WTF... flow, Part 3

1e. Repeating the first word of each paragraph

This is generally the issue when dealing with scenes that only has one character in it. We centre the world around them, and often – wrongly – make them the apex of everything. You end up getting paragraphs starting with ‘He wasn’t sure where…’ and ‘He bent down to pick it up…’ as well as ‘He hadn’t thought of this before…’ blah blah blah

Go down the page and make sure to change it up a bit. Start the paragraph with another character, or with opening a scene, or even focusing on an item. It doesn’t always have to be from the main character’s perspective.

1f. Words that mean the same thing

Many of these are clichés. Like ‘he went up north to Scotland’. Up and north are the same thing.

Try

‘ He went north to Scotland ‘

Or

‘ He went up to Scotland ‘

Safe Haven is another one to look out for. Words that may not be the same thing, but are descriptions that aren’t necessary. Havens are always safe, so just write ‘haven’ instead. It’s a bit like saying ‘you’re a stupid silly person’. It’s too much and spoils the reading.

1g. Too much needless or outright wrong descriptions

I’ll always remember this line from Fifty Shades of Grey (which is a book everyone should read if they want to learn how NOT to write)

“Desire pools dark and deadly in my groin”

Okay, those are words, yes, and that’s a sentence, check, but NONE OF THAT MAKES SENSE.

Yes, desire and deadly go together rather well. Our emotions are often linked with dangerous descriptions because to think with our hearts has traditionally been viewed as a risky thing to do. Desire can be dark, yes. In fact, the most erotic form of desire tends to be of the darkest variety. And we’ve got desire and groin, which… well I’ll grant you that desire is sexual (often enough) and groins are places we tend to find our sexual organs, so fine, I’ll grant you that one. But let’s link up the other descriptions.

Pools and groin. Gross. I don’t want to think of pools (which can be stagnant and smelly) in connection with groins (which can get foisty, ew). So that’s a massive turn off right there.

How about deadly and groin? This actually made me laugh. She has a deadly groin! Rofl. Nope. That’s a dead weight where my libido’s concerned.

Dark groin? I ain’t going anywhere near that one. Makes it sound like a spooky cave.  

Either way, this is a good example of how too much description (and descriptions that are just plain wrong) will ruin the flow of your story. I couldn’t get beyond that sentence and it took me out of the world the writer was trying to make.

Can we improve this sentence? How about

My dark desires were manifesting into borderline deadly ideas that caused powerful reverberations in my…groin.

Okay no, I can’t improve that sentence. Groin is just not a sexy word. It would’ve sufficed to say ‘The arousal I felt from my dark desires could’ve been considered deadly.” Still corny, but at least we lost the groin.

Say it slowly, groin….

1h. Basic paragraph structure.

Ask yourself is there tension in this scene? Is it romantic? Are people trying to be stealthy? Is a bomb about to blow? Or is someone slipping peacefully into death? How we build the paragraph will influence the flow of the scene and directly affect the mood.

Writing is like sculpting. Some people throw a wad of clay on a board and go hell for leather. No form, no structure, they just get the shape made and will work on the finer details later (or not in some cases, see 50 Shades of Grey lmao). Others have trained their inside voice to operate in a certain fashion every time they start typing. It’s taken me years to come to this realisation, but once I did, I made it a habit and now I can’t help it.

My Standard paragraph tends to look like this.

This is how I write my paragraphs. I start with a short sentence, then I use a longer one with a comma. The third sentence will typically follow the same style as the second, but I’ll lengthen it quite a bit. Depending on what I’m writing, I may even use two commas in the third line, but I usually like to wait for the fourth line to do this. I typically limit the length of my sentences to that of the fourth, though I will on occasions make them longer, but only if it flows and there’s plenty to explain. But don’t be afraid to drop in short sentences. Sometimes, it’s all right to be abrupt.

The above paragraph is typically how I like to write. This format is standard, so I’m not trying to relay any emotion here. I’m simply explaining. If I break it down, it looks like this,

1.       This is how I write my paragraphs.

2.       I start with a short sentence, then I use a longer one with a comma.

3.       The third sentence will typically follow the same style as the second, but I’ll lengthen it quite a bit.

4.       Depending on what I’m writing, I may even use two commas in the third line, but I usually like to wait for the fourth line to do this.

5.       I typically limit the length of my sentences to that of the fourth, though I will on occasions make them longer, but only if it flows and there’s plenty to explain.

