Then, And Then

Sadly, today my Uncampaign Mismanager and I decided to throw in the towel on our attempts to buy the open Illinois Senate seat from almost-ex-Governor Blagojevich. I so wanted to be Senator and dedicate my mighty clout to repealing the sales tax on chocolate, and we were only $27,999.68 short of the half mil we figured it would cost us. But what are ya gonna do. We knew we were racing the clock to satisfy the Guv's wild greed, and we lost to some other guy with quicker cash. Oh, well. Looks like I'm destined to be an editor, after all.

So, with my short and doomed campaign behind us, and with the refunds nearly complete to those who so cheerfully donated their Monopoly money, poker chips, and Chuck E. Cheez tokens to Our Noble Cause, I will bury my disappointment in work.

We'll start with a quick peek at the word then, followed by a caution about rules.

Technically, the word then is not a conjunction. It can be used

• as an adverb (to clarify the time at which a verb occurs, as in, "Blagojevich extorted payola, got caught, and then was forced to resign.")
• as a noun (to refer to a specific time, as in, "Since then, Blagojevich has resorted to taking bribes from his family members to get a haircut.")
• or as an adjective ( as in, "the then Governor Blagojevich remained unaware of how permanent the damage to his reputation would be.")

Sometimes, we see writers skip conjunctions when using then before a final verb in a series.

She stopped, dropped, then rolled.

And I must admit, even though this sort of thing will always jump off the page for me, I sometimes let it slide. Emphasis on sometimes. What that means is that in the vast majority of cases, I will insert the conjunction for clarity and rhythm.

So, I was thinking about Alicia's posts on compound predicates with missing conjunctions, and it made me think of the rash of manuscripts lately with faulty then constructions in just about every other paragraph. And I thought I would post this reminder that then is not a conjuction, but there's a bigger point to be made about both Alicia's and my posts.

In responding to Alicia's post, several of you raised examples of highly regarded authors who occasionally drop the conjunctions in compound predicates. I'm sure you can all find examples of authors who use then as an adverb without a conjunction, too. They're out there. I know it, and Alicia knows it, and you all know it, too.

So here's the thing. We say, here's the general rule. And we're right. And you say, but so-and-so breaks it. And you're right. But it's not enough to know the rule, and know that it can be broken. We have to also understand the effect to be created by breaking the rule in different circumstances or in different ways.

Because that's where precision lies. When a word is used with forethought and deliberation in an unexpected way, when a faulty construction is left to lie on the page like a painted whore, when a rule is quietly broken or forcefully shattered, then is a precise effect being caused upon the reader.

When you chain predicate verbs without a conjunction, you can create an impression of speed, or chaos, or actions that build in sequence to a pinnacle. The effect may vary from usage to usage, because this sort of thing is case specific. When you insert a then into such a chain, you might gain control over the sequence of events without sacrificing the effect of the dropped conjunction. So there are times when these things work, and I believe Alicia also recognized valid exceptions to the rules.

What we've been seeing lately, though, is a conjunction dropped for no apparent reason. There is no sense of a meticulous author controlling her prose by artfully breaking a rule. There is, instead, a sense of abandon. And not in a good way. It's not being done here and there for precise effects, but four or five times per page, almost like a nervous stutter in the written speech. The overall impression is one of sloppiness and disrespect for the language.

The next time you notice a published work breaking a rule, I want you to do two things. First, take a moment to congratulate yourself for recognizing the breach. You've worked hard to gain the knowledge and sharp eye that allowed you to do so, and that's a good thing.

Second, I want you to step back from the page for a moment. Appraise it as neutrally as possible. Ask yourself, why is the rule being broken here? Why here and not there? What effect is being created? Try rearranging the words to "fix" the prose, and see how the effect changes. Take the time to figure it out. It will be worth it in the end.

Theresa

Less is more. Rinse and repeat.

Re: doubling predicates without and and other cute prose tricks: If it's effective, it's good. I think it isn't necessary most of the time, and the writer needs to consider whether it's necessary here-- because if there's a grammatical break and the editor deems it unnecessary, there it goes. Out, out, damned break!

Less is more. "When it is absolutely necessary" is the amount any "clever" formation should be used-- only when it adds far, far more than breaking grammar detracts.

I don't think it NEVER works. But I do think the more a writer uses such formations, the less effect it has (beyond annoying). In fact, if you want such a formation to have an actual effect, you should never use it except the two or three times in a book it works. Maybe more than two or three times... as I said, it can be effective in conveying fast, simultaneous action. But if a writer uses it whenever there are two actions, then the reader will have no way of knowing that this moment is different, that these are simultaneous, not sequential or causal, actions.

