ADJECTIVES AND MACHETES

I've been mulling over over-writing quite a bit recently. Partly because I've been doing talks and workshops with the title, "What's Wrong With your Manuscript?" and partly because I keep seeing over-writing in the manuscripts that come my way via my Pen2Publication consultancy.

What do I mean by over-writing? Well, I've written about it before but I've recently developed a new name for it: Trying Too Hard To Sound Like a Writer.

I've also written about it fairly extensively in Write to be Published, and I thought I'd give you a little snippet from that:

Some genres and contexts require and tolerate more poetic bits. Some books and voices differ similarly. If you’ve read lots of books in your genre, you can more easily judge what is right for your book. But, whatever your genre, you will almost certainly do yourself a favour by toning down at least some parts, and then your best bits will stand out even better. You can’t see purple against a purple background.

Mark Twain’s words, written in 1880, bear repeating: “When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them – then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.”

He’s wrong, actually: it’s not hard at all. Be tough with yourself and your writing will benefit. If in doubt, cut it out. My preferred weapon is a machete. It’s remarkably therapeutic.

But which ones? Here are some tips:

• Particularly avoid the repetitious and over-easy adjective+noun adjective+noun adjective+noun format
• And adjectives that were incredibly easy for you to think of - consider whether that's because they are clichés
• When you see a pair of adjectives together, consider whether one of them is better - omit the weaker one
• Be wary of adjectives that sound too flowery for the context or the character or the voice
• If you are particularly proud of one, consdier whether you're being too proud and showing off - if it's not right for the reader, axe it.

I've got more examples of how some of you are guilty of Trying Too Hard To Sound Like a Writer. And I will be back with them soon, but meanwhile: get axing.

DO YOU HAVE GRAMMARPHOBIA?

I have just come across a fabulous resource for anyone who wants the answer to tricky grammar questions or anything to do with what's "right" or "wrong" in our language usage - not just grammar but word usage, too. It's the Grammarphobia blog.

Annoyingly, I sent off the final final final proofs for Write to be Published last night, but I'm going to email Emma at Snowbooks and see if there's time to squeeze it into the resource list at the back. Bet she says yes. She has so far never said no to me but perhaps that's because I haven't  asked for a champagne launch. *makes note on to-do list*

The blog has some good book suggestions here.  And the section on grammar myths indicates a healthy respect for good grammar and yet a willingness to move with the times. For those of you who think that since the authors are American they must write American and not British English: fair enough, but anyone who, as I have, has been edited by American editors, knows that when they know their stuff they know their stuff. They also use the OED as their guide, so they must be good.

Now, off to email my editor to see if we can squeeze it in.

AS POINTLESS AS A POINTLESS THING: CARE WITH SIMILES

Remember when you were at school and you were learning Creative Writing? (You know - the bit squeezed between Passing Exams and Spelling. The bit where you got your story read out in class and your head stuck down the toilet in break.) Yes. Remember when the teacher got to Similes, and then Metaphors? And you were the only one who knew the difference? And then you got extra marks and ticks and things when you used a simile or a metaphor? And you came to believe that using similes was Essentially A Good Thing and the mark of A Writer?

Well, sorry. You are all growned up now. Do not add similes to your writing because you think you should. You don't get points any more. At all.

There is only one occasion when a simile really makes your writing better: when it really does make it better. A simile must ADD to what you've just said. It must make what you've just said clearer, and better. If what you're trying to say is very simple and is already clear, don't clutter it up with a simile. Only when the situation is complex, unusual, interesting, extra vivid or strange, does it need a simile to inspire and excite the reader. A simile is special, and should be used for special occasions and for special effect.

Why am I going on about this? Well, I have recently read several manuscripts which are passably well executed in many ways. Until the writer has thought, "Gah! I remember now: Miss Scroggins always used to praise me for using similes. Better put one in. NOW! Why? Oh, because. Because it would be sooo cool to get extra points, just as I used to when I was eight."

People, Miss Scroggins has forgotten you. She retired long ago and is now shacked up in Spain with  Juan, about whom she has been passionate since at least the Wars of the Roses and with whom she longed to run away, a dream which she was delayed from realising by her over-lengthy career teaching children such as you, whom she adored at the time but over whom her pension and some well-deserved sunshine now take precedence. Miss Scroggins has no hold over you now. She has no hold over her waistline, either, and has allowed herself to go gloriously to seed. Forget Miss Scroggins and her exhortations to simile.

Here are some examples of completely unhelpful and pointless similes:

His words paralysed me. I was like a deer that's been transfixed by an arrow, right in its spine, so that it was alive but could not move. [The first sentence says it all. The simile simply adds some wholly unhelpful and, frankly, bizarre, extra images. We learn nothing extra and yet are bombarded with extraneous images of a dying Bambi.]

He leaned over the counter and watched me like a diving hawk. Then he laughed, throwing his head back so that I saw his teeth. [Why diving? How is that like someone watching over a counter? And then the juxtaposition of him laughing and then having visible teeth conjures a weird mixture that does NOT have the effect of making anything clearer in the reader's mind.]

And here's a proper, useful simile, though not spectacularly original:

He moved slowly, like a lion. He knew where he would find them. [The lion simile means that the reader thinks of all the other things to do with lions: that they are strong, dangerous, hunters. You can imagine the lion moving slowly because he's powerful and confident. So, this simile ADDS to the image.]

That is the point: a simile adds.

Importantly, it adds everything about that image, so you'd better make sure you get the image right. The clue is in the word "image", because the point about language is that every word you use creates an image; the reader cannot help but picture things connected with that image.

Let me show you. If I say the word fire-engine, you will think of these things: red, something loud and something large, indicating danger. So, if I say that her lips were fire-engine red, you will think of her mouth as large, red, and probably loud. Possibly even dangerous. Or at least sexy in a loud way. (Not that I have anything going on with fire officers' uniforms, you understand.)

If I say the word strawberry, you think of these things: fruit, sweet, small, strawberry-shaped. So, strawberry lips, make you think of small, sweet, gentle, tasty, strawberry-shaped lips.

Letter-box red lips: bright, loud, large. Cherry-red lips... You get my point?

And so it is with similes: every part of the simile creates pictures and if you use an image with the wrong connotations you utterly wreck or disturb the reader's picture. It becomes a confusing mess.

My final point about similes is that they must be exactly right for the voice, the style of the piece. So, in a colloquial voice you don't want to insert a poetic or literary simile. Or vice-versa. Incendiary, by Chris Cleave, is a brilliant example of a book with an exceptionally colloquial voice, and here is an example of a wonderful colloquial simile in it, which is pitch perfect for the context:

We never did eat that sushi. I mean why would you? All seaweed and raw tuna sushi is. More like a fishing boat accident than a lunch.

That is deliriously clever. I love that book, love it. So much so that I have to give you another simile from it.

They were shocking vicious things those helicopters. They were like fat black wasps looking outwards through their glittering eyes.

If it had just said wasps, we'd have thought of stripy yellow thigs, so the author cleverly specifies fat black wasps, and glittering eyes, so we still have the insecty nasty connotation but our mental image perfectly conjures those helicopters into fat black wasp-like things, and we find ourselves absolutely being able to picture them in the way the author wants. We have a sense of, Yes, they are exactly like that.

Three learning points about similes, then:

1. Only use one at all if you haven't made yourself clear already. A simile is supposed to add meaning, to make something clearer, to elaborate and enrich an incomplete picture in the reader's mind.
2. The reader, whether you like it or not, will take every aspect of your image and process it. So, make sure your image only has the connotations you want it to have.
3. And the simile must be chosen for its aptness for the voice, the style and the context.

