Yvonne said:
Schoolmarm, how about sharing some of the other subjects in that book which have caught your eye?
In my original post I said that if there was interest, I'd post more tips/comments, whatever one wants to call them. Now, I will preface what I post by saying that the things that caught my eye are the things that either I think I see too much of in fanfic or the things that I realized I do too much myself. This next section hit home, hard. I recognized everything I ever wrote in it (with the exception of a couple of very short vignettes I wrote in first person in another fandom {and yes, I know I'm the queen of not liking first person in general, so what can I say?
It just seemed to fit what I was trying to accomplish).
The chapter is entitled "Sophistication" and discusses stylistic tricks that help a writer have a more sophisticated style. On page 156, I read words that made me shudder. Check them out:
One easy way to make your writing seem more sophisticated is to avoid two stylistic constructions that are common to hack writers, namely:
Pulling off her gloves, she turned to face him.
or
As she pulled off her gloves, she turned to face him.
Both the as construction and the -ing construction as used above are grammatically correct and express the action clearly and unambiguously. But notice that both of these constructins take a bit of action ("She pulled off her gloves") and tuck it away into a dependent clause (Pulling off her gloves..."). This tends to place some of your action at one remove from your reader, to make the actions seem incidental, unimportant. And so if you use these constructions often, you weaken your writing.
They suggest that it would be better to write: "She pulled off her gloves and turned to face him."
The authors go on to point out that sometimes when we use those structures, we create physical impossibilities for our characters (somewhat like the complaint the UK people have with using verbs like laughed, sighed, breathed, etc. to indicate speech). Browne and King go on to say that they are not saying we should avoid these constructions completely, but that we should limit their use so that when we do use them, they are more effective. "But do avoid the hack's favorite constructions unless you have a good reason for using them." (p. 157) They go on to say that if you only have one incidence of these constructions per page, you're in good shape.
Schoolmarm
