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Common Description Mistakes and How to Fix Them

July 8, 2019 by Deena Nataf Leave a Comment

Wake Up Your Prose: Description Unpacked

 

The giveaway for a month of writing and editorial mentoring has gotten off to a good start, and I encourage all of you to enter. It’s an opportunity to win 1-on-1 coaching from me.  We’ll work together to design a step-by-step program for writing or finishing your book, article, memoir – whatever you want – with the goal of getting it written and finished. And you’ll have access to me via both email and phone.

Once you enter, you’ll get a special sharing link. Share it with others, and get more entries!

 

[giveaway id=2659]

 

In honor of the upcoming launch of my premium course, Wake Up Your Prose: Description Unpacked, I thought we’d go over some common mistakes we all make when trying to up our description game.

 

Description mistake #1

Too dramatic

Most of us have felt at one time or another that to describe means to be dramatic. Check this out:

She slithered into the room, gloriously shimmering from head to toe. Every man in the room cast his eyes on the dazzling figure she cut. As Percival sipped his cold martini, its tang burning the roof of his mouth, his sea-green eyes watched her closely. As Chloe strutted past him, the scent of her Chanel No. 5 wafted into his nostrils, awakening memories of their magical time together.

Okay, other than the fact that this is the worst piece of prose I’ve ever written in my life – but do you think I could get a job writing for Harlequin Romances? – I have to ask you something: are martinis tangy?

This overly dramatic paragraph is not only bad, it’s full of unnecessary adjectives and adverbs, no-no’s I’ve harped on in several posts. Moreover, do we really care that Percival’s mouth is burning? I know I don’t.  And I really don’t want to hear about his nostrils.

Yes, you need descriptive words to convey time, place, and mood, but if the description is not necessary to the plot or thesis, don’t go there.

Sometimes, less is more. Try using hard-working nouns and verbs to do the heavy lifting, so you won’t have to fall back on excessive verbiage.

Check your adjectives and adverbs (if you must use them) for accuracy. I personally wouldn’t want to see a woman slithering into a room; what is she, a snake? Put yourself in the mind of your reader. Your descriptive words are going to evoke feelings; which do you want your reader to experience?  Once you figure that out, find words that will do the job.

 

Description mistake #2

Too self-conscious

This is the type of writing sounds like the author is looking over their shoulder while writing. Often, one gets the feeling that they’re trying to imitate a famous author in the process. While I encourage you to read many and varied authors – and I even suggest you write out particularly excellent descriptions in longhand – when it’s time to do your own writing, you need to take lessons from the greats but employ your own, unique style.

Here’s a parody of Ernest Hemingway, who was famous for his bare minimum, Marlboro Man descriptions:

The mountain stood naked in the early-morning sun. Birds flew from their aeries in anticipation of a new day of scavenging. The man shrugged his backpack onto his shoulders, beginning the ascent. The smell of last night’s campfire emanated from his wrinkled, slept-in clothes. He walked on the path toward his destiny.

Very nice (not). It’s certainly better than the first example, but not by much. Nothing really happens. Again, where in this paragraph is the plot being moved forward?

What does a naked mountain look like? And what’s with this destiny thing? Is the author going to develop it; does he himself even know what that last sentence means? Remember: Never write a word whose meaning and implication you don’t absolutely know. Don’t sacrifice clarity and purpose on the altar of cheap Hemingway leftovers.

As a side issue, notice the rhythm of the sentences; they are almost all the same: subject-verb-prepositional phrase-comma-participle phrase. I am a fan of aural writing, meaning that the prose must sound right to my ear. Therefore, when I’m reading over what I wrote (BTW, I do read everything over three or four times, and I recommend this for everyone), I make sure to vary the rhythm of the sentences, their length, and their syntax.

 

Description mistake #3

Too many “to be” words

Many of us use a lot of “to be” words, which generally don’t contribute to original, thought-provoking prose.

While it’s fine to Tell sometimes, we should all be wary of too many “to be” words. Even when Telling, you can use other verbs. Check this out:

A book was on the floor, and Martine was picking it up when Jean Claude walked into the room. He was wearing brown corduroy trousers and a black shirt. The other books were on the shelves according to color. Jean Claude snorted when he saw them.

The problem with this paragraph is that it’s a parade of was, was, was, and were. let’s dress it up with a few descriptive verbs and judiciously placed adjectives and/or adverbs:

Jean Claude entered the room, wearing brown corduroy trousers and a black shirt that set off his emerald-green eyes. A book lay on the floor, and Martine bent to pick it up as she glanced at him. The rest of the books on the shelves were categorized according to color. Jean Claude stared at this bizarre arrangement, his eyes flickering with amusement and the dimple on his cheek deepening.

As I’ve said both here and here, Tell is usually cause and Show is generally effect. The first three sentences in this excerpt are more Telling, as they give us information without the emotional investment. The last sentence is Show, as the flicker of amusement and the deepening dimple

  1. were caused by the wonky placement of the books on the shelves and
  2. demonstrate how Jean Claude experienced the vision of the books.

 

Description mistake #4

Too superficial

Many times, descriptive writing will require you to get into the head of a character and find a way to convey what they’re feeling or experiencing. If you want to employ description, you won’t be able to get away with “She felt bad” or “She was freezing.” You also have to be careful about hackneyed phrases, which won’t do your subjects justice.

Compare this:

James drove the convertible like he was competing in the Indy 500. The wind was ice-cold and his tears froze on his cheeks. He drove relentlessly toward his father’s house, dreading the moment he had to break the terrible news. The wedding was off.

With this:

It was like being rejected from the high school basketball team all over again. How would he face his father as he turned the key in the lock? The wedding was off. James felt the old lump in his throat and his racing heart. And something new, too; his cheeks were wet.

In the second example, we learn how James is feeling from the comparison between his present rejection and his rejection from the basketball team. Who among us hasn’t experienced some sort of rejection in our lives? Who hasn’t felt a lump in their throat? Don’t we all remember an event where we dreaded facing our parents?

Moreover, the second excerpt draws us in to James’ world; we experience what he’s experiencing. With superficial description, that can’t happen. Feelings and emotions can be reported, but not experienced.

***

As you can see, there’s more to descriptive writing than just “describing something.” The warning signs I outlined above will help you ask yourself the right questions and present your prose clearly and interestingly.

For more on description, consider taking my course, Wake Up Your Prose: Description Unpacked. Click here to get on the waiting list! And stay tuned for more on descriptive writing in the next few weeks. And, as always,

Happy writing!

Deena

Deena Nataf

www.BulletproofWriting.com

Deena@BulletproofWriting.com

P.S. Here’s the link for the giveaway again.

Filed Under: Writing Techniques

Win a Month of Mentoring for Your Writing Project!

July 1, 2019 by Deena Nataf Leave a Comment

Wake Up Your Prose: Description Unpacked

 

I’ve had a bit of rough sailing with my new course, Wake Up Your Prose: Description Unpacked. Just when I thought it was safe to go into the water, I decided to rerecord the entire course. The audio isn’t the way I want it, and I want this course to be Premium with a capital P.

