 Words May 01 Tuesday
01,023 Words May 02 Wednesday (Flash & Poem)
01,157 Words May 03 Thursday (Long Poem etc)
01,052 Words May 04 Friday
01,000 Words May 04 Friday (EDIT, article drafted 15:49)
00,600 Words May 05-06 (Two Poems)
02,621 Words May 08 (Article)
00,738 Words May 08 (Flash)
00,988 Words May 09 (Flash)
10,554 Words Total 1,544 Words ahead of schedule
I expected a blank day but posting the flash prompts I just had to bang something out.
The result a 988 word flash so more or less that keeps me 1.5K ahead of 1K a day
01,375 Words May 01 Tuesday
01,023 Words May 02 Wednesday (Flash & Poem)
01,157 Words May 03 Thursday (Long Poem etc)
01,052 Words May 04 Friday
01,000 Words May 04 Friday (EDIT, article drafted 15:49)
00,600 Words May 05-06 (Two Poems)
02,621 Words May 08 (Article)
00,738 Words May 08 (Flash)
00,988 Words May 09 (Flash)
10,554 Words Total 1,544 Words ahead of schedule
Enough Prompts to Build a City
Here are the prompts sorted alphabetically
A broken shadow of a chimney. Thin grass
A free voice, filling mountains, valleys
All over the place like the shit of a mad person.
As the echoes and echoes grow, taunting, taunting
At eight o'clock it had been overcast, a faint drizzle washing the street.
Away from the five o'clock news of the town
Balsa cities like dreams, cantilevered by light
But what is all that to me?
For every moment of truth, an afterthought
For supper he ate the sleep from his eyes
From the canted barracks of the city of refuge
Heaven, away from the dustblown blood of cities
Here's you, after the fact, found by torchlight
Here's you, on the news, shirtless, minus a limb
herring gulls, white as the uniforms of tally clerks
I could tell he was hacked off.
I got the giggles then, I just couldn't help it.
I was out of the lounge when the first film started so I didn't see the title.
Jesus, everything is so bloody DIFFERENT
Jimmy Bright, green trousers, red top, his coat black and gold, his black eye-mask slipping, playing with his Duplo zoo
Listen to my voice. Listen, I have you.
Love means to learn to look at yourself
No matter how deep, how cold, it is not a cave.
of those at the table in a cafe
On a poppy seed is a tiny house
On a sea crueller than any word
On the day the world ends, a fisherman mends a glimmering net
Rocks were made to hurt feet
Serene and unimaginably naked
Seven paedophiles and one man dead.
She disappeared into her galley kitchen, clacked a kettle on and dug out the corkscrew.
She had rolled naked from her bed at twenty minutes to nine.
She leaned towards the analytical glass.
She rubbed her belly, shook her head and shifted her hips.
She was a little surprised that her tongue still worked.
She was also eleven and a half months pregnant
She was grinning like a sick dog.
She was round and brown, wide and brown, gorgeous and brown
So the evening wasn't going so well after all.
So, I thought, got it wrong again.
Softly he murmurs his incantations
Somewhere between an oversized Volkswagen Beetle and the Goodyear Balloon
The fishermen rowing homeward in the dusk
The future was a beautiful place, once
The video finished and Jack switched it off.
THEN she had risked looking in the mirror.
There was definitely white there, plus the faintest tinge of yellow
Time creeps over the patient who are too long patient
Tom started to laugh too, then, after a while, Jane joined in.
Under a candle's eye
Very few people understand absolute darkness
Video night last Monday
Walking around muttering Robbie Bloody Burns for God's sake!
What's this one?" I asked Tom.
Where smell rebel because what is smelt should also be
Worker, under the red trees sleeping, hear
and then sorted in the original blocks
The future was a beautiful place, once
Here's you, after the fact, found by torchlight
Here's you, on the news, shirtless, minus a limb
Away from the five o'clock news of the town
For supper he ate the sleep from his eyes
Balsa cities like dreams, cantilevered by light
All over the place like the shit of a mad person.
For every moment of truth, an afterthought
Video night last Monday
I was out of the lounge when the first film started so I didn't see the title.
What's this one?" I asked Tom.
I could tell he was hacked off.
I got the giggles then, I just couldn't help it.
Tom started to laugh too, then, after a while, Jane joined in.
The video finished and Jack switched it off.
So the evening wasn't going so well after all.
So, I thought, got it wrong again.
Very few people understand absolute darkness
Where smell rebel because what is smelt should also be
As the echoes and echoes grow, taunting, taunting
Listen to my voice. Listen, I have you.
No matter how deep, how cold, it is not a cave.
At eight o'clock it had been overcast, a faint drizzle washing the street.
She had rolled naked from her bed at twenty minutes to nine.
THEN she had risked looking in the mirror.
She leaned towards the analytical glass.
She was a little surprised that her tongue still worked.
There was definitely white there, plus the faintest tinge of yellow
But what is all that to me?
A broken shadow of a chimney. Thin grass
of those at the table in a cafe
A free voice, filling mountains, valleys
On the day the world ends, a fisherman mends a glimmering net
Love means to learn to look at yourself
Rocks were made to hurt feet
On a poppy seed is a tiny house
Softly he murmurs his incantations
Time creeps over the patient who are too long patient
Heaven, away from the dustblown blood of cities
Worker, under the red trees sleeping, hear
The fishermen rowing homeward in the dusk
On a sea crueller than any word
Under a candle's eye
From the canted barracks of the city of refuge
herring gulls, white as the uniforms of tally clerks
Serene and unimaginably naked
She was round and brown, wide and brown, gorgeous and brown
She was also eleven and a half months pregnant
Somewhere between an oversized Volkswagen Beetle and the Goodyear Balloon
She rubbed her belly, shook her head and shifted her hips.
Walking around muttering Robbie Bloody Burns for God's sake!
Jesus, everything is so bloody DIFFERENT
She disappeared into her galley kitchen, clacked a kettle on and dug out the corkscrew.
She was grinning like a sick dog.
Seven paedophiles and one man dead.
Jimmy Bright, green trousers, red top, his coat black and gold, his black eye-mask slipping, playing with his Duplo zoo
A broken shadow of a chimney. Thin grass
A free voice, filling mountains, valleys
All over the place like the shit of a mad person.
As the echoes and echoes grow, taunting, taunting
At eight o'clock it had been overcast, a faint drizzle washing the street.
Away from the five o'clock news of the town
Balsa cities like dreams, cantilevered by light
But what is all that to me?
For every moment of truth, an afterthought
For supper he ate the sleep from his eyes
From the canted barracks of the city of refuge
Heaven, away from the dustblown blood of cities
Here's you, after the fact, found by torchlight
Here's you, on the news, shirtless, minus a limb
herring gulls, white as the uniforms of tally clerks
I could tell he was hacked off.
I got the giggles then, I just couldn't help it.
I was out of the lounge when the first film started so I didn't see the title.
Jesus, everything is so bloody DIFFERENT
Jimmy Bright, green trousers, red top, his coat black and gold, his black eye-mask slipping, playing with his Duplo zoo
Listen to my voice. Listen, I have you.
Love means to learn to look at yourself
No matter how deep, how cold, it is not a cave.
of those at the table in a cafe
On a poppy seed is a tiny house
On a sea crueller than any word
On the day the world ends, a fisherman mends a glimmering net
Rocks were made to hurt feet
Serene and unimaginably naked
Seven paedophiles and one man dead.
She disappeared into her galley kitchen, clacked a kettle on and dug out the corkscrew.
She had rolled naked from her bed at twenty minutes to nine.
She leaned towards the analytical glass.
She rubbed her belly, shook her head and shifted her hips.
She was a little surprised that her tongue still worked.
She was also eleven and a half months pregnant
She was grinning like a sick dog.
She was round and brown, wide and brown, gorgeous and brown
So the evening wasn't going so well after all.
So, I thought, got it wrong again.
Softly he murmurs his incantations
Somewhere between an oversized Volkswagen Beetle and the Goodyear Balloon
The fishermen rowing homeward in the dusk
The future was a beautiful place, once
The video finished and Jack switched it off.
THEN she had risked looking in the mirror.
There was definitely white there, plus the faintest tinge of yellow
Time creeps over the patient who are too long patient
Tom started to laugh too, then, after a while, Jane joined in.
Under a candle's eye
Very few people understand absolute darkness
Video night last Monday
Walking around muttering Robbie Bloody Burns for God's sake!
What's this one?" I asked Tom.
Where smell rebel because what is smelt should also be
Worker, under the red trees sleeping, hear
and then sorted in the original blocks
The future was a beautiful place, once
Here's you, after the fact, found by torchlight
Here's you, on the news, shirtless, minus a limb
Away from the five o'clock news of the town
For supper he ate the sleep from his eyes
Balsa cities like dreams, cantilevered by light
All over the place like the shit of a mad person.
For every moment of truth, an afterthought
Video night last Monday
I was out of the lounge when the first film started so I didn't see the title.
What's this one?" I asked Tom.
I could tell he was hacked off.
I got the giggles then, I just couldn't help it.
Tom started to laugh too, then, after a while, Jane joined in.
The video finished and Jack switched it off.
So the evening wasn't going so well after all.
So, I thought, got it wrong again.
Very few people understand absolute darkness
Where smell rebel because what is smelt should also be
As the echoes and echoes grow, taunting, taunting
Listen to my voice. Listen, I have you.
No matter how deep, how cold, it is not a cave.
At eight o'clock it had been overcast, a faint drizzle washing the street.
She had rolled naked from her bed at twenty minutes to nine.
THEN she had risked looking in the mirror.
She leaned towards the analytical glass.
She was a little surprised that her tongue still worked.
There was definitely white there, plus the faintest tinge of yellow
But what is all that to me?
A broken shadow of a chimney. Thin grass
of those at the table in a cafe
A free voice, filling mountains, valleys
On the day the world ends, a fisherman mends a glimmering net
Love means to learn to look at yourself
Rocks were made to hurt feet
On a poppy seed is a tiny house
Softly he murmurs his incantations
Time creeps over the patient who are too long patient
Heaven, away from the dustblown blood of cities
Worker, under the red trees sleeping, hear
The fishermen rowing homeward in the dusk
On a sea crueller than any word
Under a candle's eye
From the canted barracks of the city of refuge
herring gulls, white as the uniforms of tally clerks
Serene and unimaginably naked
She was round and brown, wide and brown, gorgeous and brown
She was also eleven and a half months pregnant
Somewhere between an oversized Volkswagen Beetle and the Goodyear Balloon
She rubbed her belly, shook her head and shifted her hips.
Walking around muttering Robbie Bloody Burns for God's sake!
Jesus, everything is so bloody DIFFERENT
She disappeared into her galley kitchen, clacked a kettle on and dug out the corkscrew.
She was grinning like a sick dog.
Seven paedophiles and one man dead.
Jimmy Bright, green trousers, red top, his coat black and gold, his black eye-mask slipping, playing with his Duplo zoo
Flash session Tonight?