 And leave Miss Scroggins out of this. The Sangria has addled her brain and she Does Not Care any more.

Meanwhile, I am not going to be able to give you the attention to which you are accustomed for the next few weeks. I have a leaky building situation which is as big as a mountain, as wet as the sea, as expensive as the Tah Mahal, and as irritating as a roomful of mosquitos with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, and which I need about as much as a dose of dysentery before a school event.

Which is probably what I'm going to get if my leaky, rotting bathroom isn't sorted out.

DIALOGUE TAGS

Following from my earlier post on dialogue, I now come, as promised, to dialogue tags. Dialogue tags are the he queried / asked / opined bits that come between the spoken sections. Once beloved of Enid Blyton and many others, their unnecessary use is now regarded as a bad habit and poor style. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s better to repeat he said, than to vary it with questioned, opined, muttered or expostulated. The main reason for this is that it’s too easy to be tempted to tell the reader how the speaker spoke, but often more satisfying for the reader when the attitude is revealed in action. Dialogue tags are just a bit lazy and spoon-feed the reader too much. At the same time, they give the instruction after the reader has read the dialogue: too late, in other words. Sometimes, they're necessary, but you should only use them when they really are.

Let me illustrate with an example of an over-use of dialogue tags:

“Do you want to come in for coffee?” she suggested.
“Is coffee all you mean?” he wondered.
“What else would I mean?” she scoffed.
“Well, just that I thought you might have some biscuits as well,” he responded.
“Aye, right!” she laughed.

Do we really need any of the words outside the speech marks? No: we can manage perfectly well with just the speech, if the dialogue is strong enough. And that’s the key: your dialogue needs to be strong. If it is strong enough, it is strong enough to do the job on its own. Then you will need very few dialogue tags, and then usually only to show who is speaking. (Young children need more dialogue tags, as it is harder for them to follow who is talking.) Dialogue tags should show who is speaking, not how he spoke, unless that feels absolutely necessary.

Often, you can make the dialogue speak for itself, without any dialogue tags. Take a look at the same conversation re-written:

Carmelle looked straight at him. “Coffee?”
“Just coffee?” He stared back, streetlight shadowing his jaw.
“As opposed to?”
“Well, biscuits. I was thinking you probably do a mean chocolate digestive.”
“Aye, right!” How did he manage to make the word digestive sound so desirable? Carmelle felt herself begin to blush.

Finally, just in case you haven’t quite got the point, here is an example of too many dialogue tags with the extra burden of unnecessary adverbs. (I've written about lazy adverbs here. Remember that there's nothing wrong with adverbs per se, just with their lazy use.)

“Listen,” she whispered conspiratorially.
“What?” he interrupted eagerly.
“Nothing,” she replied, hesitantly, deciding that she was not going to tell him after all.

And here is how you could re-write that without dialogue tags or adverbs:

She leant towards him, her hair brushing his cheek. “Listen. I ...”
His pulse quickened. “What?”
Carmelle took a breath. She paused. What if her informant was wrong? She shook her head, looked down at the stem of the glass pressed between her fingers. “Nothing.”

Well? Please tell me you think the second one is better. Yes, the second one uses more words, but it uses them better. It uses verbs and action, shows us how the two characters behaved, allowing us to feel that we are there, to experience what they do. It draws the reader into the conversation, relegating the author (me) to a very appropriate sideline. After all, when you go to a puppet show, do you want to see the puppeteer?

DIALOGUE TECHNIQUES

Good dialogue is very hard to do and some writers are much better at it than others, just as some actors are much better than others at doing accents. Good dialogue is dialogue that a reader hardly notices as good or not, but bad dialogue sticks out painfully, dragging the whole book down. Poor dialogue is certainly one of the things that can contribute to rejection, not on its own but then poor dialogue is most unlikely to be the only thing wrong.

The first thing to know about writing dialogue is that you should not try to write exactly as people speak. If you did, you’d have lots of ums, vast tracts of nothingness and many non sequiturs. At the same time, you mustn’t write dialogue that the characters would actually never deliver. So, we devise a kind of stylized representation of speech, something that feels very natural. In essence, good dialogue is not about writing as we speak; it’s about not writing as we would not speak.

Dialogue is usually best broken up into sections, separated by narrative. You are not writing a film script or a play – unless, of course, you are, in which case you are boiling a whole different kettle of fish. You do not have to relate the whole conversation; in fact, you shouldn't. Most parts of a conversation are way too boring to set down. Yes, no, I don't know, and OK should all be reduced to their absolute minimum.

Oh, God - so should Oh, God. Amateur writers put loads of standard minor expletives in their dialogue but, again, the fact that a real person might have used a word doesn't make it deserve a place in your book. This is not about being prudish and avoiding swearing - probably the topic of another blog post - but about creating flowing, strong dialogue.

Some other big bad things to avoid:

• As I say, too many yeses and noes. Better to replace some of them either with nodding / shaking of heads – though that can quickly become repetitive – or with the rest of the sentence and context indicating positive or affirmative.
• The blatant provision of information for the reader, which the characters would already know and therefore not say. For example, “Gosh, Sally, I hardly recognized you. You used to have dark hair with a fringe and now it’s a blonde bob. Did I tell you I recently saw Samantha, your younger daughter, the one who went round Australia? Lovely girl. She’s married now, of course, and they have a baby on the way.” Bleurgh.
• Dialogue tags – I'm going to tackle this in the next post, but dialogue tags are when we say, for example: he replied, she opined, he queried, she reiterated. Where possible, stick to said, asked, or nothing. I will show you how on Friday.
• Anything which makes it hard for a reader to hear the words in his head – this means that using dialect of any sort becomes very tricky for writers. You have to be very confident in your reader and in your writing to get away with the heavy use of an accent which that reader doesn’t speak. Trouble is, sometimes it would be absurd not to use dialect to some extent, if that’s how the character would speak, but do try to keep it toned down. Think of your reader.

The key to writing dialogue is to read it aloud, preferably imagining yourself acting it. If you’re not an actor, as I’m not, this is difficult but it’s the very difficulty which will help you think more carefully. If there’s a bit of dialogue that keeps jarring every time you read it and you can’t find another way to express it, turn it into narrative instead. Better no dialogue than poor dialogue.

I admit that dialogue is not something I find easy or something I shine in. Perhaps that's why I'm extra careful with it and extra aware of when I get it wrong. I spend a lot of time trying not to get it wrong. Good dialogue sings and makes your story sparkle and come alive. Bad dialogue is horrible and drags a book right down.

She opined.

TOP TIP 2: VARY SENTENCE STRUCTURE

One common fault I see in less-than-fab writing, and one which could easily be rectified, is the repetition of sentence structure. It's a style thing rather than a grammar thing, but it's still important for the feel of your writing.

There are two very common varieties of this problem.

1. Where too many consecutive sentences begin with the subject immediately followed by the verb.
2. Where too many nouns are immediately preceded by an adjective.

Here's an example of both. I have highlighted in bold examples of 1 and italicised examples of 2:

Loretta ran through the thickening twilight, calling his name. Her breath came in painful gasps and her straggly hair was plastered to her sweaty forehead. Her legs were tiring now and black specks rained across her vision. Thick clouds were gathering, rolling in across the darkening moors. Loretta collapsed, unable to run any further. Laughter rose up in her chest. "That's like bloody Wuthering Heights, you stupid woman!" she cried, "Except badly written." The looming rain-clouds opened and she was soaked within seconds. Loretta didn't care. It would make her look much sexier when he came back, as she knew he would. She adjusted her silken top somewhat, and waited.

Lazy, yes?

