Taven Moore's Blog, page 44

“Danger” Words Lurking in your Manuscript

Danger Words

They hide in the shadows, huddled between mild-mannered prepositional phrases.

You may not even know they’re waiting.

Even if you see them, you may not see the darkness pooling between them, growing stronger and more insidious with each repetition.

Enough with the creepy, get on with it.

Right, right.

“Danger” words are words that weaken your writing.

The most obvious of these is “was” (and other variations of the “to be” verb). Overuse of weak, passive verbs when stronger, aggressive verbs could be used is an example of danger. I covered those in Vampire Verbs.

“Very” Bad

The word “very” is often misused. If someone is “very happy” they are “ecstatic” or “joyful”. Those are POWER words. If someone is “very pretty” they are “gorgeous” or “beautiful” or “stunning”.

Be on the lookout for “very weak” descriptors.

By the same token, if anything is “really” anything (really awesome, really pretty, really scary) that’s a definite warning sign. “Very” is weak. “Really” is actually incorrect unless it’s being used to indicate sloppy speech patterns in a character.

Roaming Eyeballs

Sometimes, the danger words seem fine to you. Someone may point them out and you scoff. “That’s not a problem,” you argue. “Everyone does that! I see it all the time!”

For example. “Roaming eyeballs”. This is when you make someone’s “eyes” travel the room. I used to think this was an overly-sensitive issue. Nobody’s going to read that as if the eyes are ACTUALLY roaming, right?

And then I saw it once, and it totally ruined a perfectly tense scene.

“Her eyes fell to the table and danced away from the murder weapon as if afraid to go near it.”

BAM. The INSTANT you imagine someone’s eyeballs falling onto the table, the scene is ruined. Once they start dancing, you might as well close up shop. Your gritty thriller is now a comedy.

One way that I’ve been trying to shore up this weak spot in my own writing is to replace “eyes” with “glance” or “gaze” as often as I can.

Repeated, Weak Expressions

Brows furrow, lips narrow, shoulders shrug, jaws tighten, girls sigh.

Innocuous, innocent actions, right?

Right.

Until it becomes ALL YOUR CHARACTERS DO.

Until you realize you only have one, maybe two ways to “show” anger. Good job knowing that saying “she’s angry” is weak. It’s only marginally better to have your character “clench her fists” every. single. time. she’s angry, though.

Suggestion: The Emotion Thesaurus (Thank you, Ted! *HUGS*)

Empower Your Writing

Scene: The heroine thought the hero dead. She loved him, but only came to understand just how much when she realized she would have to give him up in order to save her world from destruction. Miraculously, there he was, and there she was, their entire future spread out in front of them.

She smiles at him.

Do…do you think maybe that smile deserves some wordcount? That maybe it’s more than just a smile, it’s a welling up of emotions that wrung out her heart, fluttered around in her stomach, and clutched at her throat so hard she could barely think straight? That her hands were shaking and her breath came in short gasps and she could hardly make her knees bend the right way to start running at him, slowly at first and then faster and faster until she thrust the ground away from her, unable to bear the distance between them? That when he looked at her and wonder spread across his face, that she smiled and laughed and cried all at once and when they kissed it wasn’t a kiss so much as a re-affirmation that yes, they could touch each other again, skin-to-skin not once but again and again for so long as they breathed?

Don’t just smile. Don’t just shrug. Don’t just quirk an eyebrow … not when it matters. Not when you want to THRUST your emotions off the page and into your reader’s hearts. When you want their hearts to beat just as erratically as your heroine’s, when a smile is more than just a smile.

An expression is a danger word when it deflates the tension of a scene.

But Only When It’s Important

When your smiles really are just vague smiles, don’t empower them. Your hero enters a coffee shop and orders his usual and the girl behind the counter smiles flirtatiously.

Let her smile and flirt and leave it if that’s the last we’re going to see of her, and if the flirting doesn’t matter then the smile probably doesn’t either.

Every expression in your story should matter. If the hero is a bit of a playboy and likes the attention, the smile can matter as a characterization issue. Or if he doesn’t like it, hates the attention, hates the crowds … that’s also characterization.