I fancy watching Man U v Chelsea so the session tonight (for Me) needs to start at the latest 18:30. Will post a set of prompts at 18:00 for those interested.
alx
alx
Wednesday Morning Prompts
Must be there Friday
Song of Saucepans
Leaving the Kids Alone
The children have brought a turtle to show and tell
Tommy is three and when he's bad the wall hits him
He turned and waved. He was a year and one month.
A Poet to Spain
Becoming, at last, a bee
His momentum was unadulterated by knowledge
Never in all my life have i seen, as handsome a rat as you
My rivals house is peopled with many surfaces
Pleasure slips from memory, becomes...
The two young ones fed, bathed, zippered, read to, and sung to, asleep.
A child wearing a dead soldier's helmet
Composed in the tower before his execution
Listen Carefully
The rest is inexpressible, beyond what can be recorded
Time now to stretch on the sofa, time for a cigarette
Gardening in the tropics, you never know
because I come from the Wet Indies, certain people in England seem to think I is expert on palm trees
Trapped in a dismal marsh
The moon shines, dangerously clear
Song of Saucepans
Leaving the Kids Alone
The children have brought a turtle to show and tell
Tommy is three and when he's bad the wall hits him
He turned and waved. He was a year and one month.
A Poet to Spain
Becoming, at last, a bee
His momentum was unadulterated by knowledge
Never in all my life have i seen, as handsome a rat as you
My rivals house is peopled with many surfaces
Pleasure slips from memory, becomes...
The two young ones fed, bathed, zippered, read to, and sung to, asleep.
A child wearing a dead soldier's helmet
Composed in the tower before his execution
Listen Carefully
The rest is inexpressible, beyond what can be recorded
Time now to stretch on the sofa, time for a cigarette
Gardening in the tropics, you never know
because I come from the Wet Indies, certain people in England seem to think I is expert on palm trees
Trapped in a dismal marsh
The moon shines, dangerously clear
Update.
A few (4) various sized hits to report
MJ has an acceptance at Thieves Jargon
CLT has a little one at Secret Attic
and we have two flashes in the next Leaf Anthology
on the pubs front, not sure if these have been reported but Nightwriter has a couple of poems in Southern Ocean review and JJ is in the latest Poetry Monthly
And the Best News Last
TWO forner BCers have returned from sabbaticals
WB DavePR and Haz!
MJ has an acceptance at Thieves Jargon
CLT has a little one at Secret Attic
and we have two flashes in the next Leaf Anthology
on the pubs front, not sure if these have been reported but Nightwriter has a couple of poems in Southern Ocean review and JJ is in the latest Poetry Monthly
And the Best News Last
TWO forner BCers have returned from sabbaticals
WB DavePR and Haz!
Tuesday, 8 May 2007
Tuesday Second Set of Prompts
01 The people in their mobile homes
02 Though the swamps breed so many leeches
03 A Buffon's Wink
04 Nigger Sweat
05 She sits on a smouldering couch
06 They keep standing up to look out of the train
07 I don't like this, being carried sideways through the night
08 In the first taxi he was alone
09 In honour of something or other
10 On the day of the explosions, shadows pointed
11 North
12 Gold survives the fire that's hot enough to make you ashes
13 What they are doing make their garden seem big
14 LOST
15 See where the windows are boarded up?
16 Pathetic Anonymati
17 Until I asked her to stop doing it
18 I carefully arrange a chain of nips, a candle
19 My mother
20 From the wheelchair, watching
02 Though the swamps breed so many leeches
03 A Buffon's Wink
04 Nigger Sweat
05 She sits on a smouldering couch
06 They keep standing up to look out of the train
07 I don't like this, being carried sideways through the night
08 In the first taxi he was alone
09 In honour of something or other
10 On the day of the explosions, shadows pointed
11 North
12 Gold survives the fire that's hot enough to make you ashes
13 What they are doing make their garden seem big
14 LOST
15 See where the windows are boarded up?
16 Pathetic Anonymati
17 Until I asked her to stop doing it
18 I carefully arrange a chain of nips, a candle
19 My mother
20 From the wheelchair, watching
Drip, Drip
1,375 Words May 01 Tuesday
1,023 Words May 02 Wednesday (Flash & Poem)
1,157 Words May 03 Thursday (Long Poem etc)
1,052 Words May 04 Friday
1,000 Words May 04 Friday (EDIT, article drafted 15:49)
0,600 Words May 05-06 (Two Poems)
2,621 Words May 08 (Article)
0,738 Words May 08 (Flash)
9,566 Words May Total (1,566 words ahead of schedule)
1,023 Words May 02 Wednesday (Flash & Poem)
1,157 Words May 03 Thursday (Long Poem etc)
1,052 Words May 04 Friday
1,000 Words May 04 Friday (EDIT, article drafted 15:49)
0,600 Words May 05-06 (Two Poems)
2,621 Words May 08 (Article)
0,738 Words May 08 (Flash)
9,566 Words May Total (1,566 words ahead of schedule)
20 Prompts at 20:30
01 It's so pure in the cemetery
02 Do you think you have a corner on dying?
03 There was this hidden grin
04 My brother had been hanged that morning
05 The man who lost his way in his girlfriend's handbag
06 Gravity is one of the oldest tricks in the book
07 Both of us are getting worse
08 Without a tongue it's difficult to explain
09 TAPE
10 He tells me how badly I photograph
11 There's nothing outside but the sound of the wind
12 Gladrag
13 I chuck the bible in the parlour fire
14 I want to be carried, heavily sedated, into a waiting aircraft
15 The outlook for the day was moderate to fair
16 Hayfever
17 I want to stand with you in front of an endangered species
18 I have in my wallet
19 If you didn't see the six-legged dog it doesn't matter
20 My dog's assumed my alter ego
02 Do you think you have a corner on dying?
03 There was this hidden grin
04 My brother had been hanged that morning
05 The man who lost his way in his girlfriend's handbag
06 Gravity is one of the oldest tricks in the book
07 Both of us are getting worse
08 Without a tongue it's difficult to explain
09 TAPE
10 He tells me how badly I photograph
11 There's nothing outside but the sound of the wind
12 Gladrag
13 I chuck the bible in the parlour fire
14 I want to be carried, heavily sedated, into a waiting aircraft
15 The outlook for the day was moderate to fair
16 Hayfever
17 I want to stand with you in front of an endangered species
18 I have in my wallet
19 If you didn't see the six-legged dog it doesn't matter
20 My dog's assumed my alter ego
Flashes 20:30 and 22:00
A few Boot Campers will flash tonight.
20 prompts posted here at 20:30 and 22:00
Why not try?
It has to be better than heckling.
alx
20 prompts posted here at 20:30 and 22:00
Why not try?
It has to be better than heckling.
alx
Weekend Catch-Up
I was away Fri-Mon but glad to report that the four stories this weekend have had 9-9-9-8 critiques and a total of 55 discussion posts. So well done all (as usual)
i think they need a flash session now...
Alex
i think they need a flash session now...
Alex
Catching Up Bit By Bit
Have a lot of distractions this week (and was away the weekend)
but have to somehow reach 31K words by the 24th
(and thirty subs of course)
1,375 Words May 01 Tuesday
1,023 Words May 02 Wednesday (Flash & Poem)
1,157 Words May 03 Thursday (Long Poem etc)
1,052 Words May 04 Friday
1,000 Words May 04 Friday (EDIT, article drafted 15:49)
0,600 Words May 05-06 (Two Poems)
2,621 Words May 08 (Article)
8,828 Words May Total (828 words ahead of schedule)
but have to somehow reach 31K words by the 24th
(and thirty subs of course)
1,375 Words May 01 Tuesday
1,023 Words May 02 Wednesday (Flash & Poem)
1,157 Words May 03 Thursday (Long Poem etc)
1,052 Words May 04 Friday
1,000 Words May 04 Friday (EDIT, article drafted 15:49)
0,600 Words May 05-06 (Two Poems)
2,621 Words May 08 (Article)
8,828 Words May Total (828 words ahead of schedule)
Of COURSE There Are!
Rules? It Depends What You Mean.
I've been watching a spat on a web-site recently. On one side sits a now-published chick-lit author who took something like ten years to get any real success, attended courses, had a mentor and finally struggled into print. But now she KNOWS there are no rules, no need for rules, rules are bunkum, and she seriously distrusts "those people who force rules down fledgling writers' throats".
And yet this same writer writes formulaic fiction, straightforward, easy-to-read prose with obvious characters, obvious settings, twists-in-the-tail (ie within a convention). This writer and one other says that "rule-makers" are those who imagine there's a short-cut, a cookie-cutting way to success and that giving beginners rules constrains them.
What total UTTER bullshit.
If we train a child in road-safety are we giving them more or less freedom? Should we give them the "freedom" to be flattened by a thirty-ton truck while expressing themselves? Is that freedom?
If we teach a language student the basics of grammar, do we restrict him or eventually give him the tools to begin to find the language for himself?
When we teach children to read, teach them rules, then teach them the fundamentals of writing we give them the tools to express themselves within a world of accepted conventions. oN other the foot speakie darg we neffiloo spenk a robbel.
If we drum into a soccer player how to beat the offside trap are we restricting him or showing him that the sport has structures he needs to be aware of?
When Tierry Henry or Ronaldinio does something breathtakingly beautiful ("impossible") he still does it bound with and playing within a set of conventions, rules, and very specifically LAWS.
These gifted young men may have kicked tins around backstreets but now, beneath their raw abilities they have had decades of drills, fitness training, team-play understandings. They know the grammar and syntax of soccer, and they are famous because SOMETIMES they do something no-one else has ever done before, but the reality is, for 88 out of 90 minutes those guys do the ordinary things very, very well. They are artists but their art arises from a grounding in craft.
These two aforementioned "gurus" can take any list you produce. If you suggest X is a rule and they in fact already follow that rule, then it isn't a rule, it's common-sense!
Here's one "Rule":
Language for language's sake is obtrusive and should be avoided. The language used should at all times be appropriate to the character and setting.
So do YOU, reader, think this is "obvious"? The "famous writer" does. Perhaps she should go back and take a look at her early work, say year six or seven.
What is the reality? What do many, many, many beginners do? What, in fact is the most common beginner error"?
I would say the most common beginner error (and not an uncommon intermediate error) is over-writing and "laying it on thick" or trying to make the banal seem better by making the language appear richer. My very last article here mentioned this problem and that for an author who has won two-dozen prizes! It's a trap which writers at every level are prone to fall into. It is not obvious. If it was so "obvious" why do people continue to make the error often deep into their writing careers? Some famous authors actually forget their own in-built rules and start leaving in the lard, or worse, adding it. For further evidence read John Banville's "The Sea".
The truth is this is a good "rule". It is not blindingly obvious. Even those who agree the rule still make the mistake of not following it. This is why the sub-rule emerged "kill your darlings", because chances are those pretty bits you really, really like will almost certainly be bollocks.
Note, by the way, that I put "rule" in quotes. This means that if you "break" this "rule", nobody dies. You are not fined, or beaten with a sharp stick. You are not dragged over spikes. You are not, even, forced to read womag stories for a day.
