It seems to be a problem for a moment, I'm starting to think

[gwyn]

I normally hate this guy's book reviews, but I was proofing this review today and came across this paragraph:

His writing is riddled with clichés that are daily struck down by conscientious high-school teachers. The characters always think "for a moment," as if a sustained thought is impossible in the Wagnerian world. "Silence" plagues the pages, and it often "follows" speech. The thunder claps "Whrromp!" Every glance is recorded, for no discernable reason—everyone is "looking" or "focusing" all the time. The faces repeatedly "light up." People don't smile—they "start to smile"—and they do things "a little," even if much happens "all of a sudden." Here is a typical passage: "Liz started to smile, then started to say something, then thought better of it. Her smile faded for a moment, while she seemed to concentrate on a thought." Wagner's writing is so thoroughly devoid of any verbal imagination or intelligence that, in comparison to him, a vocabulary-impoverished sports broadcaster sounds like Shakespeare.

That's fanfic in a nutshell. Not that there are a lot of great alternatives to "looking," but the fact that every glance is recorded makes it a larger part of the problem. We overdescribe geography, we're not comfortable letting actions and dialogue speak for themselves. I find it a constant struggle to balance my need to let the story tell itself with my knowledge that a fanfic audience wants intensity, usually, even if it means overdescription and overly puffed up writing. And one of the hallmarks of the amateur writer -- me included -- is overuse of qualifying words.

::goes back to checking new story for every single occurrence of starting, moment, looking, and the word then::

Comments

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

*nodsnodsnods* After I finish every story, I have to go back and take out all the "finally"s. It's some kind of condition, I'm convinced.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Oh god, someone else who has the dreaded finally disease. Everyone has a word that they overuse; finally has always been mine. I've got to a point where even legitimate uses make me cringe, but I'm too good of an editor to let myself go to the thesaurus instead. So I end up recasting a lot, but... it's perfectly valid word, just... well. I have a very bad case of Finally disease.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Hee! We should start a support group. I'm sure there's other stuff I overuse too, but that's the big one, now that buffybot helped me kick my Look, Well, Come On addiction.

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

*blush* Yep, I do that... quite a lot. Off to read that review now.

[jidabug.livejournal.com]

How timely. Just today I was realizing that my writing leans far too much on the recording of looks and hand motions and facial expressions. Plus, I think I've developed JK Rowling's over-reliance on adverbs.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

It *is* really hard with fanfic. I find I don't do this nearly as much in my regular writing. But I believe there's a deep need to be cinematic, to truly convey every nuance, every sensation, that we can. So the prose gets laden and soggy with all the seems and the looks and moments. I have to admit, in one paragraph, that guy nailed everything that's really wrong with fanfic on a kind of global scale.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I think fanfic is unusual in that we're trying to convey, even in the shortest story, a lot of intense emotions and a great deal of interactivity among characters. So with all that, even in a plot heavy story, we've got more ground to cover in some respects -- and we're working with a universe, too, that's already created, so we probably need to overemphasize certain qualities a commercial writer doesn't. It's really interesting to think about -- and I really did love how much this guy nailed this problem with amateur writing in general. I'm going to print it out and keep it with me all the time.

[alexfandra.livejournal.com]

I heartily recommend anything written by Patrick O'Brian (Aubrey-Maturin series) for examples of how to dramatize a scene without geography getting in the way. He often puts action into dialogue, doesn't bother at all with useless "looking" or "starting to..." etc., and never bogs thing down with meandering, pointless transitions. It's fascinating stuff.

Thanks for posting this -- now I need to go do something about all the Looking going on in my WIP. Shoot.

there's another reason

[talking-sock.livejournal.com]

I've noticed this problem too, and I've been assuming it comes from trying to too literally do TV/movies on the written page. This leads to an overdescription of actions and connections between events, because on the screen we see and focus on every little move. The pauses are significant to us, the little looks, the body language. The fan writer wants to or thinks she's supposed to recreate that kind of intensity (especially in het and slash writing) and blows it, because, well, the written word just doesn't support the same kind of visuals and pacing that real-time film does.

That's been my theory, anyway.

Re: there's another reason

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I definitely think that's a big part of it. We have a desire to communicate cinematically now. Take the pizza box out of the freezer. Take the wrapping off the box, and then throw the wrappng away. Now slide the pizza out of the box... ;-)

Re: there's another reason

[wesleysgirl.livejournal.com]

I think you're right, and that another part of it is an attempt to show that we *have* captured the characters. The little quirk of Spike's lips, the way his chin drops when he tilts his head. The Buffy-glance that includes the astonished eyebrows. We're so used to *seeing* all the little things that make the characters who they are that we want to try to recreate those things on the page, breathe a little bit of extra life into them so that there's no doubt that we're talking about *Spike* or *Buffy* as opposed to a blond vampire and a blonde slayer.

