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gwynTaking a break from the mechanics of punctuation today, because I just felt more like addressing one of my peeves. I tossed around ideas for what I should go after, and in the end, elegant variation won the day.
Elegant variation is the term Fowler, author of the usage bible Modern English Usage, applied to the tendency of “second-rate writers” and “young writers” to make elaborate efforts to avoid repeating words. Some fans have taken to calling this pronoun abuse, but it actually extends far beyond pronouns (words that usually stand in for names, such as he, she, it, her, him, their, etc.), and I think it’s, if not the most hated bad fanfic device, probably in the top three. Fan fiction is mainly composed of people who’ve never really wanted or needed to learn what makes good writing — they’re just into the characters and want to write a story with them. There’s an astonishing number of really good amateur writers in fandom, so there’s nothing inherently wrong with amateur writing, by any means. But like any activity that isn’t composed of, and judged by, professionals, you’re likely to find a lot of people who don’t know the ropes, and elegant variation can set apart the high-level amateur from the mediocre to bad one.
Most of us want to avoid repeating the same words in prose. Fanfic is often so relationship-based and dialog-heavy that you end up repeating names ad nauseum. Slash is extremely difficult, especially in a sex scene, because the hes and hims can get so confusing that most people feel compelled to write anything rather than pronouns and names. Rather than repeat a word or a name, fanfic writers often resort to “the beautiful blonde spy” or “the Mountie” or “the dark-haired vampire” or the shorter man or the taller man or or or... you know what I mean. People think that by identifying a person by their title, physical characteristics, or position to the other character (“the younger agent told her silver-haired father”) they can avoid an unpleasant repetition of names or pronouns.
The problem with this is two-fold: most readers don’t notice the repetition, because words on a page work differently in our minds as we read than they do in speech; and when people use epithets to avoid looking like they’re overusing names or pronouns, they actually call more attention to the extreme (and often ridiculous) efforts they’re going to to avoid repeating anything. It’s especially noxious in sex scenes, because the amateurish amateur will resort to using role descriptions instead of a name or a pronoun. Magnificent 7 has probably the highest ratio of craptastic to readable fic of any fandom I know, with a plethora of stories where “the blond gunslinger told the former bounty hunter to suck his cock” or “As the gambler slid his hand inside the tall peacekeeper’s trousers, the dark-haired, mustachioed man moaned in satisfaction, sending a thrill up the Southerner’s spine.” (That was just for you,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
killabeez ;-) ) All fandoms suffer from this, of course, but what makes it especially tragic in love scenes is that the characters don’t really view themselves or each other this way, so it’s the extremely intrusive voice of the writer herself that suddenly raps its knuckles on the reader’s forehead, going, hey! Look at all the cool synonyms and epithets I just came up with! (Again, Sandy’s Big List of Peeves is a great place to learn about this device.)
(A note about epithets — they’re not just insult words, though that’s the second definition in the dictionary. This is the first in American Heritage 4: A term used to characterize a person or thing, such as rosy-fingered in rosy-fingered dawn or the Great in Catherine the Great. b. A term used as a descriptive substitute for the name or title of a person, such as The Great Emancipator for Abraham Lincoln. Few people ever think about themselves this way, nor do they describe people this way except in formal writing. I would only ever describe myself as “the tall unattractive redhead” if I were trying to tell someone who to look for in a crowded room, when we’d never met before.)
Contrary to popular belief, epithets do not enhance a reader’s enjoyment of a story, nor do they signal sophisticated writing. Most readers above a certain level will be thrown out of the story, since epithets require effort to follow, and are often contrived, silly, or stupid. (My fave was from an X-Files story that referred to Scully as “the blood-stained redhead.” No, really.) What true elegance in writing is all about is this: making it good for the reader. In fiction, you want your reader to lie back after finishing the story, crave a cigarette, and smile dreamily because they were so satisfied, murmuring, yes, yes, it was good for me, too. When you rely on epithets, you’re asking the reader to work harder than they want to.
