Writing: Paragraphs
Today was apparently the National Day in Honour of Preserving Brain Cells, and I didn't get the memo or something, because I felt like disappearing into the lab to invent some Idiot Repellent, but instead compromised by writing data extraction code to make it Idiot Proof. So far, so good!
This post comes to you by way of the letters M, 9, and #, whereupon I take apart some of my own (original) fiction, deconstruct a paragraph, and mention things like camera zoom, Mary Sues, and make an offer to crit anyone brave enough to face my inner editor.
The trail was ephemeral, almost impossible to follow, but she was a Goddess, and the Goddess of the Hunt. Nothing could flee from her. Caoilfhionn followed the creature off and on as the days passed, depending on her interest, growing increasingly more curious when she could not fathom its goal or its destination. The trail wandered all over creation and now was heading North into desolation.
It was days before she was near enough to see that she was following a ghost. Not merely a ghost, but the spirit of a man.
There was no colour to him. He was tall and thin and his hair seemed dark, if the blue clinging to the curls was any indication. He wore hardened leather over his torso, covering a thigh-length shift embroidered with runic curlicues. He wore boots, and above his boots were protective leather straps above his knees. His belt was laden with a knife, but the sword sheath was empty.
He wandered this way and that way, stopping uncertainly, running a confused hand through his hair. Every hour he would stop on his trek and look behind him -- not because he suspected he was being followed, but because he wondered if he was going the right way.
*
The above snippet -- to a piece of original fiction that will never get published in its current state, because it's just that awful, is just a little over 200 words (207 to be exact). It was written over six, maybe seven years ago, before I had any sort of clue of what I was doing when it comes to writing in the first place.
That's not to say that I have a clue, because I don't. What I do have is a better understanding of what makes something work for me, and believe me, that bit above? It doesn't work for me. So I'm going to crit the hell out of it.
I've already posted an example of how I would deconstruct a sentence if I let my inner editor loose while I wrote, but here's an example of what will happen when I let my inner editor loose on something I wrote a long time ago. Since I refused to reread and edit this piece back then, believe me, my inner editor is cackling with glee right now.
*
Since it's been so long since I originally wrote this thing, I'm going to treat it as if it's new-to-me, and give my initial impressions first:
This snippet is from the very beginning of a work. It's not exactly a prologue, but it's what brings the principal character, Caoilfhionn, to the attention of the other principal character in the story, a Lord of the Dead, who doesn't make an appearance until later on. The story arc for this section is that Caoilfhionn, the Goddess of the Hunt, comes across something that she has never encountered before: the soul of a dead soldier who has lost his way to eternal peace. Since Gods or Goddesses aren't normally patient or merciful toward humans, never mind the shade of a human, the Lord of the Dead is naturally concerned for the safety of someone who falls under his charge.
There are several problems with the snippet. The first one is the POV problem. We start from Caoilfhionn's POV, learn that she's a Goddess, and that she's following the trail of some sort of creature. Once she's upon him, she observes him -- but there is also the POV switch at the end where we see that the ghost is wondering if he's going the right way. If we're in Caoilfhionn's POV, we shouldn't know what the ghost is thinking.
The second problem is the lack of realism. She's following a creature of some sort that managed to evade her for days. She's a Goddess; surely that shouldn't happen, but it does. We don't know if this creature is stronger than she is, or if she's just playing with it -- because Gods and Goddesses are fickle.
The third problem is that there is no growth potential in the character. I'm starting the story with a flipping Mary Sue character! She's already a Goddess! Goddess = perfection (well, depending on the world you're in, I suppose). Where can she possibly go from there? Nowhere, that's where. How can she get stronger? She can't, she's at the top of the ultimate food chain. How can she grow as a character? Grow? Dude, she's a Goddess. Goddesses don't grow. At the moment, she has absolutely no character traits worth noting, much less redeem, and there isn't any hint of the potential conflict that will occur very soon after this snippet is written. In the first paragraph I've given the reader every reason not to keep reading: the main character is so perfect, obviously everything will work out. I need to remove that, and put more questions in the story.
The fourth problem is that the snippet doesn't flow. It doesn't suck the reader in gradually; it jerks all over the place. Think of a paragraph like a camera lens in a movie. If you pop any movie right in, it's a good bet that the camerawork will shoot the wide angle of the setting, and slowly zoom in to focus on the action, the scene, the character. Sometimes the camera work is completely different -- it starts on one specific thing, then zooms out. It doesn't matter who's behind the camera as long as someone is behind the camera.
These are four major problems, but I can fix that!
*
I'm going to start by rearranging the snippet so that I will get the camera footage issue sorted out, but I will also bring the very important hook line (There was no colour to him.) to the very beginning.
