About Rules for Writing

[pameladean]

This entry was almost entitled just "Rules for Writing," but I realized that doing so would cause people to think that I was about to list some or recommend some, whereas in fact I don't even believe in them any more. This fact is in the foreground of my thoughts because of the recent link on[Bad username or site: Making Light @ livejournal.com] to Elmore Leonard's ten rules for writing. Now, Mr. Leonard specifically says that these are rules he uses to make himself invisible, and that if one doesn't wish to do that, one needn't look them over. So I have no direct quarrel with him. But I admit to considerable puzzlement. People are always on about transparent prose (I flatly disbelieve in that as well; I have never, ever seen any transparent prose, not to my range of vision, never, not once) and effacing the writer and making the reader forget that the reader is, well, reading, making the reader forget that there is a book, is text. I do not understand it. I like books. I like text. I like books better than movies, better than television, better than comic books, better than painting, sculpture, cooking, music, or dance. I like them because they are text, because they are words. I don't want to forget that they are books. I don't want to be tricked or fooled or to have their textuality pared down to the bone so I can see through or beyond it to its reality. Nor do I want the writer to be invisible. Well, possibly the writer, though of course that is in fact an impossible thing to accomplish. But say it's possible. Maybe it's sometimes a good idea for the writer to be invisible. But I don't want the narrator to be invisible. I don't want words that aren't much like words, small pale faint weak unassuming words. What in the world is the point of that? I know a book is writing, I like knowing that, or why would I bother reading?

Pamela

Comments

[sarahwilder.livejournal.com]

Amen!

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Amen!

[pameladean]

What an indulgent choir you are!

Pamela

[redbird]

I've read almost no Elmore Leonard, so I don't know if this is what he's getting at, but the distinction you draw at the end between an invisible writer and an invisible narrator may be what he's getting at. Whether it is or not, I think it's useful. This may not be an issue in writing third person (I have yet to complete enough fiction to be able to say with anything resembling confidence), but it makes sense to me that someone using the first person to write fiction might look for ways to conceal the writer to bring out the voice of the viewpoint fictional character.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I had much the same thoughts.

[pameladean]

In theory, yeah; but not those ways. Not eschewing any verb except "said" for dialogue, stuff like that. (I should have linked to the rules, I guess, but they do irritate me so much.) Certainly one tries to avoid one's own customary locutions in favor of whatever locutions one thinks the first-person narrator would use, but Leonard's suggesting a particular set of invariable strategies, and I think actually they would be really weird in first person.

In third person you have a lot more choices. You can be as rigid as you would in first in terms of word choices that would be made by the character, and so on, or you can be rigid like that in some scenes and pull back to a more neutral or richer or sparser narrative in others, depending on exactly what you're doing. But his recommendations are so very specific, I think he means he's trying to get people to forget there's a writer there at all. And he is not the only one; it's a whole school of writing, though sometimes it only doesn't want to "get in the way of the story" or "slow the story down" or "remind the reader that the reader is reading" or something. I don't say it's an invalid choice to wish to become invisible. But it's not the only way to go, and I particularly don't like it either as reader or as writer.

Pamela

[kiya]

I do like one thing at the moment about the existence of the fairly unremarkable "said"; it enables me to use "sent" easily as the equivalent for telepathic communication in a story where I don't want to do fancy punctuation for what's really just normal dialogue.

Not really at all relevant to the topic of complaint, which I agree with, but I was all reminded. (And I may as well write about the WIP, as I'm being stunningly incapable of writing the actual WIP lately.)

[pameladean]

I am always happy to provide another cat to vacuum.

And yes, I can see that nice unobtrusive word "sent" sliding easily into the eye of people to whom "said" is invisible. Invisible words are useful. Just not the be-all and end-all of writing.

Pamela

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

The "same thoughts" that I had mainly related to there being an important difference between an invisible writer and an invisible narrator. Generally, in first-person fiction and in third-person fiction with a single viewpoint character, I prefer an invisible writer and a visible narrator. But that's just my prefence. Of course there is no "only way to go" in writing or reading, and anyone who tries to put forth such an only way is just being silly.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Actually, I sneakily like little secret reminders that I am reading. Like when one character says to another "Oh those things only happen in books" or when Sam wonders to Frodo what kind of story they'll be in (in fact, some of those moments are my very favorite bits of LOTR). Or, more broadly, like when Don Quixote and Sancho Panza find a pirated edition of their own adventures. It gives me a tickle. Not that all literature has to have that level of meta-reference back to itself, but I think John Gardner's phrase of "the extended dream" -- where you enter into a built world -- is a lot more accurate than the invisible narrator, the invisible author or, God help us scribblers, the invisible book (wouldn't that just be a film?). I should think invisibility is the last thing you want when you're trying to hold a world together. More like what Flaubert (?) said -- that like god, the author's everywhere and nowhere.

moi

[pameladean]

I am entirely with you here.