But don’t push that smile into being something it’s not by showing me the way her lips thinned and the faint shimmer of her pink lipgloss and the dance of light on her eyes as the skin around them crinkles in genuine interest.

An artificially beefed-up emotion is just as much a danger as the deflating emotions.

And Don’t Repeat Power Words

Any word that IMPACTS is a power word.

^ That sentence up there? “Impacts” is a power word.

It weakens the impact of a power word to be overused. This is why we need to expand our vocabulary, so we don’t use the word “Massive” to describe too many things. It’s a great word, but the fourth time you read it within a few chapters, it stops feeling quite so important, you know?

Terror. Agony. Grief. Bliss. Horror.

I was horrified as I saw the horrific skull leering at me from behind horrible horizons. (Okay, that’s a bit much, but you see what I mean).

I pick on the word “Horror” because it’s one of my crutches. I overuse it, along with a dozen others.

Keep a list of your own crutches and watch out for them.

But, And, Then

Some might call this a pet peeve of mine, but I’m going to lay it down any way.

I do not like sentences beginning with “And” and “But”. I am rarely convinced that the sentence needs it, and more often I find that it’s done out of laziness on the part of the author. I accept it in speech, but I think it weakens prose.

Also, any where that “and then” appears, in 99% of the cases, the sentence is actually either an “and” (meaning it happened concurrently) or a “then” (indicating a precedence of actions).

It’s muddy writing.

ALSO, the word “and” can often be abused.

“Tom and Jill went to church.” No problem.
“They brought their bibles, their rosaries, and the homemade bomb along.” Still good. Well, maybe not for the church, but for the sentence, I’m good.
“Hearts filled with anger and hate, they slid the bomb underneath the pew and made their way to the exit.” NOPE NOPE.


It’s weak to tell me they were filled with anger and hate. (Not part of the example originally, but worth noting)
You, the author, couldn’t be bothered to describe “anger and hate” in a better way. You couldn’t choose the word you wanted, so you slapped a list of descriptors (and sometimes actions) in there. PICK. You’re the writer. Put some effort into it. What are you really trying to say? Often, “and” is used to allow lazy writing, but the end result actually leeches attention away from both “anger” and “hate” and leaves you with a weaker descriptor trying to do too much.
Actually, they did one thing (hiding the bomb) followed by the second thing (leaving). They didn’t do them at the same time. You want a “, then” there, author.

The List

My growing list of “danger” words to look for in manuscripts when doing my own editing. (I respect the time of my editor far too much to hand over a rough draft. I ALWAYS edit first when it comes to my writing. No matter what Steve may tell you, I swear, I try to clean it up first. *grin*)

very
really
smile
eye
lip
was
and then
and
but
brow
sigh
shrug
jaw
my list of power words
any new power words not on my original list, which I introduced in this story and thus need to make sure I don’t repeat

How To Use It

This is where the find/replace function on your word processor of choice is going to come in handy.

The first thing I do is take each of my danger words and do a find on it. I want a count of the number of times it’s used. Some processors will tell you after a “find” but others may require a “find” and “replace” on the same text (net change, zero, but it does tell you how many times it replaced something).

Write down your starting count, then go through for every single word and read the surrounding text. Make sure you are happy with the way things are and there’s not a better way to phrase something.

At the end, I’d do the find/replace bit again and see how many danger zones I reduces my manuscript by.

Please note that this should only be done AFTER REVISION. It’s a waste of time to do this kind of word-level editing on a sentence, paragraph, or chapter that may get cut or rewritten.

Your Danger Words?

Do you have any other danger words you watch out for when editing?

 

 

Related posts:

First Fifty Words
Sketchbooks for Writers
One Word

[Perry] Sex Part 2: The Technique

Alright, so last week, we talked about the place that sex has in literature.

Today we’re going to talk about how to write sex scenes.

Ack! Children, avert your eyes!

Basically speaking, there are several kinds of sex scenes you might run into and interestingly enough, I find that they have direct links to counterparts in films.

In order of severity, these are as follows: The Lion King, the Rothfuss, the Dresden, and the Hamilton (Yes, I know that list makes little to no sense but bear with me).