But do you know what the worst thing you can say to a beginning writer? It's this:
Rules are made to be broken. Rules are for cookie-cutter-writers.
That is a CRIMINAL thing to say, to ALL beginners, and ALL intermediate writers and 99% of developed writers writing at the top of their craft.
Later I will be dealing with the totally misunderstood adage "show not tell" (the guru previously mentioned does not understand it nor do at least 80% of creative writing teachers.)
But meanwhile, for simplicity, briefly imagine that "it's obvious" that show is infinitely superior to tell and "ideally" we should never tell. How then should we teach a beginner?
Answer, wire them to the mains and every time they tell AT ALL zap them with 250 volts.
What we should NEVER do is to say something wishy-washy like, "It's preferable to show, but it's not always possible. Sometimes it's necessary to tell."
When you do that, all you do is to give the snivelling, lazy beginner a way out. Now, when you say "That's tell!" they respond "It vas nec-ess-ary!" (in a heavy German accent.)
I contend that one vital strand in the teaching of good writing is to force beginners to write 100% show. Not so that, eventually this is the way they will always write, but so that they are capable of writing this way. Until you prove it to them, and they prove it to themselves they will continue in lazy habits, always take the easy way out.
We teach the use of strong verbs by banning adverbs. Again we do not give them ways out eg: "Sometimes a verb with adverb is closer to our thoughts, or sometimes we prefer it for the flow, the music."
NO! First make them see that they CAN write without adverbs (because in school they were once taught that loads of adverbs and adjectives were good things.) Show them that 99% of the time adverbs are for lazy writers who didn't think up the best verb but just took an off-the-shelf one and then modified it to suit because they had to.
Obviously, the same applies to nouns. Strong, specific nouns don't require adjectives and usually will do a better job of explanation. Again we should insist that our neophyte writers eschew the modifier, and when they fail we should show them how they could have succeeded.
But once again, ultimately our student writers will have choice. Armed with the ability to choose strong stand-alone verbs and strong stand-alone nouns OR use nouns and verbs which require modification, they will have more ways to achieve their transmission of meaning in an entertaining and intellectually satisfying way. But leave them to their own devices and they will chunter out what Miss Clissit (Class Four English) thought was "good". Craft discipline creates freedom
That is, apparent restriction was just a teaching method to create more ability in the student and thus increase the student-writer's freedom.
Often the fledgling writer particularly if the writer is going to be great needs to be held back, held down and forced to practice his scales.
Two Football Analogies.
In soccer, the ability to use both feet is a very big advantage. Not many players are left-footed, and hardly any can use both feet well. Now you can tell a player, when he misses a goal and should have used his "wrong" foot, the mistake he made and he may well reply, "But I'm right-footed, Gaffer." You can "explain" that if he practiced with that other, useless foot he could be a star. But he won't unless you force him.
Why? Isn't it "obvious" that being two-footed is a massive advantage? Yes it's "obvious" as in when we stand back and look rationally we can see the advantages, but "our nature" is to use the most-natural foot.
Once upon a time managers used to go to training and make player wear a slipper or a plimsoll on their natural foot and a boot on the weak foot. That "persuaded" the players to use the weaker foot and thus made better players
John Aldridge
This is an old story of mine. Newport County Football Club discovered John Aldridge playing for an obscure non-league side and signed him up. He came straight into the first team and got goals. He was young, raw and very enthusiastic and looked like one of those players who just had an instinct for goal. The fans were thrilled.
So then they took John OUT of the first team and stuck him in the reserves for what seemed like forever. When, eventually John came back into the first team he seemed awkward, mechanical. Instead of running into the right spot instinctively he seemed to take a second, "work-it-out" and then go. He looked very ordinary. Had the club killed his talent? But slowly the learned craft and instinct combined.
"Aldo" went on to help Newport to promotion and cup success, then moved up through the leagues to play for Liverpool and 69 times for his country. His career total of 476 goals is the highest for any individual since the second world war.
The point is the club took raw talent and added discipline and method. Yes, for a while the marriage was difficult, but ultimately the product was far better than pure method or total intuition could ever have made it.
It is the same with virtually every craft. Why is it that these "gurus" attempt to argue that there are no rules, no mechanics, no drills, no basics when we use words, yet even the greatest musicians have to learn scales, to read music, to apply the conventions of their craft.
How about painting? In 2006 on Radio 4 the head of the Arts Council maintained that in the whole of the twentieth century in the UK just one prominent painter (Bacon) had risen to the top without attending art college. Did the art-college teachers say just slap it on and hope?
Back to Rules: Show Not Tell.
Here's an example of why some "gurus" argue against show-not-tell, another "stupid rule". They argue that you can't always show things. Sometimes you need to cut to the chase and get things over to the reader. Sometimes things are "too complex" or would "take to long to show".
In other words they don't understand show-not-tell.
I have written a number of articles called "Seduction-not-Instruction" where I argue that 100% of the time we should seduce and never instruct. What could be clearer?
Since seduction roughly equals "show" and instruction roughly equals tell, am I not saying we should "show" 100% of the time?
Well this is what these people might try to infer but that is not what I'm saying.
I'm saying you must, 100% of the time, seduce, involve, intrigue or entertain your reader. Not 90%, not 95%, not 99% of the time. All the time.
Can we get away with being less seductive? As it happens, yes. The reader skims, flicks pages. Sometimes we get away with it. But this means that at least some of our writing has not worked on the reader, has not engrossed her, has not captured her emotionally and/or intellectually.
We all know in the small matter of sexual seduction, that one false move can completely ruin the moment, can be a passion killer.
Ditto the passage of prose. One awful sentence, one grossly misplaced metaphor, a couple of horrible typos or one "Huh?" sentence can ruin a read, bring us out of the fictive dream, make us aware of the author and or the words and suddenly kill the magic.
We might find (in poorer readers, or more forgiving readers) that because the story as a whole, the novel as a whole, is interesting enough that our horrible patches are skimmed over or flipped past, but what should happen is that those passages are ALSO entertaining, enjoyable, intellectually stimulating and seductive.
Now, simple question, is the story we skim better or worse than the one that was too juicy to skim?
You might want to read those two articles at The Internet Writers Journal now. They argue that a story should seduce 100% of the time and never instruct. That's a RULE.
If it's not a fundamental TRUTH then why are we writing? Are there people out there who think we write fiction but DON'T want to create a fictive dream, an illusion, characters and dialogue and settings and smells and sounds in the reader's head that fill them up?
Oh, wait a minute, it's obvious, right? Silly me!
Do you, reading this, right now, even understand the difference between show and tell or the difference between seduction and instruction? I strongly doubt it. Beginner, ask your guru, but before you do, I'll tell you what they'll say, shall I? They'll say, "Don't SAY he was angry, don't TELL ME, show me, show me." And then they'll talk about clenched fists, teeth bared, raised voices etc.
They do this because that's about as far as 95% of CW teachers CAN go. Don't get me wrong, many will write well, seduce rather than instruct, but they've never really, not quite, worked out what they were doing.
I remember struggling for years trying to understand show-tell and finally I got it all at once in an excerpt cited by James Frey when a Korean War Sergeant says, "I'm eating chocolate an killing gooks." Now, in the context that entertains, that illustrates, and at the same time gives us the sergeant's ruthless attitude. All that bollocks about "angry' had never worked for me.
But guru might retort: "What about those situations where it's required that the reader knows that the hyperflingle valve, if opened more than one-point-one millimetres, will cause a retroflash psychotic reaction in the disimiallirification grommet?
Answer. Readers rarely do require that knowledge. All it requires in that situation is for someone to say, "Fer Chrissakes, just a millimetre!"
But what if the nature of your story does require a large amount of fact? Well, first, does it - you will be amazed how a small amount of factual information can be stretched by the reader. But if it does, why not separate it out in a prologue, or use trickery such as Isaac Asimov's Encyclopedia Galactica, italicized excerpts at the opening of each chapter. I used this technique in my Bridport Second Prize winner The Last Love Letter of Berwyn Price. The story involved a man from a family of International rugby players who had fathered only daughters. How to get his history over very quickly and in an interesting way?
I put his playing record at the start of the story as an almanac entry. Because it's there and merely there, explaining nothing, it doesn't "instruct". The reader has to apply intelligence to eventually get the meaning (the sign of something being right).
Or (if you can do it expertly in a way that isn't clunkingly obvious) have information delivered naturally in dialogue. When this is badly done, it's usually badly done, it really sucks.
But what is vital is that any delivery seduces. That is it involves the reader's emotions, entertains, intrigues, looks for empathy with. What it doesn't do is merely explain everything in a way that the reader is absolutely passive.
Another Rule (actually the same rule rephrased).
If the reader's role is totally passive the writing is shit.
I could go on, but my boy wants me to watch Prison Break.
I've been watching a spat on a web-site recently. On one side sits a now-published chick-lit author who took something like ten years to get any real success, attended courses, had a mentor and finally struggled into print. But now she KNOWS there are no rules, no need for rules, rules are bunkum, and she seriously distrusts "those people who force rules down fledgling writers' throats".
And yet this same writer writes formulaic fiction, straightforward, easy-to-read prose with obvious characters, obvious settings, twists-in-the-tail (ie within a convention). This writer and one other says that "rule-makers" are those who imagine there's a short-cut, a cookie-cutting way to success and that giving beginners rules constrains them.
What total UTTER bullshit.
If we train a child in road-safety are we giving them more or less freedom? Should we give them the "freedom" to be flattened by a thirty-ton truck while expressing themselves? Is that freedom?
If we teach a language student the basics of grammar, do we restrict him or eventually give him the tools to begin to find the language for himself?
When we teach children to read, teach them rules, then teach them the fundamentals of writing we give them the tools to express themselves within a world of accepted conventions. oN other the foot speakie darg we neffiloo spenk a robbel.
If we drum into a soccer player how to beat the offside trap are we restricting him or showing him that the sport has structures he needs to be aware of?
When Tierry Henry or Ronaldinio does something breathtakingly beautiful ("impossible") he still does it bound with and playing within a set of conventions, rules, and very specifically LAWS.
These gifted young men may have kicked tins around backstreets but now, beneath their raw abilities they have had decades of drills, fitness training, team-play understandings. They know the grammar and syntax of soccer, and they are famous because SOMETIMES they do something no-one else has ever done before, but the reality is, for 88 out of 90 minutes those guys do the ordinary things very, very well. They are artists but their art arises from a grounding in craft.
These two aforementioned "gurus" can take any list you produce. If you suggest X is a rule and they in fact already follow that rule, then it isn't a rule, it's common-sense!
Here's one "Rule":
Language for language's sake is obtrusive and should be avoided. The language used should at all times be appropriate to the character and setting.
So do YOU, reader, think this is "obvious"? The "famous writer" does. Perhaps she should go back and take a look at her early work, say year six or seven.
What is the reality? What do many, many, many beginners do? What, in fact is the most common beginner error"?