6.       But don’t be afraid to drop in short sentences.

7.       Sometimes, it’s all right to be abrupt.

Lines 6 and 7 aren’t part of my standard usually. I drop back into abrupt lines depending on what information I’m relaying, as this can slow down the reader.

In consideration to the above, it’s important to remember this rule;

Comma’s slow you down, periods stop you.

Paragraphs reset. 

(be mindful that this applies to readers who read as if they’re speaking out loud. This is a flow many will adopt, except those who speed read, to which the flow is still important, but for a different reason. See ‘speed readers’ for that).

View a comma like a speed bump; it’s only a slight pause before you continue along your way, without interrupting the flow.

But periods are breathers. When you see a full stop, it’s an indicator that you should take a breath. This is all the time you need before continuing onto the next sentence, and should be only marginally longer than a comma.

Paragraphs, however, should reset you. When reading verbally, you should adopt the action of taking a breath, find the beginning of the paragraph, and read around three to five words ahead before you start speaking them. This is particularly important when reading dialogue. Why? Because the ‘he said’ ‘she said’ is typically at the end of the sentence, and it’s important to know who’s speaking before you commit a voice.

Putting these rules into action.

Say the scene calls for panic. When there’s panic, we don’t want to be dragged along. Because of this, what we’re reading needs to meet the right pace, and this applies to both punctuation and the execution of the story. It can’t be achieved simply by ‘reading faster.’

Short sentences will kill the panic. If you write like this, it’s too slow. The reader wants speed. No stop-start. Stop-start…

Let the sentences flow properly, using a few commas whilst ensuring the meat of the drama is being told.

Paragraphs that call for panic could go like this

‘ There was a wealth of noise, but no one noticed it. The mother was in agony and she was panicking, no one could deny that, but right then, no one could help her. The nurses and doctors in that room were like soldiers in the field, rushing to fill needles with adrenaline, attaching new saline bags, monitoring machines, and calling for additional support.

“What’s happening with my baby?” the mother cried through lips wet from running tears and sweat, but whatever answers were given were done so mechanically, reading off a script as their minds were stuck with the danger that this baby would suffocate even before it was born. Right then, a room that’d seen the birthing of life dozens of times a week may well see death. ‘

If I break some of it down we see

1.       There was a wealth of noise, but no one noticed it.

2.       The mother was in agony and she was panicking, no one could deny that, but right then, no one could help her.

3.       The nurses and doctors in that room were like soldiers in the field, rushing to fill needles with adrenaline, attaching new saline bags, monitoring machines, and calling for additional support.

Just like in my standard paragraphs, we’re following a structure. We’re still building up as the paragraph continues, and this helps ease the reader in, even when our intention is to take them on a ride. But look closely at the sentences; fewer full stops, more commas, and more words. If we were to change that to more periods and less commas, how would that read?

‘ There was a wealth of noise. No one noticed it. The mother was in agony. She was panicking. No one could deny that. But, right then, no one could help her. The nurses and doctors in that room were like soldiers in the field. They were rushing to fill needles with adrenaline. Nurses were attaching new saline bags. Some were monitoring machines, and additional support was being called. ‘

The flow is stuttering. Is this bad writing? Not really. This method could be better used in a scene that calls for calm and thoughtfulness. How about

‘ The heart monitor was bleeping steadily. It was the only noise in that dim room. The bed was well made. Her body made a shape beneath the sheet, but she was motionless. Her chest wasn’t. That was all that stirred in the room. It was the machines keeping her alive. She’d fought hard. It hadn’t been enough… ‘

Perfect practice for getting across deep and brooding scenes.

But it’s not always our punctuation that can ruin the flow. What we write could also take the interest away. How many stories have you read where there’s nail-biting drama going on, but, for some reason, the writer just cuts into the middle of it to land a load of exposition on your plate.

Here’s an example of unnecessary exposition

‘ There was a wealth of noise, but no one noticed it. The mother was in agony and she was panicking, no one could deny that, but right then, no one could help her. The nurses and doctors in that room were like soldiers in the field, rushing to fill needles with adrenaline, attaching new saline bags, monitoring machines, and calling for additional support.

“What’s happening with my baby?” the mother cried before dropping back into her pillow. Her eyes were on the ceiling, but that wasn’t what she was seeing. There flashed the face of her first baby, born premature and tiny, lying in his incubator and unable to breathe for himself. He only lasted a few days before he couldn’t go on. It’d been soul crushing and nothing could shake the torment.

