(Via travors, AnnieAtkins, Nathan Bransford - Literary Agent)
Yoda Effect: Difficult to read, sentences are, when reversing sentences an author is. Cart before horse, I’m putting, and confused, readers will be.
Overstuffed Sentences: An overstuffed sentence happens when a writer tries to pack too many things into one sentence in convoluted fashion, making it difficult for the intent of the sentence to come through and to follow it becomes an exercise in re-reading the sentence while making the sentence clearer in our brains so we can understand the overstuffed sentence, which is the point of reading.
Imprecision: When writers just miss the target ground with their word using they on occasion elicit a type of sentence experiential feeling that creates a backtracking necessity.
Chatty Cathy: So, like, I don’t know if you’ve noticed but OMG teenagers use so much freaking slang!!! And multiple exclamation points!!! In a novel not a blog post!!! And so I’m all putting tons of freaking repetitious verbal tics into totes every sentence and it’s majorly exhausting the reader because WAIT I NEED TO USE ALL CAPS.
Repetition: Sometimes when authors get lyrical, lyrical in a mystical, wondrous sense, they use repetition, repetition that used sparingly can be effective, effective in a way that makes us pause and focus, focus on the thing they’re repeating, but when used too many times, so many times again and again, it can drive us insane, insane in a way that will land the reader in the loony bin, the loony bin for aggrieved readers.
Shorter Hemingway: Clipped sentences. Muscular. Am dropping articles. The death. It spreads. No sentence more than six words. Dear god the monotony. The monotony like death.
Non Sequiturs: Sometimes when authors are in a paragraph one thing won’t flow to the next. They’ll describe one thing, wow can you believe that thing that happened three days ago?, and keep describing the first thing.
Description Overload: Upon this page there is a period. It is not just any period, it is a period following a sentence. It follows this sentence in a way befitting a period of its kind, possessing a roundness that is pleasing to the eye and hearty to the soul. This period has the bearing of a regal tennis ball combined with the utility of a used spoon. It is an unpretentious period, just like any other, the result of hundreds of years of typesetting innovations that allows it to be used, almost forgotten, like oxygen to the sentence only darker, more visible. And it is after this period, which will neither reappear nor matter in any sense whatsoever to the rest of the novel, that our story begins.
Stilted dialogue:
Character #1: “I am saying precisely what I mean!”
Character #2: “Wait. What is that you are trying to tell me?”
Character #1: “Are you frickin’ listening to me? I am telling you precisely what I am feeling in this given moment. And I’m showing you I’m really angry by using pointed rhetorical questions and petulant exhortations. God.”
Character #2: “Sheesh! Well, I’m responding with leading questions that allow you to tell me exactly what you mean while adding little of value to the conversation on my own. Am I not?”
Character #1:”You are totally doing that. You totally frickin’ are. Ugh! I’m so mad right now!”
The Old Spice Guy Effect (excessive rug-pulling). The character was standing on a rug. He falls through his floor to his death! The rug was actually a trap door. But wait, the character was already dead. He merely faked falling through the trap door. But wait, the trap door was actually a portal into another world. The character was actually alive, he just thought he was dead. Now he’s really dead. Or is he? I’m in a chair.
Wednesday August 11, 2010 @ 1320
![Allegedly, I write like Cory Doctorow. I learned this by having several of my more wordy Tumblr posts analysed. Depending on mood, topic, time of day and phase of moon, I apparently also write like David Foster Wallace, James Joyce, Chuck Palahniuk, Margaret Mitchell and Dan Brown. But Cory Doctorow came up five times[1] and the others only once, so I figure that’s statistically significant enough to prove unequivocally that I write like Cory Doctorow.
I don’t mind this at all. I quite like Cory Doctorow’s works and am very much a fan of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. So, go me.
I do get the feeling that this algorithm is rigged though, the post that suggested I wrote like Dan Brown was actually my rant about attitudes towards faith.
[1] I just analysed this post[2] and it also came up Cory Doctorow. So that makes six.
[2] Ooh, recursive.](http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l5rewcDM261qz86zko1_400.png)
Allegedly, I write like Cory Doctorow. I learned this by having several of my more wordy Tumblr posts analysed. Depending on mood, topic, time of day and phase of moon, I apparently also write like David Foster Wallace, James Joyce, Chuck Palahniuk, Margaret Mitchell and Dan Brown. But Cory Doctorow came up five times[1] and the others only once, so I figure that’s statistically significant enough to prove unequivocally that I write like Cory Doctorow.
I don’t mind this at all. I quite like Cory Doctorow’s works and am very much a fan of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. So, go me.
I do get the feeling that this algorithm is rigged though, the post that suggested I wrote like Dan Brown was actually my rant about attitudes towards faith.
[1] I just analysed this post[2] and it also came up Cory Doctorow. So that makes six.
[2] Ooh, recursive.
Sunday July 18, 2010 @ 2326
I shall simply tell you what I told the jury, gentle reader – I was indeed present when the shizzle went dizzle. However, myself and my homies were merely passing through the immediate vicinity at the time of the incident; if I recall correctly, we were engaged in nothing more than chilling, perhaps with a certain amount of supplementary illing, but certainly nothing close to the magnitude of the offences alleged. In addition to this, I would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight regarding one matter – specifically, that I be the baddest pimp you ever seen and, were you to show disrespect to either myself or my close friends, I feel I should warn you that I would make a concerted effort to smoke your bitch ass.
This is great. ^_^
It reminds me of Rap Lyrics Translated.
Thursday December 24, 2009 @ 1943
52books:
This might be my favorite “How to Write Badly Well” thus far:
At this point, the dragon, which was larger than a single-decker bus but smaller than an articulated lorry, breathed some fire out of its mouth (or, more properly, exhaled a mixture of flammable gas and liquid which was ignited by a spark from a gland in its throat). This burned several people quite badly, although the knight who is the subject of our story remained largely unharmed.
Naturally, this incident caused a reaction of fear and surprise amongst the local population. It also caused a not insignificant amount of damage to property, which would take local residents many weeks to repair. Aside from this immediate inconvenience, the subsequent disruption caused by reconstruction efforts would also have an adverse effect on the local economy in the medium term. The knight then hit the dragon with his sword, killing it, which was probably for the best.
Check out the rest of the series by Joel Stickler here.
*subscribed*
Tuesday December 01, 2009 @ 0959
"Writing is a form of therapy. Sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in the human situation."
—
Graham Greene
(via psychotherapy:conorh:annieatkins)
We tumble, we shop, we hide behind corporations and consumerism. We cry inside a little and we struggle on.
(via theresalighton)
It makes me sad, because it is true.
Friday November 27, 2009 @ 0944
travors:
Researching isn’t writing and vice-versa. When you come to a factual matter that you could google in a matter of seconds, don’t. Don’t give in and look up the length of the Brooklyn Bridge, the population of Rhode Island, or the distance to the Sun. That way lies distraction — an endless click-trance that will turn your 20 minutes of composing into a half-day’s idyll through the web.
Instead, do what journalists do: type “TK” where your fact should go, as in “The Brooklyn bridge, all TK feet of it, sailed into the air like a kite.”
“TK” appears in very few English words (the one I get tripped up on is “Atkins”) so a quick search through your document for “TK” will tell you whether you have any fact-checking to do afterwards.
Clever.
Tuesday January 13, 2009 @ 0841