Sometimes, I think, writers fall in love with certain constructions and forget why they exist, and use them as if they are in fact the standard.
Alicia

Alas, If Only I'd Known Then How Dreadful Things Would Become!

Thank you to everyone who voted in our poll and commented on my question about whether to send out rejections right before Christmas or wait until January. I took your advice, and we sent out a very large number of rejection letters on Monday. Yes, I cringed at the timing, and I suspect some of the recipients did, too. But at least we can all move on now. (In case you're wondering, that leaves a bit more than 50 manuscripts on my desk, a much more manageable number.)

I had nine holiday parties in six days, three of which were at my home -- an open house for 60, a buffet supper for 45, and a formal dinner for 13. With the schedule like that, I knew I would have very little time for work this week, and that even when I would have the time, I would not have the energy. At a blistering migraine into the mix, and you'll see why after Monday's blitz of rejection letters, I accomplished almost nothing for the rest of the week.

I did, however, do a little reading.

"Yet as vast as my dreams might be, I'd no notion then of how far and fast we'd rise, John Churchill and I -- nor how far we'd tumble, too, like angels cast down from heaven itself."
-- Duchess, a Novel of Sarah Churchill, by Susan Holloway Scott, Page 122

I started this novel with high hopes, and at first, it was every bit as good as I wanted it to be. Restoration England was a fascinating place, and I was already somewhat familiar with what the story of how John and Sarah Churchill rose to prominence and eventually became the first Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. But after the premise of the book was established -- the arrival of 13-year-old Sarah Jennings to the court of Charles II, her connection to the household of the Duchess of York, her budding friendship with the young Anne, who would eventually become the last Stuart monarch -- I began to notice a little tic in the prose.

"By the time John returned home in October of 1678 and fetched me back to London, a new madness had seized the country, and our lives together would begin a course from which there'd be no return."
-- page 124

It's a well written book, really. And perhaps we must make some allowances for the fact that I read too damned much. I'm jaded. More than that, I'm perhaps too sensitive to little flourishes like this.

"My role was both to oblige the Princess in every way, and to keep my silence for my own politics and personal opinions were concerned. Alas, as my life would show, I was by nature far better suited to the one than the other."
-- page 158

I can't read one of these without hearing a musical crescendo. You remember those old TV shows, usually soap operas and other melodramas, that used this device? A character would make some terrible pronouncement, and then the orchestra would blare: Duhn-da-DUH! It was meant to heighten suspense, but it was heavy-handed enough that it quickly became material for comics.

"James was crowned the new King, free at last to rule as he pleased, and life for all of us would never again be the same."
-- page 176

It's perhaps unfair of me to draw a comparison between this book and TV shtick. Really, it's a well-written book. But I can't help noticing the number of chapters that end with this little rhetorical flourish. I didn't even have to look very hard to find all the examples I'm using in this post. They're not at the end of every chapter or scene. In fact, they're not even in the majority, and most of the scenes have well-crafted endings. That makes it a bigger shame, really. A beautiful book has been marred by a few lesser sentences, and it would've been so easy to edit these out.

"We had gambled, yes, but we had won. Surely luck -- grand, glorious, wicked luck -- was now tucked deep in my pocket, and I meant to do everything in my power to keep it there. But luck, I learned, had notions of its own."
-- page 227

You hear the crescendo? The writer is building us up for some great fall. By the time I had gotten halfway into the book, I was beginning to wonder if the book would rewrite history and have the Duke of Marlborough executed for high treason. But I know something of this man's story. I knew before I bought this book that he died of old age and was mourned as a great hero.

"It seemed to me my sister's life had become no more than a sorry testament to the unfortunate choices she’d made; I’d no notion then that our fates would cross one last time."
-- page 253

Of course, the author is not rewriting history, but trying to layer some additional tension into the story. I think it was unnecessary. This is a story built on political scandal, revolution, war, and the kind of intrigue and jockeying for position that could only happen in the court of a monarch. People plot. People take great risks. People escape from captivity in the dead of night one step ahead of the executioner's blade. There is so much drama inherent in the story that these little predictions of doom are a bit of overkill. Much better to let the plot and conflict carry the weight of the drama.

Perhaps this would bother me less if she had used this technique less frequently. Or perhaps I'm too picky. In any case, when you're trying to find an emotional note to close a chapter or scene, let me suggest that you stick to something established by the scene itself. Think of it this way: Emotion borrowed from the future will have to be paid back with interest. Are you willing to pay that price?

