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science writing

Voice and Fiction: Finding the Right Note

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Recently, I’ve been in negotiations with authors for projects that ultimately were not a good fit. Sometimes it was the author who made that call, and sometimes I’ve had the luxury of opting out myself, not because the manuscript was a cracked bell but because I personally could not make it sing. The author and I were, as my former boss the surface scientist used to say, out of phase.

What do you know about wave physics? It’s cool stuff. Next time you’re facing down some nasty writer’s block, go and do a quick search on the dynamics of sound and light. Light, obviously, is not only a wave, it’s also made of particles, but that makes the subject even more fascinating. And I digress, but digressions on wave–particle duality are exactly what you need when you’re stuck.

Back to voice. Every artist has a closetful of those, and in the beginning most artists try on different voices to see what fits. We all try to emulate our idols for a time, and then we develop something in reaction to what we hate, and the voices we keep tend to be an amalgam of the better parts of all those we discarded.

(Could there be more metaphors in this post? I’m thinking yes.)

My point? Is two-pronged. Prong 1: Writers, play with your voice. If a story isn’t quite working for you, try it with a different accent. Don’t be afraid to take on a verbal persona that doesn’t feel like you. You’ll find a balance between overkill and underwhelm and between out of control and overly contrived. Doing that work is what separates the aspiring from the published. Push the voice a little too far in any direction to find the boundaries of what works. Recognizing the “too far” point, not to mention the critical “not far enough” point, is a valuable skill that only comes with practice.

Prong 2: Editors and collaborators, don’t be afraid to say no. Work is nice, paychecks are good, but trust your instincts no matter how dire your finances. If you don’t think you can make something work, if it’s physically painful to read, don’t waste your and the author’s time. Cut that one loose like a bad first date, and move on to the next project.

Editors have voices too; they may not be immediately audible to the reader, or they may create a subtle harmony to draw attention to the force and talent of the writer. Proper harmonics send a shiver down the spine, and that is the feeling we’re all hoping for with every new project. When you feel that resonance, you’ll know that you’ve got hold of a sound project, one that will repay all the dewing and sanding and polishing.

 

usage writing

Notes from the Field: May 2014 Edition

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Oh, hey, where did April go? No matter; Happy May Day and Beltane to all! Let’s get on with it.

based off of vs. based on

I have ignored this usage issue for years because it seemed so obviously wrong and illogical. Every time I heard or read “based off of” I automatically inserted the word “jump” between “base” and “-d” because that was the only possible way it could make sense. This phrase has become a pervasive weed. Let’s apply some herbicide, right now.

Imagine a base, a foundation. It’s what you build on; it supports stuff. If you put something off of a base, you are removing it, so it’s no longer supported or connected to the base. Yes?

The film was based on a bestselling novel.
Your conclusion is based on faulty data.

in behalf vs. on behalf

In behalf of means “for the benefit of.” On behalf of means “in place of” or “representing.”

The defense attorney entered a plea on behalf of his client/on his client’s behalf.
We raised money in behalf of the orphanage/in the orphanage’s behalf.

octopuses vs. octopi

Octopus is not, nor has it ever been, a Latin word. Some well-meaning or possibly just uptight grammarians a while back decided that octopi was more correct because it looked like the legitimate Latin plurals, and so it entered the literature. You will still find marine biologists who prefer octopi when discussing multiple species of octopus, and it isn’t strictly speaking incorrect, but in most cases octopuses is just fine.You may also go with octopods for more informal writing.

Pegasus

…is this guy:

 

220px-The-Winged-HorseHis dad was Poseidon. His mom was Medusa. Somehow a sea god and a great-granddaughter of Chaos created an immaculate winged stallion. Just go with it. My point here is that Pegasus was an individual, not a species. If you’re talking about winged horses like the cutie things in Fantasia, call them winged horses, not Pegasus or Pegasi or Pegasuses.

Thanks for reading!

writing

Character Building

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Here’s something I’ve been noticing lately in the work that has been crossing my desktop: there’s a right way and a wrong way to create a memorable and fascinating character. Actually, there are several ways to do it wrong, but one stands out in conjunction with the right way.