Pamela

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

((blush)) Well good! Without sounding treacly (I hope) you're one of my favorite authors in how your books refer to other books and literature itself (I tried to massage that into something more comprehensible, but it resisted), especially in Dubious Hills, frex. After all, we're building on a tradition here. I always think of the writer/narrator as being like the storyteller around the campfire. You get drawn into the world of the story, but that doesn't obviate the pleasure that someone's telling it to you. (Was also exposed to the structural delights of Arabian Nights at far too early an age.)

moi

[pameladean]

Aw, thank you. It doesn't sound treacly to me, but, well, I'd be biased, anyway.

I think you're making an important point, once I get over my ego-boo. A lot of this advice makes "being drawn into the story" and "being aware that somebody is telling it to you" into opposites, into things that preclude one another. But you are right, that isn't the case. Both things can happen at once, even in third-person narration.

Pamela

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Danke! I just have a horror of coming over all gushy -- I don't know why really, most writing is such an isolated phenomenon probably a little gush is more than welcome, que no? I guess more than anything it's fear of trampling someone's privacy. And of looking, well, dopey.

I think one of my favorite occasions of being drawn into the story and being aware someone is telling it is in Middlemarch, when George Eliot writes, "One morning Dorothea -- but why always Dorothea? Why always the pink-cheeked and young and pretty?" (paraphrasing) and we're off for a tour of Mr. Casaubon's psyche. It's so startling -- it jolted other people I knew out of the book but it was to me as if the book had sat up and started speaking (which I of course thought was just fantastic). But I grew up reading Dickens and Jane Eyre and my father's a great fan of Thomas Wolfe, so maybe I'm not as conditioned against authorial intrusion as some modern readers.

I like yr point abt opposites, and picked up another one -- how he equates remaining invisible when writing a book, which he says his rules help him to do, in order "to help....show rather than tell what's taking place in the story" (if there's anything I hate it's Show Don't Tell advice. Sorry, the Showing is an illusion. It's actually all Telling! Some Telling is more convincing than others, that's all. Bye now). Again I can't help seeing it as a sort of cinematic convention, Isherwood's contention that he was a camera -- although even a camera, of course, has a viewpoint: that of the person behind it. I think Jane Austen is invisible, sort of. There certainly aren't any George Eliot-esque authorial intrusions into the narrative of the book. But even in that first famous sentence of P&P, she's...well, telling and showing. Showing through telling I guess is the way I would like to put it.

I hadn't realied how close that book is to beginning with dialogue. Universally acknowledged, good fortune, want of a wife, truth so well fixed, rightful property, and we're off to the races. I also, if I were a little, mean, petty person, could point out that Mrs Bennet "cried impatiently", but I'm not, so I shan't.

moi

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

I wonder if it may be a result of different reading/parsing styles. I couldn't even manage an attempt at this standard of "invisible" prose, but I remain keenly aware of words as I read or write, and in that sense I'm very much in agreement with the feeling that "I don't want words that aren't much like words, small pale faint weak unassuming words."

On the other hand, I've talked to any number of people who see "movies" in their head when they read, and from what I can tell, everything gets translated into that mental-movie-medium; the words used to evoke that movie are less specifically important. Since I am not one of these people (I can barely visualized even when I'm trying), I may be misrepresenting the experience, but perhaps for such a reader/writer, aiming toward "invisible" writing makes more sense. Mind you, this is sheer speculation on my part.

[pameladean]

My immediate response is to say that they should go see a movie, then, dammit, and not mess with my book. But that's silly. I know there are different kinds of readers. But I don't really think of that kind when I'm writing, and sometimes when reading I can practically feel the camera, and it annoys me a lot. Probably this is an indication that the technique has partly failed, but still.

Pamela

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Well, that's the kind of reader I am, although to me the particular words that are used are certainly important, because a slight change in wording changes the movie in my head.

As I composed the rest of this, I decided that it's too long to stick into someone else's LJ. Therefore, I'm making it an extry in my own.

[pameladean]

Whee! I'll look at it after I'm more awake, having higher standards for others' LJ's than for my own.

I didn't mean to insult your mode of reading. (I know you are very unlikely to have taken offense, but still.) It relieves me mightily to know that the wording still matters. I have a vague recollection that Emma Bull, who is one of the most meticulous stylists I know, is also a cinematic reader, but I'm not quite sure. I should drop her an email.

Pamela

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it depends on the reader even with this mode? I saw your post and was illuminated. I was thinking of someone relatively recently on rec.arts.sf.composition (within the last couple of months?) who sounded like specific words didn't make much difference; from your example ("seated herself" vs. "sat down") maybe you were also thinking of that discussion? In any case, I am intrigued to know that "movie" readers have varying experiences, too.