There was no colour to him. He was tall and thin and his hair seemed dark, if the blue clinging to the curls was any indication. He wore hardened leather over his torso, covering a thigh-length shift embroidered with runic curlicues. He wore boots, and above his boots were protective leather straps above his knees. His belt was laden with a knife, but the sword sheath was empty.
He wandered this way and that way, stopping uncertainly, running a confused hand through his hair. Every hour he would stop on his trek and look behind him -- not because he suspected he was being followed, but because he wondered if he was going the right way.
It was days before she was near enough to see that she was following a ghost. Not merely a ghost, but the spirit of a man.
The trail was ephemeral, almost impossible to follow, but she was a Goddess, and Goddess of the Hunt. Nothing could flee from her. Caoilfhionn followed the creature off and on as the days passed, depending on her interest, growing increasingly more curious when she could not fathom its goal or its destination. The trail wandered all over creation and now was heading North into desolation.
It's not perfect, and I'm going to switch it around more as I rewrite it, because really, at this point, there is nothing left to do but take a hammer to it and smooth it out to polish each section and to try to get the snippet back on track.
*
Now for the hammering part, which I take paragraph by paragraph -- because there are some really bad descriptions in there. I decided to start by focusing on the micro and to slowly widen out the camera view. I'm concentrating on Caoilfhionn's target, and why he fascinates her.
There was no colour to him. He was tall and thin and his hair was dark in contrast to his skin. He wore hardened leather armour covered by a surcoat embroidered with runic curlicues. He had well-worn boots, a belt around his waist, and leather gauntlets. A knife was strapped to his thigh, but the two sword sheaths on his back were empty.
No man walked these woods without weapons, and yet this man was unarmed, with little else but a dinner knife for protection.
I like this better. I took out the colour reference in the original paragraph, because the first line says that there is no colour. I also switched around what he was wearing and gave him extra stuff, also with the addition of two sword sheaths -- and on his back -- to raise interest. Normally, people only have one sword, and they wear them at their waist.
Moving onto the next part, I'm going to pull the camera out a bit.
The trail he left behind was ephemeral, almost impossible to follow. He moved as if he were born in the wild, his footfalls barely crushing grass, his body barely rustling branches in his passage. There was no human scent to him, only the faint tang of weapon oil and the iron of old blood in the air.
For days now, his footfalls drifted West, toward the setting sun. He did not stop for rest, he did not stop to eat. Once or twice he stumbled upon a babbling brook, and cupped his hands; the water trickled through his fingers before he could drink. It was in those pauses that he would turn to look North with an expression that could only be described as yearning. The bright of noon on a cloudless sky finally saw him change his path.
I took away the wandering paragraph where I out-and-out wrote about his uncertainty, and instead hinted toward it. I also gave two hints that he's a ghost with some substances -- he could still mark a trail, and he could still touch water, which makes him unusual. He still has no inkling that he's being followed. Hell, the reader has no idea that the man is being followed (okay, maybe the reader has a bit of an idea).
I'm pulling the camera even further back now.
The frost-breath of the mountain air clung to the man in glittering shimmers. The wind teased at the man's tattered surcoat. He raised an arm and braced against the storm that scrubbed his prints from the snow.
He did not see her as he slipped through the ravine to get to the other side of the Sunderan. He did not notice her shadow flitting through the icy peaks of the Dragon's Maw. And when she cleared her throat to draw his attention to where she crouched upon the round stone at the top of Heaven's Reach, she saw the hollow of his eyes.
Caoilfhionn had been following a ghost.
*
Drawing back the camera slowly has the benefit of focusing on the prey, on what the hunter was looking at, at finally being able to put names to the setting, and finally, finally realizing whose POV the reader has been following all along. The revelation comes just as a shock to the reader as it does to Caoilfhionn. I've removed all references to her as a Goddess -- but that's only because she is no longer one, I took her down a massive peg. She will be meeting the Lord of the Dead at some point, but now she has a different immediate conflict: what will the ghost do to her now that he knows she's been following him?
I kept very little of my original snippet, but I retained the important elements of it -- a lost ghost, a trail that he's shunned, and the hunt. I reorganized how I pulled the reader through the story, put the realism back into the story, and baited the hook with the mystery that the scene was supposed to start with.
Here is the reconstructed snippet in its entirety:
There was no colour to him. He was tall and thin and his hair was dark in contrast to his skin. He wore hardened leather armour covered by a surcoat embroidered with runic curlicues. He had well-worn boots, a belt around his waist, and leather gauntlets. A knife was strapped to his thigh, but the two sword sheaths on his back were empty.
