It's no secret that I'm obsessed with video games (though thankfully not addicted.) As I play through a new game for the first time I'm always on the lookout for what the game is doing to me, whether it be wracking my brain trying to figure out a puzzle, timing jumps perfectly to clear platforms over lava, or challenging me to make tough moral decisions. And yes, there are video games that make you do this.
But I'm not going to talk about those things today. The game I'm going to be talking about today is called Dead Space 2. Sequels in video games are about as common as sequels in movies, and as the years go by, books can quickly be added to this list. That's not a commentary on sequels though. There's no reason a sequel cannot be as good, if not better than an original composition. After all, there's a reason Beethoven has 9 symphonies.
Dead Space falls into the video game category of survival action horror, a category that is as hard to do right as horror movies and suspense novels. You may be wondering what this has to do with writing at this point, so I'm going to break it down into things this game does right, and how they impact writing. And not just for the next hopeful horror writer.
1. Timing.
As yesterday was Charles Dickens birthday, I feel an obligation to include him in this post. But one thing that Dickens did well was timing. Because he had to. He was writing his novels in sections and publishing them in sections in order to make a living. On the one hand this means that inherently his novels are shaped by a need to publish. But much as the starving artist archetype enchants us, as writers I'm pretty sure most of us don't actually want to live that lifestyle. So what did publishing in sections do?
It forced Dickens to right multiple climaxes into his story, so that the reader always wanted more when the next section was published!
One thing that Dead Space (both the original and 2) have done well is timing. This is not what people think of with video games where you run along guns ablaze, mowing down every enemy that comes in your path. Quite the opposite with Dead Space, actually. You don't generally see anything in your path until it's too late.
This is because Dead Space is employing one of the oldest horror trick in the book (don't quote me on that. I don't actually know how far horror traces back.) Suspense. And suspense is all about timing.
In Dead Space, enemies will pop out of the walls. They'll come when they're least expected. They will come out when it is least convenient for you and when it creates the biggest reaction, which in this game is fear. But to relate this back to Dickens, Dickens is doing the same thing. He uses story arcs to guide where your emotions go. He drops plot bombs when plot bombs need to be dropped, but he also leads you along with red herrings where herring needs to be sniffed. Dickens may not be going for the action that a video game is, but he knows that timing is how you work your audience.
Which is what any writer needs to do. I won't stand here and say there's a formula to timing (5 act structure aside) because for every formula there is a way to break it. But there is a science to this timing thing. In order to get the most impact from your audience you need to know when to pull them along with you and when to push them back. You need to know how to manage...
2. Suspense
Imagine a pond in the middle of a field. No wind blows. No sound is uttered. A single pebble falls from the sky, striking the water with a soft ploink sound. Imagine the ripples going across the water, soothing you.
KABLAM!
What I just did there was break the tension. Now, I meant to do it in a humorous way, which knowing my jokes has failed miserably but I'm still laughing. But the best way to picture tension while you're writing is with the pond approach. Better still is to imagine what you're writing is a slightly iced over pond. And everything you're writing is weight you're adding to that pond.
It's easy to tell when tension is being used in horror. Generally the soundtrack will fade away. Characters will be visibly agitated. It will have been a while since something scary happens. Horror is known for using this feeling to pull a fast one on audiences by then building the tension and letting nothing happen to allow the audience into a false sense of security.
Dead Space does the opposite. There is no moment to let the tension out (for the most part.) In most games, when you pause the game, the game is paused. In Dead Space, the only action that you as a character can do to stop the game is to bring up the game exit menu. When you access inventory, you're vulnerable. When you save, vulnerable. Everything leaves you open, which means the tension is always there.
What's more, Dead Space combines two great elements into one package. In most horror games, darkness is used extensively to limit vision. Dead Space combines the flashlight with the gun, so every time you try to see better, you are also visually prepared for combat. However, what happens here is that by bringing in the unnerving element of darkness, with the necessity to raise your gun to see, you focus in. Anything that crosses your screen could be an enemy and by looking you are aiming. It also lowers your awareness by forcing you to resist pulling the trigger and waste precious ammo, so that when something breaks through the darkness you falter.