I would say the most common beginner error (and not an uncommon intermediate error) is over-writing and "laying it on thick" or trying to make the banal seem better by making the language appear richer. My very last article here mentioned this problem and that for an author who has won two-dozen prizes! It's a trap which writers at every level are prone to fall into. It is not obvious. If it was so "obvious" why do people continue to make the error often deep into their writing careers? Some famous authors actually forget their own in-built rules and start leaving in the lard, or worse, adding it. For further evidence read John Banville's "The Sea".
The truth is this is a good "rule". It is not blindingly obvious. Even those who agree the rule still make the mistake of not following it. This is why the sub-rule emerged "kill your darlings", because chances are those pretty bits you really, really like will almost certainly be bollocks.
Note, by the way, that I put "rule" in quotes. This means that if you "break" this "rule", nobody dies. You are not fined, or beaten with a sharp stick. You are not dragged over spikes. You are not, even, forced to read womag stories for a day.
But do you know what the worst thing you can say to a beginning writer? It's this:
Rules are made to be broken. Rules are for cookie-cutter-writers.
That is a CRIMINAL thing to say, to ALL beginners, and ALL intermediate writers and 99% of developed writers writing at the top of their craft.
Later I will be dealing with the totally misunderstood adage "show not tell" (the guru previously mentioned does not understand it nor do at least 80% of creative writing teachers.)
But meanwhile, for simplicity, briefly imagine that "it's obvious" that show is infinitely superior to tell and "ideally" we should never tell. How then should we teach a beginner?
Answer, wire them to the mains and every time they tell AT ALL zap them with 250 volts.
What we should NEVER do is to say something wishy-washy like, "It's preferable to show, but it's not always possible. Sometimes it's necessary to tell."
When you do that, all you do is to give the snivelling, lazy beginner a way out. Now, when you say "That's tell!" they respond "It vas nec-ess-ary!" (in a heavy German accent.)
I contend that one vital strand in the teaching of good writing is to force beginners to write 100% show. Not so that, eventually this is the way they will always write, but so that they are capable of writing this way. Until you prove it to them, and they prove it to themselves they will continue in lazy habits, always take the easy way out.
We teach the use of strong verbs by banning adverbs. Again we do not give them ways out eg: "Sometimes a verb with adverb is closer to our thoughts, or sometimes we prefer it for the flow, the music."
NO! First make them see that they CAN write without adverbs (because in school they were once taught that loads of adverbs and adjectives were good things.) Show them that 99% of the time adverbs are for lazy writers who didn't think up the best verb but just took an off-the-shelf one and then modified it to suit because they had to.
Obviously, the same applies to nouns. Strong, specific nouns don't require adjectives and usually will do a better job of explanation. Again we should insist that our neophyte writers eschew the modifier, and when they fail we should show them how they could have succeeded.
But once again, ultimately our student writers will have choice. Armed with the ability to choose strong stand-alone verbs and strong stand-alone nouns OR use nouns and verbs which require modification, they will have more ways to achieve their transmission of meaning in an entertaining and intellectually satisfying way. But leave them to their own devices and they will chunter out what Miss Clissit (Class Four English) thought was "good". Craft discipline creates freedom
That is, apparent restriction was just a teaching method to create more ability in the student and thus increase the student-writer's freedom.
Often the fledgling writer particularly if the writer is going to be great needs to be held back, held down and forced to practice his scales.
Two Football Analogies.
In soccer, the ability to use both feet is a very big advantage. Not many players are left-footed, and hardly any can use both feet well. Now you can tell a player, when he misses a goal and should have used his "wrong" foot, the mistake he made and he may well reply, "But I'm right-footed, Gaffer." You can "explain" that if he practiced with that other, useless foot he could be a star. But he won't unless you force him.
Why? Isn't it "obvious" that being two-footed is a massive advantage? Yes it's "obvious" as in when we stand back and look rationally we can see the advantages, but "our nature" is to use the most-natural foot.
Once upon a time managers used to go to training and make player wear a slipper or a plimsoll on their natural foot and a boot on the weak foot. That "persuaded" the players to use the weaker foot and thus made better players
John Aldridge
This is an old story of mine. Newport County Football Club discovered John Aldridge playing for an obscure non-league side and signed him up. He came straight into the first team and got goals. He was young, raw and very enthusiastic and looked like one of those players who just had an instinct for goal. The fans were thrilled.
So then they took John OUT of the first team and stuck him in the reserves for what seemed like forever. When, eventually John came back into the first team he seemed awkward, mechanical. Instead of running into the right spot instinctively he seemed to take a second, "work-it-out" and then go. He looked very ordinary. Had the club killed his talent? But slowly the learned craft and instinct combined.
"Aldo" went on to help Newport to promotion and cup success, then moved up through the leagues to play for Liverpool and 69 times for his country. His career total of 476 goals is the highest for any individual since the second world war.
The point is the club took raw talent and added discipline and method. Yes, for a while the marriage was difficult, but ultimately the product was far better than pure method or total intuition could ever have made it.
It is the same with virtually every craft. Why is it that these "gurus" attempt to argue that there are no rules, no mechanics, no drills, no basics when we use words, yet even the greatest musicians have to learn scales, to read music, to apply the conventions of their craft.
How about painting? In 2006 on Radio 4 the head of the Arts Council maintained that in the whole of the twentieth century in the UK just one prominent painter (Bacon) had risen to the top without attending art college. Did the art-college teachers say just slap it on and hope?
Back to Rules: Show Not Tell.
Here's an example of why some "gurus" argue against show-not-tell, another "stupid rule". They argue that you can't always show things. Sometimes you need to cut to the chase and get things over to the reader. Sometimes things are "too complex" or would "take to long to show".
In other words they don't understand show-not-tell.
I have written a number of articles called "Seduction-not-Instruction" where I argue that 100% of the time we should seduce and never instruct. What could be clearer?
Since seduction roughly equals "show" and instruction roughly equals tell, am I not saying we should "show" 100% of the time?
Well this is what these people might try to infer but that is not what I'm saying.
I'm saying you must, 100% of the time, seduce, involve, intrigue or entertain your reader. Not 90%, not 95%, not 99% of the time. All the time.
Can we get away with being less seductive? As it happens, yes. The reader skims, flicks pages. Sometimes we get away with it. But this means that at least some of our writing has not worked on the reader, has not engrossed her, has not captured her emotionally and/or intellectually.
We all know in the small matter of sexual seduction, that one false move can completely ruin the moment, can be a passion killer.
Ditto the passage of prose. One awful sentence, one grossly misplaced metaphor, a couple of horrible typos or one "Huh?" sentence can ruin a read, bring us out of the fictive dream, make us aware of the author and or the words and suddenly kill the magic.
We might find (in poorer readers, or more forgiving readers) that because the story as a whole, the novel as a whole, is interesting enough that our horrible patches are skimmed over or flipped past, but what should happen is that those passages are ALSO entertaining, enjoyable, intellectually stimulating and seductive.
Now, simple question, is the story we skim better or worse than the one that was too juicy to skim?
You might want to read those two articles at The Internet Writers Journal now. They argue that a story should seduce 100% of the time and never instruct. That's a RULE.
If it's not a fundamental TRUTH then why are we writing? Are there people out there who think we write fiction but DON'T want to create a fictive dream, an illusion, characters and dialogue and settings and smells and sounds in the reader's head that fill them up?
Oh, wait a minute, it's obvious, right? Silly me!
Do you, reading this, right now, even understand the difference between show and tell or the difference between seduction and instruction? I strongly doubt it. Beginner, ask your guru, but before you do, I'll tell you what they'll say, shall I? They'll say, "Don't SAY he was angry, don't TELL ME, show me, show me." And then they'll talk about clenched fists, teeth bared, raised voices etc.
They do this because that's about as far as 95% of CW teachers CAN go. Don't get me wrong, many will write well, seduce rather than instruct, but they've never really, not quite, worked out what they were doing.
I remember struggling for years trying to understand show-tell and finally I got it all at once in an excerpt cited by James Frey when a Korean War Sergeant says, "I'm eating chocolate an killing gooks." Now, in the context that entertains, that illustrates, and at the same time gives us the sergeant's ruthless attitude. All that bollocks about "angry' had never worked for me.
But guru might retort: "What about those situations where it's required that the reader knows that the hyperflingle valve, if opened more than one-point-one millimetres, will cause a retroflash psychotic reaction in the disimiallirification grommet?
Answer. Readers rarely do require that knowledge. All it requires in that situation is for someone to say, "Fer Chrissakes, just a millimetre!"
But what if the nature of your story does require a large amount of fact? Well, first, does it - you will be amazed how a small amount of factual information can be stretched by the reader. But if it does, why not separate it out in a prologue, or use trickery such as Isaac Asimov's Encyclopedia Galactica, italicized excerpts at the opening of each chapter. I used this technique in my Bridport Second Prize winner The Last Love Letter of Berwyn Price. The story involved a man from a family of International rugby players who had fathered only daughters. How to get his history over very quickly and in an interesting way?
I put his playing record at the start of the story as an almanac entry. Because it's there and merely there, explaining nothing, it doesn't "instruct". The reader has to apply intelligence to eventually get the meaning (the sign of something being right).
Or (if you can do it expertly in a way that isn't clunkingly obvious) have information delivered naturally in dialogue. When this is badly done, it's usually badly done, it really sucks.
But what is vital is that any delivery seduces. That is it involves the reader's emotions, entertains, intrigues, looks for empathy with. What it doesn't do is merely explain everything in a way that the reader is absolutely passive.
Another Rule (actually the same rule rephrased).
If the reader's role is totally passive the writing is shit.
I could go on, but my boy wants me to watch Prison Break.
Monday, 7 May 2007
Bank Holiday Prompts
And old man sits netting his net
Love and Loneliness
Keegan's Hairdryer
I know nothing about sex because I was always married
Acting Ethelishly
I was a VE day baby
Jollyvanting
Sit. Feast on your life.
The Persistence of Desire
This is the Green Man
I'm taking off this skin
A wound to tend with lotion and cloth
Topsoil gets peeled away by floods
The passionate world is round
The panic bird just flew inside my chest
Love and Loneliness
Keegan's Hairdryer
I know nothing about sex because I was always married
Acting Ethelishly
I was a VE day baby
Jollyvanting
Sit. Feast on your life.
The Persistence of Desire
This is the Green Man
I'm taking off this skin
A wound to tend with lotion and cloth
Topsoil gets peeled away by floods
The passionate world is round
The panic bird just flew inside my chest
Saturday, 5 May 2007
Exercise
Okay, while AK is off gallivanting, here's an exercise for anyone who is interested. Write down four names. Male of female, exotic, foreign, boring, whatever.
Now, write a piece of dialogue in which names A and B are talking about what name C thinks of name D.
Hey presto, four names become four characters...
Now, write a piece of dialogue in which names A and B are talking about what name C thinks of name D.
Hey presto, four names become four characters...
Friday, 4 May 2007
Get yer hands OFF!
This is very rough (only just written and the ink's still wet, and it took nearly an hour so think how I sweated)
BUT
Untitled
Recently I was "aroused" (but not in my favourite way) when a promising writer I know well produced a story which was all form and show with no substance, no heart or soul. That is, the whole was artifice, a performance and it stood out as such, it made me grossly "author-aware".