No man walked these woods without weapons, and yet this man was unarmed, with little else but a dinner knife for protection.
The trail he left behind was ephemeral, almost impossible to follow. He moved as if he were born in the wild, his footfalls barely crushing grass, his body barely rustling branches in his passage. There was no human scent to him, only the faint tang of weapon oil and the iron of old blood in the air.
For days now, his footfalls drifted West, toward the setting sun. He did not stop for rest, he did not stop to eat. Once or twice he stumbled upon a babbling brook, and cupped his hand; the water trickled through his fingers before he could drink. It was in those pauses that he would turn to look North with an expression that could only be described as yearning. The bright of noon on a cloudless sky finally saw him change his path.
The frost-breath of the mountain air clung to the man in glittering shimmers. The wind teased at the man's tattered surcoat. He raised an arm and braced against the storm that scrubbed his prints from the snow.
He did not see her as he slipped through the ravine to get to the other side of the Sunderan. He did not notice her shadow flitting through the icy peaks of the Dragon's Maw. And when she cleared her throat to draw his attention to where she crouched upon the round stone at the top of Heaven's Reach, she saw the hollow of his eyes.
Caoilfhionn had been following a ghost.
*
Oi. The snippet went from 207 words to 333 words. Well, if there's anything that I can do, it's add word count. For me, trimming it down is a bit harder, but I can do that (sometimes). Just not in this instance; I think this snippet needed to be expanded to get the effect that I wanted.
It does mean that on the back end, I'll be completely revamping the characters and the plot, but the basic elements would still stay the same. Oh, don't worry. This original fiction has been on the backburner for so long, it will probably still remain on the backburner, so this doesn't mean I'm going to suddenly quit writing LM or anything like that.
Anyway!
Now that I've shown you how I pick apart at my own writing (I take a scythe to it), I wonder if anyone would want to let me loose on their own work (I promise I'm not as brutal on other people's writing)? If anyone wants to leave a comment here, anonymous or otherwise, or even by direct PM, with a 200-word snippet from their own work that they're having trouble with (and what the problem they think is there), I'll see if I can help. If enough people are interested, I'll post one breakdown a week or as time permits.
Edited to add: I appear to have become affected by the National Day in Honour of Preserving Brain Cells, because I can't figure out how to allow anonymous posting for this post for whomever wanted me to pick at their snippet without their being identified, so I apologize in advance. If you want me to have a go but don't want to be ID'd, please send me a PM!
.
This post comes to you by way of the letters M, 9, and #, whereupon I take apart some of my own (original) fiction, deconstruct a paragraph, and mention things like camera zoom, Mary Sues, and make an offer to crit anyone brave enough to face my inner editor.
The trail was ephemeral, almost impossible to follow, but she was a Goddess, and the Goddess of the Hunt. Nothing could flee from her. Caoilfhionn followed the creature off and on as the days passed, depending on her interest, growing increasingly more curious when she could not fathom its goal or its destination. The trail wandered all over creation and now was heading North into desolation.
It was days before she was near enough to see that she was following a ghost. Not merely a ghost, but the spirit of a man.
There was no colour to him. He was tall and thin and his hair seemed dark, if the blue clinging to the curls was any indication. He wore hardened leather over his torso, covering a thigh-length shift embroidered with runic curlicues. He wore boots, and above his boots were protective leather straps above his knees. His belt was laden with a knife, but the sword sheath was empty.
He wandered this way and that way, stopping uncertainly, running a confused hand through his hair. Every hour he would stop on his trek and look behind him -- not because he suspected he was being followed, but because he wondered if he was going the right way.
*
The above snippet -- to a piece of original fiction that will never get published in its current state, because it's just that awful, is just a little over 200 words (207 to be exact). It was written over six, maybe seven years ago, before I had any sort of clue of what I was doing when it comes to writing in the first place.
That's not to say that I have a clue, because I don't. What I do have is a better understanding of what makes something work for me, and believe me, that bit above? It doesn't work for me. So I'm going to crit the hell out of it.
I've already posted an example of how I would deconstruct a sentence if I let my inner editor loose while I wrote, but here's an example of what will happen when I let my inner editor loose on something I wrote a long time ago. Since I refused to reread and edit this piece back then, believe me, my inner editor is cackling with glee right now.
*
Since it's been so long since I originally wrote this thing, I'm going to treat it as if it's new-to-me, and give my initial impressions first:
This snippet is from the very beginning of a work. It's not exactly a prologue, but it's what brings the principal character, Caoilfhionn, to the attention of the other principal character in the story, a Lord of the Dead, who doesn't make an appearance until later on. The story arc for this section is that Caoilfhionn, the Goddess of the Hunt, comes across something that she has never encountered before: the soul of a dead soldier who has lost his way to eternal peace. Since Gods or Goddesses aren't normally patient or merciful toward humans, never mind the shade of a human, the Lord of the Dead is naturally concerned for the safety of someone who falls under his charge.