Theresa

New trends in prose I'm going to edit out...

Yeah, yeah, I know. It's "my voice". But any idiosyncrasy is going to lose all claim to power the story or to reflect the character (or author) voice, if it is used constantly as if it's standard English. Less is more, for cripes' sake. LESS IS MORE!!!

So if you're doubling predicates (without an AND) every paragraph or so, do not be surprised when your grumpy editor edits almost all of them back to standard English. Is this some new trend? I'm seeing it all the time in submissions and contest entries (almost never, nota bene, in published fiction). Here's an example I'm making up:

He reached out, touched her.

Oh, another-- these never come as singlets. They are usually throughout the whole chapter, regardless of POV character (that is, we can't blame the character voice).

Gilead climbed, clambered up the wall.

And yet another:

Her head ached, reeled with pain.

You know, this is actually one of those times you can use a participle! (Theresa said memorably that three things can happen when you use participles, and two of them are bad-- well, here's the good one.)

Her head ached, reeling with pain.

Well, I don't know if a head can reel, but that is actually part of the problem with this doubling of predicate. You have two predicates. Do they actually both use the same subject? Sometimes the sloppiness of this construction means that the first predicate is actually an action of the subject, but the second predicate applies apparently to some missing subject that I guess the reader is supposed to supply, like:

His hand itched to smack the kid, welled up with anger.

Well, the hand didn't well up with anger, so is it the kid welling up? The "he" that owns the hand? Predicates and subjects need to match. If you disagree with that, please find another language to write in.

(Oh, sure, you can occasionally, for some effect you can identify, break the rules. But if you do it all the time, it's you establishing a new rule, not breaking the rules. And if you want to define a rule -and abide by it-- wherein you have doubled predicates with one subject that connects directly with only one of those predicates, well, go ahead. Elucidate. Explain your logic, when the rule applies and when it doesn't, and give examples. If you don't want to do that, don't expect me or the reader to do your work for you.)

Another problem is that the practice leads to redundancy.

Gilead climbed, clambered up the wall.

I see this one a lot, where the writer apparently can't decide between two synonyms and so uses them both. (The former trend, fortunately lost in the mists of time, was to put a slash mark between them: Gilead climbed/clambered up the wall.)

Sin boldly. Choose. Climbed, clambered-- which fits better here? CHOOSE. You are in charge.

There's a great way to handle sentences where one person commits two actions, and yes, it uses two predicates. It also uses a handy little word, sometimes called a "conjunction" because it conjoins two like things (for example, actions). Conjunctions are useful because they not only show that two things are related, but HOW they are related (so "but" shows they are related by contrast or conflict). So:

He reached out and touched her.

Does that sound trite? Yes? Well, maybe it IS trite. Maybe it's too trite to write. Maybe you should make that sentence do more than repeat a long-distance commercial, huh? If you make a grammatical sentence and it says nothing of import, it's not going to suddenly become meaningful because you make it an ungrammatical sentence. Concentrate on saying something that matters.

Something to keep in mind is that editors get everything amplified. What seems to you to be a trendy or clever opening is, by the time you send it to us, rather hackneyed-- twenty other writers have already thought of that and sent it to us. So your clever opening-- oh, like the hero and heroine colliding in the corridor, my favorite clever opening that I've only seen 10K times-- isn't going to seem too clever. And how unique and true will your story seem, if it's opened in a way that opens so many other stories?

I digress. What I meant was-- if the editor has seen your "voice" thingy so much it's become annoying and has its own unflattering moniker and yahoogroups list, maybe it's not the best representation of your voice, and maybe this aspect of your voice is not actually so representative of your uniqueness.

Does that mean you should never break the rules, never listen to your inner rhythms, never try to replicate the character's voice? Of course not. It just means that you shouldn't choose one transgressive technique and use it over and over and over again. Your voice is more than one lapse in grammar, one used, moreover, by a lot of other writers-- and, uh, one that your editor is likely to "fix" anyway.

What are other "transgressive" but common techniques? I think one is the breaking up of perfectly nice sentences into one sentence and a series of fragments, like:
He knew. Knew her. Her perfume. Her perfidy. (Hmm. I like that ... perfume, perfidy. I like it a lot better in one sentence. :)

Again, I don't mean that you should never break rules of grammar and syntax. But there's not power in breaking the rule if you ALWAYS break the rules. We're likely to assume that you just don't know the rules.

