McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
JB Writer Diamonds: Description Spoilers SmF through page 30
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: meg_evonne on April 26, 2008, 12:32:53 AM ---We’ve all heard that every paragraph, every sentence, every word should drive the plot. Yeah, pretty standard rhetoric, right? So standard, that we forget about it on a regular basis. :-)
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Well, it depends on how you scale things.
Every scene should be doing something. C.J. Cherryh says she cuts every scene that's not doing at least three different things, which makes for rather dense prose. Worrying over every word at haiku-type levels of weight is unlikely to ever get a novel finished.
--- Quote ---• Few of Jim’s paragraphs exceed six lines. When they do, he did so with purpose for a reason revealed later in the book.
• His descriptions are brief, concise, and serve the purpose of furthering the plot.
• He employs several basic techniques to keep descriptions interesting and to further the tension of the plot line.
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All fine and well for the voice and sort of stories Jim is telling. There are other ways of doing first-person gumshoe, from steel-taut Dashiel Hammett to Raymond Chandler's notably overblown metaphors [ blondes who could make bishops kick holes in stained-glass windows and so forth. ]
If one were to read Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, or Steven Brust's Khaavren romances, at this sort of level, one could come up with advice going exactly the other way. The paragraphs in the Khaaveren romances tend to be long and meandering and not directly to the point of furthering the plot; what they achieve is setting up background and character things to come together later.
Do what your story needs.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Delarith on April 26, 2008, 03:44:20 PM ---Reminds me of something my high school English teacher pounded into us and reinforced with her mighty red pens. None of our writing could with passive verbs. Not only is it hard, but it really, really makes you think about what you are writing. That was almost 20 years ago and I still remember it.
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I disagree with this one profoundly, fwiw. I disagree with pretty much any restriction of that sort. passive verbs are like anything else; they are a tool to generate a given effect. Not using them without knowing what that effect is and wanting to get it, fine, but not using them ever; feh.
I think that advice comes from the notion that passive verbs are more distancing than active ones (arguably true) and that distancing is always bad for the story (totally false).
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Morraeon on April 26, 2008, 05:56:16 PM ---I wouldn't try comparing yourself to another writer while you're working on something else. I imagine the rough draft of SmF looked pretty spotty until Jim sat down to revise it later on. When you're first/rough-drafting something, you pretty much have to put the little critics in your head in an empty mason jar and stick the lid on tight.
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Note; this does not work for authors who can't draft and revise and have to get it right first time. There are several successful ones in the field.
Delarith:
I won't say I slavishly follow the no passive verb rule, but it does make me think more about what I write. While I tend to think in passive verbs, once I realize what I have written, it makes me go back and think is there a better way of writing this. Normally, there is and it makes me use more of an active voice.
Shecky:
The passive voice isn't automatically bad. The slavish devotion to the active voice, on the other hand, is the sign of a crutch used by an author with a lack of confidence. It all depends on how well it's said, regardless of whether it's active or passive voice.
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