A thread ensued where some felt I was beating up my victim, but my point was that this particular writer always showed herself, always thought of craft before the heart of the story,always showed herself on the page.
The argument followed familiar patterns. I would say something, this writer would say, "but…" This is a writer who was blocked, felt she was writing in a narrow corridor, was frightened of opening doors. "When I let go I write about horrible things and people hate me for it," she said. "I can't 'let go', I don't like my demons."
First we need to deal with a conflation of ideas. My friend here is confusing "going to the well" with going specifically to those dark mansions of the soul. She believes that letting go, writing unconsciously must by its very nature unleash horrible memories, sickness, death, abuse, betrayal, self-loathing, dying children, horrible diseases.
This is absolutely NOT the case.
Of course, I might choose to go to the place where I carry suppressed memories, choose to knock on doors, open Pandora's Box. I might choose to wallow in the horrors, to try to understand myself, what made me what I am not.
But I can go to the place of dark memories, of dark pressures and not seek out specifics. I can go there and simply use the pressures, the aches, the feelings, the idea of certain memories. I do not need to write about "my abuse" to understand the legacy of abuse just as I don't need to murder to write about murder or cheat to write about cheating.
But note the above. By my merely going to this area and discussing ways of using the past (the dynamics of my soul) I am misleading you.
MY history and experience is SMALL.
By that I mean my small life, no matter how traumatic, or sad or dangerous, is small. How does it compare in incident, conflict, setting, moral issues, resonance when weighed against all the great films, the great novels, the great stories and the greatest poems? My life, against all those lives, all those influences, is tiny and insignificant.
When I say delve into the dream-world, be drunk, write drunk, "let things up" there is no reason to believe that this must be "my dark self" or "my suppressed memories". My conscious thinking, semi-conscious day-dreaming, my almost unconscious dreams may take in my history, thoughts from the day and week, but they also combine and recombine every word I have ever heard, every image I have ever seen, all the poems, plays, advertisements as well as stories, novels, films and TV.
For me it's effortless to wallow "down there" in an almost-controlled, almost-conscious world. When I think of characters, places, ideas and situations are they really fresh? Or are they products of the age, some symptom of the world?
It is not uncommon for two or more authors each to arrive at a "new" idea seemingly simultaneously. Deep in them, working subliminally is some thing or combination of things. They have all been exposed to similar news, similar times, often delivered by the same media, and "surprise" they each respond with the same (they thought) original new idea.
After events like 9/11 the dominant thoughts, the dominant news are obvious and easy to see and poor poetry collections and short-story magazines are packed to the straining seams with "disaster writing". No one has any problem understanding this. We all know we all know the same things, and we, as writers, respond. What could be more natural?
We will all be affected by a terrible tragedy, a death of a president, a cruel famine, men walking on the moon. We are all living within the zeitgeist.
But we can use our individualism, our separate and individual way of assimilating, not just our personal history but our reading history, our cultural history, our language, our dialect, our sub-culture, our religion, our schooling, and the randomness of our individual chemistries.
We can use our own chaos theories our own ways of combining lives to create products, characters, voices, products of everything we know and have known.
It is impossible not to have Shakespeare in your stories, impossible not to have Chaucer, Keats, Milton (and Sky News). Because every writer has been influenced by every other writer, and if we have ever read, if we SPEAK, we are Shakespearian, or Miltonian. We cannot avoid our culture or the histories of art.
Which brings me to my utterly original characters…
I have an idea: a magic credit-card. I need to write about "someone" with that card. My upbringing, my politics, my culture, my religion all affect me. It is impossible to be unaffected. Am I selfish or generous? How much of that is parental influence, a kindly teacher or two, or father Maloney staring at me in church his glass eye fixed and the Devil himself boring a hole through me?
Do I pick someone old or young? Male of female? Black? White? I write very few black characters. Not because I'm racist but simply because I know more white people, was brought up by white people, and so on. And when I pick the age and gender of my lead-character how much is truly random choice, how much is the idea singing, seducing, subtly dictation?
I picked an old woman. An English old woman. A sensible, thinking (but not worldly and not highly intelligent) "nice" old English woman. Why?
Is the woman really random? Could she have been a black Scotsman with migraine? No? Why not?
"Why not" is the instinct, the intuition, the-thing-in-the-story that asks me to write, that calls, whispers, gently pulls. The old dear comes to me and says, "this is my story" (and when these people do, we know they are the right people, and they speak with the right voice, the right cadences, the right intelligence). They belong to the story and the story belongs to them.
Now, back to individual writers and their separate lives, their separate experiences, the separate histories, their separate random reading. If writer X and I have the same "McGuffin" (the magic credit card), and, for simplicity have the same idea of what we might like to say, our main character will be "of-a-type" and of a limited type.
If (because of our political stance) the card idea say that we have a fabulous way of showing the corruption of big business, the ruthless heartlessness of the big banks, and if that idea "obviously" tells us our main character will be destroyed then we are highly unlikely to choose an extremely strong, dynamic, resourceful character.
A few characters would "suit", more than one would work, but The Terminator would not. We just know this, so we choose characters that feel right, that slip into the spotlight, almost without us trying.
That's point one. The characters should come to us. And they come to us, better, bigger, more naturally, more fittingly if we let them. That is if we do not interfere, if we "just let things happen", if we "write drunk." Your character and mine? They may be a naïve young man or an old frail pensioner, but both "want to be there" and both will work well enough.
But what if, instead of letting the character come to us we sit down and plan. Now our conscious mind is interfering. Now we get the much more obvious (in a clichéd way) character. Yeah the character "sort-of" works, but deep down, we as writers know she's made up, an artificial being. She, Ethel, doesn't feel like she's a living person we stumbled upon. My point? If we stay drunk, hang loose, the right characters "come to us".
Now that is metaphor. What I mean is this: the less formal, deliberate, left-brained or conscious we are, the more likely our unconscious will naturally select the perfect character for a story. As Peter Sansom writes in his book "Writing Poems" did Shakespeare consciously, deliberately mean all that stuff in Hamlet, or did it just come together? I believe it came together because Shakespeare entered the right area and then allowed characters to first arrive, then speak, then live out their lives.
Back, now to "being drunk" and using the unconscious. More or less unconsciously I chose an old woman. I did not choose to call her Ethel, she was an Ethel. If you don't believe me, go to your ten favourite stories, films, plays and rename the main character.
Your Ethel won't be my Ethel. Mine will be partly my mother, aunts, a grandmother, the old dear who worked in the corner shop, a woman I once helped across the road… And Miss Marple, perhaps, or any of a dozen other older woman of stage, screen or leaping from the pages of my library.
But you and I, our Ethels would be more-or-less how an Ethel should be, and would behave Ethelishly. Neither of us have invented (or discovered) an irascible old bitch or an ex-Nazi prison camp warder. We both see "a nice, soft, possibly-vulnerable, "old dear".
And how does Ethel speak? How does she behave? How can we make her do our bidding? How can we be sure she'll "stay in line" and be soft when we want her to be, tough when she should?
Answer!
WE DO NOT CONTROL HER.
Ethel can do whatever she likes, when she likes, how sh likes and to whom she likes. That's the bloody point!
As soon as we do ANYTHING to control her, Ethel is no longer Ethel, some sweet old lady. Now she is a plastic puppet that reminds readers of that author, whatsisname?
Ethel came to us, remember? Why then do we not listen to her, let her speak? If we let her speak she will always say the right thing.
Why is that (dropping the metaphor)?
Because our subconscious brought us the correct vehicle, the right person for the job, the right essence, the right torch-carrier, our subconscious can continue its good work only if we let it. It will do so by giving voice to the very person we chose as the story's spokesperson.
All good stories "surprise the writer". This has led (unfortunately) to people saying stuff like "I write to discover what I know" (etc) but the real point is, if the right character has come to us (ie: we chose the main unconsciously) and if the right voice has come to us (ie: we waited until we heard a voice that we just "knew" was right) and the setting was right (ie: we found a setting which resonated with our vague deliberately not too-shaped thoughts about the story, AND the main, AND the voice, then we are allowing our unconscious to write the story for us.
All we have to do is record what the unconscious already knows.
The story may appear to surprise us, but does it? In my now-ancient story "The Card" (a Bridport Supplementary Prize-Winner) Ethel was just Ethel and she just did the right thing. I really, truly did not think as I wrote the story, it wrote itself. Plot events just "popped up", Ethel just did what was write (applying her Ethelness to everything and simply acting Ethelishly) and everything worked out, everything worked itself out.
The story had a strong thematic spine. It had that thematic spine because the story spoke like I see the world (or wanted to see it at that time). It spoke with the right voice, said the right things, because that's how Ethel was. And why did I choose Ethel?
I didn't. She chose me.
What does that mean?
It means that if I step aside, refuse to be conscious, my unconscious always makes better decisions than I can consciously.
BUT
Untitled
Recently I was "aroused" (but not in my favourite way) when a promising writer I know well produced a story which was all form and show with no substance, no heart or soul. That is, the whole was artifice, a performance and it stood out as such, it made me grossly "author-aware".
A thread ensued where some felt I was beating up my victim, but my point was that this particular writer always showed herself, always thought of craft before the heart of the story,always showed herself on the page.
The argument followed familiar patterns. I would say something, this writer would say, "but…" This is a writer who was blocked, felt she was writing in a narrow corridor, was frightened of opening doors. "When I let go I write about horrible things and people hate me for it," she said. "I can't 'let go', I don't like my demons."
First we need to deal with a conflation of ideas. My friend here is confusing "going to the well" with going specifically to those dark mansions of the soul. She believes that letting go, writing unconsciously must by its very nature unleash horrible memories, sickness, death, abuse, betrayal, self-loathing, dying children, horrible diseases.
This is absolutely NOT the case.
Of course, I might choose to go to the place where I carry suppressed memories, choose to knock on doors, open Pandora's Box. I might choose to wallow in the horrors, to try to understand myself, what made me what I am not.
But I can go to the place of dark memories, of dark pressures and not seek out specifics. I can go there and simply use the pressures, the aches, the feelings, the idea of certain memories. I do not need to write about "my abuse" to understand the legacy of abuse just as I don't need to murder to write about murder or cheat to write about cheating.
But note the above. By my merely going to this area and discussing ways of using the past (the dynamics of my soul) I am misleading you.
MY history and experience is SMALL.
By that I mean my small life, no matter how traumatic, or sad or dangerous, is small. How does it compare in incident, conflict, setting, moral issues, resonance when weighed against all the great films, the great novels, the great stories and the greatest poems? My life, against all those lives, all those influences, is tiny and insignificant.
When I say delve into the dream-world, be drunk, write drunk, "let things up" there is no reason to believe that this must be "my dark self" or "my suppressed memories". My conscious thinking, semi-conscious day-dreaming, my almost unconscious dreams may take in my history, thoughts from the day and week, but they also combine and recombine every word I have ever heard, every image I have ever seen, all the poems, plays, advertisements as well as stories, novels, films and TV.
For me it's effortless to wallow "down there" in an almost-controlled, almost-conscious world. When I think of characters, places, ideas and situations are they really fresh? Or are they products of the age, some symptom of the world?