To illustrate, I collated a list of great characters, culled from many other lists (type “best fictional characters of all time” into the search box and you’ll get my sources), very scientifically weighted, and also skewed heavily toward characters I care about, with one or two exceptions (I honestly can’t get excited about Batman, but he serves my purposes right now). Here it is, with the characters arranged in order of the number of other lists that featured them:

  1. Sherlock Holmes
  2. Darth Vader
  3. Humbert Humbert
  4. Buffy Summers
  5. Harry Potter
  6. Hannibal Lecter
  7. Han Solo
  8. Emma Bovary
  9. Hamlet
  10. Elizabeth Bennet
  11. Mrs. Norris
  12. The Doctor
  13. Tyler Durden
  14. Bartleby
  15. Ahab
  16. James Bond
  17. The Dude
  18. Jay Gatsby
  19. Leopold Bloom
  20. Batman

What do you notice about the list? Some are heroes, some are villains, some have a foot in both categories, but what makes them all interesting is that they are multifaceted. Even the most depraved (Lecter, Humbert, Ahab) have a complex back story and a brilliantly wicked intelligence. Mrs. Norris, in her banality and manipulation, is more terrifying than many villains who are far more bloodthirsty.

The heroes on the list, the ones who solve the crimes and save the world over and over, have dark sides. They do bad things on a regular basis, and they are surprisingly not all that tortured about it. We also have the tragic heroes, the ones who can’t even save themselves (Hamlet, Bovary, Gatsby, Bartleby); they interest us because of their flaws, the things that seal their fate, the traits that unsettle us because we might have them too.

Finally, there are the in-between characters, the narrators, the sidekicks, the unintentional heroes: Bloom, Solo, Lebowski, Bennet, Durden (he’s a fun one because he gets into some good old-fashioned Victorian doubling, just like Dr. Frankenstein and his monster). I’d add Potter to the list because, although he’s nominally a save-the-world hero, in fact he’s a dumbass, making colossal mistakes on a regular basis from which he is saved by his confederates and assorted dei ex machina.

What description fits none of these characters? What quality does not appear on the list? Perfection. Not one is entirely good or entirely bad. Not one is preserved from making mistakes or dumb decisions, from being occasionally afraid, or vain, or stubborn. No villain is 100 percent unadulterated evil, all the time, because that’s boring.

The best characters are those we learn about over time, like the best friends and lovers. They surprise us. They are unpredictable, layered, and remarkable. They leave us wondering.

 

writing

What You Love

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Happy Imbolc/Candlemas/Lunar New Year!

A few nights ago, I had dinner with a chef. He didn’t make the dinner; he just happened to be there. Someone at the table asked him a question, and his wife interceded with, “Don’t ask him—he hates food.” The chef elaborated that he didn’t so much hate food, just the people he worked with who saw it as a commodity, as a budget item. I could see how that would frustrate a person who has dedicated his career to creating meals with respect for the ingredients and the end users. It’s difficult to love something and watch other people treat it like a plastic bag.

But you probably already know this if you are a writer of any kind. Your story, your science, whatever you’re putting out there for people to read is drafted with love and respect for the raw materials: words. The right words get the job done, whether that job is explaining a newly hatched theory or making someone cry. If you don’t love the words, if you don’t cringe when you hear people abuse them, it’s possible that you are in the wrong business.

If you aren’t using the correct words to say what you mean, then you have no idea what you’re saying, and neither does anyone else. The grant application is misunderstood and denied. The novel excerpt is scanned and rejected because agents can spot a callous amateur in less time than it takes to hit Send on your query letter.

I could ramble on, but dozens of semioticians, semanticists, linguists, and my fellow pedants have thoroughly harrowed this ground already, so I’ll settle for some entertaining examples of linguistic ignorance (underlining is all mine).

  1. “‘Bill Stepien has not broken any laws,’ the lawyer, Kevin H. Marino, wrote, arguing that the subpoena violates his client’s rights against self-incrimination and unreasonable search and seizure.” New York Times article
  2. “It wasn’t until the Renaissance that true theater enjoyed a rebirth,” Kaplan CSET Subject Examination for Teachers
  3. “As they say, the problem with the French is they have no word for entrepreneur.” Newsweek article

To be fair, the first quotation is from an attorney, and they get paid for intentional obfuscation, but it’s still worth mentioning. The others? No excuse. I would also like to point out that all three examples were brought to my attention by a person who learned English as a second language. This fortifies my theory that the best way to learn about language is to study a different one.

