Sanderson/Writing comments

[Demesnedenoir]

In one draft of my working that sentence I think I mentioned my pondering whether that particular sentence was important enough to really draw attention to, a glance suggests it got deleted. I am assuming here that if I am talking about rain on a parched field the moment is important enough to really draw the reader's attention to it. The end of a drought or some such. Otherwise I'd just its raining and move the hell on, LOL.

I do concur on Sanderson's work being serviceable to good from what I've read.

Hrmm, perhaps this is just me, but I have a strange style, one born out of how I write most days. One thing that I do, constantly, is that when I find a word to describe a thing that is the word I use to describe that thing. So, in one of my works I have literal talismans. They are metal disks anywhere from the size of a quarter to the size of a friggin city. In a paragraph I am describing a character looking and analyzing his quarter sized fire talisman. I think in 6 sentences I use the word talisman three times. Once at the beginning to say this character had grabbed the fire talisman, once in the middle after calling it, it several times, and once at the end where he put it in his special drawer for talismans. There is no "variation" and some readers hate it. They consider it bland prose. I disagree. It is precise prose. It is not an amulet, it is not a charm, it is not a phylactery, it is a damn talisman.

I point this out for one reason, the definition of "good prose" is so very, very subjective. Granted, there is a threshold of quality. When someone meets that threshold I would call the prose acceptable. This is John Grisham. His prose is tight, accurate, but not pretty. It is acceptable. Sanderson is serviceable to good. Most of the time it is serviceable, however, there are points, like that final fight at the end of Words of Radiance, where his prose is good to great, but on average just good.

The question of "good prose" is not just a micro consideration. Often times, the strength of prose is judged in the macro perspective, over books and chapters, rather than by sentences and paragraphs. So, let's turn to your examples, Dem, and presuppose that an entire book is written in the style of sentence 3. The unfortunate truth is, while great as a single sentence, it would not work for the whole of a book. It would bog the book a bit too much. Why? Because, it would draw out so many unimportant, yet necessary details, that we would be describing things with such detail that the reader would get lost. While ther should be a presumption against passive voice or adverbs, that presumption is rebuttable. Passive voice should be used when deliberately obfuscating the actor. -ly adverbs should be used when the action is rathe unimportant and the information needs to be conveyed quickly. And any number of items for what makes "good prose" has an exception that can be met for a single instance. Just like in baseball you have all of these statistics telling what a batter can and cannot hit and where he hits or doesn't. But, on any given night that can change. Normally a batter is a 33% average. That is a really good batter, depending on HRs and RBIs he could be a player of the year candidate. However, on this night he is 0/3 with a groundout and fly into the 3d base area and a strikeout where he was caught looking. He's just having a problem on the micro level in this game, nothing to worry about. You shouldn't go out and rethink his game because of that one bad night. This same thing is with prose. You can have really good prose, like a batter with a 33% average, and still have micro level problems. You shouldn't go and oust your voice simply because you have some micro level problems that some readers might dislike.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I think that Demesnedenoir's primary point is that an ability to recognize potential weakness in prose, or to see those things that can accumulate in an infelicitous manner within our writing, may be quite useful for anyone concerned about her own writing. A discussion like this can be useful; and, why not? I don't think anyone here has the power to take these dangerous ideas and institutionalize them, doling out punishment to some writers while unfairly advancing others. What's left over is a discussion that each person can take or leave however she likes.

I plead the Fifthview, exactly right.

 

[FifthView]

Began, due to screenwriting, is just a done deal for me, I don't use them unless there is a real point to it.

These references to screenwriting have piqued my curiosity.

I think its use as a stage direction might be considered weak.

"She begins to walk across the stage." Ok, that's not substantially different than "She walks across the stage." This is because the actual physical manifestation [redundancy!] is the same: A stage has a certain length to it, the actor cannot teleport from one side to the other, so "She walks" will have a duration just like "She begins to walk."

More specificity will help in the stage direction. "She walks quickly across the stage" or "She slowly walks across the stage" is better stage direction than "She begins to walk across the stage" or "She walks across the stage." We could eliminate the -ly adverbs of course: "She darts across the stage" vs "She strolls across the stage." But no one in the audience is going to see those -ly adverbs so...?

In dialogue, I can see the trouble with "began." A character who says, "Davis began to enter the detonation code, and I was watching the door for Jack Bauer," would seem odd because characters don't speak like authors write their non-dialogue bits. A character's more likely to say, "Davis entered the detonation code...."

I'm feeling this out, you understand....

*Edit: General point is that duration is handled differently between the two mediums?

 

[Heliotrope]

I'm also wondering too, about screenwriting tools entering into fiction writing... This is a crossover from my last post in the "make it more" thread... but my example of American Gods got me thinking.