Now, don't become too paranoid about the subject+verb sentence starts: this is the natural way in which the English language works. But do try to vary it a little. Certainly make sure you don't have too many consecutive She/he/name+verb or anything that sounds too obviously similar.

The easiest way to vary this is to make the occasional sentence start with a participle. For example, "Adjusting her silken top somewhat, she waited." Or a subordinate clause, such as: "As Loretta ran through the twlight, she called his name."

The obvious way to avoid the repetition of adjective+noun is simply to use fewer adjectives and make them work harder. You can do this by choosing stronger verbs, or by trusting your reader to understand - for example, in the second sentence, at least one of those adjectives is redundant. (Straggly, I suggest.) You don't need looming rain-clouds because you've already said they are gathering. In the last sentence, you could have omitted silken and said something like, "As the rain fell, the silk clung to her body." Or something.

There's an easy way to spot any of this: read it aloud and listen for the jarring repetition of pattern.

Here endeth today's top tip.

MEANINGS AND CONTROL

I am away this week so I am taking the easy option by drawing your attention to a relevant post on my Wasted blog here.

As well as the points I make there, about control, power and the themes of Wasted, I find it interesting and important how very often readers will take meanings that are different from those we intended.

We mustn't be upset by that. I'm certainly not.

Only a very shallow book would have only one meaning. Only a shallow writer would have such a simple theme that there was no room for the reader's mind to go down some different paths of thought, because if a book has rich characters those characters will have rich minds, and, when readers enter those minds properly, they will live those lives beyond the pages of the book.

The deeper the book, the more opportunities for readers to take different interpretations. On the other hand, if many readers took the completely opposite meaning from the writer's intended one, either the writer would have failed to express the meaning properly, or the wrong readers would have found the book.

Once the book is out there, however, it belongs to the readers as much as to the writer and we must give up control.

After all, without readers there would be no book, and therefore no meaning at all.

So, I worship at the feet of readers. Even when they get it wrong!

THIS WEEK, I'm in London, talking at Bishop Challoner's School about Wasted, and then speaking at a conference in Berkshire about young people and risk-taking. I should also be writing, and if I don't I will be behind on a certain deadline and Emma at Snowbooks would be cross with me. So, I probably won't be able to do much commenting, but I will be watching you. I am always watching you.

REALLY, ACTUALLY, ABSOLUTELY, ADVERBS ARE MUCH MALIGNED

Some people have so got the wrong end of the stick about adverbs. Adverbs are not bad - using them lazily is.

Did you spot the adverb in that sentence? Should I have expressed that better? Differently? Ooops - "better" and "differently" - there go two more!

I have blogged about the poor use of adverbs before. Once in a post about "over-writing", because adverbial diarrhoea is part of that. And once in a post about the importance of showing more than telling.

It would help if you were to skim those posts to see the contexts, but I will quote from the second post here:

1. Go easy on the adverbs. Adverbs, used lazily, are an immature writer's stock in trade. Yes, they roll off the tongue, but so does dribble.

Let me elaborate on why it is absurd to claim, as I have heard people do, that adverbs are bad. (And after that I will show you how bad they can be in the hands of certain writers.)

Take the second sentence of that extract: "Adverbs, used lazily, are an immature writer's stock in trade."

The adverb is, of course, "lazily". (By the way, "of course" works as an adverbial phrase, as you'll see if you replace it with a true adverb: "obviously". Are you going to tell me that using it was bad? It's not bad, because it says what I want to say accurately and succinctly. OMG - two more adverbs! Slapped wrist, naughty author!)

Anyway, back to lazily. "Adverbs, used lazily, are an immature writer's stock in trade." Would you suggest that I should have avoided this adverb?

If I'd left out the adverb, we'd have been left with. "Adverbs, used, are an immature writer's stock in trade", or, more normally, "Adverbs are an immature writer's stock in trade." But they are not. So it would be wrong. What I am trying to say is very simple:

Adverbs, used lazily, are an immature writer's stock in trade.

OK?

There is no better way to express that sentence and I wouldn't want to because there is nothing wrong with it.

So, what do we mean when we CORRECTLY find fault with adverbs? Because it is the case that lazy over-indulgence in adverbs is an example of weak or immature writing - though many authors, at least in highly commercial genres where style is less of an issue, do get away with it. (Because it is partly to do with style, meaning and prose skill, not anything at all to do with faulty grammar.)

Here's the rest of the extract from that original blog post, immediately following the extract above. It shows some extreme (imaginary, because I wrote them) examples of how badly adverbs can be used. (By the way, see how I would have altered the meaning of that sentence by omitting badly).

Compare:

"Listen," she whispered conspiratorially.

"What?" he interrupted eagerly.

"Nothing," she replied, hesitantly, deciding that she was not going to tell him after all.

with:

She leant towards him, her hair brushing his cheek. "Listen. I ..."

His pulse quickened. "What?"

Carmelle took a breath. She paused. What if her informant was wrong? She shook her head, looked down at the stem of the glass pressed between her fingers. "Nothing."

Well? 

The second is so much better, isn't it?

Now, that was an example of adverbs in dialogue tags, but you will see how over-use of adverbs spoils writing in normal narrative too. Try this - I've put the adverbs in italics:

She walked slowly through the woods, stopping occasionally to pick a flower, sadly thinking back to the time she'd walked here with her young daughters. Their cheeks had glowed rosily after a late summer picnic, and she could picture the hair sticking damply to their foreheads. The air had been heavy with birdsong then, but now the silence fell eerily around her and suddenly she felt a chill pass down her back. All things pass, she told herself.

It's a rubbish piece of writing in many ways and some of those adverbs are mere tautology, but the main thing is that they are lazy, for differing reasons.  

• Slowly wouldn't be necessary if more care had been taken to choose a better verb than walked. 
• Occasionally is fine and necessary, though it would be better if we actually saw her do it once and the rest of the thoughts happened during this one moment of flower-picking.  
• Sadly shouldn't be necessary from the context of the para and if the rest of it were written better.
• Rosily is tautologous after glowed and damply is pretty obvious or would be unnecessary if the foreheads were described as sweaty (or something).  
• Eerily is not too bad but I'd rather be shown other aspects that made me know it was eery, without being told it so obviously. 
• And suddenly is a word which should only be used when there is no alternative - here, it could be omitted without loss of meaning. And, therefore, should be.

So, adverbs are not bad but careless or lazy over-use certainly is. Certainly, really, actually, truthfully, adamantly, obviously, very much is. OK?

It's worth saying, too, that lazy use of anything is an immature or poor writer's stock in trade, too. Let's not blame it all on adverbs. I have seen other forms of crapness. Really.

THE GREENGROCERS' APOSTROPHE'S SOLVED

As in The apostrophe of greengrocers IS solved. That is the only meaning of that sentence written in that way. A word (in this case apostrophes) can only have an apostrophe if it "owns" something that follows or if something is missed out (in this case the first letter of is).

I could equally well have written greengrocer's as greengrocers', because it's up to me whether I mean one or several. This is all about meaning and clarity, not obfuscatory rules. (Yes, I know, we could probably manage without apostrophes at all, but since we have them, let's get 'em right.)

Several of you have asked for a post on apostrophes. Oooh, the pleasure! I haven't done this since I was an English teacher. Apart from the times I taught my daughters. Forcibly. While serving them fish fingers.

By the way, it will be embarrassing if there are typos in this post, especially if they are apostrophe-related! But I can't check it properly until it goes public, and I'm busy surrounded by boxes and may not have internet access. Fingers crossed...

APOSTROPHE RULES
First, forget about "before the s or after the s". We will not be thinking like that, because that way confusion lies. The letter s has absolutely nothing to do with apostrophes. OK? Thinking of s is what has led so many astray.