Notice that last word. Hesitate. Horror movie characters don't generally falter. They hold back, but they don't actively stall like deer in headlights. But this is what you need your audience to do, and again I don't just mean in horror. Let's look at a classic, so that when I spoil the ending I don't violate the general rule of not spoiling material.
Anyone not read Where The Red Fern Grows? Then ignore this paragraph. But for those of you who did, how many of you physically faltered while reading the last section of the novel. Did you want to believe what was happening? Did you want to read on, even when you knew what was happening? And most importantly, did you know it was going to happen and find yourself torn anyways?
Maybe it was just my experience there, but even suspecting the ending I was surprised and emotionally jarred by it. And most importantly, I found myself hesitating to read it. This is not a bad thing! Hesitation is not a bad thing! It means that we're surprised and don't know how to react. Which leads to my next point.
3. Fluidity
Great video games are well known for this trait. This is because despite a lust for plot, a video game can be just as entertaining with no plot at all! (Can anyone, gamer or otherwise, tell me the plot of the original Mario game? If you find that too easy, what about Pac Man?) Yet as video games became grander in scale, they began to become grander in plot. So how do you blend plot and game play seamlessly?
If you're looking at Dead Space, pretty seamlessly. This is because the game play is part of the plot! When you wander through an empty room, as a gamer you are doing it to get to the room where your next enemy awaits. But as a story, that empty room is filled with subtle cues that do just as much to tell the story as those little cut scenes.
As an example, the last section of the game I played took me through an apartment building. In one room I found a body watching a projection which was a commercial for the church which brought on the madness that is happening in the game. In the bed there was another body, and after looking around the room I begin to piece together that this was a happy family whose lives have been ruined by the events here. There are still family pictures on the wall. I can tell they had a modest living by the abundance of books and other items in their apartment.
Without the game saying a word or forcing any combat, I am learning more about the story.
As a writer, it is often easy to focus purely on plot and ignore things like setting. Even then, it is easy to overlook the fact that your setting can tell as much of the story as the plot! Here's two less disturbing examples. I want you to see if you can tell the plot of these two stories despite the fact that I mention none of it.
Ex 1: The woman's room was empty, save for the bed she lay upon, and the machines which did the job of living for her. Every breath was accompanied by the wheeze of accordioning plastic. A steady beeping reverberated off of the mute white walls. The nurse entered the room slowly, closing the door behind her with the smallest of clicks. The steel chair that she had occupied the previous day still sat next to the bed, the red cover of the book she had left upon the cushion was the only color interrupting the stillness of the room.
Ex 2: Susan looked around Claire's room with tears in her eyes. A ragged stuffed dalmatian lay on its side across the bed, seeming to blend with the pure white covers. The desk sat covered in dust, a few rectangles of clean wood standing out from the fuzz. Susan trailed her fingers through the dust, before turning to the walls which offered no solace. Tape marks scoffed the walls where posters had once hung. A few nails here and there reminded Susan of spelling bee's, dance competitions, and one glorious concert. She knew, the room would never be the same.
Ok, so there's a few ways these stories could go, but aside from providing a way to invent the word accordioning, I hope you were able to catch how the setting affected the story. How would example one change if the dying woman was surrounded by flowers and pictures? What if she were only sleeping rather than hooked up to machines? What does it say about the nurse that the book is part of the scenery and not part of her action? I'll let you ask the same questions for example two, but I hope you see my point.
Fluidity is not just seamlessly blending together two scenes. Fluidity is connecting every moment of your story, every description of your story. When we break tension we want it to be intentional, not because the weight of the plot is too heavy to stand on the thin ice. The more detail you add, the stronger your ice becomes (though too much detail and it also becomes impossible to break.) In essence, it all becomes a balancing act.
I could go into further detail but I think three examples is enough to show how at least this video game can show writers some techniques they might employ in their own writing. The elements I've described are crucial for anything dealing with horror, but we should always remember that horror is not just hack and slash, it is at its core emotional manipulation. This examples can easily be applied to romance, mystery, political intrigue, or just a story about a man who grows flowers. But if you utilize these elements you may just find that your reader is more than just reading. They're becoming engaged. Because it may not be the death of a novel for a reader to not be engaged, but it is the death of a video game when your audience is disengaged.