There are several problems with the snippet. The first one is the POV problem. We start from Caoilfhionn's POV, learn that she's a Goddess, and that she's following the trail of some sort of creature. Once she's upon him, she observes him -- but there is also the POV switch at the end where we see that the ghost is wondering if he's going the right way. If we're in Caoilfhionn's POV, we shouldn't know what the ghost is thinking.
The second problem is the lack of realism. She's following a creature of some sort that managed to evade her for days. She's a Goddess; surely that shouldn't happen, but it does. We don't know if this creature is stronger than she is, or if she's just playing with it -- because Gods and Goddesses are fickle.
The third problem is that there is no growth potential in the character. I'm starting the story with a flipping Mary Sue character! She's already a Goddess! Goddess = perfection (well, depending on the world you're in, I suppose). Where can she possibly go from there? Nowhere, that's where. How can she get stronger? She can't, she's at the top of the ultimate food chain. How can she grow as a character? Grow? Dude, she's a Goddess. Goddesses don't grow. At the moment, she has absolutely no character traits worth noting, much less redeem, and there isn't any hint of the potential conflict that will occur very soon after this snippet is written. In the first paragraph I've given the reader every reason not to keep reading: the main character is so perfect, obviously everything will work out. I need to remove that, and put more questions in the story.
The fourth problem is that the snippet doesn't flow. It doesn't suck the reader in gradually; it jerks all over the place. Think of a paragraph like a camera lens in a movie. If you pop any movie right in, it's a good bet that the camerawork will shoot the wide angle of the setting, and slowly zoom in to focus on the action, the scene, the character. Sometimes the camera work is completely different -- it starts on one specific thing, then zooms out. It doesn't matter who's behind the camera as long as someone is behind the camera.
These are four major problems, but I can fix that!
*
I'm going to start by rearranging the snippet so that I will get the camera footage issue sorted out, but I will also bring the very important hook line (There was no colour to him.) to the very beginning.
There was no colour to him. He was tall and thin and his hair seemed dark, if the blue clinging to the curls was any indication. He wore hardened leather over his torso, covering a thigh-length shift embroidered with runic curlicues. He wore boots, and above his boots were protective leather straps above his knees. His belt was laden with a knife, but the sword sheath was empty.
He wandered this way and that way, stopping uncertainly, running a confused hand through his hair. Every hour he would stop on his trek and look behind him -- not because he suspected he was being followed, but because he wondered if he was going the right way.
It was days before she was near enough to see that she was following a ghost. Not merely a ghost, but the spirit of a man.
The trail was ephemeral, almost impossible to follow, but she was a Goddess, and Goddess of the Hunt. Nothing could flee from her. Caoilfhionn followed the creature off and on as the days passed, depending on her interest, growing increasingly more curious when she could not fathom its goal or its destination. The trail wandered all over creation and now was heading North into desolation.
It's not perfect, and I'm going to switch it around more as I rewrite it, because really, at this point, there is nothing left to do but take a hammer to it and smooth it out to polish each section and to try to get the snippet back on track.
*
Now for the hammering part, which I take paragraph by paragraph -- because there are some really bad descriptions in there. I decided to start by focusing on the micro and to slowly widen out the camera view. I'm concentrating on Caoilfhionn's target, and why he fascinates her.
There was no colour to him. He was tall and thin and his hair was dark in contrast to his skin. He wore hardened leather armour covered by a surcoat embroidered with runic curlicues. He had well-worn boots, a belt around his waist, and leather gauntlets. A knife was strapped to his thigh, but the two sword sheaths on his back were empty.
No man walked these woods without weapons, and yet this man was unarmed, with little else but a dinner knife for protection.
I like this better. I took out the colour reference in the original paragraph, because the first line says that there is no colour. I also switched around what he was wearing and gave him extra stuff, also with the addition of two sword sheaths -- and on his back -- to raise interest. Normally, people only have one sword, and they wear them at their waist.
Moving onto the next part, I'm going to pull the camera out a bit.
The trail he left behind was ephemeral, almost impossible to follow. He moved as if he were born in the wild, his footfalls barely crushing grass, his body barely rustling branches in his passage. There was no human scent to him, only the faint tang of weapon oil and the iron of old blood in the air.
