New Area of Focus

Note to self: Remove the word 'whatsoever' from your writing pretty much entirely. I think my hours of typing out the things lawyers say has done harm to my writing's conciseness, and I definitely think it's caused the word 'whatsoever' in particular to creep into my writing too much. It's a horribly clunky word.

This Probably Only Interests Me: Episode One

Writing, especially writing across different genres, affords a man many opportunities to amass at least rudimentary knowledge of many things. If I'm going to drop a character into a forest (the salient example today) and make him travel a hundred miles through that forest... well, it doesn't take too intimate knowledge of forests to make that work, because it's not a major point of description. Again, I don't feel it necessary to hold your hand with two pages of description of what this forest looks like. It looks like a forest. Whatever you think a forest looks like, that will do.

Anyway, this is just an example; the point is, in many points in writing, an author has to do a little research so he won't embarrass himself. Beyond that, you have to stop and think about it. There are unpleasant aspects to being out in the woods without camping supplies or a map. (The character in question has a four day supply of food, some canteens of water, and a blanket.) If you're accustomed to a toilet... well, that's going to be a hygiene shock to you. And you'd learn right quick to identify and avoid thorns in the many, many places you'd find them, if you're in a northern deciduous type of forest that's teeming with the buggers (as this character is).

Different characters would react to this in different ways, too. One character may be terrified of the night sounds and the critters; another may be a skilled hunter/tracker/camper/etc. that has no problem; a third might be otherwise smart and resourceful, but doesn't really have an idea how to survive in the wild, even for a few days. And the extent to which a character would be miserable out there will vary. You could write who knows how many different stories from a starting point of '[Character] finds him/herself separated from his/her party and stuck deep in unfamiliar woods...', depending on which character you fill in.

My Readers Are Smart; That's Why They're Reading Me!

I'm rewriting one of my major projects (codenamed 'Legends'; is it bad that I still have no idea what to title something I've already written nearly 200,000 words of? Can we have a ruling on this?), and reading stuff I wrote three years ago makes me feel embarrassed. It's a good bet that in 2013 I'll look back at the stuff I'm writing now and hang my head in shame. And if I don't, if I read over my 2010 work and say to myself, 'Self, that's pretty good!', then I'll be concerned I haven't improved.

My number one weakness as a technical writer* is, and has long been, wordiness. I just take too blasted long to say what I'm saying. And reading my old (fiction) stuff now, it's crystal clear what the primary symptom is: I just would not stop holding the reader's hand.

* Writing skills, in my opinion, break down into two categories: technical skills (grammar, structure, clarity) and storytelling skills (characterization, pacing, dialogue). Conciseness is my technical weakness; pacing is my storytelling weakness. I'm working on it.

What I mean is... OK, here's a typical example:

"Omegas," said Alavom, sitting up straighter the way a boy will when excited.

Reading that made me cringe. Reading that would make you, the reader, roll your eyes and find something else to read, because I'm wasting your time and insulting your intelligence. It should read:

"Omegas," said Alavom, sitting up straighter.

The reader is not a moron. He is capable of inferring for himself what it means when a teenage boy suddenly perks up while listening to a conversation. If the reader was a moron, he would be reading something more appropriate for his level, like Twilight.

The one rule of writing I'm trying very hard to enforce upon myself is the first of the six rules George Orwell laid down in Politics and the English Language: "If you can cut a word out, always cut it out." I'm still not very good at that (as this very post evidences), but I'm working on it. Wasting seven words explaining to the reader something he already knows is a double whammy: It wastes space, and it interferes with the story's flow.