The Lion King is a method of inserting a sex scene more as an implication rather than anything else. There’s a moment in The Lion King where Simba and Nala are romping around after having discovered each other again. They end up lying down in a bed of soft grasses, looking at each other with big gooey eyes while “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” is playing in the background…then the scene cuts away.

While there’s never anything said and the act is never referred to, watching the movie again through mature eye kind of drops the implication into your lap with a nudge and a wink.

This type of “did that…did that really happen?” sort of scene is best used for material of a child-friendly nature. You don’t want your primary audience to realize what’s happened but, at the same time, you want to kind of give your more discerning and mature audience a nudge.

The Rothfuss is the kind of scene one might find in The Wise Man’s Fear. The act of sex is referred to explicitly…but there’re a lot of euphemisms shrouding it. You’re told in no uncertain terms that sex has just happened between two parties but you’re left purposefully in the dark about the act. In a movie, this would be accomplished by having someone lead their partner into the bedroom before cutting away to a shot of the outside of the house with maybe a bit of moaning or squeaking bed springs to announce that something is going on.

This method should primarily be used in a situation where it’s important for the audience to know for sure that people have had sex, but it’s not important to know exactly how it all went down. In the case of The Wise Man’s Fear, it’s a delicate situation because it’s important for the reader to see Kvothe in a more grown up light. Seeing that the character has matured is a way to make it easier to stomach some of the questionable actions he takes in the latter half of the book. At the same time, because the sex doesn’t really serve any other purpose, it’s left intentionally vague so as not to be overly gratuitous.

One step up the ladder we have The Dresden. This is where things start to get a little bit…steamy. An example of this kind of sex scene can be seen in a movie like Underworld: Evolution. There is a clip to the aforementioned scene on Youtube but be warned, though nothing explicit is shown, it probably comes down squarely in the NSFW camp.

These types of scenes are best used in work of a more visceral nature. It tends to be used in situations where like the Rothfuss, the audience needs to know explicitly that sex occurred. At the same time, the characters or the style of writing itself needs to focus a little more on sensation and feelings throughout the piece for it to be believable. With the Dresden files, Jim Butcher goes to some pretty great lengths to let you know exactly how much it hurts when Harry takes a hit. Dresden spends a lot of time feeling the aches and pains of his body throughout the novels and when a sex scene occurs, it sort of makes sense to not suddenly put the brake on the emotional details.

Most of the visceral sensations are conveyed through imagery. While there’s a lot of words and images devoted to describing how it feels to slide a hand over bare skin or to meet a hungry kiss, there’s little in the way of details and specifics. There’s a lot of wordcount describing how the act feels without mentioning exactly which body part did what.

Referencing the link to the clip from Underworld again, we see a lot of similarities in the techniques. From what we’re shown, it’s VERY clear what’s going on and that both parties are very into it…but at the same time, nothing is shown that can’t be seen on a beach (not including nudist beaches). It’s a very fine line to walk and the authors that make a habit of it tend to do it fairly well.

There are those and leap and bound over the line though and for that situation we have The Hamilton. Named after the author of the Anita Blake urban fantasy/erotica series, this technique leaves nothing to the imagination. To draw a comparison to a film, one would have to reference the ones that feature gynecological closeups and sex at the drop of a hat.

To be clear, I am in no way saying there is anything wrong with literature that describes the act in lurid detail. There’s a reason why a novel like 50 Shades of Grey made it onto the New York Times bestseller list and it isn’t because of it’s thrilling plot and deep characters.

If you feel the need to write this type of sex scene in your novel, there isn’t really much advice I can share with you other than to go for broke and describe everything. Describe every movement, every body part in detail and how all of that makes the participants feel and you’ll likely be on the mark.

The only cautionary thing I would say with regard to this type of scene is to be very sure of what you’re writing before you include it. These types of detailed scenes thrown at an audience that’s not expecting it does NOT come across as titillating or exciting. By and large, they come off as gratuitous and skimmable material instead and that is very much not something you want.

By setting up a story, world and characters built around some explicitly sexy moments, it’s possible to pull off something wonderful that doesn’t come across as just smut (see Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey). But without that preparation to support it, it can be hard to sneak a scene like this in a story and make it feel like it belongs.

