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