The 2 sins of a writer

A close friend sent me a children’s book to review for an English newspaper. The book had been self-published by my friend’s friend. I finished reading it in one sitting. After I closed the book, I felt a strong sense of being cheated.

The theme was wonderful: supernatural elements and previous births are pan Indian favourites. The writer could have written a thriller or a racy whodunit, but all that the reader got was a flat main character, clueless about what he had to do with his talent (of  being able to see his previous lives in visions). The previous lives were never shown. Though the book was written in a simple and easy to read style for a ten year old, it was absolutely boring. The writer’s lack of interest showed.

It made me think. Writers can commit sins. Not murder or robbery. But literary sin. The two sins we are prone to committing are the Sin of Boring the Readers and the Sin of Cheating Readers.  

The writer whose book I had finished reading had committed those two sins.  When I opened the first page I expected a thrilling paranormal ride, hurtling the protagonist as well as me, through a terrain of different births. But I was disappointed. All that the writer showed were dull glimpses of just one birth (the current one) and nothing else. The ten year old was trapped in a dull life which the writer had not bothered to spice up. I wonder why the writer had chosen an amazing topic and been indifferent to it. 

These two sins make me shudder. I would hate to commit them. We can bore our readers to death by dull and flat descriptions. We can cheat them by not exploring the theme of our books to their full potential. 

When readers buy our books they are literally buying a ticket for a joy ride. Thrills, spills and tumbles will be expected. So, if all they experience is a flat monochromatic journey, at just one speed, they are going to be disappointed.

Have you left a book halfway due to boredom? Have you ever felt cheated after reading a book? Have you ever picked up a book expecting certain experiences and been sorely disappointed?

The Two Sins of a Writer

Few days back  a  friend sent me a children’s  book requesting me to review it for  a leading English newspaper. It had been self-published by my friend’s friend. The book was small, I finished reading it in one sitting. After I closed the book I was left with a strong sense of being cheated. Yes, it was as though the writer had made it her personal business to cheat me: the reader.

The topic was wonderful: supernatural elements and previous births have always fascinated us ( Indians.) The writer could have gone the whole hog and written  a thriller or  a racy whodunit, but all  that the reader got  was a flat main character, clueless  about  what he had to do with his talent (of  being able to see his previous lives in visions).

Though the book was written in a simple and easy to read style for a ten year old, and may not  bore a kid, but neither could it be called entertaining. It was a book that I would say had no impact whatsoever on me. It made me think.

Do writers sin? I mean they spend all their time scribbling furiously,  having  conversations with their characters, wondering how to get their main characters  out of troubled waters and tight spots, where actually is the time to do indulge in a bit of crime and sin?

Yes, we writers are liable to sin and I mean sin in a literary world. The two sins we are prone and susceptible to commit are the Sins of Boredom and Cheating. We can be accused of boring our readers and cheating them of  an amazing experience. To be honest, the writer had committed those two sins.  When I  opened the first page I expected a joyride of paranormal experiences that would hurtle the ten year old protagonist and me over a roller coaster ride of different births. But I was in  for  a major disappointment. All that the writer showed were dull glimpses of just this one birth and nothing else. The ten year old  was trapped in a dull life which the writer had not bothered to spice up.

I expected the writer to introduce us to atleast  a few different births the protagonist  had undergone. But she didn’t think it necessary to show even  a single one. I wonder why she had chosen an amazing topic and  been indifferent to it. 

The sins of Boredom and Cheating   make me shudder. I would hate to commit them. We can bore our readers to death by  dull and flat descriptions. We can cheat them by not matching our book to their expectations and disappointing them. 

When readers buy our books they are literally buying a ticket  for a joy ride. They will expect  certain thrills and spills and  few tumbles. After all it’s a ride. So, if all they experience is a flat  monochromatic journey at just one speed, they are going to be  disappointed. They may never ride again with us.

Have you ever been left with a feeling of boredom and  of having been cheated after reading a book? Have you ever picked up a book expecting certain experiences and been sorely  disappointed?

             

Editing Tips to the Rescue

Editing for me is the toughest part of writing. I  hate to do the edits for several reasons. One of them is because I  detest deleting  words from my MS.  I feel like crying  when my editor deletes paragraphs. I am fine with few words here and there. More often than not after my edits the word count goes into an overdrive.

The last time I edited a story I ended up adding a side character and increasing the length of the story by  four hundred words. Needless to say my editor was tearing her hair out and asked for the older version which she would carry in the newspaper with just one illustration.

But with time, extensive reading and research and courtesy the only workshop I attended, I realized that  editing is responsible for a polished manuscript. From a foe, editing has now become my friend. I started the edits for my current WIP with  mixed feelings. Would the word count go up or down?  The first lot of words to go were  what  William Faulkner calls ‘writer’s darlings’ or the  common modifiers I  generously sprinkle my manuscript with. I have a penchant for words  like ‘ very, extremely, really, seriously, absolutely.’ Faulkner’s advice to writers is  “to kill their darlings.” This  decreased  the word count substantially. Strunk and White in "The Elements of Style" refer to them as  “The leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words." I  eliminated  only the  modifiers that  I felt weighed down my writing.

After that I heeded Mark Twain’s advice : “When you catch an adjective, kill it.  No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them, then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.” Many adjectives were  sent packing at Mark Twain's advice, as were the silly and juvenile similies I had dumped during the initial drafts.

As I reread my manuscript, I realized  there were many repetitions that had no business being there. I had no qualms deleting these. As the manuscript is written over a period of time we often forget what  we have said earlier, hence the repetitions. The parts where I felt I was suffocating my reader with too much back story have been kept to a minimum. This was difficult as giving back story is a personal favourite.  

