I do, in fact, want fries with my existential despair

[cleolinda]

Today: Spent the morning rereading one of my favorite Victorian source books (Inside the Victorian Home), paying particular attention to the food served at formal dinners and the means of serving it, which at the beginning of the century was à la francaise, and then (from France, ironically) à la russe. Then went out for a burger. As you do

Comments

[cleolinda]

I laughed so hard when someone was giving Serious Writerly Advice and SPECIFICALLY pegged "dryly" and "grimly" as overused. Because maaaaaan, am I guilty of that. So I try to work on that now.

[particle_person]

Anne McCaffrey overuses "drolly."

[aranel13]

And 'facetiously'.

[awanderingbard]

My drama teacher used to use that word all the time and then spell it, for some reason. "You're being facetious, F-A-C-E-T-I-O-U-S." But he was otherwise awesome and a drama teacher, so I can't judge him for it.

It's weird how we all latch onto certain words, isn't it? I once beta'd a fic that had characters grinning an abnormal amount. And once a girl called herself on using the word 'fine' about five times in one sentence in an rpg post. I have a terrible habit of using 'so,' to start off new paragraphs, to the point that I always check for that before I post a journal entry.

/randomness

[aranel13]

Using the same word over and over is one of my pet peeves in writing or reading. I can't bear to use the same word twice in the same paragraph, if it's a significant word. More than twice on one page makes me twitchy, too.

I do the 'so' thing, too! I'm also guilty of 'well'.

[cleolinda]

Yeah, I just try to get down as much as I can the first time around, everything I'm thinking, and then I can go back and tighten it later.

And yeah, apparently this week was a baaaaad writer week.

[chris_walsh]

Both Stephen King and Peter David way overuse "pretty much."

Maybe it'd work to think that sometime in the 1920s there was a run on adverbs that depleted the supply (thanks to at least Robert E. Howard and Lovecraft) and we must be careful with their use now because we'll run out. (I almost wrote "we must use them judiciously" but then, I remembered, adverb shortage!)

[cleolinda]

I desperately overuse a number of words and phrases in casual journal posting, but I figure, it's an informal, conversational tone, so I'll let it go.

[chris_walsh]

And that's no problem.

I can over-stress about how I'm writing blog entries and comments, and have to tell myself "JOURNALING: YER DOIN IT RONG." Professional stuff I know is different: it's why last night I called out a site via Twitter for the its/it's screwups throughout a piece. Pet peeve, but one I felt OK addressing. If I did that to someone's journal, I'd be a douche.

You're not a douche. Keep up what you're doing. You're making it work.

[cleolinda]

Heh. Well, it's a choice you have to make, you know? People naturally overuse their pet phrases in conversation, and while I try to weed out really ungainly repetition of them, I think that, in the right context, it actually makes you feel like you're listening to someone talk. But I'm presenting this as a very personal blog, as opposed to a professional news site. It's like... I am a professional (in theory), but the medium in this case is personal.

Of course, in the end, probably the only real rule of writing is, if it sounds right, go with it.

[chulacabra]

If you're Kurt Vonnegut, you can overuse words as a literary technique and be called a genius. But only if you're Vonnegut. And he's dead.

[maudelynn]

and he's a literary genius.

[elbales]

Okay, I flinched. GUILTY.

[cleolinda]

Oh my God, so guilty. I think a lot of the problem with adverb overuse in dialogue tags is a combination of a writerly tendency towards being insecure and wanting to control. I'm afraid the line itself won't get the tone across: insecure. I'm going to load down my dialogue with adverbs so you know EXACTLY how everyone says it, as clearly as if you were watching it on a movie screen: controlling. So there's a point where you have to trust the reader to pick up on tone--particularly in the case of "dryly." "Dry" dialogue is so easily conveyed through situation, the more I think about it--irony, sarcasm, understatement, etc. But we say "dryly" anyway because we're afraid to trust the reader to pick up on that. And even if a few of them don't get it--that's the other thing, about control. You have to be willing to give up some of that, let the reader be there in your story, and not breathe down their necks with the adverbs all the time. And, I mean, that's something I have to do, too.