It is not uncommon for two or more authors each to arrive at a "new" idea seemingly simultaneously. Deep in them, working subliminally is some thing or combination of things. They have all been exposed to similar news, similar times, often delivered by the same media, and "surprise" they each respond with the same (they thought) original new idea.
After events like 9/11 the dominant thoughts, the dominant news are obvious and easy to see and poor poetry collections and short-story magazines are packed to the straining seams with "disaster writing". No one has any problem understanding this. We all know we all know the same things, and we, as writers, respond. What could be more natural?
We will all be affected by a terrible tragedy, a death of a president, a cruel famine, men walking on the moon. We are all living within the zeitgeist.
But we can use our individualism, our separate and individual way of assimilating, not just our personal history but our reading history, our cultural history, our language, our dialect, our sub-culture, our religion, our schooling, and the randomness of our individual chemistries.
We can use our own chaos theories our own ways of combining lives to create products, characters, voices, products of everything we know and have known.
It is impossible not to have Shakespeare in your stories, impossible not to have Chaucer, Keats, Milton (and Sky News). Because every writer has been influenced by every other writer, and if we have ever read, if we SPEAK, we are Shakespearian, or Miltonian. We cannot avoid our culture or the histories of art.
Which brings me to my utterly original characters…
I have an idea: a magic credit-card. I need to write about "someone" with that card. My upbringing, my politics, my culture, my religion all affect me. It is impossible to be unaffected. Am I selfish or generous? How much of that is parental influence, a kindly teacher or two, or father Maloney staring at me in church his glass eye fixed and the Devil himself boring a hole through me?
Do I pick someone old or young? Male of female? Black? White? I write very few black characters. Not because I'm racist but simply because I know more white people, was brought up by white people, and so on. And when I pick the age and gender of my lead-character how much is truly random choice, how much is the idea singing, seducing, subtly dictation?
I picked an old woman. An English old woman. A sensible, thinking (but not worldly and not highly intelligent) "nice" old English woman. Why?
Is the woman really random? Could she have been a black Scotsman with migraine? No? Why not?
"Why not" is the instinct, the intuition, the-thing-in-the-story that asks me to write, that calls, whispers, gently pulls. The old dear comes to me and says, "this is my story" (and when these people do, we know they are the right people, and they speak with the right voice, the right cadences, the right intelligence). They belong to the story and the story belongs to them.
Now, back to individual writers and their separate lives, their separate experiences, the separate histories, their separate random reading. If writer X and I have the same "McGuffin" (the magic credit card), and, for simplicity have the same idea of what we might like to say, our main character will be "of-a-type" and of a limited type.
If (because of our political stance) the card idea say that we have a fabulous way of showing the corruption of big business, the ruthless heartlessness of the big banks, and if that idea "obviously" tells us our main character will be destroyed then we are highly unlikely to choose an extremely strong, dynamic, resourceful character.
A few characters would "suit", more than one would work, but The Terminator would not. We just know this, so we choose characters that feel right, that slip into the spotlight, almost without us trying.
That's point one. The characters should come to us. And they come to us, better, bigger, more naturally, more fittingly if we let them. That is if we do not interfere, if we "just let things happen", if we "write drunk." Your character and mine? They may be a naïve young man or an old frail pensioner, but both "want to be there" and both will work well enough.
But what if, instead of letting the character come to us we sit down and plan. Now our conscious mind is interfering. Now we get the much more obvious (in a clichéd way) character. Yeah the character "sort-of" works, but deep down, we as writers know she's made up, an artificial being. She, Ethel, doesn't feel like she's a living person we stumbled upon. My point? If we stay drunk, hang loose, the right characters "come to us".
Now that is metaphor. What I mean is this: the less formal, deliberate, left-brained or conscious we are, the more likely our unconscious will naturally select the perfect character for a story. As Peter Sansom writes in his book "Writing Poems" did Shakespeare consciously, deliberately mean all that stuff in Hamlet, or did it just come together? I believe it came together because Shakespeare entered the right area and then allowed characters to first arrive, then speak, then live out their lives.
Back, now to "being drunk" and using the unconscious. More or less unconsciously I chose an old woman. I did not choose to call her Ethel, she was an Ethel. If you don't believe me, go to your ten favourite stories, films, plays and rename the main character.
Your Ethel won't be my Ethel. Mine will be partly my mother, aunts, a grandmother, the old dear who worked in the corner shop, a woman I once helped across the road… And Miss Marple, perhaps, or any of a dozen other older woman of stage, screen or leaping from the pages of my library.
But you and I, our Ethels would be more-or-less how an Ethel should be, and would behave Ethelishly. Neither of us have invented (or discovered) an irascible old bitch or an ex-Nazi prison camp warder. We both see "a nice, soft, possibly-vulnerable, "old dear".
And how does Ethel speak? How does she behave? How can we make her do our bidding? How can we be sure she'll "stay in line" and be soft when we want her to be, tough when she should?
Answer!
WE DO NOT CONTROL HER.
Ethel can do whatever she likes, when she likes, how sh likes and to whom she likes. That's the bloody point!
As soon as we do ANYTHING to control her, Ethel is no longer Ethel, some sweet old lady. Now she is a plastic puppet that reminds readers of that author, whatsisname?
Ethel came to us, remember? Why then do we not listen to her, let her speak? If we let her speak she will always say the right thing.
Why is that (dropping the metaphor)?
Because our subconscious brought us the correct vehicle, the right person for the job, the right essence, the right torch-carrier, our subconscious can continue its good work only if we let it. It will do so by giving voice to the very person we chose as the story's spokesperson.
All good stories "surprise the writer". This has led (unfortunately) to people saying stuff like "I write to discover what I know" (etc) but the real point is, if the right character has come to us (ie: we chose the main unconsciously) and if the right voice has come to us (ie: we waited until we heard a voice that we just "knew" was right) and the setting was right (ie: we found a setting which resonated with our vague deliberately not too-shaped thoughts about the story, AND the main, AND the voice, then we are allowing our unconscious to write the story for us.
All we have to do is record what the unconscious already knows.
The story may appear to surprise us, but does it? In my now-ancient story "The Card" (a Bridport Supplementary Prize-Winner) Ethel was just Ethel and she just did the right thing. I really, truly did not think as I wrote the story, it wrote itself. Plot events just "popped up", Ethel just did what was write (applying her Ethelness to everything and simply acting Ethelishly) and everything worked out, everything worked itself out.
The story had a strong thematic spine. It had that thematic spine because the story spoke like I see the world (or wanted to see it at that time). It spoke with the right voice, said the right things, because that's how Ethel was. And why did I choose Ethel?
I didn't. She chose me.
What does that mean?
It means that if I step aside, refuse to be conscious, my unconscious always makes better decisions than I can consciously.
Well, at least I...
Up to my neck today, swapping cars etc, loads of stuff to do
but managed to (at least) start an article. 1,052 words so far, my day-target met
1,375 Words May 01 Tuesday
1,023 Words May 02 Wednesday (Flash & Poem)
1,157 Words May 03 Thursday (Long Poem etc)
1,052 Words May 04 Friday
1,000 Words May 04 Friday (EDIT, article drafted 15:49)
5,607 Words May Total (1,607 words ahead of schedule)
but managed to (at least) start an article. 1,052 words so far, my day-target met
1,375 Words May 01 Tuesday
1,023 Words May 02 Wednesday (Flash & Poem)
1,157 Words May 03 Thursday (Long Poem etc)
1,052 Words May 04 Friday
1,000 Words May 04 Friday (EDIT, article drafted 15:49)
5,607 Words May Total (1,607 words ahead of schedule)
Something For the Weekend, Sir?
Flashes for the Weekend.
Mister Slater at the Gate
Congestion
Do You Like Pie? Do You Like Pie? Do You Like Pie?
An application has been made to your current employer
In Coffee Houses, Restaurants and such
Under Those Scarlet Aprons, are You Naked?
The Undeniable Strength of the Common Ant
Duct Tape
The Man Who Thought Everything Was Tits
Mickey Mouse Physics
Hawking, Floating
Grapefruits and Other Desires
Cops on the River, Dredging
He Mounted the Kerb, Even Though It Wasn't Interested
A coal-cellar sky
I can remember the moment I knew, knew
Kittiwake Pie
Slung from her neck, a tray of Walnut Whips, in the shadow of her powdered breasts
Money rolls by in dark limos
Do I have to say the words, write the words?
Flabberjack,
Queueing to Piss
We're hitting back with a cunning device
I presume, somehow, I am a bad man
Gerrozmified
She wants friends of her own
How Far a Knife Goes In
The following may apply: All calls are recorded
Thomas Knight, 18, Makes The Front Page of the Weekly News
In Wells Cathedral
They are building rockets, hundreds, there is nowhere else to go
Mister Slater at the Gate
Congestion
Do You Like Pie? Do You Like Pie? Do You Like Pie?
An application has been made to your current employer
In Coffee Houses, Restaurants and such
Under Those Scarlet Aprons, are You Naked?
The Undeniable Strength of the Common Ant
Duct Tape
The Man Who Thought Everything Was Tits
Mickey Mouse Physics
Hawking, Floating
Grapefruits and Other Desires
Cops on the River, Dredging
He Mounted the Kerb, Even Though It Wasn't Interested
A coal-cellar sky
I can remember the moment I knew, knew
Kittiwake Pie
Slung from her neck, a tray of Walnut Whips, in the shadow of her powdered breasts
Money rolls by in dark limos
Do I have to say the words, write the words?
