Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #3

Don't Show Off When You Write


If you have a speical area of expertise -if you are a nurse, for example, or a lawyer- your specialized knowledge may be a gold mine you can use as background for your stories. Fiction readers love learning about new things as they read a good story.

If you have a rich and extensive vocabulary, that may also prove to be a useful tool. Or if you happen to be a widely read person, or more cultured and schooled in the arts than the average citizen, this too may help you when you write your fiction.

But just as a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, too much erudition may be fatal to your ficition if you succum to the temptation to show it off.

Good fiction writers never show off: dump in abstruse knowledge for its own sake, or purposely use big words when simpler ones would do. Good fiction writers constantly seek ways to work in necessary background information in as unobtrusive a way as possible, and they remember that readers get irritated quickly if a writer's style sends them to the dictionary once or twice every paragraph.

You must remember that readers do not read your story to hear how smart you are, or how complicated you can make your sentences. If you insist on showing off in your copy, readers will flee in droves. It's possible to put even very complex ideas in relatively simple language, and it's equally possible to tell your readers a great deal of fascinating information without making it sound like a self-serving show-off act.


Example of what you must not do:

In an obscurantist deluge of extraneous verbiage as an outgrowth of an apparent excessive effort to manifest extraordinary intellectual attainment, the aforesaid man impacted adversely on the totality of his audience in a veritable paradigm of irreleveance.


What the writer was trying to say was:

The man tried to impress people by talking too much, but nobody liked it.




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McKenna's own thoughts/comments:

I think this topic ties in closely with yesterday's topic. "Showing off" and "condescending" go together like peanut butter and jelly. Do I have examples of these? Not off hand, no. Probably because when I run across these types of writers, I don't bother to finish what they've written because I'm so turned off by their writing. A writer that is more full of herself than her story is not writing fiction, she's writing an autobiography.

I take from today's excerpt one of the main things taught to me as a techincal writer: Keep it simple. My job isn't to wow people with my extensive and superior knowledge of a product, procedure, or software program, my job is to facilitate their use of said product, to make it easier for them to use and understand.

The one thing learning to write like that has done, (At least, I like to think it's done this!) is taught me how to cut out the necessary garbage in my prose. It makes for a tighter, more cohesive sentence and paragraph structure. It conveys information clearly without clouding it with unnecessary jargon.


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Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes #1

Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes #2

It does tie with yesterday's topic, Mckenna.

The show offs and ego trippers write stuff like that hideous example sentence. Couldn't even finish that one. Made my eyes bleed.

Of course, I should talk. I'm one of the wordiest bastards I know.

rgraham666 said:

It does tie with yesterday's topic, Mckenna.

The show offs and ego trippers write stuff like that hideous example sentence. Couldn't even finish that one. Made my eyes bleed.

Of course, I should talk. I'm one of the wordiest bastards I know.

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But they tend to be good words.

I'm with both of you, but can be guilty of straying, though I've never written (in my storys) of the things I know most about, architecture or baking.

You are certainly getting your money's worth out of this mistakes book. This is fun.

neonlyte said:

But they tend to be good words.

I'm with both of you, but can be guilty of straying, though I've never written (in my storys) of the things I know most about, architecture or baking.

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Idea for Christmas story: A baker bakes a gingerbread house for his Love... or something like that.

Nor do I write about the stuff I'm most familiar with, history.

And I do write about something that I am almost completely unfamiliar with, sex.

Doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?

Being wordy isn't the problem. It's how all those words are used. Words and descriptions can be used to enchant us, enthrall us and whisk us off to a world when never could have imagined on our own; or they can be used to drown us in a sea of incessant adjectives and adverbs until we sink under the morass of muddy prose. (kinda like I just did!)

neonlyte said:

But they tend to be good words.

I'm with both of you, but can be guilty of straying, though I've never written (in my storys) of the things I know most about, architecture or baking.

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I love to use strong background. Artists, musicians, even once a paperboy. A fireman. All in the places they would be to do what they do. Fire Pole is my most stolen story.

McKenna said:

Idea for Christmas story: A baker bakes a gingerbread house for his Love... or something like that.

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Oh I've done one, it's strictly private - she worked for me, it involved a 'piping bag' and chilled custard.

McKenna said:

But just as a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, too much erudition may be fatal to your ficition if you succum to the temptation to show it off.

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Did anyone else have to stop and look up "erudite" in this sentence? I wonder if he did that on purpose, used a more obscure word in a sentence admonishing us to avoid such language as a way to illustrate his point.

Clever, if it was on purpose.


erudite = Characterized by erudition; learned.

erudition = Deep, extensive learning.

glynndah said:

Being wordy isn't the problem. It's how all those words are used. Words and descriptions can be used to enchant us, enthrall us and whisk us off to a world when never could have imagined on our own; or they can be used to drown us in a sea of incessant adjectives and adverbs until we sink under the morass of muddy prose. (kinda like I just did!)

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Cleverly illustrated!

The author's point about technical writing made me smile. Technical writers can be so friggin obscure, man. Editors of tech books do not really seem to know when they have got one who can't explain anything!

I have a trick I'd like to share, one that got me two return gigs as a freelance. I was supposed to review a book, years ago: Report from Engine Company 51 by Dennis Smith. I was tapped because the paper wanted a fireman to say how good it was. I deliberately wrote the review, as nearly as I could, in one-syllable words. Not fetishistically, but I gave it a serious effort. It was limpid. Or clear, if you follow me. The paper was struck by the clarity, I guess, and they handed me two other little articles to do.

