From My Little Black Heart

(Or, “Why Winterfox is So Bitchy”)

Purple prose ripe with thesaurus abuse. Telling and not showing. Prose full of redundant padding. Stock characters. Clichés. Mary Sues/Marty Sams. Ping-pong dialogue. Cardboard cut-out archetypes. Excessive angst. Self-aggrandizing internal monologue. Conversations that get nowhere. Plot full of holes you could kick a spacecraft through. Pseudo-intellectual philosophizing.

Reciting the names of these monstrous horrors can continue unto the very end of the world (or sun, if you must be picky): they are countless, they are everywhere, sometimes you can’t see them until it is too late… and they are out to get you.

Writers are a strange breed. We are diverse: we come from different backgrounds; we have different interests; we have different writing styles. Yet, for some strange reason, many of us fall into the same pits. There are shared mistakes that have occurred and will occur, again and again like an arcane, time-honored tradition. It is almost frightening how there seems to exist some kind of hive mind. It might well be genetically engineered or a result of some common ancestor. Whatever it is, what really ought to be done is this: hunt down the cause, stake it through the heart, and cremate it. Then, for good measure, scatter the ashes to the four winds and different bodies of water, each preferably half the world away from the other.

Failing that, I will endeavor to alert you to these pesky mistakes. Be you a perpetrator or a victim who has been subjected to the horrors, brace yourself. I will proceed with extreme prejudice, much snark, and heartless cruelty the likes of which will have you in bitter, bitter tears of unspeakable sorrow and crushed dreams.

Or it will have you in a fit of manic, evil laughter.

So you say…

One of the first things a writer should learn is that, just because you say something is thus-and-thus doesn’t make it so. This runs the gamut from the physical to the psychological, but the most common pitfall is when the author assigns a trait to a character: intelligence, wisdom, honesty, wittiness, and charisma.

I understand the temptation. It’s easy, it’s quick, and it’s supposed to get the point across, but it might just return to bite you in the butt later. Take Ms. Arianna Starbreeze, who is said to have an IQ of 180 at introduction, but turns out to be a complete nitwit who can’t even grasp basic physics or elementary human anatomy. For that matter, she behaves like any other teenage girl in her age range. General McTacticus, the author tells you, is a tactical genius. What does he do? He tries to counter a cavalry charge with a bunch of archers (on foot) who don’t even have a semblance of infantry to protect them; forget about pikes. (Somehow, the general wins anyway. Why? Because the author says so. Duh.)

Quite simply, it is often a case of the author not knowing what she/he is talking about. Without some research, you are probably going to screw up medieval warfare; without some research, you are not going to be able to approximate the behavior – and intellectual processes – of a genius. This is not to say, “Write what you know” (because that’d be very dull, and fantasy/sci-fi genre might as well not exist). This is, however, to say, “Write what you have researched.” Then show it. Let a character’s actions speak; let a stunning victory that makes sense be testament to military brilliance. Let eccentric habits be testament to mental instability or, yes, exceptional acumen.

Some authors seem to think that, if you repeat something a lot, the reader will be fooled. Tell ‘em Florajane is pure-hearted or evil to the core thrice a page, and everyone will believe it, right? Heck, let’s make sure they didn’t miss it one more time. Let the characters rhapsodize about how malicious or virtuous the protagonist is, too!

Good gods, stop that.

It is not a good tactic. It insults your reader’s intelligence. I recently have had the misfortune of running into an original fantasy piece wherein the author repeats every description at least thrice. In his style, a character description may read:

He was a wealthy merchant, not a poor one, and he was greedy to hoard more wealth. Most people’s living conditions were worse than his; few people’s are better. That was, he was a way-above-average citizen. Of course he earned more than others; to put it in another word, he was located on the upper end of the scale. But since he indulged in decadent pleasures more than they did, he spent more money.