Save your variation and descriptions and epithets for the times when it really counts: conveying atmosphere or describing the character in detail. A sophisticated reader knows that when Spike’s got his face between Buffy’s legs, he’s not thinking of himself as the peroxide-blond English vampire, nor is Buffy. The problem is that so many unsophisticated writers don’t quite see that, and don’t have enough understanding of the process to learn it. So, massive conflict in writer and reader needs, and massive mockery of people who write that way. By all means use a descriptive epithet if it fits the situation, and if it doesn’t detract from the story or point of view (“The warrior princess had captured Ares’s heart, and he was now enslaved to her, body and soul.” “Giles desperately wanted the annoying vampire out of his bathtub.”). But it becomes a mistake and the mark of an amateur if you use epithets merely to avoid repeating a name or a pronoun.
The second form elegant variation takes is similar to pronouns, only it involves avoiding the repetition of any common noun, verb, or phrase. Unfortunately, if you had creative writing instruction in school, you might have been encouraged to write this way. Many of us were asked to use elegant variation as class exercises, so now we’re scarred for life and think we must always avoid repeating words. I well remember the “describe your environment as if you were an alien who had landed on earth” or “describe your home, without repeating any words or descriptions” exercises. So we’d describe things like “the oblong yellow fruit” instead of banana, or “the furred four-legged beast with a long, thin strip of fur at the end” (one of my classmates’ description of a cat. No, really). Gah!
This kind of thing can only lead to trouble, if you ask me. If a person never really gets a chance to study the craft, or refine a natural gift, they’ll think this is how it’s done. Hence, you get fan writers going to great lengths to avoid using a common noun twice in one paragraph, cuz they learned it in writing class or were taught this by other fanfic writers. One of my favorites was an X-Files story where the writer went into contortions to avoid saying coffee again — over the course of the paragraph Skinner had poured himself a cup of coffee; drank the thick, dark liquid; put the rich, earthy smelling brew on the table; and offered a cup of hot, black beverage to another agent. For god’s sake, it’s just coffee! Say it! Unfortunately, many writers tell newbies that a thesaurus helps their writing. Unless they’re really skilled with vocabulary and descriptive writing, most people go overboard with synonyms, and many choose the wrong word, making themselves look foolish. Be cautious with thesauruses — if the word is unfamiliar, look up the meaning, and don’t use a thesaurus just because you’re worried about repetition. If characters are gazing into chocolate orbs, or running fingers through raven tresses, you’re sailing into dangerous waters.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with repeating a word or phrase when it’s necessary. If you can write around it (for instance, if it had been crucial to the story, I’d have shown Skinner getting coffee, drinking *it*, putting *his cup* on the table, and *pouring more coffee* for the agent), then do so, especially if you can eliminate the repeating elements altogether. Many amateur writers waste an inordinate amount of space describing more “geography” than they need to — in that paragraph, there’s really no reason to focus on Skinner doing all those things. Unless he knocked the cup off the table getting coffee for the agent, and burned Mulder’s leg, prompting Mulder to shoot him, there’s no reason for the focus on such mundane, minute detail beyond “Skinner poured himself a cup of coffee, and drank it while Scully gave the briefing.” Most readers won’t assume that as he left, he put the cup in his pocket. If you find yourself writing elaborate descriptions of anything, and going, “he did this and then went there, and put that there,” take a moment and ask yourself: did I do this to make my writing sing? Did I do it to add atmosphere, and to develop the character and her viewpoint? If you’re doing it only to prevent repeating a word or phrase, avoid this — your readers will appreciate the effort.
In technical documentation and legal writing, elegant variation can get you in trouble. Most manuals and user help avoid it because it leads to confusion. Keeping the focus tightly on who or what you’re writing about will always win you points, especially if you save your descriptive capabilities for emotional text, atmospheric descriptions, or snappy dialog. If I could give any advice to newbie writers, it would be to stop being afraid of repeating a word or phrase, and stop employing elegant variation to avoid overuse of names and pronouns. Precision is good, and choosing just the right word or phrase can change mundane or awkward prose into lyrical poetry — but if the right word or phrase is simple and prosaic, that’s okay. No one will notice that you just used Clark’s name, or he, 22 times on one page, especially if you focus your efforts more on creating that lushly drawn sex scene where he peels Lex’s clothes off and offers him a super blow job. And no one will care that you just wrote bed three times in one paragraph, if they’re caught up in reading your hilarious descriptions of Wes and Lilah’s sweaty frolicking atop it. Trust me on this.
