Could you take your work in progress, change every single word—and still tell the same story?
Is it possible to write a novel without one familiar, cliché phrase?
Or description?
Or scene?
How do you guard against overusing tried and true verbiage?
Stale descriptions?
How do you turn a stereotype on its head?
Do you even try?
Do you put some effort into showing your readers that you care about language? About how it reads … and sounds?
Do you want to show your readers that you realize the language contains 1.5 zillion possibilities for you to shade, color, add texture, and drama? That you enjoy playing with words and/or using them in the most effective, accurate way possible?
Or do you prefer straightforward? Do you prefer not to turn prose into rich cream?
Proust averaged over 30 words per sentence.
Hemingway, about 10.
Do you go for flair? Or straightforward?
How much emphasis do you put on the power—and entertainment value—of a sentence over making sure the story itself continues to flow? Does it cause any reader to pause and wonder what you’re trying to say?
Do your words capture all that your mind is seeing? And experiencing?
Do you stare at each word and wonder if it’s the right one?
Do you go with the first words that come to mind?
Always?
Do you write for how your words might feel on the tongue of someone reading your prose out loud? Do you read your words out loud to hear how they sound?
Just wondering.
Oh this post made me laugh in a knowing writer-angst way; words are the bane as well as the gift of writers!
Personally, I write my first draft without worry so much about the correct words, because as I re-read it for the first edit, I will catch faulty and lackluster, overwrought and silly words.
I used to write my first draft on paper and edit as I typed it for the first time, but that was with a typewriter and the process was laborious. Actually I think I was a better writer because of it!
An illustrative story:
I wrote a Western for my Dad’s 86th birthday (determined to write one he’d never read)…He’d been a college English professor, and this was my debut novel!
I did the regular first edit and ran out of time, so he got it as it was. He didn’t say ANYTHING about it, good, bad, no critique… nothing! I guess it was saying something that he hadn’t gone over it with a red pen, and I told myself that ‘it was the thought that counts’.
Over a year later (and another edit), I had my daughter (a better writer than I am of course) read it and she pointed out that I repeated a theme (teasing about not getting your eye poked out – as a way of flirting, between a girl and boy) four or five times throughout the story – which made the whole theme not cute – it became ‘lame’.
All the editing I did, did not illuminate that repetition to me, and it probably did a little bit to deter my writing efforts! I had read that writers don’t always catch such things, and I’ve even seen it in published books (and been annoyed).
I haven’t written anything novel-like since then. It just sorta deflated my tires.
I guess everyone who writes will find themselves questioning if they are doing *all the things* with the best style, with the best techniques, and the best way for themselves, asking all those questions you did.
A writer can’t quit, because they will either just continue writing in their head, or go off the tracks, but the pressure to ‘perform’ at perfection level also has it’s ramifications – perfectionism can lead to procrastination, and fear of not getting it right can lead to resistance… it’s vicious, and now I understand why writers are known to drink!
I want to come back and see how these seemingly simple questions really affect people with/in their writing. (Good questions to ask!)
Can I use words like “um” and “er” in my fiction novel?