Let me contrast my usage shaming with a reference to some of the most remarkable nonfiction I’ve discovered in decades. I say discovered because I didn’t actually read it; it’s from a TV series called The Story of Film: An Odyssey. You can watch it on Netflix and probably some other places. It was written, directed, and narrated by a guy named Mark Cousins. Watching it will not only give you a thorough yet condensed education on the history of film, it will, if you have any sensitivity to the language at all, make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck the way they do when you hear the very best lines of poetry. The film is based on a book, which I suspect would be a joy to read, but watching the series gives you the moving images and the words together. Remember “Poetry makes nothing happen”? Film makes light happen.

Anyway, love your work. Learn to do it mindfully and with respect, or find something more suitable. Accept that other people will stomp all over it and react with hostility and scorn when you try to educate them. Feel free to complain about it in the comments; I understand.

writing

Notes from the Field, New Year’s Resolution Edition

Updated on

Happy New Year!

New Year’s resolutions—I don’t bother with ’em, but if you do, and one of yours is to be a better writer in 2014, here are a few useful tips. I added some audiovisual aids because you’re probably nursing a hangover and will appreciate something to look at besides a box of text. You’re welcome.

fiction novel—This is a redundant term, and using it on a query will earn you a form rejection in record time. You might not even get the “Thank you for submitting” boilerplate, just an email with the words Fat Chance. A novel is a work of fiction; if a book-length manuscript is about real people or events, then it is nonfiction, unless you made part of it up, in which case you may call it historical fiction as long as all the people you write about are dead or you have a strong legal team.

ellipses—These can be tricky, and I see a lot of people overusing them in place of other punctuation. An ellipsis in academic writing is used to replace part of a citation that is not relevant or too long. If the excised part of the citation comes at the end of a sentence, use four dots: an ellipsis plus a period.

Example: “Hey, they aren’t half…bad.” (Statler and Waldorf, 2002).

In fiction or literary nonfiction, an ellipsis may be used sparingly to indicate a pause in dialogue or a trailing off at the end of a statement. If dialogue ends abruptly or is interrupted by another character, use an em dash. Like any other writing trick, overuse of ellipses results in diminished effect.

Bad example: “I think…it was the…old man…who killed me!”

Better examples:

Joe spoke haltingly, fighting for breath. “I think it was the old man who killed me!”

“In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the… Anyone? Anyone?… the Great Depression, passed the… Anyone? Anyone?”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhiCFdWeQfA?rel=0-A&w=320&h=240]

 

The Player: The old man thinks he’s in love with his daughter.
Rosencrantz: Good God. We’re out of our depths here.
The Player: No, no, no! He hasn’t got a daughter! The old man thinks he’s in love with his daughter.
Rosencrantz: The old man is?
The Player: Hamlet…in love…with the old man’s daughter…the old man…thinks.

(Skip to 2:06, or enjoy the full clip if you’ve got time.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk7V8f6E5po?rel=0-A&w=320&h=240]

since and while—These are words that indicate the passage of time. If you are using them to mean because, whereas, or although, stop.

Incorrect:
Since you asked, I’m packing up your stuff.
While that is a valid point, I disagree.

Correct:
I’ve been living here since 1993.
While you were sleeping, I kidnapped your goldfish.
Because you never kiss me goodnight any more, I’m moving out.
Although you make a mean cup of coffee, that’s not a strong enough basis for continuing our relationship.

chaise lounge—I know, I know; it started as a simple typo, but that’s no reason to let it fester in our language. Chaise longue means “long chair” in French. It rhymes with “fez wrong,” only you need to lengthen that o  and put a little Long Island on the ng. Lounge is what you do on the chaise longue, or possibly the room in which you display this article of furniture.

influencer—This word is very popular right now, and it’s making me crazy. Influence is both a noun and a verb. It means “flow into,” in the sense of a stream or small river joining a larger river, bringing its unique pH, native plants and animals, and sediments with it. An influence is an addition to someone or something that alters content, direction, or velocity. Influencer is a superfluous, unnecessary, and illogical formation, and you can tell all the thought leaders who are tossing it around that I said so.

Thanks for reading, and best wishes for prosperity and published work in 2014.

writing

Just get there already.

Updated on

Here’s an issue I’ve been dealing with lately: the minute description of trivial actions in fiction. I call it telescoping, stretching out something that can easily fit into a smaller space. The following is an example, entirely from my head and not from a manuscript I’ve been reading lately (certainly not yours).