Flabberjack,
Queueing to Piss
We're hitting back with a cunning device
I presume, somehow, I am a bad man
Gerrozmified
She wants friends of her own
How Far a Knife Goes In
The following may apply: All calls are recorded
Thomas Knight, 18, Makes The Front Page of the Weekly News
In Wells Cathedral
They are building rockets, hundreds, there is nowhere else to go
Thursday, 3 May 2007
Red, Red Wine
1,375 Words May 01 Tuesday
1,023 Words May 02 Wednesday (Flash & Poem)
0,482 Words May 03 Thursday (Long Poem)
and 676 word so far tonight, another 1K day
1,375 Words May 01 Tuesday
1,023 Words May 02 Wednesday (Flash & Poem)
1,157 Words May 03 Thursday (Long Poem etc)
3,555 Words
EDIT... turned into 1,218 words, a flash
1,375 Words May 01 Tuesday
1,023 Words May 02 Wednesday (Flash & Poem)
1,700 Words May 03 Thursday (Long Poem & a Flash)
4,098 Words Total
1,023 Words May 02 Wednesday (Flash & Poem)
0,482 Words May 03 Thursday (Long Poem)
and 676 word so far tonight, another 1K day
1,375 Words May 01 Tuesday
1,023 Words May 02 Wednesday (Flash & Poem)
1,157 Words May 03 Thursday (Long Poem etc)
3,555 Words
EDIT... turned into 1,218 words, a flash
1,375 Words May 01 Tuesday
1,023 Words May 02 Wednesday (Flash & Poem)
1,700 Words May 03 Thursday (Long Poem & a Flash)
4,098 Words Total
Thursday Again 22:37
Not God but a swastika
Daddy I have had to kill you
I think at some point I looked at my father
I came at night to the dark house
I lay the suitcase on Father's bed
It is eighteen years ago
There he is, just where he should be
In those days, when my father was still big
You come to help me measure windows, pelmets, doors
My mother has gone and bought herself a piglet
In the strange quiet I realise
The assitant holds her on the table
It was three o'clock; all day we sat with her
We went in to make love
I would like to watch you sleeping
Once in a room in Blackpool we had to make do
I remember the nights and the sounds of the nights
We could never really say what this was like
Seeing you makes me want to lift my top
The thin goat, staked out in the clearing
On a quiet street where old ghosts meet
Hot Cross Buns
I love you without knowing why, or how, or where
Perhaps you'll tire of me, my love surmises
There is a kind of love called maintenance
Tanner Hop
Daddy I have had to kill you
I think at some point I looked at my father
I came at night to the dark house
I lay the suitcase on Father's bed
It is eighteen years ago
There he is, just where he should be
In those days, when my father was still big
You come to help me measure windows, pelmets, doors
My mother has gone and bought herself a piglet
In the strange quiet I realise
The assitant holds her on the table
It was three o'clock; all day we sat with her
We went in to make love
I would like to watch you sleeping
Once in a room in Blackpool we had to make do
I remember the nights and the sounds of the nights
We could never really say what this was like
Seeing you makes me want to lift my top
The thin goat, staked out in the clearing
On a quiet street where old ghosts meet
Hot Cross Buns
I love you without knowing why, or how, or where
Perhaps you'll tire of me, my love surmises
There is a kind of love called maintenance
Tanner Hop
Thursday Evening Prompts
Another set will be posted at 10:30
Red as taillights, red as a stop light
Your heartbeat flew into the room
A child I'd curl up small at night
I am not yet born; Oh hear me
We will never remember dying
We were low on petrol
I hadn't met his kind before
Before the spectacled professor snipped
Sometimes I wonder what I'm like underneath
Here is a soul, accepting nothing
"Will I die?" you ask. I pause
She wanted a little room for thinking
This is the gift my son gave me
It's not the hens that matter, scratching
Later, maybe, hanky-panky
This is my daughter and this is my son
I'm coming back as a Labrador, or the saddle of a lady's bike
When all the others were away at mass
The memory of my father is brown paper, sticks
Every other weekend, they go to their mother's
I don't need to tell you what you've done
Catching Life by the throat
You do not do, you do not do
Red as taillights, red as a stop light
Your heartbeat flew into the room
A child I'd curl up small at night
I am not yet born; Oh hear me
We will never remember dying
We were low on petrol
I hadn't met his kind before
Before the spectacled professor snipped
Sometimes I wonder what I'm like underneath
Here is a soul, accepting nothing
"Will I die?" you ask. I pause
She wanted a little room for thinking
This is the gift my son gave me
It's not the hens that matter, scratching
Later, maybe, hanky-panky
This is my daughter and this is my son
I'm coming back as a Labrador, or the saddle of a lady's bike
When all the others were away at mass
The memory of my father is brown paper, sticks
Every other weekend, they go to their mother's
I don't need to tell you what you've done
Catching Life by the throat
You do not do, you do not do
Subs, Hits Pubs Update
About a month ago I mentioned our "virgins"
Well one, Joel now reports his secod and third hit (at Shimmer & Smokebox)
And we have to Highly recommendeds (JBWB & Twisted Tongue)
taking hits for the year to 68
Latest 2007 Pubs count is Web-20, Paper-18 Total-38
03 First Prizes
03 Runner-Up Prizes
01 Third
12 HR and named Finals
19 Total
$3,163
Well one, Joel now reports his secod and third hit (at Shimmer & Smokebox)
And we have to Highly recommendeds (JBWB & Twisted Tongue)
taking hits for the year to 68
Latest 2007 Pubs count is Web-20, Paper-18 Total-38
03 First Prizes
03 Runner-Up Prizes
01 Third
12 HR and named Finals
19 Total
$3,163
Good Start!
Up early, post prompts, suddenly get inspired
Almost five hundred words before breaksfast
Excellent!
1,375 Words May 01 Tuesday
1,023 Words May 02 Wednesday (Flash & Poem)
0,482 Words May 03 Thursday (Long Poem)
2,880 Words Total
Almost five hundred words before breaksfast
Excellent!
1,375 Words May 01 Tuesday
1,023 Words May 02 Wednesday (Flash & Poem)
0,482 Words May 03 Thursday (Long Poem)
2,880 Words Total
Thurday May 3rd Prompts
With prompts, read them all, especially out loud. Cut and paste the ones that "ring" and put them at the top of the list.
As soon as one sounds like the beginning of a story you could write, try starting a story with it, word for word if necessary (you can always change it later). Hear the voice, feel the rhythms. the emotions. Now write as fast as you can but keep thinking of that varied list, imagine a magnetic force, merely a tendency; let the story search for another prompt.
PROMPTS
She sat on the stairs in white bikini briefs
Because I could not stop for death
Her flat was in a side-street, an easy downhill to the front
After great pain, a formal feeling comes
Mrs Lettice was waiting for her as she left the flat.
There's a certain slant of light
Leaving a house-key in the lock wasn't that rare
My life had stood, a loaded gun
Not fruit but sweet
Let us go then, you and I
The door opened with a schlatt! of wood
In the room the women came and went
A curved archway went through to the galleyed kitchen
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons
She wasn't shocked by blood or death
Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon
She had no real excuse
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
Withing an hour the street was the scene of a circus
Shape without form, shade without colour
Glad to be heading for the cool day
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In a dormitory street where hardly anybody knew anybody
When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his stride
Pointing to a pine-coloured door
I've paid for your sickening fantasies
Billy Tingle straightened out an aluminium easel
Superior people never make long visits
Six parallel streets away from her own
When fishes flew and forest walked
The shopping centre was busy
Death in Milan
The afternoon light closes
As soon as one sounds like the beginning of a story you could write, try starting a story with it, word for word if necessary (you can always change it later). Hear the voice, feel the rhythms. the emotions. Now write as fast as you can but keep thinking of that varied list, imagine a magnetic force, merely a tendency; let the story search for another prompt.
PROMPTS
She sat on the stairs in white bikini briefs
Because I could not stop for death
Her flat was in a side-street, an easy downhill to the front
After great pain, a formal feeling comes
Mrs Lettice was waiting for her as she left the flat.
There's a certain slant of light
Leaving a house-key in the lock wasn't that rare
My life had stood, a loaded gun
Not fruit but sweet
Let us go then, you and I
The door opened with a schlatt! of wood
In the room the women came and went
A curved archway went through to the galleyed kitchen
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons
She wasn't shocked by blood or death
Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon
She had no real excuse
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
Withing an hour the street was the scene of a circus
Shape without form, shade without colour
Glad to be heading for the cool day
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In a dormitory street where hardly anybody knew anybody
When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his stride
Pointing to a pine-coloured door
I've paid for your sickening fantasies
Billy Tingle straightened out an aluminium easel
Superior people never make long visits
Six parallel streets away from her own
When fishes flew and forest walked
The shopping centre was busy
Death in Milan
The afternoon light closes
Wednesday, 2 May 2007
Still Ticking Over
1,375 Words May 01 Tuesday
1,023 Words May 02 Wednesday (Flash & Poem)
2,398 Words Total
1,023 Words May 02 Wednesday (Flash & Poem)
2,398 Words Total
22:20 Prompts
Bacon, Bodies, Experiments, Fire, Paper, Organic.
Beating Charlie
Paris, the Secret History
And drowns Chianti
BMI
Aberyswyth, Mon Amour
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire
Not to say what everyone else is saying.
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat
Brings the priest and the doctor
Fawlty Towers
I love you more than a duck can swim
if when my wife is sleeping
what passing bells?
Tick-Tock I'm a clock
Prune
Quinquereme of Nineveh from Distant Ophir
Dangerous Pilgrimages
Tick Tock Tea
Late Return Penalty Notice
It's On the Board
Dirty British Steamer With a Salt-Caked Smoke-Stack
Number One in Heaven
I Have Eaten the Plums That Were in the Icebox
219 Pounds
Undulate Around the World, Serenely Arriving, Arriving
The Truth, With Jokes
The Totally Lost Poems of J. Edgar Hoover
Firewood, Iron-Ware and Cheap Tin Trays
Testicle
All you who sleep tonight, far from the ones you love, no hand to left or right, and emptiness above; know that you aren't alone, the whole world shares your tears, some for two nights or one, and some for all their years.
Beating Charlie
Paris, the Secret History
And drowns Chianti
BMI
Aberyswyth, Mon Amour
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire
Not to say what everyone else is saying.
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat
Brings the priest and the doctor
Fawlty Towers
I love you more than a duck can swim
if when my wife is sleeping
what passing bells?
Tick-Tock I'm a clock
Prune
Quinquereme of Nineveh from Distant Ophir
Dangerous Pilgrimages
Tick Tock Tea
Late Return Penalty Notice
It's On the Board
Dirty British Steamer With a Salt-Caked Smoke-Stack
Number One in Heaven
I Have Eaten the Plums That Were in the Icebox
219 Pounds
Undulate Around the World, Serenely Arriving, Arriving
The Truth, With Jokes
The Totally Lost Poems of J. Edgar Hoover
Firewood, Iron-Ware and Cheap Tin Trays
Testicle
All you who sleep tonight, far from the ones you love, no hand to left or right, and emptiness above; know that you aren't alone, the whole world shares your tears, some for two nights or one, and some for all their years.
als writes - the last week
this blog is partly here for bcers to diarise (is that the word?) their bc experience.
so...
sometimes, bc is a slog.
in fact, there's some discussion from time to time on bc about how hard it is for all of us to fit the writing in around our lives.
it's true; writing, trying to be a writer, getting words down, subbing, critting, rewriting, keeping a record of what you've done, what you've subbed, blah blah blah
it can be hard
but but but
recently we've had 'subs blasts' where we are 'encouraged' - that means big shouty capital letters - to send our writing to competitions, ezines, anywhere that might publish it, or give us cash for it.
we've also , for a while now, been 'encouraged' to write a story (2000 words at least) a week, post it, crit it, rewrite it (if you want) send it out somewhere as a sub (if you can)
hard, hard, work on top of life, family, work, football (euro semis and promotion/relegation races take up a lot of time!)
but but but
it works.
the last seven days - i got a story on a shortlist for a biggish comp ( big prize) - top twenty out of 500-plus entries
i won a fifty quid second-place in another competition
i got a poem (poetry, for god's sake!) accepted at a print mag
i got sent a print mag through the post with another poem of mine published inside
i'm not giving it the johnny big bollocks here - i also got a rejection back from a site i've been trying to get into for ages, and i had another two poems rejected - but what i'm saying is, the hard work pays off, a little
sure, it's small fry - fifty quid's not paying anyone's mortgage, and little poetry mags are, well, little poetry mags.