For days now, his footfalls drifted West, toward the setting sun. He did not stop for rest, he did not stop to eat. Once or twice he stumbled upon a babbling brook, and cupped his hands; the water trickled through his fingers before he could drink. It was in those pauses that he would turn to look North with an expression that could only be described as yearning. The bright of noon on a cloudless sky finally saw him change his path.
I took away the wandering paragraph where I out-and-out wrote about his uncertainty, and instead hinted toward it. I also gave two hints that he's a ghost with some substances -- he could still mark a trail, and he could still touch water, which makes him unusual. He still has no inkling that he's being followed. Hell, the reader has no idea that the man is being followed (okay, maybe the reader has a bit of an idea).
I'm pulling the camera even further back now.
The frost-breath of the mountain air clung to the man in glittering shimmers. The wind teased at the man's tattered surcoat. He raised an arm and braced against the storm that scrubbed his prints from the snow.
He did not see her as he slipped through the ravine to get to the other side of the Sunderan. He did not notice her shadow flitting through the icy peaks of the Dragon's Maw. And when she cleared her throat to draw his attention to where she crouched upon the round stone at the top of Heaven's Reach, she saw the hollow of his eyes.
Caoilfhionn had been following a ghost.
*
Drawing back the camera slowly has the benefit of focusing on the prey, on what the hunter was looking at, at finally being able to put names to the setting, and finally, finally realizing whose POV the reader has been following all along. The revelation comes just as a shock to the reader as it does to Caoilfhionn. I've removed all references to her as a Goddess -- but that's only because she is no longer one, I took her down a massive peg. She will be meeting the Lord of the Dead at some point, but now she has a different immediate conflict: what will the ghost do to her now that he knows she's been following him?
I kept very little of my original snippet, but I retained the important elements of it -- a lost ghost, a trail that he's shunned, and the hunt. I reorganized how I pulled the reader through the story, put the realism back into the story, and baited the hook with the mystery that the scene was supposed to start with.
Here is the reconstructed snippet in its entirety:
There was no colour to him. He was tall and thin and his hair was dark in contrast to his skin. He wore hardened leather armour covered by a surcoat embroidered with runic curlicues. He had well-worn boots, a belt around his waist, and leather gauntlets. A knife was strapped to his thigh, but the two sword sheaths on his back were empty.
No man walked these woods without weapons, and yet this man was unarmed, with little else but a dinner knife for protection.
The trail he left behind was ephemeral, almost impossible to follow. He moved as if he were born in the wild, his footfalls barely crushing grass, his body barely rustling branches in his passage. There was no human scent to him, only the faint tang of weapon oil and the iron of old blood in the air.
For days now, his footfalls drifted West, toward the setting sun. He did not stop for rest, he did not stop to eat. Once or twice he stumbled upon a babbling brook, and cupped his hand; the water trickled through his fingers before he could drink. It was in those pauses that he would turn to look North with an expression that could only be described as yearning. The bright of noon on a cloudless sky finally saw him change his path.
The frost-breath of the mountain air clung to the man in glittering shimmers. The wind teased at the man's tattered surcoat. He raised an arm and braced against the storm that scrubbed his prints from the snow.
He did not see her as he slipped through the ravine to get to the other side of the Sunderan. He did not notice her shadow flitting through the icy peaks of the Dragon's Maw. And when she cleared her throat to draw his attention to where she crouched upon the round stone at the top of Heaven's Reach, she saw the hollow of his eyes.
Caoilfhionn had been following a ghost.
*
Oi. The snippet went from 207 words to 333 words. Well, if there's anything that I can do, it's add word count. For me, trimming it down is a bit harder, but I can do that (sometimes). Just not in this instance; I think this snippet needed to be expanded to get the effect that I wanted.
It does mean that on the back end, I'll be completely revamping the characters and the plot, but the basic elements would still stay the same. Oh, don't worry. This original fiction has been on the backburner for so long, it will probably still remain on the backburner, so this doesn't mean I'm going to suddenly quit writing LM or anything like that.
Anyway!
Now that I've shown you how I pick apart at my own writing (I take a scythe to it), I wonder if anyone would want to let me loose on their own work (I promise I'm not as brutal on other people's writing)? If anyone wants to leave a comment here, anonymous or otherwise, or even by direct PM, with a 200-word snippet from their own work that they're having trouble with (and what the problem they think is there), I'll see if I can help. If enough people are interested, I'll post one breakdown a week or as time permits.
Edited to add: I appear to have become affected by the National Day in Honour of Preserving Brain Cells, because I can't figure out how to allow anonymous posting for this post for whomever wanted me to pick at their snippet without their being identified, so I apologize in advance. If you want me to have a go but don't want to be ID'd, please send me a PM!
.