I got up. I walked to the fridge. I opened the door, looked inside, and got a beer. Then I turned around and went over to the counter to find an opener.

This entire passage could be replaced by “I got myself a beer.” Even this abbreviated version, which conveys every nuance of the previous example, is unnecessary unless it relates to the plot in some way. Is the narrator an alcoholic? Is it 9:30 in the morning? Does the narrator, unable to locate a bottle opener, attempt to open said beer with a bread knife and sever a finger, requiring a trip to the ER, where he meets his love interest/nemesis/long-lost son? If the answer is no, cut the beer. Get yourself a beer (unless it’s 9:30 in the morning or you’re driving while writing, which I don’t recommend) and figure out what you want to make happen in this paragraph. Writing just to get words on the page is fine, but go back and cut the filler on your next revision day. Fiction is not third-grade arithmetic; you don’t need to show your work.

My point? Trust your readers to follow you. If your hero is watching TV in one room when the doorbell rings, the next line doesn’t have to tell us that she got up and walked to the door and opened it. “The doorbell rang. It was Eddie, the punk kid from downstairs.” We get it. If you’re afraid that readers will get lost or bored unless you take every little step with them, maybe you need to rethink your story. Anything that is tedious to write will be several orders of magnitude more so to read. An agent won’t bother, nor will any disinterested* shopper perusing your author site and considering dropping $8.99 on your self-published masterpiece.

Just get there; we’re right behind you.

*disinterested means unbiased, open to possibilities, as opposed to uninterested, which means “mind made up already, Do Not Want.” Today you get two for one.

writing

Notes from the Field, November 2013 Emergency Intervention Edition

Updated on

OK, this is serious. Like this guy, I don’t have pet peeves, I have…other feelings, and this usage issue is a major cause of them.

horn vs. antler—These are two different body parts found on entirely different species. The terms are not interchangeable.

  • A horn is a permanent growth on the skull of an animal. The horns of cows, goats, and sheep are made of an inner core of bone with an outer casing of keratinized skin. Keratin is the stuff that composes hooves, nails, and hair. Rhino horns are also made of keratin. Horns occur on the male and female of the species.

cow

  • Antlers are annual growths made of bone that occur, with one exception, on male deer, moose, and similar species (cervids). Female reindeer are that exception. They grow in the spring, covered by a thick, velvety skin of blood vessels. The velvet dries up and falls off, and the buck uses his antlers to show off and score mates. Cooler weather rolls around, and the antlers fall off. Some people collect them and turn them into furniture or knife handles.

220px-Red_deer_stag_2009_denmark

Bottom line: antlers are shed; horns are for life. Deer do not have horns, unless they are very special deer that have formed a brass quartet, and even in that case, those things on their heads are still antlers. Are we clear? Can I look forward to never seeing another sentence about deer horns, please?

writing

Notes from the Field, October 2013 Edition

Updated on

 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk?rel=0-A&w=320&h=240]

unique: This word means one thing, literally—it is an adjective meaning singular, that there is only one of its kind, anywhere, ever. As such, to add a qualifier to it, for example, very, or even worse, sort of, is logically absurd. A thing either is or isn’t unique. Most of the time it isn’t. Some words that really mean what you’re using unique for include:

  • rare
  • distinctive
  • innovative
  • novel
  • bizarre
  • idiosyncratic
  • particular

Use those instead.

conscious/conscience: I suspect that this is more often a misspelling than a usage error. Just in case, conscious is an adjective meaning aware. The noun form is consciousness, which is not the same as conscience. Conscience is a noun meaning your inner moral or ethical guide, the internal compass that directs (or should direct) your behavior. Consciousness and conscience both deal with awareness, but the latter specifically addresses your behavior. The former just means you’re awake. Do not let your conscious be your guide.

neither…nor: You can use nor in a couple of ways, but I’m seeing a combination of the two ways, which is sloppy and nonsensical.

  • Bad example: I didn’t want apples nor oranges for breakfast.
  • Good example: He drank neither beer nor wine, only whiskey. [Note: You can add a second nor in here for a three-item list.]
  • Good example: The meal was not served on time, nor was it prepared particularly well. [Note that this example can easily be reworded into the structure of the first good example, which is often preferred, but sometimes this second way is more emphatic.]

When in doubt, check a dictionary; you can’t always count on Inigo Montoya to tell you these things.