“We’re doing everything we can, honey,” a nurse said mechanically, reading off a script as their minds were stuck with the danger that this baby would suffocate even before it was born. Right then, a room that’d seen the coming of life dozens of times that week may well see death. ‘

Is that information vital for the story right then? No. Does it add to the danger that this baby (and the mother) could die? No. If anything, it slows the pace down, detracts from the gripping drama, and means the reader must get re-invested in the scene once again.

How to remedy this?

Exposition should be treated like salt. A little is all we need, and don’t do it to add flavour, but to bring out the flavours already there. And when to add it is just as important. Don’t stop the drama to insert backstory, because that’s just an insult to your reader and a shame on your writing.

Speed readers still need flow

I’m a speed reader. I’ll get through a three-hundred-page book in six hours. It’s not the best way to read a book, but I’m so damn impatient that I must know! And that’s not even fast for a speed reader. Most I know can get through a book in half that time. I know one woman who can read an entire book at breakfast! Madness.

Speed readers need that flow to get to the end of the book. This is because we rely heavily on predictability. I know that the first few sentences aren’t going to deliver whopping amounts of information, (usually), so rather than read them, I can look at them, take the key words, and move on. And if there isn’t all that fluffy description filler, I tend to be able to skip the middle or even the end of sentences and still know what’s going on. Often, I get caught by something that slows me down and that’s not a bad thing. But by being consistent, by using standard paragraphs, and not dropping exposition and filler randomly into ongoing scenes, speed readers will find a book far more enjoyable.

In conclusion

Flow brings life to a story, much like a river brings life to the banks. If there’s no movement, or if it goes too fast, the reader loses out.

Exposition will always ruin flow. Always. It doesn’t mean it’s not interesting, but if it’s not important enough to be worked into the plot, then it’s not worth too much time being spent on it. Getting these out in small but satisfactory chunks is important, and not dropping them in the middle of interesting scenes is also vital (unless it’s stuff like ‘Luke I am your father’ and whatnot, which is small, sweet, and makes an impact on the plot quite nicely).

Punctuation is vital. Structure your paragraphs and check your tools. Keep ellipsis to a minimum. Use periods sparingly in scenes that call for energy and speed, but don’t use too many commas, either.

Repetition can kill a story more than anything. At least exposition gives you story. Repetition does little but grate on the reader and this needs to be avoided.

But most importantly, read out loud! Find a private place, get into character, feel it as you say it, and don’t rush. You’re reading this to yourself not because you like the sound of your own voice, but because you’re listening for issues in flow, grammar, and punctuation.

Good luck and don’t forget,

Never stop writing.

WTF... Flow Part 2

1c. Names names names

In addition to my previous post regarding repetition, the most widespread crime I see in the area of repetition tends to be character names. Some writers are adamant that they must put ‘who said what’ right after dialogue. Don’t do this. If you’ve done your job right, then the reader will be smart enough to know who’s talking.

Times when you don’t need to use names is when there are only two people in the conversation, or when one is male and the other is female. In this instance, ‘he’ and ‘she’ will do fine, or it may not be necessary at all. Like this,

“I don’t think this relationship’s working out,’ he said, his eyes on the floor.

She had her hands open, as if begging. ‘Why? You won’t tell me what’s wrong. You won’t even look at me!”

“I don’t have any answers for you!”

“But you’ve obviously been thinking about this a lot.”

“I have…”

“Then tell me.”

“I just can’t, okay!”

There, it flowed, we’re in the heat of it, we’re hearing their raw emotions, we can almost feel them moving, tensing, their words showing helplessness, and this could go on for ages back and forth with no need to write a name or usual dialogue descriptions.

In other examples, if there’s a group of girls and one’s a man, then feel free to refer to him by his pronoun. And when tackling groups of the same gender, you won’t have a choice but to use their names, but you can still omit the ‘said’ parts (or whatever descriptions you may use instead, though I’d avoid these, too, if you can).

Here’s an example with just the ‘said’ used.

“No one’s seen her in days,” Karen said.

“What do you mean?” Jennifer said, looking at Sam. “I thought you were with her yesterday.”

Sam said, “I wasn’t! I told you, I was stuck indoors waiting for the repair man.”

“We’re not helping anyone just sitting around here,” Abbigail said.

Now, with it fleshed out to improve flow.

Karen was shaking her head. “No one’s seen her in days.”

“What do you mean?” Jennifer asked before looking at Sam. “I thought you were with her yesterday.”

“I wasn’t! I told you, I was stuck indoors waiting for the repair man.”

Abbigail had had enough and got up. “We’re not helping anyone just sitting around here.”