So, in American Gods Gaiman wrote:

Shadow had done three years in prison. He was big enough and looked don't-****-with-me enough that his biggest problem was killing time. So he kept himself in shape, and taught himself coin tricks, and thought a lot about how much he loved his wife.

The best thing - in Shadow's opinion, perhaps the only good thing - about being in prison was a feeling of relief. The feeling that he'd plunged as low as he could plunge and he'd hit bottom. He didn't worry that the man was going to get him, because the man had got him. He was no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, because yesterday had brought it.

Now, for screenwriting none of that would work or be relevant because the viewer would never know what Shadow was thinking, so they have to show it another way, in which case:

Shadow lays on a hard prison cot, tossing a quarter in his large hand.

Would make more sense. The immediate action of Shadow doing something is important for screenwriting because the viewers only get to view what Shadow is doing...

But fiction is different. In fiction we get into the head of the character and we get to see what they are thinking and feeling, so the narrative form is different, and I think different words would then be used.

I do think that when writing fiction we do have to be careful that we are not crossing too much over to screen writing because they are two very different mediums.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Obviously screenwriting and novels are different. One reason to not use "began" in Scripts is stage direction... basically, you avoid playing director entirely in a spec script, big no-no, but the underlying reason of creating a snapshot in time does apply (much of the time) to novels and is the core reason for my advice to not (over)use them in either medium. Ditching begans will create a more active scene, in general.

Again, these aren't laws, they are guidelines even in screenwriting. There are always exceptions to everything. Nobody is going to toss a great script because of the use of "began" but when you are trying to get your script or ms past the first layer of gatekeepers, you want to dot them i's and cross them t's and make damned sure you don't give them an excuse to toss it in the scrap heap. If you're producing your own film or self-publishing? By all means, write it however the heck you want.

These references to screenwriting have piqued my curiosity.

I think its use as a stage direction might be considered weak.

"She begins to walk across the stage." Ok, that's not substantially different than "She walks across the stage." This is because the actual physical manifestation [redundancy!] is the same: A stage has a certain length to it, the actor cannot teleport from one side to the other, so "She walks" will have a duration just like "She begins to walk."

More specificity will help in the stage direction. "She walks quickly across the stage" or "She slowly walks across the stage" is better stage direction than "She begins to walk across the stage" or "She walks across the stage." We could eliminate the -ly adverbs of course: "She darts across the stage" vs "She strolls across the stage." But no one in the audience is going to see those -ly adverbs so...?

In dialogue, I can see the trouble with "began." A character who says, "Davis began to enter the detonation code, and I was watching the door for Jack Bauer," would seem odd because characters don't speak like authors write their non-dialogue bits. A character's more likely to say, "Davis entered the detonation code...."

I'm feeling this out, you understand....

*Edit: General point is that duration is handled differently between the two mediums?

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Clearly you wouldn't want to write a novel like a screenplay, sales would suck, LOL. Screenplays are present tense at all times, something I find annoying in novels, is a for instance. Novels of basically all dialogue aren't flying off the shelves. In a novel we must direct the character, while in a screenplay it is up to the director/actor to interpret those lines and deliver them. In novels we control the delivery (although some folks would also suggest not to direct the reader too much, an odd and debatable point) and can delve into the minds of the character, so of course we need to take advantage of that.

Began is a useful tool under the right circumstances, but action is going to read better without it under most circumstances. It's a basic notion that carries over well into any form of creative writing.

I'm also wondering too, about screenwriting tools entering into fiction writing... This is a crossover from my last post in the "make it more" thread... but my example of American Gods got me thinking.

So, in American Gods Gaiman wrote:

Shadow had done three years in prison. He was big enough and looked don't-****-with-me enough that his biggest problem was killing time. So he kept himself in shape, and taught himself coin tricks, and thought a lot about how much he loved his wife.

The best thing - in Shadow's opinion, perhaps the only good thing - about being in prison was a feeling of relief. The feeling that he'd plunged as low as he could plunge and he'd hit bottom. He didn't worry that the man was going to get him, because the man had got him. He was no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, because yesterday had brought it.

Now, for screenwriting none of that would work or be relevant because the viewer would never know what Shadow was thinking, so they have to show it another way, in which case:

Shadow lays on a hard prison cot, tossing a quarter in his large hand.

Would make more sense. The immediate action of Shadow doing something is important for screenwriting because the viewers only get to view what Shadow is doing...

But fiction is different. In fiction we get into the head of the character and we get to see what they are thinking and feeling, so the narrative form is different, and I think different words would then be used.

I do think that when writing fiction we do have to be careful that we are not crossing too much over to screen writing because they are two very different mediums.

