The anti-boasting thread

[yowser]

All my male narrators (except for the garrulous anthropomorphic genitalia) are confused.

No idea how that happens.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I call those "hesitation words", or "hedging words". It's the author not wanting to simply say something flat out, to assert it confidently. He wants to soften it, to leave wriggle room, to hedge his bets on it by leaving an out. My worst version of it is "just" or "a bit".

I'm not entirely conscious of it. "Bit" is one I use too often. "Seems" is another one, especially in first-person writing. Either the character perceives something or they don't. Why would they doubt what should be obvious?

 

[AndersonsBiographer]

I can't believe that they don't let the lit teachers show that one to the kids anymore.

 

[KeithD]

But they are grammatically correct, right? There's no official limit to a sentence length is there?

I try my best to chop them up before publication. Often it's my editor who has to point them out.

 

[KeithD]

Try not to go overboard on squeezing often-used words and starting sentences with "and" and "but" out of your writing. These aren't nonfiction essays. The more conversational--as in how people actually talk (without going overboard with that as well) the narration and dialogue of your fictional work is, the more comfortable the reader will be with it.

 

[Sappho_CGN]

I love that thread.

In this "facebook-ocean of perfect people living in a perfect world" there is this small island of self-criticsm. There is still hope for the world

;-)

 

[Areala-chan]

I over-write almost everything in my initial drafts, and because of that I spend a considerable amount of time wrangling the story back from myself. I do my own editing, because of course I'm a control freak, so after a while this burns me out and I begin making mistakes, overlooking things in the push towards just getting the thing done already. Every single story I've put up here, I've gone back and read after publishing and face-palmed at stuff I failed to catch. As a writer, I am my own worst enemy. As a critic, doubly so.

 

[WrongFrog]

Too many "ly" words.
I have to fight constantly (see, did it again) to keep my writing in the lavender zone- I only have purple ink.
I miss typos and words caused by autocorrect, because I do everything on my phone.
I have no consistency. I'll drop 20-50k words in a week and then get distracted and forget how to write a grocery list.
Too much buildup, not enough sex (I don't think that's so bad, but some people really hate it).
I will cheerfully ignored all "rules" of writing, grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure if I feel like it reads better.
I'm a comma addict, and struggling with recovery.

 

[NoTalentHack]

I'm too softhearted sometimes. I start out with a character that's a villain, but then I try to make sense of their actions, and it's all "well, fuck, I kind of feel sorry for this asshole."

I like simple language and, while I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, it does lead to more repetition than I'd like. I try to make up for this by varying adjectives, verbs, etc., but there's only so many ways to say that someone chuckled, for example.

I skip the parts that bore me more often than I should. I've got one in the publishing queue right now where the middle part could easily have been stretched out more in the hands of a better/more action-oriented writer. I don't hate that I didn't; while it's a pivotal point in the story, I think it's okay that it's given short shrift in terms of description. At the same time, though, I kind of wish I could have thought of good ways to flesh it out, or that I could have been arsed to do so.

I worry too much if I might get something "wrong," so I end up skipping it. I've worked blue collar jobs a bit, and I spent my teenage years on a ranch, for example, but no one would ever accuse me of being a "working man" in the Bruce Springsteen, union member, dirt under his fingernails way. Because of that, though, I shy away from trying to describe that experience for fear of getting things wrong, even with research, which means my protagonists are almost all white collar types or college kids. That's not bad, but I wish I had more range when it came to that.

 

[Bazzle]

Tenses can I get my characters in the right tense. Forever jumping from one to the other.

Can I spot it no. Not even after it was pointed out to me.

I have determined I'm tense blind.

 

[SimonDoom]

I can be somewhat lazy. I don't do a lot of research, but I don't really want to. I choose settings that I feel I can write about without having to research or study much. I could stretch myself more.

I probably write characters that either behave the way I think I would or that behave the way I want them to, without enough regard for whether the behavior makes sense on its own.

I could do more with character development to bring the reader in and convince the reader my stories are about characters the reader cares about instead of fantasy projection people.