Don’t be afraid to write sex into your stories! Just take some time to think about what kind of scene is appropriate for the world, the characters and the novel itself and things will turn out alright.

Related posts:

[Perry] Using An Unreliable Narrator
[Perry] The Power of a Good Threat
[Perry] Magic Systems: Arbitrary Versus Rules

Saucy Chronicles : Dragons — Now Available in Print!

Amazon’s CreateSpace has finished the approval process, and you can now purchase the second Saucy Chronicles book from Amazon in deadtree format.

The Dragons: Saucy Chronicles II

The Kindle version is still available, as is the first volume of unicorn stories. Find them all here!

Related posts:

There Be Dragons!
Saucy Chronicles 1: The Unicorns Now Available!
Call for Amazon Reviews

Dear Tami – A Request

Basically, I am looking for blog fodder.

I’m about as qualified to give my opinion on the internet as anyone else, and I’ve done an awful lot of research and study on various topics.

So! If you have a question you might want answered OR a topic you’d like to see a blog post on, just toss me an email at tami@tamimoore.com and let me know what you’d like answered (and if you’d prefer to remain anonymous or if you’d like a link to your site).

I will answer all questions, though perhaps not the way the asker intended. (Anne or Brad, if you ask me philosophical or mathematical questions, you can be prepared for a non-serious answer).

Things I can probably help with:

Writing (plotting, outlining, worldbuilding, etc)
Reading
Dogs (breeds and training)
Horses
Tarot Cards
Programming
Art
Positivity and Motivation
Food (especially gluten free and dietary restrictions, including low carb, keto, primal, and anti-inflammatory)

And I reserve the right to Phone A Friend to help answer a question I don’t know the answer to. =]

 

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Blog Preference Request
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There Be Dragons!

Saucy Chronicles

The time has finally arrived!

The second Saucy Ink Short Story collection is now available for purchase on Amazon, in both kindle and print format.

Nine new and different stories about one of the most beloved creatures in all fantasy: DRAGONS!.

We’ve got fire-breathing dragons, shape-shifting dragons, metal dragons, and adorable little hero dragons. We’ve got urban fantasy, high fantasy, humorous stories, deadly mysteries, and more!

Taven’s Story

My own story is Love’s Champion, an urban fantasy featuring a cowboy riding one of Hephaestus’s metal dragons to pay an official visit to Aphrodite’s Champion.

LOVE’S CHAMPION: As an Arbiter for the Gods and Goddesses of the Greek pantheon, Nathaniel was no stranger to their squabbles, both large and petty. Even so, he found himself ill-prepared when a “simple favor” turned into a battle that forced him to question the gap between the letter of the law and his own moral code.

Perry’s Story

That’s right! You’ve been enjoying his blog posts for the last mumble-mumble months, and now you finally get the opportunity to read some of his writing!

Perry’s short story is entitled Final Flight, and was a touching and creative weaving of points of view. The narrative switches between the rider – moving forward through a tense aerial battle, and the dragon – moving backward to culminate in the day the dragon and rider bonded.

It was amazing and it made me cry every single time I read it.

FINAL FLIGHT: Bound by ties that are stronger than blood, man and dragon join to fight a common foe: one that would use dragons not as partners, but as slaves

Buy The Collection!

Kindle Version
Print Version: coming soon!

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Updates and a Choose Anecdote

Writing Status, July 2012

[Perry] Sex Part 1: The Purpose

Let’s talk about sex.

A few months ago, I attended a reading and signing in town by Patrick Rothfuss. During the reading he was asked a question about the reactions he got from his decision to have his main character, Kvothe, indulge in several acts of a carnal nature in The Wise Man’s Fear.

He mentioned that a lot of readers sort of got up in arms about the issue and that he was baffled to understand why.

During the course of the novel, Kvothe kills around thirty to forty people, some of them in some pretty heinous ways using sympathy. Also during the course of the novel, he…”romps” a few times with a a fairy sex goddess, a tavern wench and two ninjas. 

One of these events garnered Rothfuss a lot of hatemail from outraged readers who stated that on no uncertain terms would they be caught dead buying his books ever again. The other event passed by without a single word of protest.