What I mean, it was pellucid.

McKenna said:

I take from today's excerpt one of the main things taught to me as a techincal writer: Keep it simple. My job isn't to wow people with my extensive and superior knowledge of a product, procedure, or software program, my job is to facilitate their use of said product, to make it easier for them to use and understand.

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This may be true for technical manials and other practical-use text. But fiction is something else, there you are allowed to be a bit less stringent for the sake of delectation. A piece of prose to me is not just a recapturing of an event in as simple wordsa as possible. I want the text to entertain me, delight me, not just the plot. A good written story entertains with it's style, rhythm and flow, is heavy when the story is, melodic when the mood requires it and so on.

I say sure, keep is simple. But never at the cost of ambience.

The paragraph you quote is not really a good example of its own point, either. "Of said product," indeed.

There is nothing wrong with being able to explain clearly and simply. To have that ability in your bag of tricks can't help but be useful to you. I agree with you, as I am supposed to, according to your sig. You are quite right that the stark, third-grade feel of over-simple prose loses you something which fiction ought properly to have. Flavor, I would call it. Juice. Meat. You can achieve it and be readable, the rule here says, or you can achieve it and be less so. A read-through for accessibility is a good notion.

cantdog said:

The author's point about technical writing made me smile. Technical writers can be so friggin obscure, man. Editors of tech books do not really seem to know when they have got one who can't explain anything!

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That wasn't the author's bit about technical writing Cant, that was mine. I thought the * * * would separate the two clearly, but evidently not. Ooops.

Liar said:

I say sure, keep is simple. But never at the cost of ambience.

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Agreed. My point was not to over do the ambience at the cost of the plot.

cantdog said:

The paragraph you quote is not really a good example of its own point, either. "Of said product," indeed.

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Good lord... I'm getting quite the stoning today...

I am probably the worlds most guilty of this sin. I don't use smaller words, expecting readers to have a vocabulary extensive enough to follow. And I love showing off ticky tac bits of knowledge, often gleaned from a lot of research for just a porn story.

It's a mistake I'll continue to make. I like using the right word, not searching for ways to say it more simply. And I like imparting a little knowledge with my porn.

But I never cliamed to be more than an amature hack, so it's all good

"Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend
on Simplicity."
--Plato (The Republic, Book 3, 400-D)



"Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the
complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity."
--Charles Mingus


Those two quotes have always stuck with me in relation to my own creativity. I apply those thoughts to everything I do, whether it's graphic design, music or writing. In writing, when someone uses a lot of ten dollar words it makes me think they are overcompensating for a weakness somewhere else. Often that weakness can be not really having anything interesting to write about.

Whereas on the other hand the difference between tuneful and mellifluous is as vast as the ocean is big.

I love reading interesting things that have no particular place in a story except that they are interesting of themselves.

I tend to use my arcane or parochial knowledge as it springs up. Not forcing it into a story because I know about it but mentioning it if the story goes that way.

Since this is a bash the Mac thread I'll just point out that although the author uses the word erudite (purposely or not) as illustration (no I didn't have to look it up) I notice too that either Mac or the original author thought it amusing (or didn't notice) the mispelling of succumb.

I believe this writing book is more for businesses than fiction. For business writing, the key problem is people using big words and faux erudition in order to seem smarter than they are and it hinders clarity and the point of the message.

However, in writing, the flow not the simplicity is sacrosanct. As long as the flow of a passage is maintained, it doesn't matter how many big words or outside knowledge or whatnot is used. You can even derail the plot for an outside joke as long as the flow is maintained. Fiction is unique in that or perhaps not. You are transporting them to a world inside your prose, created by your prose and as long as the flow is unbroken, they will remain in that prose and forgive whatever the hell you do. The same is true for poetry.

I use the same rule for professional writing, but one must also be overly conscious of word choice in that arena and sometimes have to use bad flow merely to avoid trouble.

It's true that most wordy writers can't maintain the flow and that's why we really disconnect from them, but it's not an universal rule. Take Lovecraft or Poe for instance. Heavily stoic and wordy, but since they are creating dark gothic worlds, it fits right and thus creates a good flow that you can read for hours.

As always, with every rule for writing, there is an exception......

OK, so seriously, why do so many feel the need to defend their writing?


Don't get me wrong, thanks for sharing (and bashing me, though I have no idea when that became the sport de jour) but what would happen if you stopped defending and started listening?

God forbid a new idea be introduced to old writers (figuratively, if not literally).

Get off your fucking high horse already.

Long words ain't necessarily bad.

Fiction authors are creating an alternative universe that must be believable and internally consistent if the illusion of reality is to work. Words are the tools to do that.

What is important is the choice of words to suit the intended audience and the use of words. I don't think a writer can have too wide a vocabulary. What matters is the use that is made of that vocabulary. Most people's passive vocabulary is larger than their active - they understand many more words than they would normally use. Authors have to write to use words that other people will understand so an author's active vocabulary should be larger than the usual and perhaps larger than John Doe's passive.

One of the elusive arts is making the fundamentals of a complex idea seem simple. If an author can do that, whether writing a technical manual or writing erotica, than success is attainable.

Og

McKenna said:

Get off your fucking high horse already.

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B-but, the view is so pwetty from up here.




K, seriously. I'm listening. And learn stuff too. But wuts wrong with posting opposing perspectives?