David is one of the founders and editors of Obsession Literary Magazine and the maintainer of Obsession's blog.
Showing posts with label Rules. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rules. Show all posts
February 8, 2012
January 23, 2012
Five Reasons Why You Should Join a Writers Group: Written by David
Last week I gave you a little history lesson, discussing some famous writers groups that changed the face of writing. This week I'm going to get a little more personal. I'm going to give you 5 reasons how a writing group can change the face of your writing.
Before I get into that I just want to clear one thing up. It's not necessarily that a writing group will do all of these things. As with any writing endeavor, part of what's going to help you succeed is your own drive. The other is the groups drive. If, however, you find a keeper, you'll find that your writing only improves due to your choice of committing to a group. But why even give a writering group a shot?
1. Fresh Eyes
I don't know what your process is like, but mine generally involves writing a poem, obsessing over it for a few weeks, and then I shelve the piece for a bit so I can approach it at a later date with fresh eyes. Now, this is not the most time effective approach to writing, so imagine my surprise at my discovery that presenting pieces to my writing group speeds the whole process up!
In a writering group, especially one consisting of multiple opinions and/or genres, your piece is immediately getting a fresh look which will often draw out discussions on parts of your writing that you wanted to discuss, and maybe even parts you didn't even notice. Ever written a really killer story but then had someone look at it and ask "Yeah but who's the main character?" only to realize you never defined them? It won't always be something as big as this, but you may find pieces of your story are missing that you didn't even notice because in your head they were always so clear!
My point is that having a group of writers critique you can give you that immediate feedback that you need to continue your writing process rather than having it sit around for a bit, or read it fifty times to notice those few details. But that seems a minor thing when compared to...
2. Fresh Ideas
When my writers group and I presented at the Montgomery Community College Writing Conference on the advantages and disadvantages of writing groups, we had a member of the audience who was very hesitant to let someone else view her work because she was afraid that it would tarnish her hand in the piece. As I discussed last week, this is definitely not the case, but it's not just editing that you can get from a writers group.
When you have several different types of minds looking at your piece you may find that they notice elements that you may not have been aware you put in (as a writing teacher of mine once said though, whether you are aware of it or not it's never just luck.) These elements may prove even more interesting than the ideas you were focusing on (your secondary character is more moving than the main character, that side story has the potential to add a whole different layer to your story, a simile that you didn't even notice would be stronger throughout the poem, etc.) If you're like my group it may come down to something as seemingly small as word choice (something I have a knack for helping my group out with.)
Certainly editing can bring up some fresh thoughts, but I'm talking about so much more here. Being among a group of writers it is only inevitable that you are going to get ideas from their successes and failures. As the quote goes "Good artists copy, great artists steal." I'm not saying that you'll steal all of your colleagues ideas, but you will find inspiration from them. I'll give you two examples from my own group experiences.
First is my favorite poem that I've written. A fellow student back when I was in a group editing style class wrote two poems that didn't work within a week. One was about being awake at 3 am, which was supposed to be about being unable to sleep but didn't go far enough. The other was a poem about the Mariana trench. In those two failures though, I found that the second idea was meant to be combined with the first! I combined the two ideas, put them in my own language, and wrote a poem about how the it feels like you're descending into the Mariana trench when you're deeply tired but can't sleep.
The second example is the novel I'm writing. It began as a short story long ago that went into the folder of unsuccessful ideas and just stewed there. Up until one of the members in my writing groups started presenting chapters of the novel he was writing. Now, there was no similarity in the ideas. His is a satire on religion, mine is about a tree that defies the laws of reality. But in going to that group week after week and helping to edit one novel, I found my inspiration to write my own. And now, as it nears completion, I know I never would have gotten so far if not for the group.
3. Practice
Much as with any other art, practice makes perfect. However, we have few ways to practice our craft in the way that a musician can hear what doesn't fit in a composition or an artist may see where the colors don't blend. Sure, while writing you can see your spelling/grammatical errors, but how can you tell when stylistically you're off? How do you practice editing?