Elegant variation is the term Fowler, author of the usage bible Modern English Usage, applied to the tendency of “second-rate writers” and “young writers” to make elaborate efforts to avoid repeating words. Some fans have taken to calling this pronoun abuse, but it actually extends far beyond pronouns (words that usually stand in for names, such as he, she, it, her, him, their, etc.), and I think it’s, if not the most hated bad fanfic device, probably in the top three. Fan fiction is mainly composed of people who’ve never really wanted or needed to learn what makes good writing — they’re just into the characters and want to write a story with them. There’s an astonishing number of really good amateur writers in fandom, so there’s nothing inherently wrong with amateur writing, by any means. But like any activity that isn’t composed of, and judged by, professionals, you’re likely to find a lot of people who don’t know the ropes, and elegant variation can set apart the high-level amateur from the mediocre to bad one.
Most of us want to avoid repeating the same words in prose. Fanfic is often so relationship-based and dialog-heavy that you end up repeating names ad nauseum. Slash is extremely difficult, especially in a sex scene, because the hes and hims can get so confusing that most people feel compelled to write anything rather than pronouns and names. Rather than repeat a word or a name, fanfic writers often resort to “the beautiful blonde spy” or “the Mountie” or “the dark-haired vampire” or the shorter man or the taller man or or or... you know what I mean. People think that by identifying a person by their title, physical characteristics, or position to the other character (“the younger agent told her silver-haired father”) they can avoid an unpleasant repetition of names or pronouns.
The problem with this is two-fold: most readers don’t notice the repetition, because words on a page work differently in our minds as we read than they do in speech; and when people use epithets to avoid looking like they’re overusing names or pronouns, they actually call more attention to the extreme (and often ridiculous) efforts they’re going to to avoid repeating anything. It’s especially noxious in sex scenes, because the amateurish amateur will resort to using role descriptions instead of a name or a pronoun. Magnificent 7 has probably the highest ratio of craptastic to readable fic of any fandom I know, with a plethora of stories where “the blond gunslinger told the former bounty hunter to suck his cock” or “As the gambler slid his hand inside the tall peacekeeper’s trousers, the dark-haired, mustachioed man moaned in satisfaction, sending a thrill up the Southerner’s spine.” (That was just for you,
killabeez ;-) ) All fandoms suffer from this, of course, but what makes it especially tragic in love scenes is that the characters don’t really view themselves or each other this way, so it’s the extremely intrusive voice of the writer herself that suddenly raps its knuckles on the reader’s forehead, going, hey! Look at all the cool synonyms and epithets I just came up with! (Again, Sandy’s Big List of Peeves is a great place to learn about this device.)(A note about epithets — they’re not just insult words, though that’s the second definition in the dictionary. This is the first in American Heritage 4: A term used to characterize a person or thing, such as rosy-fingered in rosy-fingered dawn or the Great in Catherine the Great. b. A term used as a descriptive substitute for the name or title of a person, such as The Great Emancipator for Abraham Lincoln. Few people ever think about themselves this way, nor do they describe people this way except in formal writing. I would only ever describe myself as “the tall unattractive redhead” if I were trying to tell someone who to look for in a crowded room, when we’d never met before.)
Contrary to popular belief, epithets do not enhance a reader’s enjoyment of a story, nor do they signal sophisticated writing. Most readers above a certain level will be thrown out of the story, since epithets require effort to follow, and are often contrived, silly, or stupid. (My fave was from an X-Files story that referred to Scully as “the blood-stained redhead.” No, really.) What true elegance in writing is all about is this: making it good for the reader. In fiction, you want your reader to lie back after finishing the story, crave a cigarette, and smile dreamily because they were so satisfied, murmuring, yes, yes, it was good for me, too. When you rely on epithets, you’re asking the reader to work harder than they want to.