So I’m recording it for the third time. 🙂

Setbacks aside, the course is going to be great. In celebration of its upcoming release, I’m running a giveaway where you can win a month of writing and editorial mentoring from me!

How would your writing transform if you were able to work 1-on-1 for a month with an editor who has 35 years of experience?

Whether you have a current writing project or need extra support to begin one, I’ll accompany you on your writing journey for a full month.

We’ll work together to design a step-by-step program for writing or finishing your book, article, memoir – whatever you want – with the goal of getting it written and finished.

This is what the winner will get:

  • A plan of action: brainstorming, outlining, writing, revising
  • Help in setting up a work schedule and creating short-term goals
  • Email communication
  • A weekly email check-in to ensure you are on the right track
  • Two twenty-minute phone calls to discuss your progress

It’s totally free to enter the giveaway. You’ll get a special link so you can share with everyone you know! Each time someone enters using your link, you automatically get an extra entry – which means an extra chance to win!

Click on this link to enter – and good luck!

And…

Happy Writing!

Deena

Deena Nataf

www.BulletproofWriting.com

Deena@BulletproofWriting.com

P.S. Here’s the link for the giveaway again.

 

 

Filed Under: Writing Techniques, Uncategorized

A Sneak Peak at My Premium Course, a New Book, and Paying it Forward

May 21, 2019 by Deena Nataf 2 Comments

Description Course

 

 

I’ve been busy these past weeks recording my premium course, Wake Up Your Prose: Description Unpacked, which will launch this summer. I’ve had the slides done professionally, and my sound person is refining the audio as we speak. Here’s some preliminary information about the course.

Wake Up Your Prose: Description Unpacked, version 2, is based on the 2017 beta version of the course, which sold beyond my wildest expectations – surpassing the industry average for online course sales by 400 percent.

 

What’s inside the course

I’ve completely revamped and rewritten Wake Up Your Prose. I’ve also expanded it from 8 modules to 10 modules – plus a bonus module. The slides are beautiful, and the sound is great.

Each module has a downloadable Workbook. I’m redoing the ones from the beta course and writing new ones for Modules 9 and 10. The Workbooks contain a summary of the module, plus supplementary material, checklists, and links to relevant ebooks.

Each module, builds on what we’ve learned in previous modules. There’s an entertaining and challenging writing exercise at the end of each module, so you’ll be able to put your new knowledge into practice right away.

Here are the modules:

  • Description Warm-Up
  • Method Writing
  • Description Basics
  • The Art of Storytelling
  • Show
  • Tell
  • Analogy, Metaphor, and Simile
  • Putting It All Together: Description Review and Reinforcement
  • Quick and Dirty Tips for Enhanced Description
  • Grammar
  • Special Bonus Module

 

Think you might be interested? Click here, and I’ll put you on the waiting list. If you’re on the list and decide to buy, you’ll get a special treat.

I’ll keep you updated as we get closer to the launch.

 

New book by an old author

I just finished Warlight, by Michael Ondaatje (of The English Patient fame), and it was extremely well written. He packs his novels with myriad observations, many musings, and a lot of information. Every word is precious and relevant to the novel, so you have to read very closely. At the same time, it’s a great read; just pay attention. Fascinating and worthwhile.

There is a lot of mystery in Warlight, some of which is never resolved. For example (spoiler alert!), we never find out what happened to the protagonist’s shadowy father after he disappears. I was bothered by this, and then I read an interview with Michael Ondaatje, which took place way before he wrote Warlight.

My loss was that I never spoke to [my father] as an adult….He is still one of those books we long to read whose pages remain uncut….He was a sad and mercurial figure. There was a lot I didn’t know about him, and that was recurring in my books: trying to find the central character. It became a habit. In all my books there are mysteries that are not fully told.

What Ondaatje says reflects a bit of Method Writing: He uses the mystery of his own father to include mysteries “not fully told” in his fiction. By the time he writes Warlight, one of the mysteries is in fact the central character’s father, whom he never gets to speak to “as an adult.”

 

Paying it forward

When I was just starting Bulletproof Writing, I received a lot of help from generous bloggers, who took the time to give me information and advice. I also read many and various blogs, where I learned the nuances of owning a website and writing interesting articles. In light of the help I received, I thought it would be appropriate to share the love, and mention some other, more recent internet businesses that have something worthwhile to say to readers of my blog.

 

1. Podcast

A few posts ago, I mentioned that I was reading an ebook called The Age of Illumination: Science, Technology, and Reason in the Middle Ages, by Scott Rank, who writes and presents a podcast called History Unplugged. If you’d like to listen, you can subscribe here.

 

2. Grammarly redux

Remember my review of Grammarly? Last week, I received an email from the man who runs a blog for designers called Daily Logo Challenge. They recently published a post comparing Grammarly’s free version to its premium version. If you’re thinking about purchasing Grammarly Premium, or if you’re interested in another side of the Grammarly debate, you can read the post here.

 

3. Cute infographic

One of my readers sent me an infographic on homophones (sort of like homonyms) from another website, which I thought was great. The graphics are really clever. You can see it here.

***

That’s it for now. Go ahead and start your summer reading soon, and let me know which books you’ve chosen. And of course,

 

Happy writing,

Deena

Deena Nataf

www.BulletproofWriting.com

Deena@BulletproofWriting.com

Filed Under: Writing Techniques

Good and Bad Literary Trash: Separating the Men from the Boys – part 2

April 30, 2019 by Deena Nataf Leave a Comment

bulletproofwriting.com

 

In the first part of my 2-part series on good and bad literary trash, we learned all about good and bad literary trash, especially what makes good trash good. In this post, we’re going to explore common mistakes bad-trash authors make, as well as go over a list of what to do if you want to land in the winner’s circle.

Let’s begin with 3 issues I see consistently in those semi-professionally written cozy mysteries and romance novels I’ve described as “bad trash.”

Grammar and idiom

Almost to a (wo)man, bad trash is loaded with grammar mistakes and poorly proofed copy. Issues such as misspelled words; using that instead of who when describing a human being; and misuse of words, idioms, and phrases are just a sampling of the mistakes I’ve encountered in the past month alone.

1. Who/whom

Although I personally deplore it, the use of who instead of whom is becoming de rigueur even in good trash. For example, it is now acceptable to say “The musician who I like.” On the other hand, no professional writer would ever countenance the following: “To who do I owe the pleasure?” The Grishams and Folletts of the writing world (and/or their editors) would never make this mistake.

If you want to use who occasionally instead of whom, pay attention to nuance and make your choice carefully.

For a more in-depth treatment of the who/whom issue, see the guest post I wrote here.