The adapted example is longer by seven words, but it’s helped ease the reader along, giving rhythm to the characters, emotion to their words, and eased away from the fact that names are continually used, with no jarring notions of ‘said’ cropping up all over the place. (And, FYI, this doesn’t improve just because you change ‘said’ with ‘shouted, asked, yelled, cried’ etc. Whilst that does break the repetition, it won’t be enough to manage adequate flow, which is something most novice writers – myself included – tend to fall for).

1d. And, and, and, and

Sometimes, you get someone who loves ‘and’ and hates commas.

If you have a long running sentence, you can benefit by omitting the ands. For example

‘ There was no one there and the wind was quiet and the trees were swaying in the breeze. ‘

Okay, but what if,

‘ There was no one there, the wind was quiet, and the trees were swaying in the breeze. ‘

Much better, but let’s go deeper with another example.

‘ I’d been shopping that day and I’d bought plenty of groceries and toiletries, and wine, of course. ‘

So, we have comma’s, but still a little repetitive? How about,

‘ I’d been shopping that day and I’d bought plenty of groceries and toiletries, as well as wine, of course. ‘

But do we really need all those ands? I’ve got an idea. How’s this?

‘ I’d been shopping that day where I’d bought plenty of groceries and toiletries, as well as wine, of course. ‘

Again, it adds words, but again, it helps the flow. A reader would rather have a story three hundred pages long that reads well, than a two-hundred-page novel that feels like dragging their eyes across gravel.

How to remedy this problem?

Ctrl+F is your friend. I look back to when I had a someone read my epic adventure fantasy novel. He’d only managed to get through a few chapters before saying ‘Tara doesn’t half nod a lot’.

I had no idea what that meant before realising I’d fallen into the mistake of having my character repeat a generic movement. I hit Ctrl+F, put in ‘nod’ and was horrified just how often I’d written it. This may not be as egregious as other repetitions, but it’s something that you, as a writer, need to spot before your reader does.

It also helps to be mindful of your reading practices. When you read aloud, you work up a flow and you speed up. Sometimes, this means you spot words that may be two paragraphs apart, but because you have the words still ringing in your ears, you spot them and that’s also a good time to change them. There’s no fixed rule on how far apart two of the same words need to be, but I say it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Also avoid same sounding words.

I don’t think alliteration is as bad as repetition, but that’s not a professional opinion. It’s good practice to avoid writing similar sounding words. I wrote this earlier on and kept it in as an example

*Seen these scenes.

Yeah, they’re similar sounding, but they mean completely different things. And yet when read (especially aloud) they form more of a noise rather than a sentence, and this can be enough to take a reader out of the story because they’re too busy saying ‘seen these scenes’ like a nifty tongue twister. Just look at all these ‘e’s and ‘s’s. *shudder*

The best remedy?

Read your work aloud. It’s something you’ll hear a lot of writers saying, but it’s important to do. You may think, ‘but the reader isn’t going to read this aloud?’ But there’re such things as audio books.

Read your work out loud, do it calmly, precisely, and be vigilant. Don’t just zone out because you’ve read each line a hundred times before.

Wtf... flow Part One

Review. Forensics: anatomy of a crime

There are no spoilers in this review

So I went to comic con this year. Woot! I've always wanted to go to the Excel London venue and this year I got to go with my brothers and it was mint!

here's a vid my twin took. he did an exceptional job. 

MCM comic con 2018

I took a bus down as usual. National Express. £30 return, but sometimes you wonder if you're saving money and spending comfort. It's a risk but I was so delighted to find it was an awesome journey there and back. 

And much of that was thanks to this book. Val. I love that name, wonder why. But she really blew me away with this work. 

5 stars! 

It's non-fiction, and gives us case studies of crimes and criminals, some we know of, some we may not, but doing so in a way that gets us close to the men and women involved, knowing their jobs, their reasons for being in such roles, and how the field is changing. Each chapter covers a different element of crime and forensics, from the evolution of finger-print evidence, to face reconstruction using computers and clay! 

As someone who wants to write a string of my own criminal works, I wanted to read this more as a study than for entertainment, but I couldn't put it down. Five hours into my journey South and I was still hooked! Then when I got to London, I was finding any excuse to get back into it. 

Whether you want to learn or be entertained, it's a good book. I want more! 

WTF: Flow, Part 1

1a. Flow

A good story will flow. If it’s executed well, you’ll get a long way into the book without even realising. You’ll turn the pages without noticing, you’ll slip from one paragraph to another with ease, and you won’t end up jarred by repetitive words, messy sentences, or exposition. All this and more is imperative to good flow.