There's certainly some strange ways. Hunter S. Thompson retyped A Farewell to Arms (I believe) and The Great Gatsby before he set out to do his own writing. I'm not suggesting everyone do this, but a good exercise as writers is to think how we might change the books we read to satisfy our own style and expectations (steer clear of Twilight though, it'll make you hate yourself.) But this can only push you so much.
Part of being in a writing group is that you are also helping edit other peoples writing. After all, you can't expect other writers to give your writing the attention it deserves if you aren't willing to do the same (this is one of the things to watch out for when searching for a writing group and one I'll talk about next week.) By practicing our editing of other peoples work, we'll find that our critical eye for our own work will be better tuned to notice the finer details. This doesn't mean that you will eventually run through your need for a writing group. In fact, the opposite. If your group progresses the same as you, you'll find that your works begin improving all the better and you as a group are able to focus on fine tuning pieces instead of overhauling.
4. Motivation
I didn't start writing until I was in college and was in writing courses. I read a whole lot, but as far as writing goes, I never went past the terrible poetry that high schoolers are oft to write and oft to assume is the most poignant writing to grace the page (but is the type of melodrama that makes you gag years later when you read it again.) However when I entered into a poetry course that had me writing at least one poem every week I started producing dozens a week, forcing myself to write and write and write some more. Then I graduated.
And for a year...I wrote a poem or five.
Now, there were a lot of other reasons behind my ignoring my writing, but we won't get into that. Instead we'll focus on what happened after I happened to get invited into a writing group after presenting a poem to a Renaissance Literature class. I started writing again. I started producing on the level I had been in my college course. And I started doing something I'd never done before. Editing.
Whether you find a group that meets weekly, monthly, or however often they'd like, having that knowledge that you should have something for a specific day will push you to make sure you have something written for that day. It will push you to edit to present quality pieces to your group. If you're competitive like me, it will push you to try to go beyond your own levels so that you impress your colleagues.
You see what I'm getting at here. A writing group will drive you. If you already had the drive you may find that it pushes you in different directions. But it is far easier to be motivated with others than to motivate yourself.
5. Community
This one should be obvious but I find that it is often an overlooked element of the group. This part I can't talk technical truths because most of the advantages will depend on the composition of the group. I can only tell you what I've experienced in my own group.
The members of my writing group have become more than just fellow writers. They're business partners now, as we venture into running an E-zine. They're co-workers as we prepare for our trek to the AWP conference in March. They're the people that I trust to be references for me as I venture into getting a job. They're the people I trust to help edit my writing.
And they're my friends.
I know some groups will meet for dinner and editing. However the group I'm a part of has tried that and realized it's better not to mix business and pleasure. It is my advice that you edit first and then eat. Otherwise you're generally more focused on eating than editing.
But if you find a truly great group of writers than the best advice I can give you is to sometimes meet and don't discuss writing at all! Myself and the members of my group meet for lunch. We go to each others parties. We're honored guests at each others weddings. We are a group but we are also extremely close friends. Which helps us in the writing aspect of our group because we are comfortable enough with each other to propose radical changes, put forward extreme ideas, and argue until our faces turn blue. And I don't mean with the person who wrote the piece!
If you payed attention last week, the friendship aspect of the group shouldn't be that surprising. Those great writing groups of the past I talked about? They were more than just writing groups. They were circles of friends.
So there you have it. There's certainly more reasons that you could think of for why to join a writing group, but those are my five most important. But it's not all sunshine and rainbows. Next week I'll discuss some of the reasons why a writing group might not be working out and how you can help yourself solve those issues.
David is one of the founders and editors of Obsession Literary Magazine and the maintainer of Obsession's blog.
Before I get into that I just want to clear one thing up. It's not necessarily that a writing group will do all of these things. As with any writing endeavor, part of what's going to help you succeed is your own drive. The other is the groups drive. If, however, you find a keeper, you'll find that your writing only improves due to your choice of committing to a group. But why even give a writering group a shot?
1. Fresh Eyes
I don't know what your process is like, but mine generally involves writing a poem, obsessing over it for a few weeks, and then I shelve the piece for a bit so I can approach it at a later date with fresh eyes. Now, this is not the most time effective approach to writing, so imagine my surprise at my discovery that presenting pieces to my writing group speeds the whole process up!