 

[FifthView]

but the underlying reason of creating a snapshot in time does apply (much of the time) to novels and is the core reason for my advice to not (over)use them in either medium. Ditching begans will create a more active scene, in general.

I'm thinking of the various ways a director can show a group of events happening simultaneously, the way someone may "begin" to do something and then someone else or another event happens, and then both things are proceeding; and, add a few more things to the mix.

To some extent, the layout of the set will help in this endeavor as the camera flicks from one person to another and another. We see Bauer running down a hall, then flick to the terrorists in a closed room putting the final touches on an enhancement to a weapon of mass destruction. The audience sees the length of the hall, the closed doors, then sees the interior of a room, and understands automatically that these things are occurring simultaneously and a length of time is required before the twain can meet. Meanwhile, an alarm in the building goes off; or, gunfire is heard all around; and, the director can show either Bauer or the terrorists noticing those things for the first time, and the cacophony can continue until the situation is resolved.

Even multiple things happening within a single small set—say, within that room after Bauer enters—can be taken in at a glance by the viewing audience. (The director may still flick the camera about to focus on this or that, and might use slo-mo, or in one shot may move the camera about to show the distances between actors and events.)

But a novel or story is somewhat different. The reader's experience is very linear. We could write that, "An alarm rang throughout the building," while describing Bauer's advance down that hallway. But depending on the length of that scene, by the time we flick to the terrorists within the room (whether there's another POV character in that group or Bauer bursts into the room), will the reader have an impression of that alarm ringing still? And besides, how long does an alarm ring out? Is it a series of three loud gongs, then silence? Is it an ongoing ringing? I'm not sure that, "An alarm began to ring throughout the building" will necessarily lead to a reader's present awareness, later, that the alarm is still ringing; but I think it's a tonal thing: The author signals to a reader with "began" that the tension level has increased and intends for that to carry forward. (Plus, perhaps it signals "Keep this in mind as we proceed.")

 

[Demesnedenoir]

As to the latter with the continuing ring in fiction, I am personally going to find a way to reinforce the noise in the reader's head in the attempt to keep it in mind through the character's perspective, I'm not going to rely on began in order to keep anything in the the reader's memory. Began can serve this sort of function, in a relatively lame fashion, but if it's important and the piece of prose long enough, it needs to be reinforced. If you began and nothing else you are left with... did it end? did it continue? did it cut off? there isn't really an implication of continued unless the writer says so. It is a snapshot in time.

In fiction, simultaneous and continuance can be handled in a multitude of ways, two different scenes, or sets, so to speak, can have "mirrors" for indicating time. A mirror in an alarm setting could be we see Character A and an alarm sounds and we follow them to finish the scene. Character B we start following and a little later, we hear the alarm, we now know exactly where these two characters were at the moment the alarm sounds.

Been quite a few years since my screenwriting, but... As a writing note, in the actual spec script, an alarm would just be something like ALARM WAILS and later ALARM ENDS as necessary, with (most likely) no flourish outside of character action, maybe. Now in the working script, God knows what it might be by the director's whim.

I'm thinking of the various ways a director can show a group of events happening simultaneously, the way someone may "begin" to do something and then someone else or another event happens, and then both things are proceeding; and, add a few more things to the mix.

To some extent, the layout of the set will help in this endeavor as the camera flicks from one person to another and another. We see Bauer running down a hall, then flick to the terrorists in a closed room putting the final touches on an enhancement to a weapon of mass destruction. The audience sees the length of the hall, the closed doors, then sees the interior of a room, and understands automatically that these things are occurring simultaneously and a length of time is required before the twain can meet. Meanwhile, an alarm in the building goes off; or, gunfire is heard all around; and, the director can show either Bauer or the terrorists noticing those things for the first time, and the cacophony can continue until the situation is resolved.

Even multiple things happening within a single small set—say, within that room after Bauer enters—can be taken in at a glance by the viewing audience. (The director may still flick the camera about to focus on this or that, and might use slo-mo, or in one shot may move the camera about to show the distances between actors and events.)

But a novel or story is somewhat different. The reader's experience is very linear. We could write that, "An alarm rang throughout the building," while describing Bauer's advance down that hallway. But depending on the length of that scene, by the time we flick to the terrorists within the room (whether there's another POV character in that group or Bauer bursts into the room), will the reader have an impression of that alarm ringing still? And besides, how long does an alarm ring out? Is it a series of three loud gongs, then silence? Is it an ongoing ringing? I'm not sure that, "An alarm began to ring throughout the building" will necessarily lead to a reader's present awareness, later, that the alarm is still ringing; but I think it's a tonal thing: The author signals to a reader with "began" that the tension level has increased and intends for that to carry forward. (Plus, perhaps it signals "Keep this in mind as we proceed.")