2. Bemused and nonplussed

With regard to misused words, almost all the authors of bad trash I’ve read use bemused and nonplussed incorrectly. Bemused means bewildered, confused, dazed, or lost in thought. It does not mean amused. However, thanks to the decline of English skills in the past generation or two, Merriam-Webster now allows it to be used with the meaning of “having or showing feelings of wry amusement especially from something that is surprising or perplexing.” That last part is Merriam-Webster’s nod to bemused‘s original and correct meaning.

Similarly, nonplussed means “unsure about what to say, think, or do; or perplexed.” Unlike its position on bemused, however, Merriam-Webster adds the following to its definition: “The use of nonplussed to mean “unimpressed” is an Americanism that has become increasingly common in recent decades and now appears frequently in published writing. It apparently arose from confusion over the meaning of nonplussed in ambiguous contexts, and it continues to be widely regarded as an error.”

I discuss other problems with idiom and word choice in this post and this post.

3. Parallel structure

Parallel structure remains a problem in bad trash. Here’s a real winner:

“It was the constant round of preparing lectures, assignments, and then grading those assignments that was the problem.”

Simply put, this is a lousy sentence. Parallelism is but one of its problems.

The parallel structure problem is that the word preparing goes on both lectures and the first occurrence of the word assignments, but not on the term those assignments toward the end of the sentence.

Here’s another problem: A sentence that begins and ends with “It was…that was” is awkward and clunky.

How about one of these instead:

  • “The problem was the constant round of preparing lectures and assignments, and grading the assignments once they were turned in.”
  • “The problem was the constant round of preparing lectures combined with creating and grading assignments.”
  • “The problem was the constant round of preparing lectures, creating assignments, and grading the students’ school- and homework.”

For more on parallel structure, check out my posts here, here, and here.

 

What [not] to do

I’ve gathered a few suggestions from my vast experience with bad ebook trash. Following these guidelines will lift you up and out of the slush pile and into the category of a professional and published writer.

  • Don’t give your characters names that start with the same letter. Surprisingly, this is very common in bad trash. I can’t tell you how confusing it is to get everyone straight when you have a Kitty, a Kathleen, a Blaine, and a Baily. (These four names are from the same awful book.) Finessing the details goes a long way to being seen as a real author.
  • Keep track of who’s talking in lengthy dialogues. Recently, I came across a several-page conversation that switched characters in the middle. Don’t do this. When writing your first draft, put characters’ names in brackets before each line of dialogue, and delete them when you’re finished writing the conversation.
  • Keep a “book bible.” If you’re writing fiction, list every character in the book: first name, last name, age, where they were born, hair color, basic personality traits, etc. Nonfiction writers: Get the spelling of names, cities, colleges etc. correct, and get your dates right. Write all of this information down. If you’re writing a biography, create a family tree for yourself. Inconsistency with regard to any fact marks you as an amateur.
  • Stay professional. When creating an author’s bio, don’t add how many dogs or cats you have, and don’t tell us that you love to knit in your spare time. You’re allowed to have a spouse and kids, and you’re allowed to live somewhere, but that’s about it. Authors of good trash generally mention only that they’re the best-selling author of 105 books and live with their family in rural Mississippi. This isn’t an anti-animal or anti-crafts thing; it’s a being-taken-more-seriously thing.

***

Honestly, it really doesn’t take that much to hone your writing abilities. A few significant tweaks can do it. The above ideas will help you continue to grow.

Bottom line, you need

  • a strong grasp of grammar, and
  • the knowledge of what does and doesn’t sound good.

Fiction writers can add to this list realistically drawn characters and plots that make sense. Nonfiction writers need to remember that all literature – even a computer manual – tells a story.

Make it a priority to read good literature, whether modern novels, classics, or nonfiction. Stay away from old, hackneyed cliches, and keep asking yourself, “What am I trying to say?” You’ll be surprised how well-received your writing will become!

Happy writing!
Deena

Deena Nataf
www.BulletproofWriting.com
Deena@BulletproofWriting.com

Filed Under: Writing Techniques

Indulge Your Inner Grammar Nerd, Minimize Writing Overwhelm, and Read a Good Book

April 16, 2019 by Deena Nataf Leave a Comment

 

In my next post, I’ll continue my series on good and bad literary trash, but I decided to interrupt it this week with some general writing tips, a roundup of what I’m currently reading, and comedy grammar.

Like me, I’m sure many of you are busy doing Spring cleaning, preparing for Passover or Easter, or counting the days until Spring Break. This period can be a real tinderbox of pressure and overwhelm, but it doesn’t have to be.

When preparing for a big task, I spend a few minutes breaking it up into parts, and then breaking up those parts into smaller, manageable, and quick jobs. I then make a timeline, working backwards from Ground Zero.

This year, I’m also trying to think lateral instead of linear. For example, I have always performed a one-day cooking marathon before Passover. It never occurred to me to take two days until a colleague of mine looked at me like I was insane, and said, “Why are you doing this to yourself?” So I readjusted my schedule and will now be able to cook for two days instead of one. Wow, what a concept.

 

Minimize writing overwhelm

For some of us, just the thought of sitting down to write engenders feelings of overwhelm every single day (you are writing every single day, aren’t you?). Consider applying my cooking and cleaning principles to your writing. Why not try the following:

  • For a project, novel, article, etc., divide up the tasks into general categories such as research, outline, writing, editing, etc.
  • Divide each of these large categories into several manageable, one-day tasks.
  • Give yourself a due date and work backwards, assigning one task to each writing day or days.
  • Decide the following the night before each writing session: when you are going to write, what you are going to write, and how long you are going to write – and stick to it.

Breaking tasks into small, mini jobs has also been helpful for preparing my revised, premium course, Wake Up Your Prose: Description Unpacked. I’m making slow but steady progress recording the script, and hope to launch sometime before the summer.

 

What I’m reading

I realized this morning that I’m reading, or have read recently, 6 books.

Nonfiction

First is an ebook called The Age of Illumination: Science, Technology, and Reason in the Middle Ages, by Scott Rank. It’s an interesting treatment of a 1,000-year period that has historically been labeled the Dark Ages. The author contends that there was a lot of progress and advanced thinking going on during these years, such as the invention of the clock and the writing of the Magna Carta.

Second on my bedside table is Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. It unsentimentally gives an account of the flip side of Manifest Destiny, which for most Americans of a certain age was glorified in our 5th grade history lessons. The book is very sad and very hard to read, but fascinating and important. I highly recommend it, and it’s well written to boot.

Fiction

As far as fiction goes, I read Ann Tyler’s Back when We Were Grownups a week or two ago. It’s classic Ann Tyler, and I liked it. There are two Tyler novels that I did not like: The Amateur Marriage and Pulitzer-Prize-winning Breathing Lessons (sorry, Ann), and I was a bit embarrassed by Vinegar Girl (completely out of character for a Tyler book, but a cute read). Next on my Tyler agenda is A Patchwork Planet, which I picked up today.

I just finished the third book in a historical-fiction trilogy set in the post-Civil War Midwest. Immediately previous to that, I had read a series that takes place in post-Civil War San Francisco, so I’m enjoying the continuity of time periods.