In a writering group, especially one consisting of multiple opinions and/or genres, your piece is immediately getting a fresh look which will often draw out discussions on parts of your writing that you wanted to discuss, and maybe even parts you didn't even notice. Ever written a really killer story but then had someone look at it and ask "Yeah but who's the main character?" only to realize you never defined them? It won't always be something as big as this, but you may find pieces of your story are missing that you didn't even notice because in your head they were always so clear!
My point is that having a group of writers critique you can give you that immediate feedback that you need to continue your writing process rather than having it sit around for a bit, or read it fifty times to notice those few details. But that seems a minor thing when compared to...
2. Fresh Ideas
When my writers group and I presented at the Montgomery Community College Writing Conference on the advantages and disadvantages of writing groups, we had a member of the audience who was very hesitant to let someone else view her work because she was afraid that it would tarnish her hand in the piece. As I discussed last week, this is definitely not the case, but it's not just editing that you can get from a writers group.
When you have several different types of minds looking at your piece you may find that they notice elements that you may not have been aware you put in (as a writing teacher of mine once said though, whether you are aware of it or not it's never just luck.) These elements may prove even more interesting than the ideas you were focusing on (your secondary character is more moving than the main character, that side story has the potential to add a whole different layer to your story, a simile that you didn't even notice would be stronger throughout the poem, etc.) If you're like my group it may come down to something as seemingly small as word choice (something I have a knack for helping my group out with.)
Certainly editing can bring up some fresh thoughts, but I'm talking about so much more here. Being among a group of writers it is only inevitable that you are going to get ideas from their successes and failures. As the quote goes "Good artists copy, great artists steal." I'm not saying that you'll steal all of your colleagues ideas, but you will find inspiration from them. I'll give you two examples from my own group experiences.
First is my favorite poem that I've written. A fellow student back when I was in a group editing style class wrote two poems that didn't work within a week. One was about being awake at 3 am, which was supposed to be about being unable to sleep but didn't go far enough. The other was a poem about the Mariana trench. In those two failures though, I found that the second idea was meant to be combined with the first! I combined the two ideas, put them in my own language, and wrote a poem about how the it feels like you're descending into the Mariana trench when you're deeply tired but can't sleep.
The second example is the novel I'm writing. It began as a short story long ago that went into the folder of unsuccessful ideas and just stewed there. Up until one of the members in my writing groups started presenting chapters of the novel he was writing. Now, there was no similarity in the ideas. His is a satire on religion, mine is about a tree that defies the laws of reality. But in going to that group week after week and helping to edit one novel, I found my inspiration to write my own. And now, as it nears completion, I know I never would have gotten so far if not for the group.
3. Practice
Much as with any other art, practice makes perfect. However, we have few ways to practice our craft in the way that a musician can hear what doesn't fit in a composition or an artist may see where the colors don't blend. Sure, while writing you can see your spelling/grammatical errors, but how can you tell when stylistically you're off? How do you practice editing?
There's certainly some strange ways. Hunter S. Thompson retyped A Farewell to Arms (I believe) and The Great Gatsby before he set out to do his own writing. I'm not suggesting everyone do this, but a good exercise as writers is to think how we might change the books we read to satisfy our own style and expectations (steer clear of Twilight though, it'll make you hate yourself.) But this can only push you so much.
Part of being in a writing group is that you are also helping edit other peoples writing. After all, you can't expect other writers to give your writing the attention it deserves if you aren't willing to do the same (this is one of the things to watch out for when searching for a writing group and one I'll talk about next week.) By practicing our editing of other peoples work, we'll find that our critical eye for our own work will be better tuned to notice the finer details. This doesn't mean that you will eventually run through your need for a writing group. In fact, the opposite. If your group progresses the same as you, you'll find that your works begin improving all the better and you as a group are able to focus on fine tuning pieces instead of overhauling.
4. Motivation
I didn't start writing until I was in college and was in writing courses. I read a whole lot, but as far as writing goes, I never went past the terrible poetry that high schoolers are oft to write and oft to assume is the most poignant writing to grace the page (but is the type of melodrama that makes you gag years later when you read it again.) However when I entered into a poetry course that had me writing at least one poem every week I started producing dozens a week, forcing myself to write and write and write some more. Then I graduated.
