writercises | TECH: Writing Lean and Mean?

"Words are the essential nutrients of our stories. And, too often, we get so caught up in our idea, characters, setting, emotions and plot, we lose sight of the basics. Our writing ends up flabby and weak." Nancy Kress, Writer's Digest, July 2004, p. 29

That's how Nancy Kress starts her article about rewriting. In it, she takes a flabby paragraph and turns it into a stronger one. She points out a number of places to work on. Let's take a look at her points, and maybe toss in some thoughts of our own along the way, okay?

Nancy starts with the verbs, which she calls the energy source of sentences. She recommends using strong verbs, and selecting them with care. Beware the adverb or modifying phrase. She also warns against various groups of verbs such as:

"there was" constructions
Verbizations of nouns for business purposes
the progressive past when the simple past will do

Once you've tightened up the verbs, look at the nouns. Nancy calls these the muscles. Specific, concrete, well-suited to the situation and the characters, nouns are the building blocks. Make sure they are solid ones!

Modifiers, the sugar and spice of the writing life. Part of the concern here is simply avoiding overuse. Nancy warns against weak adjectives, unnecessary adjectives, an adjective overload -- dirty, gray, dingy, half melted snow is just plain yucky. She suggests a litmus test for adjectives -- "if you remove it, do you alter the meaning or image?" If not, get rid of it.

Pronouns -- make sure they have some referent, and if possible, just one. And do your best to align the plural and singular in verbs and pronouns and stuff like that?

Conjunctions. Vary your sentences. Beware of falling into a pattern, and repeating it again and again. While extended sentences are nice, variation keeps the reader awake.

Prepositions -- up, too, from, with, for, around and under. Good ways to connect directions and scenery, but be careful to avoid the endless run-on sentence and the dangling modifier.

Interjections are probably something that we were not taught in English class, since they don't belong in formal writing. But damn, they are certainly useful in fiction. Nancy advises us to make sure the interjections match the character -- the small-town minister is unlikely to strew "by the bloody bones" throughout his speech. Avoid stereotypes. And while profanity may be natural for some characters, don't overuse it.

Something to check in your writing. Make sure that the verbs, nouns, and other words are right for the fight, and who knows, maybe the knockout will hit!

What do you think? Do you pay attention to the words in your writing? Do you go back and re-read it, tweaking a word here and a phrase there, rearranging sections and checking just how individual characters talk and walk and twist their mustaches (and those are the women!)?

Make those words ring!
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