I’ve begun reading Jamie Ford’s Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, also historical fiction. It takes place in 1942 Seattle, Washington, right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when anti-Japanese sentiment was at its peak. So far, so good. Very well written, and the historical time period is one I’ve always enjoyed learning about. Although I’m only on page 41, I can already recommend it. The writer is Asian, and it has that gentle, calm, and elegant feel that many of us associate with that region of the world.

Memoir

I’m in the middle of A Year in Provence, a memoir by Peter Mayle. Mayle and his wife moved from London to Provence, France, in the late 1980s, and this book chronicles their first year there. It’s absolutely laugh-out-loud hilarious. And boy, is he a good writer.

As I’ve emphasized in my memoir series, the memoir writer must choose his or her area of focus: a specific angle, a special format, an impactful time period, etc. Mayle chose a 12-chapter format (January–December) and focuses on the everyday happenings and adjustments to living on what is for all intents and purposes a new planet. He spends a lot of time talking about food and wine, which I found tiresome, but I’m enjoying the book immensely nevertheless. Fans of James Herriot’s All Things Bright and Beautiful series will enjoy this one.

 

Comedy grammar time

Here’s a grammar-nerd-friendly piece in The New Yorker called “Dropped Hyphens, Split Infinitives, and Other Thrilling Developments from the 2019 American Copy Editors Society Conference,” by the comma queen herself, Mary Norris. Many thanks to my dear subscriber, Yehoshua D., for the heads up. The article’s a hoot; here’s one long excerpt that I especially loved:

The conference offers dozens of sessions, on everything from gender consciousness to “Bad English.”… But the centerpiece of the weekend is the session at which the A.P. announces changes to its annual style guide. It was standing room only…. There were guidelines on race…and updates on recreational marijuana (pot or cannabis on second reference; employees at dispensaries are budtenders).

A cheer went up when [the A.P. representative] announced that “split forms” are acceptable—most copy editors have long since stopped worrying about the split infinitive, but now we are good “to boldly go” where the English language has been going for centuries….

You could feel the excitement in the room when a slide appeared with the heading “HYPHENS!” The A.P. is dropping the hyphen in such terms as “African American,” “Asian American,” and “Filipino American.” …

More hyphen news: in the interest of preventing clutter, the A.P. will drop the little bugger from such compounds as “third-grade teacher” and “chocolate-chip cookie.” The purpose of the hyphen is clarity: because there is no danger in mistaking which two words go together (it’s not “gradeteacher” or “chipcookie”), the extra mark is unnecessary….

One final item: the hyphen has been removed from double-“E” combinations, such as “preeclampsia,” “preelection,” “preeminent,” “preempt,” “reenter,” etc.

***

Pick up a good book, keep going with your writing, and I’ll see you next time with more examples of what makes good and bad literary trash. I’ve also got some great tips for making sure your own writing lands in the good, great, and magnificent piles. Until then,

Happy writing!
Deena

Deena Nataf
www.BulletproofWriting.com
Deena@BulletproofWriting.com

Filed Under: Writing Techniques

Good and Bad Literary Trash: Separating the Men from the Boys – part 1

April 2, 2019 by Deena Nataf 2 Comments

www.bulletproofwriting.com

 

The white flag is out.

 

I have finally reached my limit of true literary trash, or, as I call it, “bad trash.” I will no longer buy – or read – any of it. Reading these embarrassing books has sapped my time and patience. Myself, I just wanted historical fiction with a murder on the side, but the ebooks I’ve been downloading have been grave (no pun intended) disappointments.

 

Bad trash

Guess what I found out? Most of the bad trash I’ve been reading is in a category all its own called “cozy mysteries.” Who knew it was even a genre?

Cozy mysteries can be set in any era, and are normally written as a series. Although historical cozy mysteries follow similar lines to modern ones, the latter are almost always about a woman who:

  • ​is just getting over a serious relationship and needs to “start over”;
  • opens either​ a bakery or an inn (am not making this up);
  • discovers a dead body; and
  • meets a handsome, single man – usually some type of law enforcement professional – whom she doesn’t initially get along with. Often, there is an ex (or soon-to-be ex) -wife or -girlfriend in the picture.​​

And they finally get married in the 6th, 8th, or 10th book in the series. ​

 

Good trash

From now on, I’d like to read only “good trash,” classics, and nonfiction. ​Good trash (and I use the expression affectionately) is a level or two above bad trash. It makes for great leisure reading; you know, where you lie on the couch drinking tea and eating chocolate. My favorite authors in this group include Alexander McCall Smith, John Grisham, Daniel Silva, and Rhys Bowen.

As I said in my last post, I’ve been contemplating what separates the poorly written, cranked-out cozy mysteries and over-the-top spy novels from the good stuff. After all, Rhys Bowen writes cozy mysteries and Daniel Silva writes spy thrillers. John Grisham, who is the 38th best-selling author of all time, writes books about lawyers. But why is Grisham one of the best-selling authors of all time? And why are readers begging Alexander McCall Smith to continue adding books to his three series as well as create entirely new series?

It’s not as if authors of good trash have cornered the market on unique themes and plot lines. Take Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon series, for example. Bottom line, it’s just another collection of spy thrillers:

  • Elusive, handsome spy with a tragic past;
  • Beautiful, young female agent who captures his heart by book 4 or 5;
  • The ups and downs of their relationship for another several books until they finally get married;
  • While he basically saves the world as we know it in every single book.

When presented like that, who would want to read this stuff? Yet why are Silva’s books so popular, and what separates them from the bad trash?

 

Good vs. bad literary trash

There are several reasons some books sell better than others. Here are a few.

Money

Sometimes it’s simply an issue of money. Best-selling authors have contracts with big-name publishers, who usually require them to put out a book a year. By contrast, bad-trash authors are often individuals who have self-published with Amazon’s self-publishing services and created a cover with Canva.

Well-developed, likeable characters

Protagonists in good-trash novels are generally likeable, warts and all. In fact, drawing a character with normal human failings is another way to endear oneself to readers. Likewise, villains are often nuanced and not all bad. Sometimes the author Shows or Tells us what in a character’s past has led to his or her warped personality. Grisham and Silva excel in creating well-developed characters, although McCall Smith is the master. McCall Smith is also particularly good at nuanced heroes and villains.

On the other hand, so many of the characters in the bad-trash group are truly unappealing. Whiny, childish, not so truthful. The female protagonists are constantly either lying to their boyfriends and bosom buddies, or concealing from them a key fact that would have either caught the killer earlier or kept the main character from almost getting killed and needing to be saved by her boyfriend the law enforcement professional. Why would someone want to date or be friends with a liar? And what’s attractive about a man or woman who shows absolutely no shred of kindness?

Consistency and realism

Consistency and realism also separate the bad from the good. First, in good trash, characters don’t behave…out of character. You wouldn’t expect the Russian killer in a Silva novel to have a change of heart and put his gun down at the last minute.