1b. Repetition

Words aren’t there when we’re born. Sound is, so that means music is as well. The rhythm of the mother’s heart is the one true song the baby will hear until they’re born. After that, there’s an onslaught of sounds and, eventually, they become repetitive and familiar. This is important for learning a language. Mummy, Daddy, and the occasional swearword that goes viral.

To babies, it’s fun. It’s when learning is life and they do it with vigour. As we get older, that yearning for learning doesn’t so much dampen, but we do usually tackle it a little differently. Because of this, repetition can become annoying, especially if it’s obvious in our entertainment.

Books are great. They contain words. There are loads of words. Some of us collect them like Pokémon. You can even list them in generations, set into the decades for when you learned them, and how some words go in and out of fashion. Or is that just me? Either way, words are cool. Really cool. Like, cooler than cool. Right? Yeah...

Words rock until you use the same ones over, and over, and over…

What is repetition in writing? Well, look above. There's load of it. It’s not funny and it’s not clever. For someone reading a textbook it might work well, drilling the same thing into your head again and again. But for a reader chasing the plot, it’s annoying. It can also make the story sound messy. Here’s a few examples.

“I love this story. It’s a love story and it’s my favourite.”

This has been written in dialogue and you can’t trim dialogue down like you would when writing the narrative because dialogue must sound natural. This example is something someone is likely to say. But for the sake of this effort, we’re going to smarten it up.

“I prefer love stories, and this one is my favourite.”

Fewer words, no repetition, it flows, and it tells you what you need to know.

How else can repetition get in the way?

‘ I rolled out of bed and looked around my bedroom. ‘

Nothing wrong with that. Sure, bed is repeated, but they’re two different words, right? It may seem harmless, but to the reader, (especially overly critical ones like me) that makes a little notch in my mind, and those can soon add up - often subconsciously.

If we were to smarten this up, we could say

‘ I rolled out of bed and looked around the room.  ‘

Why does this work? Is room too vague? What happens if the reader thinks ‘well, sure they slipped out of bed, but maybe the bed’s not in a bedroom? Maybe it’s in a garage, or a hut, or the back of McDonalds?’

Well those readers have probably just moved on from Biff and Chip books so I don’t cater to those. But many readers are going to be smart enough to assume ‘there’s a bed in a room, so it must be a bedroom’. And if it’s not, you can go into detail of where it is when you build the scene. Don’t take the reader as a fool (but also don’t take them as a psychic, see ‘scene building’ for that)

This seems rather trivial, I suppose, and I might not care much about it, unless I notice is somewhere else, like this.

‘ We went fishing, and I caught several fish. ‘

True that, but you can expand on it a little to reduce the repetition and also add a bit of interest.

‘ We went fishing, and I caught several perch and a catfish. ‘

It adds more words, but it also improves the flow.

Or what about this?

‘ The body wasn’t laid right for someone who’d fallen backwards down the stairs. It was then we noticed something was under the body, something that couldn’t have been there before the body had fallen. ‘

How about we change it to

‘ The deceased victim wasn’t laid right for someone who’d fallen backwards down the stairs. It was then we noticed something was under the body, something that couldn’t have been there before the person had fallen. ‘

Why does this work better? I’ve not just hit right-click and surfed through synonyms, I’ve purposely chosen those different descriptions, here’s why.

The first I chose was ‘deceased victim’, one because this is typical crime novel speak, but it tells us the person is dead, it tells us the person is the victim and not the perp, and sets a mood. ‘Deceased victim’ sounds much more emotive than ‘body’. This has set the tone for the paragraph, one of initial shock which is what even the most hardened detective (but most importantly, the reader) would feel when viewing such a thing.

The second ‘body’ I didn’t change. It’s deadpan, it’s serious, almost clinical, because we’re getting stuck into it now. We’ve snapped into the mind of the detective, we’re looking at it like someone wanting to think with their head and not with their hearts, and they’re being objective.

But we’re all human. Even the jobbing officer who might’ve seen these scenes* a thousand times and grown cold, will succumb to their feelings. So, on the last change, I turned ‘body’ into ‘person’, denoting that this had once been a living, breathing member of the community, with a personality, and maybe even with a family and friends.

In closing, that’s probably a lot of intention I put into such a small paragraph. This might work well in a short scene, but I’d likely flesh this out over several paragraphs to help cement my meaning with the reader.

The lesson here is ‘avoid repetition’, but when changing the words, think about what word might need changing, what you're changing it with, or if you can you simply omit it all together.