 

books writing

My Cat Can Save Your Story

Updated on

For some reason, I can’t read books about writing books. I went to graduate school to learn how to get better at writing books, and do you know what we read there? Actual books, about silkworms or falling in love or dying in wars. That would be my recommendation to anyone else. One exception I’ve found is books about writing screenplays, maybe because most screenwriters are more transparent about why they write: it’s about getting paid, not so much about honing one’s craft or changing the world with the magic of prose. Also, screenplays have more rules than novels; they are defined by their form like a villanelle or a 12-bar blues progression (more about which later).

Anyway, I’ve found two excellent, intelligent, and above all short books about how to write a better screenplay that translate very well to novel writing. Neither of these books, singly or together, will turn you into a rich and famous author, but they will at least buy you a ticket in the lottery.

mystory

 

My Story Can Beat Up Your Story, by Jeffrey Alan Schechter

This book is invaluable when it comes to writing strong, identifiable characters and compelling situations. It’s amazing how easy it is when you reduce your story to the simplest possible terms, which you will need to do anyway if you want to write a successful pitch, more about which later.

 

savethecat

 

Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder

This is another quick and easy read that will make you want to smack yourself in the face and rhetoricate*,”It’s so obvious! How did I not think of that?” Seriously. Got a plot problem? This book will show you how to fix it.

If the usual how-to books and “writers on writing” monographs written by famous authors when they were strapped for cash or ideas work for you, great! Use them. If you find them as tiresome as I do and have limited patience and discretionary reading time, try these out and let me know what you think. If you love movies and have an encyclopedic knowledge of plot twists, so much the better.

*No, I did not make that word up. I thought I had, but it turns out someone else got there first.

writing

Notes from the Field, July 2013 Edition

Updated on

This post deals with common usage errors I’ve run across recently. If you’re a little unclear on any of these, don’t feel bad: many highly educated writers and professionals are blatantly misusing them. Now you don’t have to be one of them.

affect/effect—Affect as a verb means to change; as a noun it is most commonly used to describe a mental or emotional state, often one that is consciously put on to impress others (affected). You find that one frequently in psychology texts (lack of affect = showing no response to stimuli). Effect as a verb also means change in the sense of “to make something happen.” As a noun it describes the result of an action on something: a baseball affects a window, and the effects are broken glass and an insurance claim.

  • Verb examples: Education is the best tool to effect social change, and its benefits affect everyone in the community.
  • Noun examples: Her affect is world-weary and sophisticated, but its effect on people is anything but complimentary.

alright/all right—Alright is a throat-clearing term like OK, hey, look, or dude. It has no meaning except to draw attention to what follows. All right describes something that is not wrong. It may not be great either, but it will do. OK fits both of these meanings and can be used interchangeably. If in doubt, go with OK.

  • Examples: Alright, you guys, that game wasn’t the best you’ve ever played, but it was all right.

All right can also have its literal meaning of great, fantastic, couldn’t be better, and of course in a test-taking context if you answered no questions incorrectly, you got them all right. To stray into British usage for a moment, all right used as an interrogative takes on another connotation in conversation to mean anything from “Can we stop arguing now?” to “Have you got your head out of your arse yet?”

compose/comprise—Compose means to make up or put together. Think of composing music. Comprise means to embrace or contain. This is so simple, yet it’s easily the most common usage mistake I find. It is most frequently misused in the passive voice.

  • Examples: The city is composed of seven wards, each of which comprises a police department, fire station, public school district, and at least one park.

lie/lay—Lie is an intransitive verb, which means it has no object. Lay is a transitive verb and does require an object. Colloquial uses such as “Now I lay me down to sleep” and “Lay myself down” are no doubt adding to the confusion, but in fact this is a reflexive use of the verb, and the reflexive pronoun is an object.

  • Present-tense examples: Please lay the books on the table while I go lie down for a while.

More confusion arises because the past participle of lie is lay. The past participle of lay is laid.

  • Past-tense examples: I laid out the cards for solitaire after Mother lay down for a nap.

whether (or not)—Use whether when discussing two options, either of which is viable. Only add or not to indicate that the outcome of an event will remain unchanged regardless of the decision in question. If the meaning of a sentence stays the same if you remove the phrase or not, then leave it out: He can’t decide whether or not to get ice cream.

  •  Examples: I don’t know whether I should stay or go; Dan is leaving whether I go or not.

Questions? Suggestions for further discussion? Leave them in the comments section below.