Second, there are fewer coincidences in good trash. Events happen and are resolved logically. In bad trash you frequently encounter a dose or two of deus ex machina. The heroine “just happens” to walk by the burning building, or there’s a last-minute change of plans that saves her life.

Third, the ending in a good-trash novel is logical and not always 100 percent happy. Like life, sometimes things are messy. By contrast, most of the cozy mysteries I’ve read end in one of three ways:

  • The bad guy dies
  • The good guy law enforcement professional assures his girlfriend the heroine, “She’ll go to jail for the rest of her life.”
  • The villain is sent to a mental hospital.

Notice that no one ever goes to trial or has his day in court.

Superb, professional copy editing

Really. Good trash has good grammar, good punctuation, good spelling, and nary a typo. Granted, the big names either can afford the best or have publishers who will foot the bill. But they also know how to write well, and they know the rules, so they make fewer mistakes.

As I’ve said before, just because your second cousin’s upstairs neighbor was the editor of their high school yearbook doesn’t mean he or she knows how to edit or copy edit a book. I suspect a lot of semi-professional writers who manage to publish ebooks are using friends or fellow writers to go over their manuscripts.

Tight prose

Famous authors know exactly what they are saying. Never do they throw in a sentence that sounds artsy but means nothing.

By contrast, get a load of this 32-word travesty, which is from the latest (and hopefully last) cozy mystery I read. It describes a vast room in a police department that stores confiscated weapons:

“Housing thousands of implements used for the purpose of inflicting misery, pain, and even death, most of the officers of the police department felt an inexplicable sense of negativity in the locker.“

  1. How did the author get away with this sentence?
  2. Did no one notice the dangling participle?
  3. Did the author read her own manuscript?
  4. Why “the officers of the police department”? Why not simply “the police officers”?
  5. Does anybody understand what “felt an inexplicable sense of negativity” means? How can you feel a sense? And what is the word negativity doing here? Would any normal person say, “Wow, when you point that gun at me, I feel negativity”?
  6. Why is feeling a negative emotion when walking through a room full of guns, knives, and garrotes “inexplicable”?

 

***

We’ve seen that both good and bad literary trash share many of the same themes, plots, and characters. We’ve also seen that not even authors of good trash have published a book that rivals, say, War and Peace (although who would want to read War and Peace?) or Pride and Prejudice.

Nevertheless, Rhys Bowen’s cozy mysteries are intelligent, humorous, well-written, and typo-free. John Grisham is clever, clean, and creative. And Alexander McCall’s books never succumb to gratuitous sex or violence.

This is good trash at its best.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this series, where we’ll discuss common mistakes bad-trash authors make, as well as a list of no-nos if you want to remain on the good list – or even on the list of literary classics!

 

Happy writing!

Deena

www.BulletproofWriting.com

Deena@BulletproofWriting.com

P.S. See the second post in this series here.

Filed Under: Writing Techniques, Tips for the Writing Life

The Careful Use of Brackets, and Putting Your Reader Front and Center

March 19, 2019 by Deena Nataf Leave a Comment

www.bulletproofwriting.com

 

 

In the small, foreign country where I live, Spring is making a heroic effort to assert itself. It’s going two steps forward and one step back. But today is gorgeous; a perfect day to learn about brackets!

First, I must confess: In my last post, which mentioned author Ken Follett, I spelled his name wrong. I forgot the second t. Many thanks to my lovely brother-in-law, who pointed it out. And sorry, Ken! If you click on my post now, you’ll see that I’ve corrected my mistake.

 

I love the word bracketology

But unfortunately, it doesn’t mean the study of brackets.

As I said in my previous post, I’m currently working on a project that has many members of the team a bit bracket-challenged. Then I discovered that another book I’m editing is bracket-heavy and needs close bracket supervision. Thus, I thought I’d revisit the bracket issue.

These are the helpful hints I wrote in my 2016 post on parenthetical statements:

Brackets

Brackets are also called square brackets (as opposed to round brackets, i.e., parentheses). They are used when an omniscient being is interrupting or clarifying the prose. Brackets are the most off-topic, as they are divorced from the subject matter, the point of view, and/or the quotation. They can be used in the following situations:

  • When an author is quoting someone but needs to change the quote to make the prose sound better: Johnny said that “[he] always wanted to fly a combat helicopter.” The original quote was “I always wanted to fly a combat helicopter,” but the author was using third person and thus changed the I to he.
  • When more explanation is necessary: “All of them joined in the valley of Siddim, which is [now] the Salt Sea” (Genesis 14:3). The word “now” is not in the original Hebrew. It was added because the Salt Sea wasn’t called the Salt Sea at the time of the war being described in this verse; it was called the valley of Siddim at that time. A literal translation might confuse readers, most of whom assume that a valley is not a sea. (Notice that I enclose the source, i.e., Genesis 14:3, in parentheses.)
  • When the author is quoting directly from a source but is worried her readers will think she’s an idiot: “Your [sic] a nice person,” she wrote. The author has inserted “sic” here to make sure we all know that she herself would never in a million years write “your” when she means “you’re.”
  • When an author is substituting an original phrase for one of his own choosing: The radio show host said the prime minister was the biggest [expletive deleted] in the history of the world.

 

More complicated bracket issues

What I wrote above is 100 percent correct. However, sometimes other, more complex parenthetical issues come up. There are often punctuation issues as well when brackets are used.

 

ADDITIONAL BRACKET RULE:

You need to put into brackets everything that would not belong on the page if you didn’t have the brackets in the first place.

Example A:  [Upon meeting David,] Russel told Myrna that he wasn’t good enough for her.

NOT: [Upon meeting David], Russel told Myrna that he wasn’t good enough for her.

In this example, the comma goes in the bracketed phrase, because if you didn’t have the bracketed phrase, you’d be left with a sentence that looks like this:

, Russel told Myrna that he wasn’t good enough for her.

 

Example B:  She did not withhold [my salary] from me, [because she knew I’d sue her if she did].

Here, the first bracketed phrase replaces the word “it.”

Let’s look at the second bracketed phrase. If you took it out, you’d be left with a comma and a period together: “She did not withhold [my salary] from me,.” To put the comma within the brackets isn’t nice: [, because she knew I’d sue her if she did]. The only alternative is to make an exception here and retain the comma outside the brackets.

By the way, in academic literature you can sometimes get away with a punctuation mark right inside the open bracket. But I don’t recommend it for any other genre of writing.

 

Example C:  This one [Jack] exited and that one [Jill] entered.

“This one/that one” are integral parts of the original sentence (and they aren’t pronouns, such as “he” or “she”). We are using the bracketed phrase to elaborate, not substitute.

Now, I know there is the appositive thing, i.e., “This one, [Jack,] exited and that one, [Jill,] entered.” That said, please, DON’T use 4 commas instead of zero commas! Remember: You must keep your readers at the forefront of your mind. They need ease of reading and simple, clean punctuation more than they need your appositives.