There are only two reasons to use an apostrophe:

1. ABBREVIATION - WHEN TWO WORDS BECOME ONE or when something is missed out of a word (though many such omissions are nowadays not represented by apostrophes)

Read these examples, because each shows a different aspect:

• didn't, can't, mustn't etc - you know this, and I don't need to explain oddities like won't
• It's a lovely day - BUT NB NB NB NB NB: it's ONLY HAS AN APOSTROPHE WHEN SOMETHING HAS BEEN MISSED OUT, ie when it stands for it has or it is. NEVER ELSEWHERE
  
• The dog's going to eat its dinner - because dog's stands for The dog IS going...

Some things to consider:

Nowadays, generally speaking, you do not normally need an apostrophe to denote letters missed from the beginning or end of a word, but you do when TWO become one, such as can't - originally can not

In the old days, any missing letters needed to be indicated by either an apostrophe or a full-stop, but not any more. For example, 'phone is now just phone. (There's nothing wrong with 'phone, but it's not needed.) Photo would certainly not be photo'. Therefore, photos* would NOT have an apostrophe. If in doubt, leave it out. These vagaries are a matter of common practice.

*I don't know why this troubles people but please remember that you do NOT just add an apostrophe to denote a plural. The s does that all by itself. This is the problem that greengrocers have. Apples, bananas, peas, etc. No apostrophes. Not unless you're selling the apples' possessions.

CD is one that gets people tangled. Originally it would have been C.D. and you could still write this. Would you say CD'? No, so don't write CD's. (You'd write the CDs' cases though, following the possession rules below - as in the cases of the CDs.)

The most important thing to realise with plurals is that if you would not have had an apostrophe for the singular, you do not for the plural. Because apostrophes play no part in forming a plural word.

20s, 1960s, 80s etc do not have an apostrophe because there is no abbreviation going on.

Some unusual abbreviations, such as 'em for them, would have an apostrophe, simply as a favour to the reader, who might otherwise be confused.

To repeat: nowadays, generally speaking, you do not normally need an apostrophe to denote letters missed from the beginning or end of a word, unless it's required for clarity, but you do when TWO become one, such as can't - orginally can not.

2. POSSESSION - ONLY WHEN THE "POSSESSOR" COMES IMMEDIATELY BEFORE THE THING POSSESSED.

And the only thing to remember about the position of the apostrophe is that it comes immediately after the "possessor". So, if the possessor is plural, put the apostrophe after the plural form.

So, the dog's / dogs' dinner:

The dog's dinner - the thing possessing the dinner is the dog (one dog) so the apostrophe goes after dog.
The dogs' dinner - the things possessing the dinner are the dogs (more than one dog) so the apostrophe goes after the dogs.

If you remember to think "after the possessor", you won't have a problem with, for example, the Joneses' house = the house of the Joneses. The Joneses are the possessors.

Exceptions? One exception and one extra point.

EXCEPTION. These words never, ever, ever have an apostrophe, even though they look as though they should**:

theirs, ours, yours, hers (or, more obviously, his and whose)

Never. Got it? Don't worry about why - just remind yourself that the word mine doesn't have an apostrophe so why should theirs etc? What, because there's an s at the end of theirs? So? We're not thinking about s, remember? S has nothing to do with apostrophes. As I said.

And remember: it's ONLY has an apostrophe for abbreviation - it is or it has

** Technically, these are not even exceptions: in fact, since the object possessed does not come immediately after the word, there's no need for an apostrophe, within the rules. You don't say yours house, do you?

EXTRA POINT. Sometimes you have to notice that the "thing possessed" is omitted, or "understood". For example, I'm going round to Jane's. This has an apostrophe because we mean Jane's place or Jane's house. Another example would be, This is Sally's, not Joan's, book.

CAUTION - be careful to remember the rule with irregular plurals. This is another reason why you must focus on "after the possessor". For example, the children's party or the people's princess - both follow the rule as long as you are not doing that "before the s or after the s thing."

That's it in terms of rules. But of course, that's not quite the end....

...because there are some occasions when the rules are hard to interpret. Or even a bit fluffy and annoying.

A few examples:
1. three weeks' time - because we mean a period of time of three weeks BUT we say in three weeks with NO apostrophe
2. for goodness' sake - because it is for the sake of goodness
3. Accounts Department does not need one, because Accounts is being used as an adjective, describing the department, not indicating possession
4. three hours late - does not need one, because late is not a noun and can't be said to be owned*** by anything.

[***Thanks to eagle-eyed Dave Bartlett for correcting my confused brain there.]
 

Sometimes it's entirely up to the person creating the phrase. For example, the people of The Writers' and Artists' Yearbook decided that they meant many writers and artists; but the people of The Writer's Handbook decided to refer to one writer. Both equally correct.

James' or James's?? Bit of an argument there. Usage tends to favour James' in the US and James's in the UK. No doubt this will change and I wonder in which direction...?

And there are times when it comes down to usage and all you can do is look the phrase up on a reputable website and see what the experts say: there's no way I can go through everything here. If in doubt, check.

Do you want to do a quiz? There's one at the bottom of this article here, which also, I see, gives a clear list of apostrophe rules. Between my explanations (especially the "after the possessor" rule) you should have it cracked. There's some nifty footwork on gerunds, too.

Now, I know I haven't answered every possible question, but it would get too bitty. Get your head round the rules first and use sensible internet searching for individual phrases that pose you a problem.

Here are some more resources that seem good at a quick glance:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A790175
http://www.eng-lang.co.uk/apostrophe_rules.htm
http://www.grammarbook.com/default.asp

I also just came across this recent Litopia podcast - I haven't listened but it's Eve Harvey so it will be good.

That's it. You're armed. Go out and prepare to laugh at greengrocers.

HEROINES IN THEIR PRIME? APPLY WITHIN

Since you ask, I'm 48. Middle-aged, c'est absoluement moi. I am, I like to think, in my prime. I am more in control of my life than ever before, I buy more fabulous shoes than I did when I was younger, I make more effort (I have to) and more radical decisions, earn more, want more, accept new experiences, meet more and more interesting people, and exciting things happen to me - sometimes not in a good way, but excitingly, nevertheless. Some of the things that happen to me even make pretty good stories.

But apparently I couldn't be in a novel. What utter tosh. Isn't it? Or is it?

Publisher and writer (and woman of a somewhat similar age), Lynn Michell, drew my attention to this the other day, because she blogged about it here. Do go over and read what she says.

Lynn quoted a "well respected" literary agent as having said:

‘I can’t sell a novel these days about a middle-aged heroine. No publisher would touch it. Give up. Youth is exciting. Old age is interesting. Middle-aged men are either powerful and sexy or going through a crisis or thrilling baddies. But forget all about women aged between 40 and 65. No-one wants to read about them in novels.’

I really hope he is talking tripe. Not just because it's obvious (though not the point) that in real life middle-aged women are no more or less capable of being all the things needed in stories - they are vulnerable / feisty, strong / weak, tragic / domineering, lucky / unlucky, sexy / shy, betrayed / murdered / attacked / hated / loved, criminal / dramatic / damaged / heroic. But because lots of modern novels do feature women of a certain age. Surely. Don't they?

Lots? Er, like, give an example. Erm... Here's where I run away because I am (honestly) frantically busy - for which there's a very good reason which I will tell you quite soon. So, it's over to you, my fabulous, well-read blog-readers, to come up with novels written in the last few (say sixish) years, featuring a heroine aged 45 - 60. Catherine, Sally, Emma, Daniel, Jo(s), Jane, David, Cat, all of you... come on, please.

