After doing some medium-extensive plot repairs on my first novel, In the Dark, I printed out a hard copy to read over and make sure my plot changes made sense.
I haven’t even gotten to the first of the plot edits and I’m already marking up my manuscript.
The main thing I’m fixing is too many “its” and too many “buts.” And let’s not forget my favorite crutch, “just.” Oh, yes, and “was” is on that list too.
“It” isn’t a terrible word by itself, but overusing the word to mean things that are indistinct can be problematic. “It was raining out.” What was raining? The sky, the clouds, the weather? Be specific. Now, to say “I got in the car and started it,” it what? The car. You mentioned a noun already, referring to that noun as “it” the second time you bring it up is clear enough. And saying “I got in the car and started the car,” is awkward and over-explain-y as hell. I suppose you could say “I got in the car and turned the key.” Either is good, provided you don’t have a lot of “its” in that paragraph already.
“But” is another one that’s fine once in a while. When it gets overused, that’s when “but” starts to get repetitive and bad. “He didn’t want to go, but what choice did he have?” “It was dark, but some light got through.” “I wanted pasta, but we were out.” None of these is bad. The main issue is overuse. I came across one paragraph (during an earlier editing phase) where every single sentence was constructed with a “comma but” in the middle. Four of them! That’s plain sloppy.
“Was” works the same. “He was hurt. She was angry. I was out of breath. He was full of shit. The day was perfect. The night was cold.” Saying that something “was” a certain way isn’t wrong. Now saying something was doing something — “she was making headway, he was going to the store, it was raining” — that’s no good at all. “She made headway, he went to the store, it rained.” That’s better. But saying everything “was” anything over and over starts to hurt the reader’s brain — and isn’t always as descriptive as it could be.
Readers think this kind of thing doesn’t matter or that writers are fussing with their words. Words matter, and the writing starts to get messy and uninteresting pretty quickly when a writer does not use their words with care. Readers think editing doesn’t matter, but they will put down a book that bores them or “isn’t written well,” even if they can’t define what they don’t like about it. Writers try to avoid that as much as we can!
There’s a book on writing titled No One Wants to Read Your Shit, and the thing about that is, it’s true. You can sit around and write all day, nobody cares or wants to read what you have.
I think the time investment turns people off. I notice this with music, too — I was a hand-drummer in various bands for six years, and still sit in once in a while. Nobody I know comes to the shows I’m in. People who like live music show up. That’s a niche crowd. Listening to music takes time. You have to go to where someone is playing, sit down, listen, and then, if one of the musicians is a friend, say if you liked the show or not. If you didn’t like what you heard, saying anything to your friend is uncomfortable. Even if they want you to listen a recording of the music, there’s a time commitment. A whole song is three minutes! People don’t want to listen to “Happy Birthday” being sung to them, who’s gonna listen to a song for three whole minutes?? And then also say if you liked it? Better to just skip the whole thing.
Reading a book or short story is the same way. It takes time. A person has to commit to sitting down and reading, and then, if the author is a friend, they need to report back. And not everyone enjoys reading for fun. Better to just skip it.
Visual art takes no time. You glance at it, maybe on Facebook or Instagram, maybe at a local coffee shop where someone has a display. You like what you see, maybe not, but you can click “like” quickly or say that the artist is talented or dedicated or some such nice little white lie and no real time invested. Maybe if you like a piece they’re showing off, you buy it or a print.
Books require effort.
It’s my job as an author to make my writing worth that effort. To have something to say, and to make what I write stand out. It’s my job as an author to make people want to read my shit.
Lazily leaving in too many “its” and “buts” will convince no one to read any of my shit.
I mean, there’s more to good writing than that. There’s characters, plot, twists, emotion, all of that. And readers will forgive a certain amount of lazy writing if the story is good. But they will put a book down or give up on it if the writing is too bad. Without training, they won’t always be able to say why they didn’t like it. If you ask, they’ll say that word choice doesn’t matter. It does, though.
And that is why I’m choosing better words.
I want people to read my shit. I want them to WANT to read my shit. I want the time investment to be worthwhile to people.
I’m willing to invest my time to do that.
I like this. My favorite authors write with a rhythm that makes the reading effortless. I don’t stumble over awkward words, I can be so absorbed that I am barely aware I’m reading. So yes, I enjoy the authors who are word crafters, and perfect their style. These are the writers who occupy the space on my shelves.
You get it! It’s so satisfying when an author really puts time into their craft. It makes it so easy to get lost in the world they create.
“But” “it” “was” “just” fine!
… just joking.
This is of course purely anecdotal, and just from the pop fiction that I read. But it’s amounted to a few thousand books over the last decade or so, and I do like to at least take a glance at what people write about them on Amazon (and sometimes elsewhere) and where they pop up in sales charts.
Prose does not matter.
It just doesn’t. It’d be good if it did, because I do like good prose, and it’d incentivize authors to actually care about words and sentences and all the other good bits, and reward those that work hard on it and give clear targets to aim for when trying to work at increasing your audience …
But success in pop fiction (if you want to win literary fiction awards then it’s a different topic, but those snobs will disqualify you for including vampires anyway, so 😉 ) and quality of writing is just disconnected. Not even weakly correlated, just completely uncorrelated. Some of the absolutely worst novels I’ve read – with, no exaggeration, every single sentence having some kind of typo or other issue – were some of the most successful ones. And people don’t even go “yes, despite the problems …” – it’s just “this is the greatest thing ever!”
What readers, en masse, care about is content. Badass protagonist and some cheesy romance or whatever. How well that’s written is far less interesting than that it confirms to their expectations and is something they know they will like. Must have a flashy cover, must be instantly recognizable as “the thing they like” – the rest, whatever.
Obviously I could be wrong and all that, but it’s very strongly my observation and if anything only moving more in that direction (now that publishing houses are losing more of their grip on what gets released and read every year).
Of course I also strongly feel that any artistic endeavor (and writing is that, even if some people try their best to make it not) should be a fundamentally selfish work, in the sense of “I do it my way because that’s how I like it, and even if nobody else cares, I care, and that’s what matters” … so I’d never say not to bother with good prose.
But I am saying that I wouldn’t expect any “reward” for caring. Well. I guess I’ll hope I’m wrong. It’s known to happen from time to time. 😉
I feel ya. Some of the biggest sellers are just — not great prose. But I’m sure those authors are smiling all the way to the bank.
I’m not super worried if I make a million bucks or gain a million readers. I’m more interested in making art I’m proud of and finding enough people who like it to support what I’m doing. I’d be perfectly happy as a comfortable mid-lister. Neil Gaiman I’m not, nor do I expect to be. I want to write at his level (he’s one of those where pop meets prose and finds success), but I know I don’t have his talent and almost certainly will never have his audience or success. Still, if I can be proud of what I write, then hey. I’m winning something.