Save your variation and descriptions and epithets for the times when it really counts: conveying atmosphere or describing the character in detail. A sophisticated reader knows that when Spike’s got his face between Buffy’s legs, he’s not thinking of himself as the peroxide-blond English vampire, nor is Buffy. The problem is that so many unsophisticated writers don’t quite see that, and don’t have enough understanding of the process to learn it. So, massive conflict in writer and reader needs, and massive mockery of people who write that way. By all means use a descriptive epithet if it fits the situation, and if it doesn’t detract from the story or point of view (“The warrior princess had captured Ares’s heart, and he was now enslaved to her, body and soul.” “Giles desperately wanted the annoying vampire out of his bathtub.”). But it becomes a mistake and the mark of an amateur if you use epithets merely to avoid repeating a name or a pronoun.
The second form elegant variation takes is similar to pronouns, only it involves avoiding the repetition of any common noun, verb, or phrase. Unfortunately, if you had creative writing instruction in school, you might have been encouraged to write this way. Many of us were asked to use elegant variation as class exercises, so now we’re scarred for life and think we must always avoid repeating words. I well remember the “describe your environment as if you were an alien who had landed on earth” or “describe your home, without repeating any words or descriptions” exercises. So we’d describe things like “the oblong yellow fruit” instead of banana, or “the furred four-legged beast with a long, thin strip of fur at the end” (one of my classmates’ description of a cat. No, really). Gah!
This kind of thing can only lead to trouble, if you ask me. If a person never really gets a chance to study the craft, or refine a natural gift, they’ll think this is how it’s done. Hence, you get fan writers going to great lengths to avoid using a common noun twice in one paragraph, cuz they learned it in writing class or were taught this by other fanfic writers. One of my favorites was an X-Files story where the writer went into contortions to avoid saying coffee again — over the course of the paragraph Skinner had poured himself a cup of coffee; drank the thick, dark liquid; put the rich, earthy smelling brew on the table; and offered a cup of hot, black beverage to another agent. For god’s sake, it’s just coffee! Say it! Unfortunately, many writers tell newbies that a thesaurus helps their writing. Unless they’re really skilled with vocabulary and descriptive writing, most people go overboard with synonyms, and many choose the wrong word, making themselves look foolish. Be cautious with thesauruses — if the word is unfamiliar, look up the meaning, and don’t use a thesaurus just because you’re worried about repetition. If characters are gazing into chocolate orbs, or running fingers through raven tresses, you’re sailing into dangerous waters.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with repeating a word or phrase when it’s necessary. If you can write around it (for instance, if it had been crucial to the story, I’d have shown Skinner getting coffee, drinking *it*, putting *his cup* on the table, and *pouring more coffee* for the agent), then do so, especially if you can eliminate the repeating elements altogether. Many amateur writers waste an inordinate amount of space describing more “geography” than they need to — in that paragraph, there’s really no reason to focus on Skinner doing all those things. Unless he knocked the cup off the table getting coffee for the agent, and burned Mulder’s leg, prompting Mulder to shoot him, there’s no reason for the focus on such mundane, minute detail beyond “Skinner poured himself a cup of coffee, and drank it while Scully gave the briefing.” Most readers won’t assume that as he left, he put the cup in his pocket. If you find yourself writing elaborate descriptions of anything, and going, “he did this and then went there, and put that there,” take a moment and ask yourself: did I do this to make my writing sing? Did I do it to add atmosphere, and to develop the character and her viewpoint? If you’re doing it only to prevent repeating a word or phrase, avoid this — your readers will appreciate the effort.
In technical documentation and legal writing, elegant variation can get you in trouble. Most manuals and user help avoid it because it leads to confusion. Keeping the focus tightly on who or what you’re writing about will always win you points, especially if you save your descriptive capabilities for emotional text, atmospheric descriptions, or snappy dialog. If I could give any advice to newbie writers, it would be to stop being afraid of repeating a word or phrase, and stop employing elegant variation to avoid overuse of names and pronouns. Precision is good, and choosing just the right word or phrase can change mundane or awkward prose into lyrical poetry — but if the right word or phrase is simple and prosaic, that’s okay. No one will notice that you just used Clark’s name, or he, 22 times on one page, especially if you focus your efforts more on creating that lushly drawn sex scene where he peels Lex’s clothes off and offers him a super blow job. And no one will care that you just wrote bed three times in one paragraph, if they’re caught up in reading your hilarious descriptions of Wes and Lilah’s sweaty frolicking atop it. Trust me on this.