 

Example D:  We’re sisters, [we both suffer silently,] in our misery.

NOT: We’re sisters, [we both suffer silently], in our misery.

First off, we need to understand that the bracketed phrase is explaining what I mean by being a sister in misery to someone. If I wanted to express that I and another woman suffer silently in our misery, I wouldn’t need brackets at all, as “we both suffer silently” would be an integral part of the sentence.

Back to the original sentence. If you were to take out the bracketed phrase, you wouldn’t need commas at all, i.e., “We’re sisters in our misery.” However, “We’re sisters, we both suffer silently, in our misery” begs 2 commas (which “bracket” the middle clause). It would thus be better to retain both of them in the sentence. Place the second comma within the brackets and keep the first comma where it is.

Another option is to substitute the brackets for the abbreviation i.e.: “We’re sisters, i.e., we both suffer silently, in our misery.”

There is a case for no commas even if you retain the brackets. I don’t recommend this, because it would sound too much like a run-on sentence: “We’re sisters [we both suffer silently] in our misery.”

 

The reader [almost] always comes first

You have no doubt noticed that I’ve broken some of my own bracket rules. That is because the bottom line is to make it as easy as possible for your reader. Therefore, when confronted with a sticky grammar or punctuation issue, ask yourself what would help your reader better understand the phrase.

You won’t encounter many brackets in fiction. But certainly in nonfiction – especially in excerpts or quotations – you’ll need to know how to use brackets correctly and in a way that your reader will understand what is being substituted, what is being elaborated, or what is being added.

***

That’s it for today! I hope you’ve learned both about brackets and about putting readers first. In my next post, I will update you on my reading lists and other sundry stuff. I’d also like to take another look at the poorly written and edited garbage I’ve decided to stop reading on Kindle.

For more on brackets, see The Chicago Manual of Style 6.99, 6.103.

And until next time,

Happy writing!
Deena

Deena Nataf
www.BulletproofWriting.com
Deena@BulletproofWriting.com

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Filed Under: Writing Techniques

Trashy Novels, and Writing Advice from an Unlikely Source

March 5, 2019 by Deena Nataf Leave a Comment

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I’m starting today not wanting to write at all, but I’m pushing myself and sticking to my schedule just as I tell you to do! It’s not always easy.

I got a lot of positive feedback from my last post, “Grammarly, Stepford Wives, and Mediocrity.” I still owe some of you replies to your wonderful emails. Don’t despair; you’ll get them soon.

Let me know what other subjects you’d like me to cover in future posts; this blog is for you!

 

Too much trash

I’ve been reading a mix of modern classics, novels, and trash this past month, but I’m getting tired of the trash. What a waste of time. I was given a set of six ebooks (cozy mystery series) in order to write a review, but they’re so bad that the only way to describe them is inedible. I mean, I’ll usually read anything, but this is just too painful. Here are the books’ main sins:

  • Shallow, undeveloped, and inconsistent characters
  • Canned dialogue and situations
  • Poor, confusing, unrealistic plots lacking essential information
  • Embarrassing spelling, grammar, and editing mistakes

These issues seem to be rampant in self-published ebooks. Granted, quality is uneven, so it’s best to get a free sample from Kindle before purchasing. (Sometimes, the first book in a series is free, so there’s no monetary investment if you end up hating it.)

bulletproofwriting.comI suspect that many of these books are the fruit of members of book clubs and writers’ groups. I think both book clubs and writers’ groups are great, but I wish people would take more time to “sharpen the ax” before they start cutting down the tree.

 

This month’s good novels

I’ve also read some really great books this past month. The first was The Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri. She won a Pulitzer for this one. I’ve read other books of hers, and she is an outstanding writer. It is a total pleasure to read her. I generally don’t care for short story collections, but The Interpreter of Maladies is a happy exception. I strongly encourage you to get your hands on any of Lahiri’s books.

The biggest surprise this month was Anybody Out There, by Marian Keyes. Apparently, it’s the 4th book in a series, but the author does such a good job of weaving things together that I had no idea. I wasn’t confused for a minute, and none of the background information felt like a non sequitur. Some series can be confusing if you haven’t read them in order.

I was convinced the book would be just a fun romp, but I was happily mistaken. It’s very well-written, and it had me both on-the-floor laughing and tearing up. It’s both a sad and a hopeful book, and well worth your time if you are in the mood for a novel. I was blown away by how Keyes crafted each character and kept them consistent. The plot was realistic, and Keyes added just the right amount of caricature to some of the personalities to keep things hopping.

I don’t think men would enjoy this book.

I also finally read my first Ken Follett novel, Eye of the Needle. I’m a fan of spy thrillers, and enjoyed it on this level. The historical aspect of the novel (World War II, and the allied attempt to fool the Germans with regard to the D-Day landings) was fascinating, but I didn’t like many of the main characters.

 

Valuable writing advice from Ken Follett

As I was tooling around the internet for information on Ken Follett, I found a fascinating Masterclass on his website. It’s full of information about writing and publishing a novel. I don’t agree with everything he says about how to write a book, but there were some gems, which I will enumerate below.

One must keep in mind that even though Follett is a bestselling author, he’s no Jane Austen (who is, surprisingly, his favorite dead author; his favorite living authors are Stephen King, Richard North Patterson, and Lee Child, which has to tell you something). Nevertheless, here’s some great advice, especially for novelists:

The basics

  • The basic challenge for the writer can be very simply explained – it is to create an imaginary world and then draw the reader into that imaginary world.
  • I want to entertain you. I want you to be thrilled or moved to tears or scared and I definitely want you to be on the edge of your seat all the time, wondering what is going to happen next.
  • I’ve failed dreadfully if you have to read a sentence twice to figure out what I meant.
  • You can almost always find a way to improve just about every sentence that you’ve written.

Sharpening the ax

  • As an aspiring writer, you should certainly start by writing an outline…. The outline says chapter by chapter what happens in the book and it contains potted biographies of each of the characters.
  • It is far easier to correct your mistakes if you write an outline than if you sat down and wrote, ‘Chapter One’ at the top of a piece of paper and started writing.
  • Writing an outline also concentrates your mind. It is good to carry on reading a lot at this stage…. When you are reading other books, you will see how other writers have handled [your topic] and you’ll see the problem from different angles.
  • You should also show your outline to other people…it will be bruising if it’s going to be any use to you.

Writing the outline

  • A basic idea [i.e., what the book is about] is something that can be said in one sentence.
  • I write down my one sentence on a piece of paper and I try and make it two. I elaborate more and more…before too long I’ve got three paragraphs, a page, two pages and so on as I constantly rewrite and tease out the story.
  • I begin to imagine the people in the story, where they came from and what their motivations are. I think about how they will approach [a] problem.
  • [C]reate interesting characters and show how their lives are devastated by a series of events, how they fight against adversity and how they triumph.
  • [A]sk yourself questions all the time about these people that you have created and the problems they are confronted with…you must always ask…what are they afraid of?
  • [A]lways be aware of raising the stakes.
  • I finish up at the end of the [outline] process with between 25-40 typed pages [because he keeps elaborating on it]…. Typically there will be a first draft outline, a second draft outline and a final outline, so it would twice go through the process of being shown to a number of people.