I know grammar and spelling well, but I'm an erratic editor. My fingers have a bad habit of typing one word while my mind intends another word--the funniest and most egregious example being substituting "waste" for "waist" on more than one occasion. I don't catch those mistakes as often as I'd like.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I over-write almost everything in my initial drafts, and because of that I spend a considerable amount of time wrangling the story back from myself. I do my own editing, because of course I'm a control freak, so after a while this burns me out and I begin making mistakes, overlooking things in the push towards just getting the thing done already. Every single story I've put up here, I've gone back and read after publishing and face-palmed at stuff I failed to catch. As a writer, I am my own worst enemy. As a critic, doubly so.

I've corrected stories because I made errors two big for me to ignore. It took five weeks last summer to get two of those approved; the site was really busy then. So who reads them after five weeks? I don't know, but at least they were correct. (If it's only or two typos I let it go.)

 

[Comshaw]

A hundred bucks say that half of the people will write their "shortcomings" in a way that actually glorifies their writing.
"I don't do this and that well, BUT..." and then they write two paragraphs about what they are doing well, along with linking two of their stories at least

Okay, rant off. I had a problem with grammar at the start BUT readers' input and Grammarly helped, so I'd say that that problem is history now. Other than that, writing natural dialogue is challenging as English isn't my native. It can probably sound somewhat stiff to native speakers.

Guilty! For me, it's a matter of conservation of effort. The reason: because there aren't enough words, nor time, nor space to describe or list what I don't do well in my writing. While in reverse it only takes two paragraphs to describe what I do well. So I ain't a gunna' even try listing what ain't good 'bout my writing.

Comshaw

 

[gunhilltrain]

A hundred bucks say that half of the people will write their "shortcomings" in a way that actually glorifies their writing.
"I don't do this and that well, BUT..." and then they write two paragraphs about what they are doing well, along with linking two of their stories at least

Okay, rant off. I had a problem with grammar at the start BUT readers' input and Grammarly helped, so I'd say that that problem is history now. Other than that, writing natural dialogue is challenging as English isn't my native. It can probably sound somewhat stiff to native speakers.

It's like those job-interview questions, "What's your biggest weakness?" It's a trap, because they know half the candidates are going to answer honestly. Gives them an excuse to get rid of about 50% of the people applying.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

The struggles to keep my sentence structures varied and to avoid using unique words that I love (particularly during sex) are constant.

 

[countdowntolov3]

My style is noticably different depending if I'm writing on my phone or a computer. That can't be a good thing :/

 

[intim8]

I just now read something that is a somewhat more specific version of a general weakness I only vaguely knew I had, but makes perfect sense.

Paraphrased, it said, "don't name the emotion your character is feeling. When you name it, it puts the reader's brain into thinking mode, which interferes with them feeling it. Evoke the emotion indirectly."

And yeah, in general, that is something I do too often. Overspecificity. Like I'm trying to document a scene rather than expressing it.

Weird confession, but I actually sketch maps of rooms and other locations my stories take place in. I used to try to describe them in the story like you're reading the map, or looking over a floor plan with furniture. I got over that one, mostly; now I use the maps so that as I describe the charactes moving through the scene, it is at least consistent and coherent, and where necessary to the flow of the story, describe the scene in more detail.

But I guess I tend to do the same kind of thing in other areas. Blocking out the movements, including sex, like I'm directing a movie. Laying out the thought process a character goes through instead of just showing their reaction, stuff like that.

 

[mildlyaroused]

That's one thing that Grammarly, with all it's faults, does help with. Do I really need to write "actually" at the beginning of a sentence? Probably not. Actually, I didn't need to write "really" in that second sentence either.

If I may ask, who is that person in your avatar?

That's true. I think I can forgive myself for lots of those "hedging words" because I write in a close perspective to my protagonists. And to be honest, they are reflective of a wider meandering, eccentric and unspecific style that I use in most of my writing. Some readers (and editors) won't like it, but it sits okay with me for now.

And the fellow in my avatar is the most illustrious Nick Cave. He's an Australian musician!

 

[TheLobster]

I wouldn't discount the words signifying uncertainty if they are meant to convey the perspective and impressions of characters. Things will "seem" and "appear" to them, and be "only a little bit," and have all those fuzzy boundaries. I think that's perfectly fine.