Because, if you can't come up with some answers, the "well respected literary" agent was right. 

And if he was, I'm doomed, and so are some of you. Not interesting enough, eh? Would he like me to prove to him that I am perfectly capable of providing the murder and intrigue which he so doubts?

I really want him not to be right. Would it not be absurd if he were right? Fundamentally weird? After all, are we not the main reading demographic. So, if he's right, is it our fault?

PS I should add that I am a huge Fay Weldon and Bernice Rubens fan and they certainly had middle-aged heroines - however, BR hasn't written anything in the last few years, being dead, and I haven't read any FW in very recent years. To be fair to the agent, FW is well enough established to sell anything. So, who has taken on FW's mantle?

SELF-EDITING - A BIT LIKE WEEDING

Several of you have asked me to talk about my method for editing and revising my own work. Method? This could be a short post...

But, ever true to you, my bloggy readers, I decided that I should give you what you ask for. I will try to make some method out of my madness.

I guess that the possible methods for self-editing are similar to the possible methods for weeding your garden.

1. Go from one end to the other, picking out all the weeds carefully.
2. Wander about, picking out weeds as you see them.
3. Decide that weeds are just plants with more determination and that, since everything is equal in God's eyes, they should be allowed to remain. [Please don't take this view, even if you have admirable Buddhist tendencies. Not if you want to be published and read. Publishers don't do zen.]

Then I decided that this analogy is complete rubbish and that, as with all analogies, it is aesthetically pleasing and yet practically pointless.

There are, in fact, only three things you need to think about when weeding your garden:

1. You need to know the difference between a weed and a plant.
2. And you just have to get rid of the damned weeds. Doesn't matter how - just do it.
3. No matter how carefully you do it, you'll find more weeds at the end, because the removal of one weed often reveals another.

I decided that that is not complete rubbish and is a pretty good analogy for editing your own work.

1. You need to know what possible errors you're looking for - the difference between a good sentence / plot structure and a crappy one.
2. And you just need to get rid of the errors.
3. And when you've got rid of one lot, another lot is revealed.
4. So you get rid of them.
5. And so on.
6. Until your piece of work is weed-free.

Would you like any help with the identification of weeds? I am here for you, as ever. 

There are two categories of weeds in your literary garden.

CATEGORY ONE WEEDS are the choking bindweedy ones, which threaten to take over your roses and throttle the life-blood from them. These must be removed early on, by the roots, otherwise your roses cannot grow and your garden, frankly, is fit only for slugs and other vermin. It is, in the words of Rab C Nesbit, pish. Examples are:

• Poor characterisation - either in your MCs or your supporting acts. Do your characters always behave as they should? Does the reader like / respect/ identify with / feel for the MC? [We don't need to do all those things, but we have to care.]
• Pace problems - I wrote about that here.
• Tension issues - where is the tension? Is it in the right place? Is it satisfied at the right time?
• Voice slippages - see here.
• Major POV slippages - here you are.
• Story structure / shape / arc problems - over here.
• Saggy middle - hmm, future post, methinks.
• Crappy ending - here.
• Story starting in the wrong place - gosh, I'm good to you.
• And a lot more - which is not very helpful of me but I have a book to write.

[To be honest, you really shouldn't have let most of these anywhere near your garden in the first place. If you are a beginner writer, your book may be littered with these horrors, but a more experienced writer will avoid almost all of them before they appear.]

CATEGORY TWO WEEDS are smaller things, which all writers will find in their first drafts and which we will apply the weeding gloves to with a commendable ruthlessness. Our editors and copy-editors and proof-readers will pick up any that we didn't spot but we want to leave as little as possible for these people. It's our book, not theirs. Category Two weeds are like those dainty things that try to pretend they're real flowers. Sometimes my husband thinks they are and he leaves them. Sometimes he takes out the pretty flowers instead. He is like a novice writer when it comes to weeding, which in his case it usually doesn't, actually. Examples are:

• Places where tweaks should be made to clarify characterisation / motivation / credibility.
• Clunky sentences - sentences where you have clustered a collection of clauses in an ugly order, for example, making it hard for the reader to read.
• Minor POV or voice slippage.
• Places where thre's too much telling when showing would have been better. Extraneous adverbs.
• Continuity issues - eg saying that the MC leapt onto the horse's bare back and then later mentioning the stirrups. I have done this. Oh and then there was the one [which made it through all the copy-editors and all the way into the printed book] where a girl flings open the door of a room which ten minutes before I'd said was locked on the other side...
• Typos, spelling errors, punctuation etc etc. And yes, there will be some in this post. I'll find them eventually. But probably not all of them, because this is a blog post and I can change it later. So shut up, please.
• Anything that doesn't sound absofrigginglutely perfect when you read it aloud, imagining that your audience consists of fidgety people who are assuming you've got nothing interesting to tell them and they're desperate to leave.

When you've done all that, there's only one more thing to do. Do it again. And possibly again. 

One of the problems is that the weed you removed may have hidden roots. You will have noticed the same in books: if you change one thing, you'll find you have created knock-on effects which now have to be dealt with. So, you do have to remove weeds and plot problems by the root and make sure you've not forgotten any tendrils. I suggest keeping a notebook as you revise and jotting down things you've changed, so that you can check that you've found all the consequences. However, this is a bit methody for me and I prefer the madness approach and the constant re-reading.

And when you're quite sure that no weed is peeping up between the soil of your well-raked flower-border, then you can let an agent or publisher see it. By which time, a previously invisible seed will have begun to sprout, and what you thought was perfection won't be. That's because perfection is unattainable in writing as in gardening, and you have to get over it.

Have I answered your questions? Probably not. See, I don't really have a method. I just do it. And do it again. I honestly think once you can identify the weeds, pulling them out is not that difficult. You can choose whatever weeding method works for you: just get rid of the little buggers.

Oh, and by the way, spell-check and grammar-check are the equivalent of weed-killer: they don't let anything grow. They kill indiscriminately and remove control from the gardener. They may have their place for some people but they are not enough for anyone. Real writers use their hands.

AsVoltaire said, Maintenant, il faut cultiver ton jardin. And here's one I made earlier, with not a weed in sight:

PRITHEE, HOW SHOULD I TACKLE HISTORICAL FICTION, FAIR LADY?

When I asked what topics you'd like me to cover this year, Dan Holloway asked about historical fiction [HF]. He says that he loves history but hates historical fiction. He doesn't like it when it is verbose, pompous, archaic, and shows off the research. He wants a story which:

"has sharp, active sentences, brilliant plotting, doesn't tell me about the history of whalebone just because someone's wearing a corset, and speaks like I do. ... Yet stories like that never seem to reach the shelves because they don't obey the conventions of HF.

So I want to know - what REALLY ARE the HF conventions that an agent/publisher will demand? And if someone wants to write a story set in the past that knows how to end a sentence without seventeen subclauses, do they have to give up the HF tag and market it as lit fic?"

To reassure you all that I do know something about this: I have had three historical novels published and they've gained good reviews. All happen to be for teenagers, but everything applies identically to adult HF. Fleshmarket is set in Scotland in the 1820s and The Highwayman's Footsteps and The Highwayman's Curse are set in England and then Scotland in the the 1760s. Luckily, many of you have already been very complimentary about them - phew! Also, of course, I read HF, though I also read and write other genres, too. In fact, the book by my bed just now is a wonderful debut HF crime novel by Alastair Sim, called The Unbelievers, published by Snowbooks. I highly recommend.

There are three main aspects of HF for an author to consider:

1. Can you change history?
2. Language - should it be authentic for the period?
3. How much is too much info and research?

