JCB's Ruminations on the Craft of Fiction #17
September 10, 2020
Once in a presentation long ago, I defined writing as the conscious use of language. There is an enormous difference between how we speak in casual conversation, letting the words slip out of our mouths without planning, and the deliberative work of creating an effective piece of writing. Every word and phrase must be considered. Although phrases and words may come unbidden to our fingers as we compose a first draft (or even as we rewrite clumsy passages), these should only be taken as placeholders until we vet them. And the vetting process requires deliberate conscious effort.
Early drafts allow us to compose a sketch of our vision, to get the broad strokes onto the page. No small part of early writing is discovering what we want to say, and rewriting is to hone how we say it. One place I often focus in my revisions is broad or vague verbs. To say a character "moved" in a scene is to elide details. It’s more evocative to say they "darted" or "sprang." Vague verbs often leap into our minds as we compose because we’re only glimpsing the fictional scene, and these act as chop-brushes to fill in the big pieces. As we refine the verbs, we are using a much finer brush to evoke clear and crisp action. And this is true of all words, not just verbs.
I’ve listened to writers read their work aloud who do not seem to notice how they’re changing their written sentences in the reading. They change prepositions. They rearrange the order of words and phrases. It’s a useful skill to hone, to be able to listen to yourself read, to see where you reflexively make changes, or where your ear jangles--not merely to note it, but to fix it. I’ve read many sentences that seem to have begun with the writer’s first thought and moved on to their second, and the syntax becomes twisted and convoluted because of it, as they try to attach ideas one to another, seeking to outline a scene or idea. This is necessary in early drafts, but to rewrite is to fix the inverted and confusing syntax of sentences that came to us in scattered pieces.
So far I am only touching on prose-level rewriting here, but it’s important also to consider and reconsider large-scale decisions. Is this scene necessary? Does the character need to walk to the other side of the room, or can she just say what she needs to say from where she was standing beside the fireplace? Does she need to ever have stood near the fireplace? Could she have said this two scenes ago at the drive-in? Does she need to say anything at all? Does she even need to be in this story? Maybe this scene belongs in a different story, and maybe I should write that story instead because it’s better than this one.
When I said that writing is the conscious use of language, I was probably thinking of the finished product. But the process of writing, of creating a written thing, requires our conscious deliberation in all of its parts. That is how we turn a rough idea into a well-formed piece of writing.
Next: On Proportion