"The Best Word"

In my quest for a simpler life I’m supposed to throw away bags, bins, and drawers of precious writing junk I’ve squirreled away for decades. Instead I’m just moving stuff from one box to another.

But one pleasant reunion was when I found 40 pages I’d printed out in 1999 from Chuck Guilford’s web site “Paradigm Online Writing Assistant” and that’s still on the Internet. He offers valuable help under the headings of Discovery, Organizing, Revising, Editing, Informal Essays, Thesis/Support Essays, Argumentative Essays, Exploratory Essays, and Documenting.

Under the heading of “Revising” and “the Best Word” Guilford discusses clichés -- those tired, unimaginative words and phrases that we sometimes mistake for creativity but that cause not only the reader -- but also the writer who wrote them -- to yawn.

He lists several clichés, then asks that you rewrite the cliché, “making the same point more vividly and clearly in your own language.”

Try rewriting these three:
1. “I was hungry enough to eat a horse.”
2. “We ran up against a brick wall.”
3. “Ever since then she’s kept her nose clean.”

What did you come up? Let us know!

answer to the inpot question: on weaving threads

What a great question. One of the most common remarks I make on manuscripts relates to weaving more threads through the book (which really means, keeping track of your threads).

Novels in progress can be overly ego-centric via the main character, with secondary characters standing around like hand-maidens ready to serve. This can create both a claustrophobic atmosphere and a one-note plot. So grabbing hold of secondary characters' plots threads and pulling them through creates texture and interest.

Of course, there are other kinds of threads: character, metaphoric, thematic. These are as important as the plot threads. What I've been noticing lately is how good sit-coms are at repeating small details to a large effect. I was just discussing with my daughter Isabelle the Seinfeld episode where Elaine breaks up with her boyfriend and he calls her Bighead. She finds the comment ridiculous, but when she goes outside, birds keep flying into her head. A passer-by comments on how the birds just can't seem to avoid her. On a recent HBO sit-com, the boss is upset that a girl at work is exposing her midriff. When he tells her not to, she accuses him of calling her fat. There are several other scenes with the boss feeling politically incorrect about weight and women because of his faux pas, each increasing in hilarity because of the echo, with the viewer happily connecting the dots. The show ends with him falling off of a building and grabbing his employee's bared stomach fat to hang on for dear life.

On the opposite hand, I've recently seen two shows where the script opened up all kinds of plot threads and then just let them drop. The first was the new Spiderman musical on Broadway. The second was the film Black Swan which was "full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing," although probably not "told by an idiot" as the line from Macbeth begins. Both had these and-then-they-woke -up-and-it-was-all-a-dream type of endings. I wanted to jump up and yell: "But what about those threads!"

The thing I find most helpful for keeping track is to simply bold words on my computer draft that I want to pick up later. It might be a simple character detail, like nail biting, that I want to remember so I don't show the character later peeling off stamps with her long fingernails (consistency of character). Or maybe everyone in the surreal high pressure school bites their fingernails (thematic thread) or rebels against the demands of beauty (metaphor/theme), or she decides to be a hand model and needs to stop, but can't so she goes to a twelve step program where she meets the girl or man or dog or scissors of her dreams and lives happily ever after (plot thread). Any technique that notices the opportunities in front of us on the page will work. One book I can think of that does this brilliantly on every level is Holes. Other techniques/thoughts?

the middle morass

When my husband and I dine out, we often order appetizers, which we find to be the most inventive and interesting dishes on the menu. The other night, at a restaurant known for its creative chef, we were hungry enough to ignore that habit and ordered main courses. Mine was a very plain chunk of cod with a sauce that was indecipherable. Michael's was a steak slathered in a sauce far too decipherable, and couple of measly slices of potato. "Ugh," Michael said. "We should have known. A meal is like a book. The middle is always the worst part."

As a reader, I certainly find that to be true. I often find the energy lagging in books and I'm tempted to jump to the last few chapters (dessert!). Furthermore, as a writer I encounter the kind of writerly exhaustion to which Liza alluded in her last post, around page 150; in other words, the middle.

Some things can help. If I write the ending chapters (as I am tempted toward as a reader), I can trick myself into working backwards, so I don't notice when I get to the middle. The randomness exercises that Liza mentioned, be they Ron's talismanic words, my picture cards, or just plain reading articles on subjects far and wide, can push me through. Another way of getting through is to write chapters that I do not plan to use. Often, though, the only solution is setting the manuscript aside for a couple of months (something which I recognize is not always practical in a graduate program).

Well, I've finally finished the two books I've been working on: one adult, and one MG. On the first, it simply took years and years of writing and tossing, writing and struggling through the middle. On the second, I was helped along by a brilliant agent, whose advice supplied the key to unlocking the structure of the book. Does anyone else share this middle morass? What do you do about it?

editing advice

About revision, I find myself telling writers: Be neither the doting parent, who blindly adores every word; nor the critical parent, who destroys the joy and pleasure of the process through self battery.

Be that balanced parent who says: "Lovely. Bravo. Now practice it again until it's perfect."

breaking up with your pages

Writing today, I am trying to cut the pages in my book where I am moving from point A to point B; in other words, the places where inspiration was not hitching a ride with me, and I am plodding along. Why is it so hard to do? It's not even "killing my darlings." I think my darlings are, well, darling, and I am keeping them.

Is it like not breaking up with the wrong someone until someone better comes along? That's not very brave. Right?