Posted: Apr 28, 08 10:57am
A writing challenge:
In this exercise, we will look at ways to de-construct and reconstruct the sentences you will find below. What words can be omitted without changing the meaning? How could changing parts of speech affect how the sentences read? What keeps the sentences flat? To cut the fat, we need to have an understanding of the elements of sentence construction. It is not enough to be able to name parts of speech. We learned to break down a sentence in elementary school, but we weren't taught how to use each part of speech to maximize its effect upon the reader. We also need to understand other tools of writing that contribute to strengthening the read. Editing combines cutting, pasting, adding, subtracting, revising. We change tenses. We may even change the narrator if we chose one that doesn’t contribute to the story.
Writing a first draft is intuitive. The words flow to the paper or screen and the sound is pleasing to our ears. That is because, when we read silently, we “hear” thoughts with our mind and our senses, not our ears. Unless you are the exception, you do not speak aloud when you write ... or read. Because you have the advantage of a direct access to what you mean, when you are writing about the collision of a train and car, your writing will sound good to you as it appears. You hear the scrape of the train brakes and the mind-ripping explosion when metal-meets-metal. Your reader doesn’t. She has no access to your mind, therefore, the words you write are all she can envision.
The true test of writing for someone else to read is whether the words will be pleasing to his or her mind’s eye. Remember, though we read with our eyes, our mind converts writing to sound, sight, smell, touch and taste. Our reactions are visceral as well as intellectual. We hear the voice of the writer, and if it is boring or displeasing, we stop reading.
Fixing some of the sentences below is a simple task for any writer. But, as writers, we need to be able to do more than intuit change. Consistency is the ability to repeat an act. To change a sentence teaches us nothing about cutting or processing fat. To understand why we changed it gives us insight into the editing process.
Critique the sentences. What is wrong with them? Why don't they work as well as an alternate might? What changes do you recommend and why do you recommend them? What kinds of words stop the reader from getting maximum pleasure from a story?
What is fat and why do we excise it? Fat is any word, combination of words, sentences, passages or chapters that slow down a story or blunt its impact. The search for fat in our writing begins with a search for: redundancies, weak verbs, poorly used adverbs, "picket-fence" adjectives, pronouns where nouns are needed, cliches, description where dialogue would better serve, incomplete ideas, overstating, presenting unnecessary complexities, assumptions, misplaced modifiers and interrupted action. It is also a search for WHAT YOU MEANT TO SAY RATHER THAN WHAT YOU SAID. Cutting fat is only one part of the process of discovering the best words to tell a story, but it is a most critical part.
There is no way we can look at all of the construction problems in a brief exercise. The best we can do is open our minds to the need to search out and cut/polish/replace/enhance any part of these examples that causes our story to drag, or takes the reader out of our plot and into our construction.
The best stories are seamless. A seamless story flows, allowing the reader to identify with the characters and situations. A seamless exercize in reading leaves the reader begging more.
Reviewing is a tool used to learn how to write. It is far easier to criticize someone else’s work than our own. Ask yourself the following questions as you review stories and articles: Did you think about plot, POV, character development and dialogue when you read the story? Did the story cause you to examine it for voice, ease of reading, relevance and handling of subject matter? Did you read sentences to determine if the writer chose the best course for his subject, style and venue?
In this exercise, we are working with real sentences written by another writer. I wrote them with glaring and subtle errors of all kinds. Repairing each sentence is a learning experience, one in which we can discover tools we have within us that needed to be unwrapped and used. In working with these sentences, you can compare finding errors in grammar, spelling and punctuation and then being satisfied with the content to taking the wrapper off a lollipop. After you take off the wrapper, it still sucks. Freedom from errors is only one small step toward writing effective prose.
Cutting the fat is not a single step we take to improve our writing. Rather, it is the application of all of our knowledge of writing to an existing first draft. We call fat-cutting by another name: editing. Editing addresses the mechanics of writing. We can distinguish it from rewriting which focuses upon changing the elements, plot, POV or order of a story or article.
No writing is perfect. Sometimes the best writers indulge their egos and include words or passages that could be trimmed. Writing is an asbestos situation. When you can say, I did asbestos I could, wrap it and submit it. Then, go back to learn more about writing for the next time.
The following sentences are fuel to stimulate you to think about fat-cutting. Or ... liposuction and reconstructive surgery if we want to get into Nip/Tuck mode. Each provides information. Each tells you facts or describes people, places or things.
