Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Forced Writing - It Needs To Flow Off The Page

Too often, I find myself writing a rejection letter that states the writing was too forced and didn't flow off the page enough. The end result is that I am simply not drawn to the characters and their situations. For any of you who have received this comment, please understand this is not a form letter but really the best way to say what was happening.

I honestly believe that writers are often too hung up on finding a great premise and story idea, or they spend so much time developing the K-A heroine or totally hot hero and they forget the writing. These characters are literally trapped within the pages of the story and can never escape if the writing is not working for the reader. Now this might not be the only reason. There are obviously a ton of other potential reasons why the characters are trapped, but more often than not, it is the writing.

In many ways, this type of writing reminds me of Michaelangelo's "Prisoner" sculptures in the Academia in Florence. The carvings depict characters struggling with all of their might to tear away at the stone and escape. I love it! But not in writing.

As a writer, this is where grammar knowledge comes into play. The use of paragraphing, complex sentence structures, independent and dependent clauses, and certainly the punctuation marks, will control how the writing comes off the pages. And yes, if you are not understanding this information and rely heavily on grammar checkers, this is something you will want to master, or at least get a to a functional level if you want to write professionally. If you spend so much time "wordsmithing" the story, there is a good chance you are messing a lot of this up.

Reading your story out-loud is one potential way of identifying key problems. Now, please note, when you do this, it is crucial that you have someone else read it to you and not you reading it to yourself. The latter will result in what literacy specialists call "reading miscues." Your brain simply doesn't like making mistakes so it will change words and make edits, even if it is not on the page.

If you find that you are stumbling over adjectives and adverbs (which by the way are not bad, just misused), or you find you run are running out of oxygen on those longer paragraphs, you might have a problem. Let's deal with the adjectives and adverbs for a second. Yes, there are writers out there who tell you to leave them out. I am sorry to say it, but these writers are recommending it because they probably are unclear how to use them effectively (yes I know this is a stereotype but it gets my truly excellent point across). The problem writers have with the adjectives and adverbs is they simply force these little beauties on words and phrases that don't need them. Hey, telling me the spaghetti was savory is repetitious. It's obviously not sweet. And then adding it to delectable and piping hot is too much. In other words, "She licked her luscious red lips still tender from his passionate kiss, savoring the savory and delectable piping hot bowl of angel hair pasta in a light Tuscan marinara sauce..." is way too much. No, I will not get into the issues of why someone would use angel air with marinara, or the fact that she should be doing something other than eating, I want to simply show you a truly awkward sentence.

In this case, the author is simply trying to do too much with those internal clauses and an over-use of adjectives. What she is simply trying to say is there was a great kiss and great pasta. The rest is far from necessary and makes the reading forced and lacking in fluency.

As an agent, this is part of the reason I don't need to ask for a lot of a manuscript in the early query process. If you have the writing issues in the first chapters, the ones you really go over a lot, then the odds are the rest is going to struggle as well.

Homework today? Go work on fluency. As for me, I am off to edit some writing.



  1. Thanks so much for another great post. This one is timely and just what I needed to read. I'm about to sit down and start doing an edit focussing solely on my writing.
    You mentioned in an e-mail to me that my writing was too forced and I really appreciate this post explaining it all.
    Have a great New Year!

  2. Forced writing is difficult to see in your own writing. My critique partners and writing club have not called me on it, but an agent has so it becomes confusing even when you read aloud. Good luck with correcting this, Melissa.