CAN YOU CHANGE HISTORY?

For a very interesting conversation about this, go here and here. [The second is a response to comments from the first.] Read the comments, too.

There are some things you can change and some you can't. Here are the bare bones of it:

• You are inventing characters, so you are inevitably changing history. So, get over it. 
• However, your readers must believe you. So, they will believe that an unknown man once met Henry IVth in a jousting tournament and tripped over his halberd [if halberds were around then, of which I've not a clue, but about which I would certainly have to have a clue if I was writing that period, which I wouldn't because halberds and jousting do nothing for me]; but they will not believe that Henry IVth had two heads. If you want H4 to have two heads, you'll have to go down the magical realism / dreamstate / totally weird route and hope that your readers are dabbling with illegal substances. Normal readers will believe that there was a fire in Edinburgh in 1829, even if there wasn't, but they won't believe that Edinburgh was entirely destroyed by a comet in 1829. Unless we are genuinely being asked to accept a parellel-world story.
  
• You cannot refer to something that didn't exist then. For example, if matches were invented in 1829, you cannot have matches being used in 1828. Some geeky pedant in hgh school will tell you, in no uncertain terms, that you are an idiot. This provides the most delicious opportunities for HF writers to show off. For example, you cannot imagine the pleasure I got from mentioning umbrellas and kaleidoscopes in Fleshmarket.  Hehehehehehe. Nom nom nom, as my daughter would rightly say about cranberry and brie canapés.
  
• BUT you must NEVER show off your research treasures. My husband lying in bed reading my new novel and muttering "research alert" is the nightmare scenario for me. I don't know if Dan Brown is married but I hope his wife had the strength to do a hell of a lot of muttering. [I'll mention this more in the section about wearing your research lightly.]

LANGUAGE AND ALL THOSE PRITHEES

Damned irritating things, zounds and hell's teeth. Avoid clunking archaisms, please. On the other hand, you've got to get it right. Or, more importantly, you mustn't get it wrong: you cannot use any word or phrase which would not have been used. So, you cannot say, "no-man's land" in a book which pre-dates the First World War, as I tried to do in Fleshmarket but was saved from by my clever editor. You have to be aware of how meanings of words have changed. Take the word "sensible" - it just wasn't used to mean "un-stupid" in the 18th century: it meant "aware". One essential tool for the HF writer is the "Shorter" Oxford dictionary [shorter?? Gah!] This will tell you when words were first used. Invaluable, trust me. Even if it does weigh more than me after a large dinner. But all this does NOT mean you have to litter your story with silly words just for effect.

There are three ways of writing historical language:

1. Do it very authentically.
2. Do it moderately. 
3. Ignore it.

1. I asked my erudite blogger friend, Catherine Hughes, to name me some books that took the very authentic approach. It seems that they generally don't, nowadays. Thank goodness, says Dan, and I agree. Her impression, borne out by her questioning of the good folks in Waterstone's, and my own feelings, is that archaic language only ever works in dialogue. She gave me some examples of HF where archaic dialogue is used: Kate Mosse's Labyrinthe, Paula Brackstone's work, Diana Gabaldon [who also, acc CH, defines the period by the type of dialogue] and Barbara Erskine. There are more examples, as Catherine says, but the main point to take from this is that nowadays you'd be best reserving your strictly authentic language for dialogue. And even then, be warned that you risk getting in the way of the reader's own voice - we readers tend to trip up on dialect and other voices that are not natural to us, including authentic archaic lingo.

2. Moderation is the approach I use, even if moderation does not come naturally to me in other areas of my life. The trick here is not to use specifically archaic words or phrases but subtly to twist modern usage to create a gentle effect of oldness. There are some specific techniques and I offer you an example of each one, all taken from The Highwayman's Curse:

Correct formality of language where modern usage favours a grammatical slip: instead of the modern, "Was I no better than him?", my "archaic" version is, "Was I no better than he?"

Twist of word order: instead of the modern, "I had never met someone like...", my version is, "Never had I met someone like..."

 Use of a slightly archaic word: instead of the modern, "It bothered me that...", I say, "It irked me that..."

3. Ignoring the need for authentic language, while not being obviously anachronistic, in other words by avoiding colloquialism, slang, or words which could not have been used at the time, is possible. I think it would be unlikely to be used in a book for adults, unless it was a spoof, but it can more easily be used in children's books. For example, my friend and hugely successful colleague, Elizabeth Laird, uses this approach. Even her dialogue uses a very down-to-earth tone, the way that people today do speak. It works for her and creates a lovely simplicity of language.

NOTE: whichever of the above methods you use, someone will disapprove. Someone will want you to be more or less "authentic". Sometimes this is because most people don't actually know how people spoke at any given time in history; sometimes this is because you'll never satisfy a genuine expert. It's the same, as I know to my cost, with writing a local dialect or Scots language. You cannot do it correctly without alienating those who don't speak with that voice; and you cannot alter it without alienating those who do speak in that voice.

TOO MUCH INFO AND RESEARCH?

One should wear one's research lightly, but how lightly is lightly? There will inevitably be disagreement as to what is too much. My own approach, and one which reviewers have picked up favourably, is that I want to know everything but I don't want to show everything. I want to know what the buildings were made of, even if I'm never going to tell you. I want to know what utensils people ate from and what they ate, even though I will not explain every detail to you. If I don't know, I can't feel, and if I can't feel, I can't make you feel.

So, do your research and do it thoroughly. But never let us know just how much you did. Give only as much detail as you need to paint your picture but do paint it richly. That sounds like a paradox but it's one you have to get your head around. You have to find your own way, while thinking always of your reader. Draw him into the story with the richness of your story-telling, but don't ever make him think he's in a history lesson.

ONE OTHER POINT ABOUT WRITING HF: 

Choose your year. It's not enough to tell yourself that the story is set "in the mid 18th Century". If you don't decide on the exact year and even month, you won't know whether there was a king or queen, whether the country was at war or not, what huge political issues were frightening or exercising people. Even though there were no news channels, iphones and Twitter, and even though lots of rural people would be slow to hear bits of news, it's not realistic for your characters to be lolling around drinking mead and not seeming to realise that they were a year into the Wars of the Roses...

DAN - I hope I've reassured you that the sort of HF you might like is published and does well. Maybe Catherine Hughes can recommend some specific titles? So, no, you certainly don't have to avoid the HF tag and think of it as lit fic. Though it can be literary as well - there's every "level" out there.

Do add recommendations for HF that follows any of the approaches I've mentioned. By the way, Cathereine has started a new blog which will eventually have loads of her reviews in categories - I think I'll ask her to be my unofficial assistant whenever I need suggestions of books to illustrate a point!

Zounds! Hark! Doth the clock chime? Methinks a beverage calleth. Would that coffee had thus far been discovered by people of these fair isles...

IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT

It beats me how I could have done a whole and very long post on how to start your novel and how not to start your novel, without mentioning that all time classic way not to start your novel: with the weather. Especially when the weather is supposed to denote mood, as it so often is in books.

"It was a dark and stormy night" is the infamous opening clause of Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel, Paul Clifford, which is the epitome of the clichéd weathery opening of a novel, and has even spawned the annual bad-writing contest, The Edward Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Prize. However, poor old EBL's writing wasn't actually picked on because he opened with the weather, but because his language tended towards the florid, portentous and melodramatic, with unoriginal effect.

Now, however, opening with the weather has become a cliché and therefore to be treated cautiously unless you can do it in an original or effective way. Maybe leave it for paragraph two.

Another reason you should be careful of using weather to define mood, is that it is rather too obvious to have the sun shine when a character is happy and to bring on the rain at funerals. Of course, it adds atmosphere and of course we do it sometimes - often, in fact - I'm just saying: think before you play God with the weather. Do it cleverly and subtly.