And for a year...I wrote a poem or five.
Now, there were a lot of other reasons behind my ignoring my writing, but we won't get into that. Instead we'll focus on what happened after I happened to get invited into a writing group after presenting a poem to a Renaissance Literature class. I started writing again. I started producing on the level I had been in my college course. And I started doing something I'd never done before. Editing.
Whether you find a group that meets weekly, monthly, or however often they'd like, having that knowledge that you should have something for a specific day will push you to make sure you have something written for that day. It will push you to edit to present quality pieces to your group. If you're competitive like me, it will push you to try to go beyond your own levels so that you impress your colleagues.
You see what I'm getting at here. A writing group will drive you. If you already had the drive you may find that it pushes you in different directions. But it is far easier to be motivated with others than to motivate yourself.
5. Community
This one should be obvious but I find that it is often an overlooked element of the group. This part I can't talk technical truths because most of the advantages will depend on the composition of the group. I can only tell you what I've experienced in my own group.
The members of my writing group have become more than just fellow writers. They're business partners now, as we venture into running an E-zine. They're co-workers as we prepare for our trek to the AWP conference in March. They're the people that I trust to be references for me as I venture into getting a job. They're the people I trust to help edit my writing.
And they're my friends.
I know some groups will meet for dinner and editing. However the group I'm a part of has tried that and realized it's better not to mix business and pleasure. It is my advice that you edit first and then eat. Otherwise you're generally more focused on eating than editing.
But if you find a truly great group of writers than the best advice I can give you is to sometimes meet and don't discuss writing at all! Myself and the members of my group meet for lunch. We go to each others parties. We're honored guests at each others weddings. We are a group but we are also extremely close friends. Which helps us in the writing aspect of our group because we are comfortable enough with each other to propose radical changes, put forward extreme ideas, and argue until our faces turn blue. And I don't mean with the person who wrote the piece!
If you payed attention last week, the friendship aspect of the group shouldn't be that surprising. Those great writing groups of the past I talked about? They were more than just writing groups. They were circles of friends.
So there you have it. There's certainly more reasons that you could think of for why to join a writing group, but those are my five most important. But it's not all sunshine and rainbows. Next week I'll discuss some of the reasons why a writing group might not be working out and how you can help yourself solve those issues.
David is one of the founders and editors of Obsession Literary Magazine and the maintainer of Obsession's blog.
January 11, 2012
Rules of Writing: By David
I recently read (and responded) to the following blog post by Keith Cronin. You can read the whole thing here.
A singularly unpopular view of adverbs: By Keith Cronin
I want to start out by saying that I don't necessarily disagree with Keith Cronin's stance. I simply have a different one.
Anyone who has ever been through a professional writing course (whether in college or beyond) knows that you will always hear some sort of writing rules put forth. Mr. Cronin's objection is to the rule against overusing adverbs, but I feel this gets into a larger issue than just adverbs.
The types of rules for writing one may hear in writing courses can make as much sense as "avoid switching tenses" to being as weird as "never write poetry about writing poetry."
In Cronin's post, he makes the claim that adverbs are not something to be avoided, but rather something to be embraced. And I agree fully. Just not to the extent that he proposes. And only once you've learned how to use them properly.
Adverbs, like any other words, can be used skillfully or they can be used haphazardly. In thinking of adverbs, I like to think of them as accidentals in music. That is, a sharp or flat that isn't part of the key signature. An accidental, when well placed, can completely change the tone of a piece of music. It can add a sad moment to a happy song, or vice versa. They can create dissonant sounds that pierce the listener to the bone and make them shudder. But if used haphazardly, they create a garbled mess that sounds off, and which pushes listeners away.
There is nothing inherently wrong with adverbs, or any part of grammar. I once heard a writing teacher state that there was never a moment where a writer should have to use a semicolon. If that were true, there would be no such thing as a semicolon! However, if a writer uses semicolons too often, they create endless sentences that make no sense (I for one, when thinking of semicolons, always reflect back to an old Dilbert comic strip where Dilbert creates a multipage personal evaluation that fits into a single sentence, in order to annoy his boss.)