My reading-mode is primarily aural (on those rampant "types of intelligences" tests I seem to be scoring higher on "musical" than "verbal" intelligences, which is depressing given that I gave up on music as an avocation years ago), so even minute changes in wording matter; they change the flavor and rhythm and tone of the sentence.

And as someone who can't even visualize simple plane figures without much effort, I envy you.

more than film

[(Anonymous)]

When I hear "transparent prose" I think of those storytellers who are able to put me into full immersion virtual reality where I'm not reading about it, I'm not watching it happen, I'm living it.

My beef with Leonard's rules is that I don't think that experience is incompatible with artful writing. I think that's what I love about all the Scribblies' writing--that combination of immersive storytelling along with (NOT instead of) narrative artistry.

jeffy (http://tomecat.com/madtimes/)

Re: more than film

[pameladean]

If by artful you mean overtly artful, I agree with you. In fact, naive or faux naive writing is a lot more likely to extract me from a story and leave me frothing on the shore of annoyance. I suspect that what pushes a reader away from a story is particular to the reader, and maybe also to the story.

Pamela

My friend Hannah says that the answer to any writing question is "it depends."

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Well, I think Leonard's advice, like all other writing advice, is best gargled with a healthy dose of "This works for me; it may not work for you." Or, as I keep reminding myself, there are no rules. There are only guidelines, and when it works it's fine to break to break them.

However, I work with a lot of very squeaky shiny new writers, and there are a fair number who don't want to understand *why* the guidelines exist. And it does make a difference to understand why a common error can come to be seen that way, even when it's possible to break it quite effectively--

--bleh. Si I can sit down and write a first person present tense story, and not be a hypocrite when I say that most of the time, first person and present tense don't work for writers who are just learning the craft. Because they tend to go for a complicated solution because it's complicated and fancy, rather than because it's the simplest effective solution to a given story.

On the other paw, you never learn how to ride a bike if you're scared to fall on your ass.

So, you know.

It's all just words in the end, and there's only one way to get to Carnegie Hall. If I'm expressing myself coherently at all.

Re: My friend Hannah says that the answer to any writing question is "it depends."

[pameladean]

I say that too, quite frequently.

Leonard did in fact make pretty much that kind of disclaimer, which is why I said, somewhat ludicrously as it turns out, that I had no quarrel with him. It's more that his rules reminded me of a whole slew of others and an entire coherent approach to writing that I have always found both baffling and vaguely pernicious.

When I was a shiny new writer, I never paid any attention to those rules unless an editor forced me to. And even then, the rule itself simply was not helpful. A demonstration of why a particular passage did not work was helpful. A demonstration that I kept doing this kind of thing and it wasn't doing what I thought it was was helpful, but correcting one tendency with another one isn't a good idea either. Even if you make the same mistake repeatedly, the solution for each instance of it is probably not the same. I think most rules of writing, even if you call them guidelines, are such very crude attempts to generalize what really will not be generalized that they should be viewed with cackles of contempt, but possibly that is an overreaction.

Pamela

Re: My friend Hannah says that the answer to any writing question is "it depends."

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

You know, I don't think it's an over-reaction. I think there's conflicting things going on: the writerly desire for the Magic Get Published Button at conflict with the icky reality that there is no such thing, and that what's unequivocally *right* on one page may be spoon-gagging wrong on the next.

It's all seat of the pants when you get down to it, even if you can explain in erudite terms what that seat of the pants is about. The intersection of craftsmanship and art?

Something. I'm back to the old saw about writing not being something that can be taught, only learned.

It seems to me that the point you're making obliquely is that it's not enough *not to do things wrong.* One must do things *right.*

I find that there's a point where I realize that everything is really just fumbling ways of talking about the same thing, and if it were easy to explain, we wouldn't need the fiction in the first place.

Re: My friend Hannah says that the answer to any writing question is "it depends."

[pameladean]

We seem to be in violent agreement.

I suspect that a lot of writing rules are created from the inside out, are a kind of shorthand that a particular writer uses for what has been learned in the course of writing. But they are a very different thing when viewed from the outside in. One needs to learn one's own for oneself. This isn't to say that occasionally another writer may not hit on a truth for oneself, and in such a way that one can recognize what the shorthand stands for. But yeah, seat of the pants, entirely situational work, that's what we have to do most of the time.

I am also much taken with your formulation that it isn't enough not to do the wrong thing, one must do the right thing. And that's all particular to the work, the scene, the sentence in question as well.

Pamela

Re: My friend Hannah says that the answer to any writing question is "it depends."

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I think on some level what happens is that people badly want it to be simple and mechanistic, and it isn't. Or, worse, it is, on some levels. But it also isn't. So you can learn all the 'rules' and still not be writing well. Or you can break them with abandon, and be doing okay.

