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