Can you guess which was which?

I found this story a little disturbing. Having read the book (as I’m sure many of us have?), I’d have to say that any sex that was present in the book was of the ‘fade out’ variety. It’s the sort of scene where if it was in a movie, you would see a man and woman coming together to kiss and maybe start to unbutton a shirt before fading out to black and then scene would fade back in with the two of them naked in bed (with the covers pulled up demurely).

Contrasted against that, you have some fairly descriptive depictions of violence. There’s a fair bit of blood spilled, torturous wounds inflicted and even the desecration of dead bodies to achieve an end.

And of these two, the first one is the more disturbing one? PG-rated sex between two consensual adults (don’t forget the consenting fairy sex goddess) is MORE disturbing than murder, torture and the desecration of the dead?

This isn’t even taking into account the implied off screen rape of two minors. Yeah, you read that correctly. And you know what? Of all of the events of the novel, THAT was the bit that made me a little uncomfortable. The sex didn’t bother me and the violence didn’t make me bat an eye but the whole suggested rape thing got me a tad squeamish.

But according to him, nobody wrote him any hatemail because of the rape.

No, what really gets certain people’s blood boiling is that the main character has had sex a few times.

I think there’s something strange to be said for a culture that tends to find a hazy depiction of sex more disturbing than explicit violence and gore or implied rape.

Stepping off of my soapbox for a moment, I want to take a look at the question lurking beneath the rhetoric: What is the purpose of sex in a story?

Given the relationship between sex and death, it probably wouldn’t surprise you guys to know that I feel the same way about characters having sex as I do about characters dying.

I think that by and large, many people shy away from the idea of their characters dying and having sex just because. It might be out of a sense of trying to protect the image of the character you’ve created or it might be because you’re not sure you’ll handle it well. Despite those very valid worries though, I say if the situation calls for it, give it a shot.

Just like killing off main characters, I’m most definitely NOT advocating that you throw some sex in there just because you feel you should. That just leads to a whole host of awkward moments that will probably have your reader glossing and skimming past.

But there are cases where a bit of sex feels perfectly natural to include. Our characters are just as human as we are…well, you know, unless they’re like…not.

Even if we don’t engage in the act directly, thoughts of a sexual nature cross our minds probably at least once or twice a day, even if it’s nothing more than seeing an attractive stranger walking past on the street and reacting to it. Considering also that many of our characters spend an inordinate amount of time in high stress situations with all of that extra adrenaline and heightened emotions all around…well, I’m just saying that I don’t think a few stray sexual thoughts or impulses would be unwarranted.

Many readers relate best to characters that they can see a bit of themselves in and a character that’s 100% pristine and pure of thought and deed no matter what the situation feels as fake as a villain who has a handlebar mustache and ties virgins to train tracks just because he can (see the difference between Elene and Viridiana in The Night Angel).

In closing, to be clear, I’m not saying that there HAS to be sex. All I’m saying is that if your characters grow and develop relationships that might lead to sex, be open to the idea that including it might help strengthen your characters and make them seem more real instead of dismissing it out of hand to keep the story and characters ‘clean.’

 

 

Related posts:

[Perry] Everyone Dies
[Perry] Using An Unreliable Narrator
[Perry] The Power of a Good Threat

New Art – Canine Adventure!

New art available over on my flickr account. A GIANT commission for a lovely (and patient woman) of her various pet dogs off on an adventure.

Click to embiggen.

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New Art!
A New Place For Art
New Short Story : Theodore’s Adventure

New Blog Theme

I was looking for something clean, simple, fast, and mobile-friendly.

It’s not 100% done yet, but it was close enough to roll out.

I hope you like it, and I hope Perry likes his new icon.

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Blog Housekeeping
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[Perry] Cartoons for Grown-Ups

Largely speaking, there tends to be a bit of a schism between East and West when it comes to animated features.

I watch a lot of cartoons.

It’s a love that began with Tom and Jerry when I was little and it has continued unabated ever since.

I’ve been thinking recently about the divide between asian and american cartoons though. While I’ve run into many asian cartoons that were clearly directed at a more mature audience, I’ve rarely seen that same demographic targeted by western animated features.