And certainly think carefully before you open your story with something as boring as the weather. Even though we're British, we'd still rather focus on something else. Especially now. [And, to answer a question from a non-British blog-reader the other day: yes, we do have snow in the UK, every year, just not everywhere, not so much, not so deep, not so long, and not so bloody cold. We even have a great skiing season every year up here in Scotland - thing is, normally it's confined to the mountainy bits, not my local high street.]

If it helps you remember to avoid using the weather to denote opening mood, perhaps I should point out that it would also be that old friend of literature students, a pathetic fallacy. And you wouldn't want to be accused of that, would you? It sounds most demeaning.

After all, imagine telling someone you didn't like his pathetic fallacy...

[Thanks for all your excellent comments after the last post on how/where to start your novel, by the way. I'm glad the main messages you took were: 1) do what is right for your story and 2) quit worrying, get writing. I'm sorry I haven't replied to them all: I am overwhelmed at the moment with deadlines and I am sometimes so tired that I can't find my way to the chocolate cupboard. Yes, that tired. I know I also haven't got round to all c180 blogs whose owners visited my blog party on Sunday - I've done about 150, probably explaining my severe eye-strain just now. Twas fun though - lots of clever bloggers out there.]

Next post: historical fiction. Probably on Friday.

BIG MISTAKE 3: OVER-WRITING

Thing about writers is we're passionate about words. (If you're not, bugger off, please).

Trouble with being passionate about words is we sometimes don't know when to rein in our passion. I admit that I'm guilty of this quite often. There are people in my life who do their best to stop me, and very grateful I am to them.

They are, in no particular order:

• my husband - "Shut up: you're banging on."
• my editor - "OTT" / "suggest omit?"
• my internal editor - "do you really need both those descriptions you're so horribly proud of? Would you consider killing one of the babies? No? Well, I'll do it for you and it won't be pretty."

Personally, I blame it on primary school teachers. (With all respect to them for the otherwise wonderful job they do and all the nasty things they mop up.) See, when kids start to write stories, they're told to use adjectives, and adverbs, and detail, and the five senses; and then they get onto similes and metaphors and other devices. Whenever children use these techniques, they get praised. So they use more. And more. Some children don't and they don't get praise, so they fade into the background and become the ones who don't consider themselves writers. Meanwhile Arabella and George have their stories read out in class to demonstrate the richness of their language and the vividness of their imaginations. And so Arabella and George gorge on more and more adjectives and clever-clever literary devices and get carried away into some kind of ecstasy as they sit in their teenage rooms and pour their hearts out into their diaries by moonlight.

Other kids are asleep, but Arabella and George are floating on moonbeams and diving into liquid worlds and sherbet dreams and the parts of their brains that are good with words become passionate about words and lo and behold, two hopeful writers are emerging.

Thing is, no one tells them to stop. No one tells them that just because an adjective is beautiful, five adjectives are not necessarily five times as beautiful. No one tells them that words are valuable, that they need to be chosen perfectly, that effort goes into the positioning of each word, and, crucially, its removal if it is not the absolute best one for the job.

So, grown-up now, Arabella and George begin to write novels. They write for themselves, because they must be true to their souls. They put everything into their oeuvres, their whole beings, all the power of language that they can muster. They read their work aloud to themselves, over and over again. They make themselves cry and shiver with the piercing anguish of their prose.

One day, they are ready to send their oeuvres off to publishers. They visit a well-known blog, called Help! I Need a Publisher! - though, in fact, they believe that they should really be on a blog called "Help! I'm a Publisher and I Really Need You, You Fabulous Writer!" And they follow all the stunning advice about covering letters and synopses and sample chapters and tailoring the submission properly to the right publisher. They don't even include any toffee, or glitter, or naked photos of themselves, though George is tempted because he has a kind of Byronic air of which he is more than faintly proud.

And they are rejected. Because you can bet your bottom dollar that their work is over-written. Thing is that A & G, potentially talented though they may be, are totally up themselves with the beauty of their prose and they have forgotten that this is not about them: it's about the story / work / book /reader. Of course, we must write from the heart and I would never advise selling out at the expense of the quality of your writing - though you may earn more if you do - but if you put yourself and the pleasure YOU derive from your own words above the work itself and the pleasure the reader will take from it then you may as well talk under water.

Help! How do I know if I'm doing this horrible over-writing thing?
So far, I've suggested a cause and a result, and you'll have gleaned something general about what over-writing is, but I haven't shown you how to spot it in your own work. It's easier to spot in others' work, because it's damned irritating. It's like seeing someone a bit over-dressed for the occasion - you know, when someone has just gone that little bit too far to show off the gorgeous legs and Manolo Blahniks when all we're doing is digging a ditch; or perhaps like wearing two diamond necklaces - very vulgar, dahling. It's showing off, preening, and no one responds well to it. When we find over-writing in someone else's work, we may mutter under our breath, "Ok, ok, you really fancy yourself, don't you?" and it gets in the way of the story that we were trying to read.

And this is the main point about over-writing: it gets in the way. It ends up hiding the true beauty underneath, covering it with glitz and frills.

So, on the basis that you are looking carefully at every word you use, because I know you are, here are the questions I think you should ask yourself when checking your work for over-writing. Ask yourself these things especially when it's a piece of description, high emotion, or when you are feeling particularly proud of yourself:

• have I paced the surrounding sentences so that this bit has enough space to work? So, if my gem is surrounded by loads of other gems, is it going to be noticed? No? So, bin some gems. Give the purple sentence some space. You can't see purple on a background of purple
• have I said the same thing twice? (I do this a lot. I even do it quite often.) Or if not exactly the same then is half my description more powerful than the other half?
  
• have I used three adjectives where one (or a different phrase altogether) would have worked harder and maybe ended up being more meaningful?
  
• is this in fact a bit of action where the reader doesn't want to be held back by description anyway? Will the reader be tempted to skip to the action?
  
• is this actually beautiful or is it in fact absurdly flowery? Am I being like a child who thinks that My Little Bride Pony is genuinely tasteful? Am I being greedy and deluded?
  
• if it is genuinely beautiful, is it in keeping with the rest of the work / section? Am I "in voice"?
  
• have I been guilty of "showing, not telling"? (This is often over-used as a crit - sometimes, telling is the right thing to do, but only if it's the right thing to do. I've written about it here and here.)
• have I overdone the adverbs? Especially in dialogue tags - eg. "she said, resignedly" (because it would be much better and more skilful if you showed in other ways that the person spoke resignedly - otherwise [think about it] the reader won't know how to read it until after reading it and getting to your adverb, by which time [if you're a crappy writer] the reader will have read it excitedly or poignantly or something quite differently.
• if I cut this paragraph by 25% would it be even better? (Yes, it would, trust me.)

One trouble is: over-writing is all relative. What's beautiful prose to someone is self-indulgence to another. You have to work out where you want to be on the spectrum. Michel Faber is my writing hero - his prose is gorgeous, his imagination extreme and his vocabulary and imagery rich and rolling, yet he thinks about every word (or he seems to) and every word works. You have to read every word because there are clues everywhere and you can't afford to miss them. That's how I'd love to write. But everyone's different and I'm not saying other styles aren't just as valuable. Just make sure you're clear about what you want and whether your readers want the same.

I'm currently going through my next novel, Wasted, with my ruthless internal editor's hat on. The novel is done and dusted and my editor wants me to release it for copy-editing, but I'm convinced there are more things wrong with it. One of the things I'm looking for, because I tend to get carried away, is over-writing.