1. Looking out the big picture window, I was able to see the magnificent sunset in the western sky.
2. When I looked at the house, I saw a white picket fence, tall pine trees, green, deciduous bushes and peeling, grey paint.
3. The menu listed a delicious sandwich which contained farm-fresh eggs, crispy bacon, tangy cheddar cheese and rich, creamery butter. My mouth watered in anticipation of this wonderful treat.
4. A really tall man approached me and asked, I couldn't be more lost. Can you help me out?
5. I sat alone in the empty room enveloped by the sound of silence.
6. I couldn't get over how beautiful Marianne was. She had short, dark hair; long, polished nails and huge, bright, blue eyes. With her trim, athletic figure she was pretty as a picture. She just took my breath away.
7. The movie was a scary shocker.
8. The library contained a vast compendium of tomes on a plethora of subject matter.
9. Grandmother was a funny person. When she told jokes, we would listen raptly. She had one particular joke about plucking chickens that was the funniest thing you ever heard. She would pretend to be a chicken and cluck loudly.
What does each sentence or brief paragraph do for you? What about each could be/should be improved to show a picture rather than tell a concept? Where is more information needed, and where will less paint a better picture? If a sentence causes the reader to follow the order that it presents, how could the sentence be reordered to put the emphasis where the reader needs it, in order to attain the intent of the writer?
Let’s look at the first sentence:
Looking out the big picture window, I was able to see the magnificent sunset in the western sky.
In terms of grammatical structure, it is a perfectly acceptable sentence. In terms of bringing the reader into the story, the sentence doesn’t reveal its subject until after the comma. I am looking out the window. I am both the writer and the reader. Looking out the window, used as an opening for the sentence, could refer to anyone. The reader needs to make a mind-shift from an anonymous someone looking out the window to, I, looking out the window, after a false start.
There is another tiny nit in the first part of the sentence. Find it by answering the following question: Did you ever see a small picture window? It is the sunset and the western sky that needs the modifier - or not; it is not the window.
When you look at the sentence, you, as a writer, need to be able to say, I had a purpose in writing it. Its purpose was to add a degree of verisimilitude to the blank screen that served as the background before I wrote it. In your mind, you saw the setting. You wanted to convey it to he reader. You wanted the reader to see it through the eyes of the protagonist; you used first person POV with good reason. The first thing your mind projected was the sentence as stated. Imagination has no sense of what the reader may know or not know. It is a very primitive part of our organism. It sees as a small child sees: Imagination uses few words and many feelings and pictures. Our editor, firmly ensconced in our conscious mind, turns the idea into prose that accesses the reader’s imagination.
What was the main idea the sentence tried to convey? The impact of the setting sun in the western sky upon the subject as seen through the eyes of the subject. That is a whole lot of gobbledegook for a simple sentence about a sunset. Lets break it down further:
Subject: I, the protagonist.
Task: Absorbing the impact of the sunset and conveying that to the reader.
Purpose: Add verisimilitude to a passage in which you give your reader a three-dimensional portrait of locale so that she may feel the impact of the location upon the characters and plot.
Rewrite the sentence. What? You thought I was going to do it for you? If I do, I would demonstrate that I can write, or at least I could demonstrate I am a pretender. The instructions above incorporate the kind of thinking every professional writer employs.
Ease your mind. Experienced writers do not go through all of the concatenations I did in the example to reach my conclusions. After a while, cutting the fat becomes second nature, and happens almost automatically when the writer is editing. Go to the neighborhood butcher shop. The butcher slices away the excess fat from the lean meat almost without looking. If he can do it ...
Think of what I am presenting as the beginning of a new way of thinking about writing. Every word serves a purpose. Every sentence has a job, and that job is to engorge the reader with a pastry making him plead for more.
Let’s try another of the examples. Earlier, I mentioned excessive use of adjectives. I did not go into how to correct the issue. Solving problems comes after recognition.
When I looked at the house I saw a white picket fence, tall pine trees, green, deciduous bushes and peeling, gray paint.
Do NOT read the sentence again. When you reach the end of this paragraph, please close your eyes. Without looking, repeat EVERY adjective and the noun they each modified.