The first draft

  • The toughest part of the whole process is going from the outline to the first draft…. Putting flesh on the bones is the hardest imaginative work in the whole process.
  • There is a rule which says that the story should turn about every four to six pages. A story turn is anything that changes the basic dramatic situation. It can change it in a little way or change it in a big way.
  • If you’ve got two story turns in four pages, you are going too fast and are not drawing the full drama and emotion out of each scene.

The second draft

  • When the first draft is complete, I show it once again to [other people]. I get them all to make notes.
  • I don’t edit my first draft. I don’t put the first draft on the screen at all…. I key every word in again because that forces me to reconsider every sentence.

Notice how the section entitled Writing the outline has the most nuggets, with The basics and Sharpening the ax tying for second. This is not a coincidence, and should tell you something about where you should be putting your energies before you type “Chapter One.”

***

In my next blog I’m going to revisit brackets. I’m currently working on a project that is bracket-challenged, and thought the issue begged reviewing.

And remember to let me know what else you’d like me to cover in future posts!

Until then,

Happy writing!

Deena

Deena Nataf

www.BulletproofWriting.com

Deena@BulletproofWriting.com

​

Filed Under: Tips for the Writing Life

Grammarly, Stepford Wives, and Mediocrity

February 19, 2019 by Deena Nataf Leave a Comment

​

I’ve been wanting to review Grammarly.com for accuracy, helpfulness, and ease of use. How can it be so popular when almost every business blog I read is full of embarrassing writing mistakes and typos that reflect the writer’s apathy? In fact, so many blog owners actually come right out and say that writing mistakes don’t matter!

Nothing can take the place of a live human being writing raw and editing hard. However, Grammarly might be a worthwhile crutch aid when you’re just starting out and want to discover what Artificial Intelligence has to say about language and grammar.

With this in mind, I wrote the first draft of this post on the Grammarly app. Let’s see how I (and it) measure up.

 

User-friendliness

The Grammarly app itself is easy to use. For people with a free account, the app checks only spelling and critical grammar issues. Those with a Premium account ($12 per month if you pay yearly, $30 per month if you pay monthly) get a whole lot more, including the following:

  • advanced grammar check
  • insulting language check (LOVE this)
  • parallelism alerts
  • vocabulary enhancement suggestions
  • plagiarism detector
  • word choice suggestions according to genre
  • awkward words and sentences
  • checking for unnatural phrasing

The Grammarly app lets you set four categories: audience, writing style, emotion, and intent. I’ve set this post as being geared toward a general audience, with an informal writing style, and containing “mild” emotion. The intent of the post is to describe (as opposed to “inform,” “convince,” or “tell a story”).

 

How’m I doing?

Up to this point, my first draft scored between 91 and 98 percent (it changes frequently). This means that it was better than 91 to 98 percent of all other Grammarly users’ writing. On the Flesch reading scale, however, it scored only a 56, meaning it could be read by someone with at least a 9th-grade education. For a general audience/informal writing style/mild emotion/intent to describe-type article, the app says to aim for a Flesch score of between 60 and 70 – which gears it to the average 8th grader.

The additional writing issues Grammarly found in my first draft were word choice (3 violations) and wordy sentences (2). The only problem is that I have to get Premium in order to find out which words they want me to replace, and which sentences are too wordy! The app also suggested very politely to “consider adding a comma” after “Flesch reading scale” (see previous paragraph). Thanks, guys.

 

Stilted writing

I found that I was writing a bit unnaturally on the Grammarly app, as if I were looking over my shoulder, worried I’d write something Grammarly didn’t like. Obviously, that is no way to write; your piece won’t come out sounding normal, and your own unique voice won’t shine through.

One way to prevent this while you’re using the Grammarly app is to hide the Assistant function until you finish the entire piece. That way, you won’t constantly be checking your writing performance. You can enable it when you finish. Another way is to write your piece on a simple Word document, and copy and paste it into the Grammarly app after you’re done.

By the time I finished writing the first draft of this post, I was at 93 percent on the Grammarly text scale and 64 on the Flesch scale. I still had 2 unnaturally long sentences, but ended up with 5 word choice problems!

Grammarly also gave me 4 incorrect suggestions from the “alert” function, which I was able to flag as incorrect. Take that, O machine! Artificial Intelligence isn’t (yet) perfect, and honestly, I hope it never will be.

 

My final score

Everything you’ve read so far is the final draft of this post. I plugged it into the app, and I ended up with a score of 95 on the Grammarly scale and the same 69 on the Flesch reading scale. But I now have 8 “word choice” issues and was slapped this time with 3 wordy sentences.

 

Why Grammarly?

Grammarly could be a nice crosscheck for high school and college students, sort of like a sophisticated Spell Check. It might give a bit of reassurance before one’s essay or book report goes out into the big, wide world. It also might be a nice app for those who have a lot of business emails to write and are unsure of their spelling or grammar skills. Likewise, people for whom English is not their native tongue can get quick and dirty help. They might be able to save themselves embarrassment when trying to impress potential bosses or love interests.

But beware: All except one of the suggestions from the alert function turned out to be inappropriate (their word, not mine). For instance, “5 word choice problems” was flagged as needing a hyphen, as in: “5-word choice problems.” I might have word-choice problems, but I certainly don’t have choice problems that are 5 words long.

Another thing to think about is whether you want to engage with the original or the Cliff Notes. In today’s world, many if not most people would rather just barf anything out on the page and get the servant (i.e., Grammarly) to clean it all up. I despise this attitude, but acknowledge that it’s pretty prevalent and not worth the diatribe I was just about to deliver.

 

Worst case scenario

One of the fears I have with regard to Grammarly is that it will ultimately dumb down the youngest 2 or 3 generations even further than they’re already being dumbed down as we speak.

What’s more, I hate to think of Grammarly becoming the mandatory final station that everyone will stop at before their writing disembarks into the world. Will there eventually be a cessation of creativity, uniqueness, and choice? Would e.e. cummings score only 25 percent on the Grammarly scale? Is literature on track to becoming one gigantic Stepford wife?

For me, it’s also a moral issue. Like, why would someone want to stay mediocre? Doesn’t everybody want to master as many skills as possible – including excellent writing and perfect spelling and grammar? Wouldn’t you want to gear your diction to someone more sophisticated than the average 9th grader? It seems that the only skill some people want to master these days is how to be “good enough” with the least amount of exertion possible.

***

The thing is, I’m preaching to the choir.

You wouldn’t be reading my blog if you weren’t interested in being a better-than-just-mediocre writer. And I love you for it. I support you and admire you. You are swimming upstream in a sea of smooth sailors.

Keep up your excellence!! And keep reading my blog. You are part of the small but mighty tribe of those who want to be the best version of themselves. And remember,

Happy writing!