The reason that every every writing course begins with rules is two fold. Firstly, it's because every writing teacher has a different view of writing and every writing teacher will assume that they are right. But since they all claim they are right, then we have to know that inevitably some (or all) of them will be wrong. So this leaves us with the second reason that every writing course begins with rules.
It is the same reason that a beginning art student is given a color wheel and told not to stray outside of complimentary colors. It is the same reason that a beginning music student learns a scale with no sharps or flats and begins building from there. As writers, we need to learn the basics before we learn the advanced rules before we learn that all of the truly great writers were breaking rules! If no one ever broke the rules we'd still be writing in the old Greek styles (and probably still in Greek!)
We learn the rules to learn how to break them skillfully and create something that goes beyond just writing. So that those choices we make go on to become art.
So as I started out saying, I fully agree with Keith Cronin when he claims that adverbs shouldn't be viewed as something evil. But I disagree in stating that I feel they should be viewed as something that cannot be evil. Think of it like the force. There's the light side (the rules side) and the dark side (the haphazard side). And somewhere in between there's Luke Skywalker who knows how to use and control both.
David is one of the founders and editors of Obsession Literary Magazine and the maintainer of Obsession's blog.
A singularly unpopular view of adverbs: By Keith Cronin
I want to start out by saying that I don't necessarily disagree with Keith Cronin's stance. I simply have a different one.
Anyone who has ever been through a professional writing course (whether in college or beyond) knows that you will always hear some sort of writing rules put forth. Mr. Cronin's objection is to the rule against overusing adverbs, but I feel this gets into a larger issue than just adverbs.
The types of rules for writing one may hear in writing courses can make as much sense as "avoid switching tenses" to being as weird as "never write poetry about writing poetry."
In Cronin's post, he makes the claim that adverbs are not something to be avoided, but rather something to be embraced. And I agree fully. Just not to the extent that he proposes. And only once you've learned how to use them properly.
Adverbs, like any other words, can be used skillfully or they can be used haphazardly. In thinking of adverbs, I like to think of them as accidentals in music. That is, a sharp or flat that isn't part of the key signature. An accidental, when well placed, can completely change the tone of a piece of music. It can add a sad moment to a happy song, or vice versa. They can create dissonant sounds that pierce the listener to the bone and make them shudder. But if used haphazardly, they create a garbled mess that sounds off, and which pushes listeners away.
There is nothing inherently wrong with adverbs, or any part of grammar. I once heard a writing teacher state that there was never a moment where a writer should have to use a semicolon. If that were true, there would be no such thing as a semicolon! However, if a writer uses semicolons too often, they create endless sentences that make no sense (I for one, when thinking of semicolons, always reflect back to an old Dilbert comic strip where Dilbert creates a multipage personal evaluation that fits into a single sentence, in order to annoy his boss.)
The reason that every every writing course begins with rules is two fold. Firstly, it's because every writing teacher has a different view of writing and every writing teacher will assume that they are right. But since they all claim they are right, then we have to know that inevitably some (or all) of them will be wrong. So this leaves us with the second reason that every writing course begins with rules.
It is the same reason that a beginning art student is given a color wheel and told not to stray outside of complimentary colors. It is the same reason that a beginning music student learns a scale with no sharps or flats and begins building from there. As writers, we need to learn the basics before we learn the advanced rules before we learn that all of the truly great writers were breaking rules! If no one ever broke the rules we'd still be writing in the old Greek styles (and probably still in Greek!)
We learn the rules to learn how to break them skillfully and create something that goes beyond just writing. So that those choices we make go on to become art.
So as I started out saying, I fully agree with Keith Cronin when he claims that adverbs shouldn't be viewed as something evil. But I disagree in stating that I feel they should be viewed as something that cannot be evil. Think of it like the force. There's the light side (the rules side) and the dark side (the haphazard side). And somewhere in between there's Luke Skywalker who knows how to use and control both.
David is one of the founders and editors of Obsession Literary Magazine and the maintainer of Obsession's blog.
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