... (ellipse signifying the passage of time)
How did you do? I wrote the darned thing and I couldn’t do it! Think of your poor reader. A writer who uses that style of sentences is likely to repeat the act several times per page. The impact is overwhelming. By the end of a 125,000 word novel, you will have been expected to memorize over eighteen thousand adjectives in order to describe characters, settings, actions and motives. Or, you could do what reviewers here often do as a knee-jerk reaction to anything written: “It was a great story! I loved it.” That combination of words, without further description of characters, plot or the nuances of the story, tell me that the writer presented a great outline that will never see its lovely spine, naked and gleaming, on a bookshelf.
How to rewrite this sentence is a question not as easily answered as it was in the first example. Let’s use the same tools.
Subject: As in the previous example, it is I, the protagonist.
Task: Give the reader a picture of the setting. It is important to the development of both the character and the plot.
Purpose: Add verisimilitude
What is wrong with the description? No one will remember enough about the house and its surroundings to have an impact ten seconds later, let alone by the end of the novel, four hundred and thirty-six pages away. Let’s imagine that the writer was Laura Ingells writing about her little house on the prairie.
How can you give a picture of peeling paint and gray without stringing adjectives? How can you get the reader to feel the impact of the old pine stand without tall and how do you give a portrait of green deciduous bushes without green and ... deciduous? And how about the evergreens? Easier to spell and remember than deciduous but equally important to the landscape - especially during change of seasons!
In order to trim the fat from this sentence, you may need to re-conceptualize your job. If you are constructing a better version of the Yellow Pages, you need to make your ads stand out because it is otherwise, just a listing of who, where and how to contact them. This is not the Yellow Pages, you protest. Right, you are, my friend. It is far more personal, though somewhat less lucrative for the writer.
Think about the tools in your possession. You have the tools of sentence construction, a dictionary, a thesaurus ... Lay them aside. You will need more impressive tools. These tools are the tools of creative writing: metaphor and simile as well as knowledge that is embedded inside of other description.
Look again at the concepts you may want the first vision of the house to portray. Are the important aspects about appearance, or are they the accumulated experiences of the generations who have lived there? You can sneak in a little color into a memorable passage that compares the house to its conception and its former and present occupants. The sentence, as it was written, looks like something a writer would say before coming to the realization that she is planning to talk about life on the prairie.
In this instance, I am going to give my own interpretation of how to embed the information in sentences that are more descriptive of people than scenery. At the end, I will present most of the information, but you will see it incorporated in a story that is about people (characters), not about houses and bushes. I am doing so because for many new writers, this will be a new concept in their writing and I always believed that the best way to sell the product of a new bakery was to stand outside with a tray of free samples.
A. The house, like the spavined horse in the pasture adjacent, had seen better days. Even the picket fence, whitewashed annually for many of those years, showed signs of recent neglect.
B. Sixty years ago, when he cleared the land, Grandpa had allowed a few of the recently born, loblolly pines to remain. God did the rest of the work and their magnificence is a tribute to His guiding wisdom rather than Grandpa’s foresight.
C. Grandma worked so hard to give the home a cared-about look, right down to the planting of well-chosen evergreen bushes that would not only allow a touch of green to peek out above the cresting snow in the dead of winter, but would survive the time when she could no longer care for them.
D. When I looked at the house that had been home to what will be five generations of my family, after my daughter, Amy, gives birth, I felt the decades of caring, not the recent moments of unintentional neglect.
Close your eyes. What do you remember and how does it affect you? Compare it to the effect the information in the original version had upon you when you read it.
Imagine how you, the reader, would have been affected, if the writer had presented all this information in the same manner that the description of a house and land was presented in the original exercise. When I talk about writing in three-dimensional prose, the previous passages are a reflection of what I mean.
The unfortunate side effect is that I did create a new problem: Once you set out to write in the style I am suggesting, you can’t let up because you have just trained the reader to expect powerful prose. You won’t be allowed a single deep, green boat on a bright, blue sea with some girl dressed in a yellow, polka dot bikini carrying a spectacular, rainbow-colored umbrella, on a bright, sunny day. Now, they will expect that you will start off with a girl named Marisol, who looks as if she had been standing outside a paint factory when the bomb hit.
Enjoy working on the rest of the exercises. I’ll know if you did your homework when I review the next story you post here. This is one exercise for which you will receive an A+ just for engaging your mind with the challenges it presents. Think as a writer rather than thinking about being one.