Alicia

Quote tag verbing

I'm not one of those who hates quote tags or restricts them to "he said." I like verbs that tell what the quote IS: asked, remarked, commented, observed, shouted, whispered-- verbs that are "say" words (that is, they specifically refer to speech) but are giving the extra info you might get if you were there and could see the facial expression and hear the tone. I also have no problem with adverbs that modify (she said softly) or contradict (he yelled lovingly) the quote verb, as long as it works and isn't redundant (not so fond of "he murmured softly," though I'm sure I've written that :).

So I'm hardly a puritan when it comes to quote tags. But of course, I do draw the line. Now I want you all to think about what you find acceptable and what you find objectionable as a tag for dialogue. (Assume that, for purposes of rhythm and/or speaker identification, you need a quote tag, and an action tag might be too much, distracting from the speech, etc.)

So here are some tag verbs I've seen recently, and maybe you can pick out the ones that annoy you and the ones that don't, and if you have a rationale, let us know. :) Now before or after these is a line of speech, like:
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.
That is, these are TAGS. They are to be connected (like she said above) with a comma before or after the speech. They are not sentences on their own. Okay? And the speech line presumably has something to do with the chosen tag, like "You can't divide by zero," he instructed.

he growled
she smiled
she laughed
he grunted
she hissed
she whispered
he ground out
he grated (what is it with "gr" words? Reminds me of the Crazy English guy who pointed out that most English words that begin with "sn" have to do with the nose)
she attempted
she blurted
he added
he teased
he taunted
she explained
he instructed
he snorted
she sneered
he exclaimed
she lectured
she interrogated
he insisted
he rasped
she muttered


Thoughts? Other tags you like or hate?
Alicia

"Must" past tense

Previous post... what is the past tense of "must"? "Had to?" (That is what one source says, though I suspect that is an Americanism.) "Must have"? The sentence I had was complicated because it was in the negative (She must not have expected him/she must not expect him), and so it complicated the verb. Anyway, here is an interesting discussion of this issue-- is "must" its own past tense? It's a bit archaic, maybe, but "must" has been the past tense of "must," and one respondent in that discussion points out that modals (the little verb-words that add a condition to a verb, like could or should) often do dual duty, with present or past tense determined by context or some other indication (like "five years ago"). Interesting, anyway. The respondent mentions that the OED makes a distinction for "indirect speech" (like "He told her that he must go"). I think a character's internal thoughts might count as indirect speech, where there's actually a certain existential confusion of past and present. (Notice how we debate whether a thought should be in present or past tense-- same issue.)

Telepathy, interpretation, and POV shifts

First let me say that there is no rule you have to stay in one character viewpoint or that deep POV is the only or even most desirable choice. In fact, I suspect that some form of multiple (but controlled) POV will be "the" POV of the 21st century, as omniscent was the dominant POV of the 19th C and single POV of the 20th C.

AND what POV you feel most comfortable writing is the one you usually should be writing-- you should learn to do it as well as you can, but what sort of plot and characterization you choose probably derives from the same personality and preference that determine what POV approach you prefer. That is, don't battle your nature-- just do what you do really well, and do it for the sake of giving the reader the best experience possible.

But... I think whether you are using multiple or single POV, if you're using personal POV (not omniscient), at any given moment you are in someone's POV. For however long, you are putting the reader in that person's body and mind, right? And you don't want to inadvertently eject the reader from that person, right?

Sometimes as I read a passage, I feel ejected, like suddenly I'm not in Tom's mind, I'm in Joan's mind, or dangling helplessly in between. When I go back and read to figure out why, it's often actually a deep POV issue, where the writer has Tom interpreting something from the way Joan speaks or behaves... but because there's no "Tom thought" in there, it sounds like JOAN.

Okay, let me backtrack. While Tom cannot know what Joan is thinking, he can definitely interpret. This is not weird for the reader, as of course, the reader also cannot read minds but can interpret body language, tone of voice, facial expression, etc. But of course, Tom might or might not be good at this. He might be really empathic and intuitive and see a twitch of her lips and know she's lying, or he could be the clueless type who thinks he knows what that lip-twitch means ("Oh, she's going to sneeze!") but is wrong. But... the important thing is that if it's significant, if you want the READER to interpret also, the POV character has to notice and narrate it.

So let's try a scenario. Tom knocks on Joan's door, and she opens it.

Tom took a deep breath and knocked on her door. He heard a faint voice inside -- "Coming, coming," and braced himself.