Deena

Deena Nataf

www.BulletproofWriting.com

Deena@BulletproofWriting.com

Filed Under: Tips for the Writing Life

A Tribute to My Mother: Writing Memoir, Part 5

February 4, 2019 by Deena Nataf 2 Comments

​

​​These past two weeks have been sad ones for me, as my mother died on January 22nd.

One of my cousins read from my mother’s memoirs at the funeral. My mother wrote them many years ago and gave them out to all family members. This 9-page document covers mostly her early years, up until she got married.

It is with my mother’s death in mind that I thought I’d present a 5th post on memoir-writing. If you haven’t yet read the first 4, you can get them here, here, here, and here.

 

Use literary devices for memoir-writing

Just as with “regular” nonfiction, and of course with fiction, you must make your memoir interesting. Use the same literary devices you’d normally use with your other writing.

Description

Always employ description when you are writing, whether in your memoir or another form of nonfiction, and of course in fiction. I’ll use unedited excerpts from my mother’s memoir to illustrate the following description tools.​

If you take my course, “Wake Up Your Prose: Description Unpacked,” you will enjoy 9 modules – plus a bonus module – which cover all these description tools and more.​ Watch for more information about the course in the weeks ahead, or sign up here to be the first to know about when it goes on sale.

Show and Tell.

When writing down a memory, describe scenes, scents, and sounds, tying them in with what you were feeling at the time. Certainly, you can Tell sometimes, and your insights about either a person or an event will be appreciated. Just give an example or two to go with your commentary. Here’s a poignant Tell memory from my mother’s memoir:

[During the Depression,] our parents were very involved politically and worked to help raise funds for charity…. They went out to meetings almost every evening and I remember feeling lonely at those times.

Analogy, metaphor, and simile.​

In a nutshell, these three description tools use something known to the reader in order to explain something unknown to him or her. The trio are a real powerhouse. ​

Avoid using cliche in analogy, metaphor, and simile (“He’s a big as a whale”; “We had a whale of a time”; “She’s the whale of the Fisch family”).

My mother made perfect use of analogy retelling the story of receiving a big, expensive radio at the height of the Depression:

​In the summer of 1935….​ a delivery man [brought in] a brand new stand up floor model Philco radio for us…. The only way I can describe the enormity of this in my nine year old mind is that it could be compared in current times to winning the lottery or getting a theater size TV screen installed in our home.

Backstory and foreshadowing.​

With a simple sentence or two, you can give a lot of information without crowding your memoir with unnecessary noise. Most people don’t want to read about your mother’s cousin’s great-grandmother and what she ate for breakfast – unless the focus of your memoir is the eating habits of your relatives and how those habits evolved over the years. By the way, this is a legitimate angle for a memoir.

It wasn’t my mother’s, however. She used the Depression as the background for her growing-up years. Afterwards, she describes different vignettes in light of this short backstory:

​The early 1930’s was a terrible time in this country, and in the world for that matter. The Depression affected almost everyone, and making a living was difficult if not impossible.

Toward the end of the memoir, my mother sets up her readers for hearing about the deaths of her parents and two of her siblings. I’d call this foreshadowing, as it is a statement rather than a memory:

​Life unfortunately also includes death, and that kind of loss we all bear differently.

Dialogue

You might think your memoir doesn’t lend itself to dialogue, but for argument’s sake allow me point out that you’d be surprised how many types of prose can be enhanced with dialogue. It’s not just for novels.

Dialogue makes a story come alive. It’s a wonderful device for biography, as it makes what could be dry facts more interesting. Although it’s almost impossible to reconstruct a conversation word for word, if you remember the gist, the tone, and the goal, you’ll be able to write a good facsimile.

One of the subscribers to this blog hired me to edit his autobiography, and his use of dialogue was outstanding. It enhanced what was already a fascinating book. I highly recommend employing dialogue in your memoir if at all possible.

My mother’s memoir has no dialogue, but she does mention a conversation between her and her brother when her sister was born. After he relayed the news from their father’s phone call that the baby was born, my mother wanted to know if it was a girl or a boy, and he answered, “I forgot to ask.”​

 

Respect your point of view

Remember that the angle and tone of a memoir, as well as the memories themselves and their interpretation, will be different for each writer, even when the same event is being described.

For example, my mother describes her first 7 years in Denver holding the “premium position” of youngest member of the family. Later, she reports that in Los Angeles​ during the Depression things were more complicated, with a baby sister to take care of and two working parents. She mentions a hands-on mother and Saturday outings when she lived in Denver, while she emphasizes hard work and an unselfish, special spirit permeating the house in Los Angeles.

On the other hand, my aunt (the baby sister) is an absolute font of memories about my grandmother’s sterling qualities and the wonderful things my grandmother did for her as she was growing up in Los Angeles.

Tell the truth

My late uncle once said that the family didn’t keep the Jewish dietary laws “because we couldn’t afford to,” while my mother used to say, “We always had enough food.” Her first cousin, however, once confided to me, “They were so poor during the Depression that they didn’t have enough to eat.” Personally, I don’t know who was right, and there might not be only one right answer. If my uncle and my mother’s cousin had written their own memoirs, they would have written about Depression-era Los Angeles as they experienced it. My 8-year-old mother might very well have ​had enough food, while perhaps her cousin thought that being served, say, one piece of chicken instead of two meant destitution.

The important thing for you as the memoir-writer is this: Tell the truth as you yourself experienced it.

***

I’d like to close with an excerpt from Anne Lamott’s outstanding book on writing,​ ​Bird by Bird:

​Life is like a recycling center, where all the concerns and dramas of humankind get recycled back and forth across the universe. But what you have to offer is your own sensibility…everything we need in order to tell our stories in a reasonable and exciting way already exists in each of us. Everything you need is in your head and memories.

Until next time,

Happy writing!

Deena

Deena Nataf

www.BulletproofWriting.com

Deena@BulletproofWriting.com

 

Filed Under: Writing Techniques

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Hi, I’m Deena Nataf

BulletproofWriting.comI’m a book and journal editor with thirty years of experience in the field. If you write to publish, I want to help you get that first draft written, that manuscript finished, and that book out the door. If you write for yourself, I’ll give you the tools you need to write clearly, write regularly, and write in your own voice. But no matter why you write, I’m passionate about helping you make your mark on the world.

You can see more about me here.

What Can I Help You With?

  • Writing Techniques
  • Comedy Grammar
  • Tips for the Writing Life
  • Uncategorized

Recent Posts

  • The Importance of a Great Title (and other important writing and grammar stuff) November 20, 2020
  • Get Ready (Fast) for NaNoWriMo 2020! October 30, 2020
  • Creating Subject-Specific Metaphors (plus news, discounts, and other fun stuff) September 3, 2020
  • Reading Ideas (and More!) for the Duration April 2, 2020
  • Keep Sane and Keep Writing During Lockdown March 24, 2020

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