What I suspect -- i.e. where this advice is coming from -- is the assumption that 3rd person narrator always maintains the same perspective. For me, it's pretty much never the case at all.

I pretty much always "attach" the narrator to a character, granting him insight into this particular character's feeling and motivations but simultaneously blinding him to the inner monologue of other characters. This blindness would then be a source of uncertainty, because it's actually that primary character whose perception is being conveyed. Next scene, however, the narrator may speak from a different character's PoV, depending on what works best for the story.

 

[AG31]

But what are our weaknesses? What are the aspects of writing where we admit privately that we've been bluffing our way through, and readers have been kind to overlook our shortcomings?

This is probably why I promote the idea of "simple erotica." There are loads of things that would be weaknesses in my writing if I attempted them. But I don't. I just stick to describing the experience of a certain kind of sexual encounter. I'm not an author. I'm a recorder of fantasies, with an attention to words.

 

[gunhilltrain]

That's true. I think I can forgive myself for lots of those "hedging words" because I write in a close perspective to my protagonists. And to be honest, they are reflective of a wider meandering, eccentric and unspecific style that I use in most of my writing. Some readers (and editors) won't like it, but it sits okay with me for now.

And the fellow in my avatar is the most illustrious Nick Cave. He's an Australian musician!

Yes, I have heard of him. I admit i don't know much about him. For a while, I wondered if you had used a photo of yourself.

 

[AG31]

"don't name the emotion your character is feeling. When you name it, it puts the reader's brain into thinking mode, which interferes with them feeling it. Evoke the emotion indirectly."

This is a variation on Show, don't Tell, but it puts a finer edge on a specific aspect of it. Thanks.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Yes, I have heard of him. I admit i don't know much about him. For a while, I wondered if you had used a photo of yourself.

Find "The Red Right Hand" and "Where the Wild Roses Grow". In the former you get a theremin, in the latter, the fabulous Kylie Minogue.

To go deeper, anything from Murder Ballads.

 

[mildlyaroused]

Yes, I have heard of him. I admit i don't know much about him. For a while, I wondered if you had used a photo of yourself.

I wish I was as pretty as Nick Cave. He might not be the best person by every account, but he makes great music and he's a very interesting person.

To go deeper, anything from Murder Ballads.

Also "Henry Lee", with the lovely PJ Harvey. Some approachable songs of his that I like are "Jubilee Street", "The Sorrowful Wife", "We Came Along This Road". That whole latter album (No More Shall We Part) is great. Murder Ballads is more intense, like most of his early stuff.

He has a very varied discography within his style, so there's plenty for people to pick and choose from.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Anti-boast: I'm over-fond of stuff like "softly" and "I think" in my writing, and too often I get hung up on perfecting something that probably nobody else is ever going to notice.

It's like those job-interview questions, "What's your biggest weakness?" It's a trap, because they know half the candidates are going to answer honestly. Gives them an excuse to get rid of about 50% of the people applying.

It's a bullshit question but I'm not sure that's the reason people ask it. I've done a bit of hiring in my time, and it does require culling the candidates heavily - we might get 200 applicants and only have the budget to hire ten of them. But every candidate I interview is at least an hour out of my day, so I want to do most of that culling before interview stage; going to the trouble of an interview and then looking for arbitrary reasons to eliminate people would be self-defeating.

IMHO, most of the reason people ask those questions is that they just don't know how to run an interview. If we're interviewing for a widget designer, most of the panel are going to be other widget designers who understand the job but have little/no experience in hiring. They know interviewers are supposed to ask questions, and they remember that "what's your biggest weakness" is a question that interviewers often ask, so they ask it, without thinking very much about what the purpose is for that question or what useful info they're going to glean from it.

Also "Henry Lee", with the lovely PJ Harvey. Some approachable songs of his that I like are "Jubilee Street", "The Sorrowful Wife", "We Came Along This Road". That whole latter album (No More Shall We Part) is great. Murder Ballads is more intense, like most of his early stuff.

Have you ever encountered Katarzyna Groniec's "Millhaven"? One of the few Nick Cave covers I've heard that stands up well, partly because it doesn't just try to imitate the original.