                       

As the word count decreased and the writing became a little crisper and tighter, my smile widened. For the first time in my life after my edits, words  fell  like leaves in autumn.

The paragraphs where I was telling rather than showing  will take  the longest time.  I consider it a hangover of my school days where we had to write long essays. While writing longer stories I tend to  fall into the tell and not show pattern. Though it’s something that we constantly hear it’s also the easiest thing to overlook.  I am currently tackling  these long passages that will  require a lot of rethinking  and effort.

Trying to edit the scenes with dialogues was  easy as I followed the advice that  dialogue should either build character or advance the action. The longer dialogues have given way to shorter ones, and the boring bits chopped. Then there are the grammatical and punctuation errors to remedy. I  am leaving the sentence structure modification for the last.

Do you think I am going about my edits the right way? Is there something I have overlooked, something that can further improve my WIP?  How do you all handle your edits? Do you have any editing secrets that you would like to share?

Falling Into The Trap

The worst mistake we writers or actually any creative person can make is by Falling Into The Trap. In a nutshell I want to talk about  the  Writing Trap, or,  a large writing hole that we writers are susceptible to fall into in  the successive books that we write. We can fall into this writing trap  due to  several reasons; overuse of  certain types of clichés and stereotypes, use of a similar style of narrative in all the books we write even though the books  may not be a part of a series, use of similar settings, use of similar protagonists in all the books, not deviating from the same  and often  predictable  thought patterns and plot twists.

This can be attributed to the fact that  once the writers have discovered or stumbled upon a  successful formula, they want to  use it  for all its worth. Perhaps they endorse the view why mess or meddle  with  something that has worked well. But what they forget is that a certain style the readers may have adored once, may not find takers the second or third time round.

Many times I have felt  a strong feeling of Déjà vu when I  read the next set of books written by  few  writers. I get the  feeling that I have met the characters before at another time in another place (read in a previous book). Even the setting has no novelty as it’s the same one as the last book  written by the author. The problem faced by the main character and  the way  the conflict has been resolved  is something I had guessed halfway ( very often much earlier) through the book.

Its at that  time  I feel cheated and  upset, that the author has  fallen into a self made  trap and unknowingly and unintentionally sucked us readers into the trap. These writers become predictable, it’s easy for the readers to guess their next move  or,  the way the plot will now twist and turn.

Today’s generation of readers have several things vying for their limited and often straying attention. And, if the writer has  nothing new to offer  they are quick to discard the book and the writer.

The only way we can avoid this vicious writing  trap is by adopting the mantra of  Originality. This  will sustain the writer if he or she is in for the long haul. There are several writers who have adopted this approach  successfully: Roald Dahl; each book of his was different  from the other,  for example  there was no similarity in any of these books ; George’s Marvellous Medicine, Twits, Mathilda, James and the Giant Peach, and  Charlie and the Chocolate factory.

Another writer  who escaped this trap is J.K Rowling. Though the seven potter books had the  same setting of  Hogwarts and  the same set of   characters, each book had something new to offer. There were surprises  and shocks  in plenty,  new entrants who took us completely unawares, several times the plot took unexpected twists that had us readers eager to know what would happen next.

This trait of unpredictability  is single handedly responsible for keeping  readers hooked and the writer far from the  writing trap.

 Have you ever felt that a particular writer is falling into the  trap? How do you  personally manage to avoid the writing trap that  we writers can easily fall into? Please share, we all can learn from your experience.

Critiques, or looking in the mirror ?

 I had never critiqued someone’s work, or had my work critiqued (  see  my earlier post 'The Lonely Life of an Indian Writer’) by another writer. So it came as quite a shock for  me when a writing friend I had met at a workshop conducted by my publisher asked me to  critique her short stories.

I was pretty nervous, not only was she a new friend, she was also the only writing friend I had.  I  didn’t want to lose her  as my critique could upset her, or, hurt her feelings. Before I could reply she said she would email  the stories to me as she wanted another writer’s opinion on them before wishing them Bon Voyage. “ You are free to make  changes, edit it if you feel the need for it,” she said.

The  next day  I downloaded the stories. As I read them I realized that they were good, but riddled with several grammatical mistakes which she had perhaps overlooked.  Structral errors  I can understand,  but not grammatical errors at her level (she has been writing for several years). I know that its easy to be critical of others  ( but let me tell you that I am extremely critical of my  work too).

As I  switched on the track changes tool  and started editing I realized that  doing critiques was  like looking in the mirror. I became aware of all the mistakes I tend  to make  while writing short stories. Very often we write the way we talk, without paying  in depth  attention to either grammar or tense. As I waded through her stories  I realized that the first impression I got was that the soul of her stories  was good, but the  attention to details was missing. The feeling  that came across was that she had written the stories in a hurry, as though racing against time and she had to finish it any which way. Several times I felt that she could have handled  the scenes differently, added tension and  done away with boring  descriptions. She could have stayed away  from common frequently used clichés, invested in  imaginative and innovative  similies.  

As  I plunged deeper and deeper into the critique, I felt like I was staring  in  a mirror. My  reflection  appeared before me with all its faults  magnified. What I considered a great piece of writing ( my stories) must have looked pathetic to my editor. Did she have the same expression I had while editing ?

That episode has brought about several changes in me,  has made me more conscious of  my grammar and tense.  Nowadays I  read each line several times, pay more attention to plot,  tension and character growth. I consciously stray away from clichés that we should have left behind in junior school. When I read any descriptive paragraphs  I have written, I wonder whether my descriptions can be more original. I have become ruthless while editing my work.     

           

 Does  doing a critique of  someone elses  work   help you become a better writer? Does it make you aware of  your own writing mistakes? I would love to know if critiques  are like  staring in the mirror for you too?