RIDING THE WRITERS' WAVE

Dear club, these are some rules I'm adding to my review giude "Invalid Item"  . Feel free to comment and discuss.


(232) Overuse is an enemy.

Ok, this falls in the Duh category, it is meant as an umbrella rule for many of the following rules. It is not the case that all overused words need to be omitted from text. There are times when they provide the best option far better than alternative phrasings.

The same goes for techniques. At one point, I was enamored with taking out “and”s converting independent clauses with participle phrases For example:



I performed this mutation in a line by line review for an entire novella. The next novella I read by the same author overused this technique.

James Goldman gives Henry II so many great lines inThe Lion in Winter. One of my favorites is “When I bellow, bellow back. Use all of your voices …” The important part is to use all of your voices, all of your techniques.

(236) Overuse of “the.”

The definitive article is overused, misused and abused. I urge all writers to cut down on its usage. Here’s how to do it. As you proofread, cross out every instance of the word “the” and reread the sentence. If it still reads well, cut “the.” If your sentence now reads wrong, apply the uniqueness test and replace “the” with “a”.

Usually “the” is misused to create false uniqueness. Substituting “the” with “a” is a solution to this effect. Giving more detail is another. Consider the sentence:


“The room, The bed,” Arg! Simply changing “the” to “her” adds possession and setting. “His,” “her” and “their” are good substitutes for “the.” Again, adding more detail to “the” objects can work even better.

I found a recent 55 word story where cutting down “the”s help.



I recommended the following, giving the author 8 more words to play with.



Let’s look at the choices:

“Assembled in the sky”: Simply removing “the” does not work, nor does indefinite substitution. I could have offered “assembled in azure skies,” but intent would have been distorted too much.

“The unsteady gait of a traveler”: Here the author already achieved indefinite substitution, but detail, like a name is a better option and resolves the problem further. Another rule will cover use of prepositional phrases, but detail substation and prepositional phrase attribution resolves to “Morgan’s unsteady gait.”

“The instant …”: Simplify the sentence, “He collapsed and screeching was heard.” When faced with excess verbs, “was heard,” play with subject and object and change to a better verb. So let “screeches” be the subject “Screeches” do something. I chose “announced” giving “Excited screeches announced his exhausted collapse.”

(237) Watch out for prepositional phrases.

In college socio-linguistics class, I learned some primitive cultures language had only two or three color terms (white and black, or, white, black and red). Early anthropologists concluded these primitive people had limited cognition and saw the world, literally, within their color terms. Later on, more perceptive anthropologists and socio-linguists recorded these people using phrases like “the color of the banana leaf in spring after a rain.” These people possessed full cognitive capabilities and used long descriptive phrases to compensate for a limited lexicon.

When I see descriptive “of” phrases, a red flag shoots up. They are an opportunity to display lexical variation. Stephen King says vocabulary is a run what you brung sorta thing. I agree with April Sunday : Vocab is the thing. A better position lies somewhere in between. We all need help with our vocabulary. I know I do. Third person narration should opt for greater precision.

I use this distinction to suggest Ed level in my dialog. For lower Ed level, I substitute descriptive phrases for precise terms. Character’s can, in part, be defined by their lexical capabilities. ..