but the stuff is out there
people (however few) might read it
it's better than it sitting on my hard drive
and it creates a bit of enthusiasm in me for this whole writing lark
getting a hit emailed to your in box, it's nice
the encouragement we get to write write write sub sub sub at bc (not just from the boss, although he does shout the loudest, but from everyone else) that's what leads to getting stuff published, placing in comps, and - eventually - improving as a writer
i'm not bigging-up bc here
i'm just saying that the hard work is - sometimes - always - worth it.
so...
sometimes, bc is a slog.
in fact, there's some discussion from time to time on bc about how hard it is for all of us to fit the writing in around our lives.
it's true; writing, trying to be a writer, getting words down, subbing, critting, rewriting, keeping a record of what you've done, what you've subbed, blah blah blah
it can be hard
but but but
recently we've had 'subs blasts' where we are 'encouraged' - that means big shouty capital letters - to send our writing to competitions, ezines, anywhere that might publish it, or give us cash for it.
we've also , for a while now, been 'encouraged' to write a story (2000 words at least) a week, post it, crit it, rewrite it (if you want) send it out somewhere as a sub (if you can)
hard, hard, work on top of life, family, work, football (euro semis and promotion/relegation races take up a lot of time!)
but but but
it works.
the last seven days - i got a story on a shortlist for a biggish comp ( big prize) - top twenty out of 500-plus entries
i won a fifty quid second-place in another competition
i got a poem (poetry, for god's sake!) accepted at a print mag
i got sent a print mag through the post with another poem of mine published inside
i'm not giving it the johnny big bollocks here - i also got a rejection back from a site i've been trying to get into for ages, and i had another two poems rejected - but what i'm saying is, the hard work pays off, a little
sure, it's small fry - fifty quid's not paying anyone's mortgage, and little poetry mags are, well, little poetry mags.
but the stuff is out there
people (however few) might read it
it's better than it sitting on my hard drive
and it creates a bit of enthusiasm in me for this whole writing lark
getting a hit emailed to your in box, it's nice
the encouragement we get to write write write sub sub sub at bc (not just from the boss, although he does shout the loudest, but from everyone else) that's what leads to getting stuff published, placing in comps, and - eventually - improving as a writer
i'm not bigging-up bc here
i'm just saying that the hard work is - sometimes - always - worth it.
21:05 PROMPTS
End of an Era, End of an Ear
TING!
Sebastian
PING!
A Midnight Yoghurt
A Deer Dancing
Splitting Matches Four Ways
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sacks
Yellow Wellies
Smeddum
Jones Has the Answer
And fine she well might, the coarse creature!
RAMC
The Man Who Stole a Snowman and Took it to Egypt
Making Fags From Dog-ends
Nature & Nature's Laws Lay Hid at Night
The A-Z of Murder
Eye Drops
Ten Quid on the Lottery, a Broken Toe
Why Getting Even is Odd
The Difference Between a Dove and a Pigeon
Half Welsh, Half-Irish (the Bad Halves)
TING!
Sebastian
PING!
A Midnight Yoghurt
A Deer Dancing
Splitting Matches Four Ways
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sacks
Yellow Wellies
Smeddum
Jones Has the Answer
And fine she well might, the coarse creature!
RAMC
The Man Who Stole a Snowman and Took it to Egypt
Making Fags From Dog-ends
Nature & Nature's Laws Lay Hid at Night
The A-Z of Murder
Eye Drops
Ten Quid on the Lottery, a Broken Toe
Why Getting Even is Odd
The Difference Between a Dove and a Pigeon
Half Welsh, Half-Irish (the Bad Halves)
19:30 Prompts
For all I know I was meant to be one of those
Cold Monday Morning, six o'clock, November.
Frogs give notice when the swamp backs up
Please Drive Carefully Through Our Village
Not that it was needed that much
Ready?
There were lanterns at the outer edge
Tuesday, Tulip
Today the rent is due again
Blank Firs
When they passed through the city, the others knew it first
That night she called his name, not mine
No one needs to know what's ailing me
Prison-Break
We took a walk towards the cathedral
Cold Monday Morning, six o'clock, November.
Frogs give notice when the swamp backs up
Please Drive Carefully Through Our Village
Not that it was needed that much
Ready?
There were lanterns at the outer edge
Tuesday, Tulip
Today the rent is due again
Blank Firs
When they passed through the city, the others knew it first
That night she called his name, not mine
No one needs to know what's ailing me
Prison-Break
We took a walk towards the cathedral
18:00 Prompts
He wonders at his brother's skull
Bloody Men!
Sharp knuckles shine that way, my friends
A wooden way, regardless
Earth flows away
This is the hour of dying men, and snow
I have nothing except my body
Letters, Lettuce
I don't want you, don't tempt me
My life closed twice
Tired plough boys lay their head
DING!
Her dress, and flames
The Road, Less
The most beautiful bodies are like transparent glass
Top Man
The sound of a horn not heard
Secure Male Services
The child rushing down a staircase
Blossom
She lightly wipes away two tears
Before Eliot
They sang on the dunes, Maria, Maria
Orbit, Orbit
Bloody Men!
Sharp knuckles shine that way, my friends
A wooden way, regardless
Earth flows away
This is the hour of dying men, and snow
I have nothing except my body
Letters, Lettuce
I don't want you, don't tempt me
My life closed twice
Tired plough boys lay their head
DING!
Her dress, and flames
The Road, Less
The most beautiful bodies are like transparent glass
Top Man
The sound of a horn not heard
Secure Male Services
The child rushing down a staircase
Blossom
She lightly wipes away two tears
Before Eliot
They sang on the dunes, Maria, Maria
Orbit, Orbit
Tuesday, 1 May 2007
Steady Start for May
1,375 Words May 01 Tuesday (One Flash, some Poems, one VG)
and three subs, one small hit
(ADDED)
and twelve pieces from tonight's flash session, all critiqued briefly
alx
and three subs, one small hit
(ADDED)
and twelve pieces from tonight's flash session, all critiqued briefly
alx
22:30 Prompts Set (oops)
ARGH!!!!
Because there was a penalty shoot-out I "sent" these early (22:15)
On;y problem is I didn't press SEND
She was in the bath for five-thirty, out for six
Shit everywhere
Singapore Burning
Someone dropped a tray of drinks
Spray Polish
Steam, Jug
The afternoon was flat, grey and ordinary
The all the men came and added their weight
Then he let Nagasaki off its leash
The others were laughing quietly
The pig-tailed, freckled fallen idols of the stage
The reflecting shops on the hill were just ticking over
They found it scrubbed, and buffed, spotless…
They're watching the house
Three times out of ten you'll see the town clown
Three walked barefoot into the sea, mother, father, only child
Thursdays & Fridays are lemon and lime
We sat in the ruins and drank ourselves blind
Weeds floating alongside and also leaves
Where scampi comes from
White-coated assistants in slow-frame
Women of Huddersfield!
Because there was a penalty shoot-out I "sent" these early (22:15)
On;y problem is I didn't press SEND
She was in the bath for five-thirty, out for six
Shit everywhere
Singapore Burning
Someone dropped a tray of drinks
Spray Polish
Steam, Jug
The afternoon was flat, grey and ordinary
The all the men came and added their weight
Then he let Nagasaki off its leash
The others were laughing quietly
The pig-tailed, freckled fallen idols of the stage
The reflecting shops on the hill were just ticking over
They found it scrubbed, and buffed, spotless…
They're watching the house
Three times out of ten you'll see the town clown
Three walked barefoot into the sea, mother, father, only child
Thursdays & Fridays are lemon and lime
We sat in the ruins and drank ourselves blind
Weeds floating alongside and also leaves
Where scampi comes from
White-coated assistants in slow-frame
Women of Huddersfield!
21:00 Third Set of Prompts
On the prom. Retired ex-patriates swarmed
Orang-Utans
Pale and pastel, relaxing
Passing paper bags to solitary customers
Pebbles, smaller pebbles
Above the tree-line and below the fog
Pesticide, Herbicide
I'll sit for a while and quietly weep, if that's OK
Peterloo, Waterloo
Pigeon
Piss-holes in the snow
Random's Decision
Remember the case of the girl who drowned?
Caesar
Sharpshooters strolled across the campus
She danced on to his mouth
She skipped brightly from the car to the front door
She walked away, laughing
Orang-Utans
Pale and pastel, relaxing
Passing paper bags to solitary customers
Pebbles, smaller pebbles
Above the tree-line and below the fog
Pesticide, Herbicide
I'll sit for a while and quietly weep, if that's OK
Peterloo, Waterloo
Pigeon
Piss-holes in the snow
Random's Decision
Remember the case of the girl who drowned?
Caesar
Sharpshooters strolled across the campus
She danced on to his mouth
She skipped brightly from the car to the front door
She walked away, laughing
Last Weekend's Stories
A few hours late this week but all got their eight critiques and two got nine
and one fresh story, two flashes, three poems already!
and one fresh story, two flashes, three poems already!
19:30 Prompts
Her parents banned all mirrors from the house
His Other Story
On Mondays, red cars only enter town
How we escaped
I could take up smoking
A small, highly-polished, desk
I watched two men on the opposite slope
Indians!
It's empty here, apart from God
John Mole
Last Night in the Shed, he was working late
Late fat summer
Leaving the house by the back door
Marquee
My mind was like a tree full of monkeys
Nationwide
Not much wind, not too cold, not actually raining
Breakwater
A waist-high mob of bickering brats
His Other Story
On Mondays, red cars only enter town
How we escaped
I could take up smoking
A small, highly-polished, desk
I watched two men on the opposite slope
Indians!
It's empty here, apart from God
John Mole
Last Night in the Shed, he was working late
Late fat summer
Leaving the house by the back door
Marquee
My mind was like a tree full of monkeys
Nationwide
Not much wind, not too cold, not actually raining
Breakwater
A waist-high mob of bickering brats
18:00 Prompts
18:00
Please reply if you are "in"
She thought she would play Simply Red and wash her hair
A car puttered slowly up the road
Doubting Thomas
A card in a newsagent window
Mandolin
A contemplative soul, much like I am
Afterwards, she cried again
Almost Wales
And suddenly a man leapt from a boat
Billiards
Book of Disquiet
Heavy and slow, each step deliberate
Chicken Soup
Doors opened with pinging bells
Every son carries a key to a rusted lock
He was spark out, at noon, on the beach
Please reply if you are "in"
She thought she would play Simply Red and wash her hair
A car puttered slowly up the road
Doubting Thomas
A card in a newsagent window
Mandolin
A contemplative soul, much like I am
Afterwards, she cried again
Almost Wales
And suddenly a man leapt from a boat
Billiards
Book of Disquiet
Heavy and slow, each step deliberate
Chicken Soup
Doors opened with pinging bells
Every son carries a key to a rusted lock
He was spark out, at noon, on the beach
REMINDER: FLASHING TONIGHT!
Prompts posted here TONIGHT at
18:00
19:30
21:00
22:30
Why not write four flashes, each inside 90 minutes?
18:00
19:30
21:00
22:30
Why not write four flashes, each inside 90 minutes?
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