I'm sure I use way too many of all of those words and phrases, sadly. :-P

Re: there's another reason

[ahedonia.livejournal.com]

That's EXACTLY the reason I thought, and also the reason this review has me mentally cringing at the thought of every one of my written works. :-/

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

Oh, man. The purple. It kills.

I look at my older fanfic, and think- wow. Was I holding a thesaurus the ENTIRE time I was writing these? Ack.

Best lesson for a newbie writer? Just say "said" already for fuckssake. And it's OKAY to use the character's name repeatedly. Trust me. Copious descriptions make the Baby Jesus weep.

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

I know I've seen "the slayer's red-haired lesbian witch friend" or similar in some fic. And one that for a chapter didn't call anyone by name. They were "the redheaded hacker", "the dark-haired cheerleader", "the blonde teen" (this was a human AU and they defeated their purpose by applying this description to both Buffy and Spike).

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

The lessons learned with time, hunh? *G*

Dak said something to me the other day about how she couldn't believe a community of writers was so against concrit. I told her this wasn't a community of writers, so much as a community of people who write, with some writers thrown in for good measure. Hence the humongous outcry when someone dares suggest there may be a better way to describe Spike's eyes rather than 'cerulean orbs'.

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

Yep, and I fall somewhere between the two - I have no interest in writing anything other than fanfic, or being published, but I don't want to be painful to read *g*

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

I told her this wasn't a community of writers, so much as a community of people who write, with some writers thrown in for good measure.

Kita, I love you. That's *exactly* what we are.

[kben.livejournal.com]

I once got this review:

How about some constuctive criticism? Your descriptions are repetative. If I read another character described as "The blonde" or "the witch" or "the redhead" I'm going to throw up.

It makes me want to write a fic that's about Anya, Willow, and Tara and use the descriptions interchangably.

And some days, Buffy's just "the blonde slayer" and not "the flax haired commander of demony justice," mmmkay?

[db2305.livejournal.com]

*groans*

This describes my writing. *dies*

These words should give off an alarm in Word. Gonna put this in my memories and use it to check my fic. Aargh!

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Believe me, I feel your pain. I thought I was finished with this story, just waiting for beta edits, and went back to look it over for just this stuff? Ha ha ha ha! Oh my god. As someone who, you know, edits for a living, and who goes over and over a story before I give to an editor, I am truly ashamed of just how much of these craptastic words are in this 10,000 word piece.

::dies::

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

And one of the hallmarks of the amateur writer -- me included -- is overuse of qualifying words.

I became more consciously aware of this problem in my own writing when I read Stephen King's On Writing. He goes on a witty but heartfelt diatribe against adverbs and all the evils they entail. I thought about it for a long time, and have since experimented with a conscious effort to use less adverbs around dialogue, and less dialogue-qualifying words in general, to sort of challenge myself to have the dialogue be good enough to stand on its own. I'm not entirely sucessful of course, but I have liked that aspect of my writing better since I tried to do more with less.

Though "looking" has always been a problem for me. It's one of the rare things that people do a lot of that unfortunately there are very few words for. And the most of the things that could be synonyms for "looking" or "looking at" have very specific connotations that could muck with the meaning of your sentence.

[shetiger.livejournal.com]

Hello, here via doyle_sb4. I find it almost impossible to avoid these writing this way during the first draft process. I've got a chapter going that's mostly 'he looked into his eyes, then turned his head away, then turned back to meet the dark gaze'. Blah. But once I get the plot going, I can manage to edit out a lot of the badness. But I do find that the same actions and phrases keep coming up. It has made me think about the way people physically express themselves in real life, and how to describe that. Mostly I get stuck in 'he carefully lifted the left side of his obicularis occuli, producing an odd squint'. Ack. Anatomical knowledge is not necessarily helpful in writing. :)

I've been thinking about having my husband (a computer programmer) write up a little engine that searches out frequently repeated words and phrases, as an editing aid. Would anyone be interested in something like that?

-tigerlady

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty darn sure you'd have folks lining up at your door if you did! I think that a lot of conscientious fan writers would love to have something they could rely on that isn't one of those awful, lame grammar checkers -- grammar checkers do not really work on fiction, if you ask me, and most people are looking for just that sort of help ("what am I doing too much of? What am I not seeing?")

[unovis.livejournal.com]

"Then" "little" "though" "just"-- I have to go back and trim these hedges in everything I write. Then I have to search for "wryly" "drily" and anything involving a grin, a snort, or a twist of the lips. It's humiliating to see the same gestures pop up in story after story.

How did this person get published??!!

[black-bird-777.livejournal.com]

It's a bloody tragedy that people like this get published when there are so many excellent writers who know how to *think* and write well out there. ARGH. Deliciously vicious review.

[lamath.livejournal.com]

Oh man. I'm currently writing a fic where there isn't a lot of dialogue because the characters are giving each other the silent treatment. Now I'm going to be all paranoid about all the looks exchanged.

Thanks for posting this! Will definitely be going over the fic on a revision and checking for those points!