It can be argued (quite convincingly) that the likes of Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke can be enjoyed by viewers of all ages, but there are many shades of meaning to those films and I find myself wondering if the younger viewers really appreciate the depth of these stories.

On the other hand, western cartoons tend to mainly target the younger audience with the occasional embedded nod to the older viewers, primarily in the form of innuendo.

Every now and then though, you run into something that breaks the mold.

Recently, I’ve run into two such examples.

The first was Batman: Under the Red Hood which I saw for the first time last year.

Now I’ve never really followed the comics all that closely, so the story was new to me. It had been recommended to me by a friend after a conversation where I lamented the fact that though I wanted more serious and darker superhero tales, all I had available were the saturday morning DC cartoons that had been a mainstay of my childhood years.

This was when I was introduced to the movie and I wasn’t disappointed.

The movie itself opens with a scene of the Joker beating the current Robin to death with a crow bar and honestly? It just gets darker from there.

The violence in the story is used to a point though, and a damned strong one at that.

There’s a lot more that I want to say about this movie, but I really don’t want to spoil it at all. All I’ll say is that if you were a fan of the grittier feel to the recent Batman remakes, “Under the Red Hood” is definitely a story you should check out.

Oddly enough, the second example is also a Batman story. The Dark Knight Returns is the animated version of the graphic novel of the same name by Frank Miller.

It’s a story about what happens to heroes past their prime. Batman in his old age has been ‘retired’ for the past decade, but the relentless rise of crime in the city pushes him to don the cape one last time.

It’s a story of staying true to one’s ideals. It’s a story about a world with no more heroes, and how quickly they’ll turn to tear apart the individual brave enough to make a stand.

Those who’ve read the graphic novel will be pleased to see an almost panel by panel recreation of the story. The only things missing in this animated version are some of the thought bubbles that were present in the comic but on the whole, it doesn’t seem that large a loss for such a powerful tale.

So in my years of watching cartoons, these were pretty much the only two that have stuck around in recent memory as western cartoons meant for a mature audience.

If there are any others out there that you guys would like to recommend, I’ve love to know about them!

Related posts:

[Perry] Using An Unreliable Narrator
[Perry] Everyone Dies
[Perry] Wherein Not All Things Need To Be Ambitious

Favorite Teas

I love teas.

I didn’t used to love teas, and in point of fact, I am still very leery of most black teas. Oh, and red teas still smell like warm, wet hay to me, so I can’t drink those, either.

And yet, I love teas.

I love the pomp and circumstance of steaming water transformed into a magical brew of soothing, warm herbs.

I love to lower the tea bag into the water, and that first rush of scent as the hot water drags the flavor into itself.

My Favorite Teas

My favorite teas are inexpensive. I love the Celestial Seasonings brand most of all. Such a dizzying array of flavors, and with so many tea bags per box. Granted, they don’t have the individual paper packaging that makes a tea super portable, but how often do you need to carry a variety of tea with you?

My absolute, 100% best-tea-in-the-world is

Celestial Seasoning’s Candy Cane Lane

The green tea base is so mild that it doesn’t contribute very much flavor, and the peppermint and vanilla are so creamy and subtle that the whole thing is just happy. It’s a seasonal blend, though, so it’s only available during the christmas/winter season. I pick up ten or twelve boxes of these every year and enjoy them throughout. =]

Some other favorites include:

True Blueberry
Lemon Zinger (CANNOT be beaten with a dose of honey and a shot of lemon juice. Perfect for a sore throat, yummy for even when you’re healthy)
Honey Vanilla Chamomile (I love their “sleepytime” teas, but this one’s my favorite!)
Natural Detox Wellness (when they say “creamy vanilla flavor” they really mean it!)

Yogi

I’m also a fan of the more-expensive Yogi brand of teas. They’re always flavorful and delicious, and I love the fortune-cookie tea tag sayings that they include. My current favorite from them is the Honey Lavender Stress Relief blend. Very mild, and I really enjoy the lavender smell.

Your Favorites

What are your favorite teas? (Or hot cocoas or coffees if you prefer!)

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Tea