[arkuat]

Have I mentioned lately that I love you?

I haven't read much (any?) Elmore Leonard, and I certainly haven't read his rules for writing, but this brouhaha reminds me of an Isaac Asimov essay in which the estimable Mr. Asimov took pride in his transparent Venetian windowpane glass style of writing, contrasting it with the "stained glass" style of others.

Well, I like stained glass. And the narrator of TAM LIN and JGR is among my favorite characters.

[pameladean]

*blush* Well, you have, but not in public. *smooch* (My LJ, I get to be soppy if I like.)

I like stained glass, too. And that's a very good analogy, because I think it's misleading to view language as a window through which one sees something else. It is the something else, or, rather, it can be. Stained glass is to let in light, but it's not to see through, it's to be looked AT, looked at with the light that's beyond it. The point is not to squint through it and figure out how the sky would look if you had a clear window.
Just so! Thank you. I love you, too.

Oh, wait, that is interesting, I'll have to ponder the notion that the narrator of TL and JGR is the same. It's not impossible. Very different from the narrator of the Secret Country books or The Dubious Hills. They are cousins, at least, the narrators of those two books. Hmmmmm.

Pamela

Pamela

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Oh! Oh! Oh! Totally off-topic, but I found the new Secret Country reprints while browsing at B&N the other day and did a ridiculous giddy dance of joy. They're SO GORGEOUS!!!

[pameladean]

Aren't they just FINE? My editor rocks.

Pamela

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, good old Orwell: "Good prose is like a window-pane." I've always thought good prose is like, well, sort of, a painting. A painting is a window, too, after all, isn't it? ((wanders off dubiously into English Major-type metaphoricness))

moi

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Like a window-pane, like a stained-glass window, like a painting, like a curled-up cat, like Ilmarinen's awl, like a series of perfect jetes landing on the very edge of a stage. That's the lovely thing about good prose: it doesn't have to be like just one thing. We shouldn't let that kind of metaphor eat the whole process for us.

Re: About Rules for Writing

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

somebody else has already mentioned readers who prefer immersion in movie-form as an experience for their reading, so i'm just gonna muse a little on the invisibility of the writer.

i often prefer that, and i like your distinction between the invisible writer and the invisible narrator -- i don't care much about the latter, but the former, good idea in many cases. i am reading robertson davies right now, tempest tost, and the writer is extremely visible to me. i don't happen to mind, because davies is a very clever writer, and i delight in his words, but there is a different quality to reading this, it creates more distance from the characters, from the story; i am sitting outside the story conspiring with the writer in clever remarks about the characters. it's fun, but this is not what i look for most often when reading. i like to be much closer to the story, i like to be in the story, though it's never like a movie at all, and i am with you in that i want it to be textual because i love the words and the flavours they conjur up, which is very different from what a movie does.

[corinnethewise.livejournal.com]

I think there is a difference between not getting in the way of the story and trying to pretend that the book is not a book. There are some stories that I have the worst time getting through. They can be excellent stories, but the particular way that the author writes makes it very hard for me to read, Dickins is a good example of this, for me. Other books just flow smoothly. The best books I am not necessarily aware that I am reading, not because I feel like I'm watching a movie, but because I just become part of the story. I am the characters, I am part of the story. Peg Kerr's Wild Swans is an excellent example of this. While I was reading it, whenever anyone tried to talk to me I'd think that I couldn't talk like Eliza. It took me a few moments to realize that I wasn't part of the book. Those are the best stories, to me, where they don't pretend to not to be written, but where they are so well written that it goes beyond reading.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Did this remind anyone else of Ursula K. Le Guin's essay in Language of the Night about How To Write books which say, Never begin a story with dialogue! so she quotes the opening of War & Peace?

moi

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I think your entry is more orthogonal to Leonard's essay than in contradiction. Two of the things I like about his list are (1) that he does explicitly define it as his rules for himself and for a particular literary aim; and (2) for *every single item* he then goes on to give an example of a writer who contravenes this "rule" successfully.

Leonard's prose isn't transparent to me at all; I consider him a very stylized writer, with an identifiable voice and a great sense of rhythm. He's not one of my favorite writers, but he is a very good one.

transparency is a function of eyes

[(Anonymous)]

We all have pretty much the same material eyes, but literary eyes vary, leaving it true of prose that the one transparency is the other wall of close-laid stones.

--
Graydon

[papersky.livejournal.com]

My reaction to that set of rules was to read through my last six chapters to see if I could possibly insert any more adverbs, uses of "suddenly", alternatives to said or otherwise crush them into the dust.

I was really annoyed to discover that I already had the right words, but perhaps it's for the best.

("This is for you, Mr. Leonard," the cat gasped, as she suddenly honked up a hairball in the middle of his swept marble floor.)