I thought I'd give you three extracts that I picked up and thought about at length:

1. "Their heads tell them that this is fake, ordinary, or has a boring explanation - Farantella is ill or messing around with them."

There's an example of "the cliché of three": fake, ordinary, boring. I realised that ordinary and boring are too similar to be useful, so I changed it to, "Their heads tell them that this is fake, or has an ordinary explanation." No frills, no fancy stuff. No showing off.

2. "For they both feel it: that there is something heavy in the caravan, something thickening the air, a chill breath of strangeness."

This one I haven't finished with. It feels over-written, though it occurs at a moment where I am wanting the reader to pause and savour the atmosphere. But it's that "cliché of three" again, and I'm not sure I'm happy. I'll have to think about it. It may get to stay. Or it may not. I'd rather think of something with one or two phrases, otherwise it looks as though I'm struggling to find the right phrase.

3. "Soon, but not very soon, disentangled but still with the blush of him hot on her skin, Jess goes into her house and smiles goodbye to Jack, standing there, watching her."

This gets to stay. This baby lives. Jack and Jess are passionately in love and every touch is almost unbearably electric. I need to show this, even though I have not described their kiss. I am "showing" the effects of the kiss, the parting of their skin, rather than "telling" you about the kiss. (Frankly, showing and not telling with kissing is often preferable - the imagination can fill in the details without feeling as though the author is being a voyeur ...) So, I judge it not over-written but strong. You may disagree! Of course, all this is about context, and you haven't seen the contexts, but I wanted to show you a little of how I go about trying to be ruthless about over-writing. And sometimes failing.

Do remember that in the end you have to judge this yourself. Some genres require and tolerate greater or lesser levels of prose; different books and different topics require a different treatment.

For example, my first novel, Mondays are Red, is heavily loaded with description, which in a different context you might call over-writing. But it shows a boy waking from a coma, hugely disorientated and with an acquired and exaggerated version of the sensory condition, synaesthesia. So, you get pretty over-the-top description and a deliberately confusing multi-sensory layering - it's a book you either love or hate, depending on whether you can let yourself go with the strange descriptions. Whereas Wasted has whole pages with virtually no adjectives and adverbs at all, completely pared back, interspersed with the occasional sentence suddenly rich in description. The intention there is that you will notice the description much more starkly, because it will stand out.

It's that thing about not being able to see purple against a purple background.

But, whatever you're writing and whoever your reader, it is worth considering whether you can apply these adages to your work:

Less is often more
Flowery is not good - delicately floral is.
Over-writing is in the eye of the beholder - and you do care about your beholder
It requires much greater skill to say something in a few words than in many

And finally, that old chestnut:

If in doubt, leave it out.

If you apply that last one correctly you cannot be guilty of over-writing. It's the most important task of the internal editor: to ensure that every word works and earns its place.

Finally, finally, newbies to this blog, or people with duff memories like mine, may be wondering what Big Mistake 1 and Big Mistake 2 were. They were, respectively, Voice and Pace. And the greatest of these is voice.

Voice defines you and defines your book. It's the hardest thing to teach. Compared to voice, over-writing is a complete doddle. So, no excuses now and no pressure. Go and seek out your over-written passages and where you find them, cut them out. And watch how something much stronger appears.

SHOW NOT TELL - Part 2

If you have read and properly digested yesterday's lesson on SHOWING, NOT TELLING, you may now move on to Lynn Price's typically excellent and trenchant post on VISUAL WRITING. She makes many wise points, but the examples of dialogue particularly link with my show-not-tell post. Lynn makes the same points about adverbs and dialogue tags - and, though we're far from the first to do so, she got there before me, damn the pesky coyote. In fact, it was reading her words that spurred me to bring show-not-tell to your attention earlier than I was going to. Such an influence she is.

By the way, all this stuff about rules: rules are for breaking, aren't they? Rules are for beginners, no? No, actually. Writing rules are for writers who crave the power of language.

The only rule I go by is: if you understand the power of language, you will want every single word to be right. And you will never stop wanting to learn new ways to control your power and therefore control your readers.

Power-crazy? You bet!

SHOW NOT TELL - LET ME TELL YOU HOW

"Show not tell" we're always being told. "Told", not shown, you notice. Well, tough - I'm going to tell you how to show not tell.

1. Go easy on the adverbs. Adverbs, used lazily, are an immature writer's stock in trade. Yes, they roll off the tongue, but so does dribble.

Compare:

"Listen," she whispered conspiratorially.

"What?" he interrupted eagerly.

"Nothing," she replied, hesitantly, deciding that she was not going to tell him after all.

with:

She leant towards him, her hair brushing his cheek. "Listen. I ..."

His pulse quickened. "What?"

Carmelle took a breath. She paused. What if her informant was wrong? She shook her head, looked down at the stem of the glass pressed between her fingers. "Nothing."

Well?

2. Don't just tell us what someone is like: show him doing something. If you tell me what Fred is like, I may not trust you. See, you might have judged Fred differently from me. If you tell me he is cruel and callous, I'm struggling to understand what your definition of cruel and callous might be. But if you show me him ripping the legs off spiders and making a collage with them for his sister's birthday card, then I'm getting the picture. Thing is, you may be the author but I am so not interested in what you think and I don't want you to mediate more than necessary - I'll make my own judgements, thanks v much.

3. Go easy on the dialogue tags. They feel clunky and repetitive when over-used. And, as with adverbitis, it's so easy to tell the reader how the speaker spoke, but harder for the writer and often more satisfying for the reader when the attitude is revealed in action. Here's an example of horrible over-use of dialogue tags:

"Do you want to come in for coffee?" she suggested.

"Is coffee all you mean?" he wondered.

"What else would I mean?" she scoffed.

"Well, just that I thought you might have some biscuits as well," he responded.

"Aye, right!" she laughed.

Think about it: do we really need any of the words outside the speech marks? We can manage perfectly well with just the speech. Or, if you don't want the dialogue to speak, literally, for itself, how about this:

Carmelle looked straight at him. "Coffee?"

"Just coffee?" He stared back, streetlight shadowing his jaw.

"As opposed to?"

"Well, biscuits. I was thinking you probably do a mean chocolate digestive." How did he manage to make the word digestive sound so desirable?

"Aye, right!"

Do I make my point? Would you like a short writing exercise? I thought you would. Imagine you are me (buy some better shoes, eat more chocolate and learn to appreciate sparkly wine and you'll be more than half way there) and imagine you are writing this blog post. But imagine that you respect the rules of copyright and therefore can't use my words. So, come up with your own examples of dialogue to illustrate my points in 1 and 3 above.

Then, ask yourself how much longer it took you to write the example of good practice than the example of crappy writing. See, not easy being a good writer, is it?

Oh, I should probably say something very important about covering letters too: in your covering letter, don't tell us how brilliant you or your book are/is. Please, please, please. If you tell me it's wonderful or that it's told in a fabulously original voice, I will immediately not believe you. Let me be the judge of your quality. You're just the writer; you're not your own reviewer. So show me how good you are and then I'll tell you how good you really are.

DO REALISE, THOUGH ...
Often, telling not showing is perfectly acceptable. No, forget that: it's never acceptable. When it's necessary and right, it's necessary and right, and therefore perfect; when it's neither necessary or right, it's crappy. All you need do is think precisely about every word and phrase you write and analyse why you are deciding to put it there, and then your writing will be just wonderful.

"All you need to do" - so easy! Trust me, though: thinking about every word is the only way to learn to be a great writer. If you don't think about every word, your readers certainly will and then they'll tell you all about it; and the thing about readers is that they both show and tell. Ruthlessly.