She flung open the door. "Yes, can I--" Then she faltered. She wasn't expecting him.


Now when you're in deep POV, you might report his thought, his interpretation of her faltering, straight, without "he thought" or "he realized" (though really, neither of those are likely to bother the reader, so don't feel you have to get rid of them anymore than you'd avoid "he saw" or "he heard"). It is a rendition of his judgment about what her faltering means.

Trouble is, that line "She wasn't expecting him" is exactly what you might write about her reaction if you were in her POV-- in her mind. So the reader might hesitate and wonder if we're now in her POV. Hesitation, re-reading-- those are not what you want, as they mean you confused the reader and slowed down the narrative flow.

So how can you do this-- show the interpretation-- without the reader confusion? I'm going to suggest a couple things, but you might have other ways of handling this.

First, try going with a new paragraph. We associate what's in a quote paragraph with the speaker (the action, for example), although that's not a rule or anything... just if you are trying to un-confuse, that's a way to do it:

Tom took a deep breath and knocked on her door. He heard a faint voice inside -- "Coming, coming," and braced himself.

She flung open the door. "Yes, can I--" Then she faltered.

She wasn't expecting him.

Notice that her actions (flinging, faltering) are still there with the speech-- that's all "her".

But the next line might be more obviously his thought if it's in a new paragraph, do you think? Now I'm not fond of a lot of one-line paragraphs. I just got a submission where almost every paragraph, stretched out over an 8 1/2 inch page, was just a line or maybe two, and it "sounded" sing-songy and childish. If you love short paragraphs (shorter than 4 sentences, say), just remember that some readers will "hear" that as childish (children's books have short paragraphs for a reason). (I use "sound" and "hear" there because there are a lot of readers-- I'm one-- who actually hear the passage as they read, and thus will notice if a paragraph ends too soon or if a sentence has too many syllables... I know it's weird, kind of synesthesia, but do be aware that this is a fairly sizeable proportion of readers, and they actually might refuse to read books that "sound wrong". So it pays to think of the rhythm and sound of your prose as you write and revise. Who else has that "sound" response to reading?)

So you don't want to have a lot of short paragraphs, but having one shorter graph in the midst of longer ones serves to emphasize the importance.

Another idea is to use her name, or if you've established that Tom thinks of her as "Joanie" or "Mrs. Lewis," using that name will make clear this line is in his mind:

Joanie wasn't expecting him.

Also consider a term that replaces the name or the pronoun and is his-- "Mom wasn't expecting him," for example. Or "That little brat wasn't expecting him." (She wouldn't think of herself that way. :) But you don't want to get artificial-- it's got to be in his voice or it won't work.

Another thought-- look at the verb there.

She wasn't expecting him.

"Wasn't" doesn't sound like interpretation, actually. Well, of course, we do "interpret" in categorical ways, but if you want to make clear it's him interpreting, not absolute reality, consider fuzzing up the verb a bit. For example:

She must not have been expecting him.

"Must not" isn't straight reality or even pretending to be- it's obviously interpretation. If you don't like that complicated tense there (have been expecting), maybe: She must not expect him? (Have we left past tense there? I don't think so-- "must" is its own past tense, I think.) She must not have expected him?

And it's moments like these you realize why "he realized" is actually a useful device that shouldn't be discarded even in deep POV, because it signals to the reader that it's his thought, his interpretation, and not his observation, her thought, or absolute reality.

He realized that she had not been expecting him.

She had not been expecting him, he realized.

Now... another complication. What if he's interpreting wrong? What if she was expecting him, and her faltering was because, I don't know, she's in love with him and is trying not to blurt it out? Or she sees him and realizes that he's the crazed stalker she's been fearing? Or she sees that he's got spinach in his teeth?

How would you -- in his POV -- signal that this is his interpretation, but it's wrong (or limited)? Or would you just let his interpretation stand for the moment, as that is his reality at the moment?

Alicia

For future...

Just making note to remind me for future blog-- explore common theme. Undercover, mistaken identity, disguise, amnesia-- all identity issues. Scarlet Pimpernel, Oedipus, etc.
Alicia

I Need Your Opinions on This

There's a poll up in the sidebar about holiday rejections, and I really would like to know what you all think of this. We're in desk-clearing mode, but something in me cringes at the thought of sending out rejections during Christmas week. Is it better to do it then and get it over with, or wait until January and contribute to the plague of January winter blues?

(If you're on a feed reader, you have to click over to the actual blog to vote.)

Theresa