No kidding. One of his passages is something very akin to this. In short, he stretches what could have been a single statement into a whole paragraph by repeating the subject over and over in different ways. Each sentence is an extension of the last, and all of them state the same thing. Now, most people don’t fall into this trap; this is an extreme, extreme case, but nevertheless, it is something to keep in mind. Never, ever, beat readers over the head with a piece of information, no matter how necessary you think it is.

And if you don’t show it, it still won’t be true. For instance, if you want to say your character is impoverished, describe his mud-walled house, the state of his ragged, dirty clothes, or his emaciated appearance. Show, show, and don’t tell!

But, but, it’s so Meaningful!

He looks upon the blank canvas and sees this: a statement of nothingness. Lo, and what profound statement this is! Nothingness is so… nothing. It ultimately sums up the meaning of life! The insignificance of one man compared to the wide universe! Nothing. What symbolism! Verily…

Someone delivers a slap to his face.

“Hey, snap out of it. A blank canvas is a blank canvas is a blank canvas, okay?”

The instant you find yourself coming up with a theme and setting out to build a story around it, take a deep breath. Drink strong, calming herbal tea. Step off the soapbox, because you were this close to entering the forbidden Pretentious!Ville. Quite simply, a story written with the intention to teach something often falls apart the moment somebody looks at it with a critical eye, unless you are very, very good. (In that case, you shouldn’t be reading this anyway. Hey, go fondle your Nobel/Booker/Pulitzer Prize or something.) If you want to do it, do it via an essay. Hop on a barrel and screech out a speech at the top of your lungs. Get a pulpit. The last thing you should try is writing a story.

Now, I’m not declaiming that “meaningful” and “philosophical” concepts in fiction is TEH EVAL. But what I have problems is that, all too frequently, the author falls in love with the idea of preaching and loses sight of everything else – characterization, plot, or even the fact that most people want to be entertained, not lectured. I am one of the people who think characters drive the story; they should live and they should breathe. When you start using characters as outlets for what you perceive as “deep”, they die and become nothing more than annoying, pedantic mouthpieces. Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth is an example of this phenomenon. The series started off as a semi-decent, if a bit predictable, fantasy braincandy. But no, Goodkind has to move onto preaching about, among other things, politics. Half of Faith of the Fallen, book six of the series, takes place in an evil, evil empire where the citizens are brainwashed and oppressed under a government whose methods are blatantly communist. (It is ruled by a tyrannical, villainous emperor, by the way.) Enters Richard Rahl, the hero. What does he do? He carves a statue. Mind you, he is this powerful war wizard with power the likes of which has never been seen for a thousand years, but it’s painstakingly emphasized that he sculpts the stone without the use of magic. The statue is then shown to the empire’s citizens, who promptly fall to their knees and find spiritual liberation just by looking at this marvelous work of art. This includes the wicked sorceress capable of committing the most brutal horrors.

What the hell.

Much of the book doesn’t make a terrible amount of sense, in any case. Richard has never shown a particular talent for sculpting – certainly not the kind that can awe or mass hypnotize a crowd – and suddenly this genius ability comes out of nowhere. Not only that, but throughout the series, Richard would break into lecturing about freedom and ideas that sound suspiciously like capitalism. Other characters would oooh and ahhh at him, gawking and generally acting like idiots or impressionable first-year politics students. (I’m sorry if I’m insulting students of this field everywhere.) The characters had some emotional problems, angst and depth in the first few books; these all disappear as they devolve into a blatant outlet for the author’s political/philosophical beliefs. (The stereotypical depiction is laughable, by the way. The evil empire seems to be a combination of communism and religious/clerical influence. Uhm, no. Anyone who has the smallest bit of clue would know these don’t work together. Can we say, “research!”?)

Please, unless you really know what you’re doing, don’t do this. Let your characters live; let them weave their tales in their own ways naturally. When you let that happen, the story will begin to have a will of its own, and that is far, far better than any artificial, rigid pamphlet you are trying to slap your reader’s face with.