Tighten your Writing

It's during the editing phase that you start to realize that you're a lot wordier than you thought.  At least that's been my experience.  And you, too, can do most of it without any help.

• You can catch your overwriting  and redundancies ["Hey, Grandma," I said to Grandma as I walked in the house.]  
• You can change those overly descriptive writing handles [she screamed angrily] into ones publishers will accept like said, shouted, asked, or whispered.  
• You can dump all amplifiers after you realize they amplify nothing [really hated doesn't convey nearly as much as loathed or even just hated all by itself.] 
• You can ferret out those pesky adjectives [beautiful woman] and turn them into vivid nouns [goddess].  
• Above all, you can hunt down those clunky adverbial phrases [stared stupidly] and swap them for strong verbs [gaped].  

Basically, you can take your gut draft, the draft you wrote just for you, straight from your heart, and turn it into something another human being will actually want to read.  You can change it from written vomit into a compelling story.

It helps to distance yourself from your writing, so you see it with newer eyes.  I went over an old short story recently I thought was so wonderful and found about half of it was filler.  It also helps to print out your writing because then you see it from another angle.  You can go at it with a pen.  It really helps to read it out loud to yourself, as well, because then you slow down your reading pace and see so many things you didn't see before.  You can also use the software's built-in spell/grammar check.

But there comes a moment when you realize you can do no more.  You need external eyes, someone outside your head, to which you can send it or read it.  That's when writers' groups online or in person come into play.  I've written about those recently.  That's when you can call in an editor like I did recently.  That's also when you can look into buying software like Grammerly or Autocrit, which help you do a lot of the things I've mentioned.  Most of editing can be done alone.  But almost everyone eventually needs help.  You are not alone.  If you're done with your heart draft [the rough draft], it's time to write the rest with your head.  It's time to tighten that writing.

Grammar-free Zones

Last semester, I taught an English class.  Granted, it was a very beginning writing class.  But I got to teach then expect grammar and writing skills--to a point.  I've now been asked to teach a class that is even more of a beginners' class.  And it doesn't look like I'll be teaching [or expecting] writing skills in the weekly paragraphs I'll be receiving.  This, for a grammar nazi, is called torture.  FaceBook causes many writers pain.  I am one of those writers.  I read the humorous grammar nazi's rule book Eats Shoots and Leaves for fun.

Now, I will be looking at and papers, unable to let my internal editor say a word.  Tell me, fellow writers out there, how much fun it is to live in a world full of [sometimes intentional] bad grammar?  How much fun is it to walk through those 20 Items or Less [FEWER, people, FEWER] lines and not say a word?  How many times do you have to look at signs and billboards and not say a thing about how much people must be smoking to spell that way, where kids are able to see and learn all the wrong things?  How many of us can watch Weird Al's "Word Crimes" and laugh knowingly while mentally looking for (and finding) errors even there?

People like me who enter situations like these have to remember to breathe.  We have to remind ourselves that the only reason we haven't been unfriended by 90% of those we know on social media is because we can control our red-pen impulses and just shake our heads in silence.  The only way to keep the job is to be gentle and view the heart of the piece, not the trappings.  The world will spell and punctuate [or not] as it will.  We will somehow survive the experience and move on. And be thankful to have a job.  

The Power of the Hero's Journey

This week, I watched the new live-action version of Disney's Jungle Book.  The original is cute, a classic.  Many people adore it.  But for me, it was never very exciting because it was my least favorite kind of story, milieu.  This means location.  The place is the main character.  Mowgli represents the audience as Baloo and Bagira act as tour guides to show off the quirky denizens of the jungle, who sing to display their personalities/philosphies.  Some of them are dangerous to the defenseless Mowgli.  But it is nonetheless not the story of a kid in a jungle so much as the story of the characters that people that jungle.

The new move has the same checklist of characters, for the most part.  However, the story as shown in the new movie employs the power of the hero's journey as described by Joseph Campbell. Mowgli starts in the normal world, in the wolf pack.  His call to adventure comes from Shere Khan, the tiger who threatens his family and home.  At first, he resists it, then he accepts it.  He then descends into the underworld of the unknown parts of the jungle and faces a number of dangers, including a father-figure's death.  The stakes are higher.  The choices are Mowgli's to make, not forced on him, and he grows as a character through them.  The movie takes one step further in becoming a bildungsroman, a coming of age story.  Because he fulfills the hero's journey, he emerges capable, master of both worlds.

A lot of writers like to write stories, but any story, whether it be a fantasy, a fairy tale retelling, science fiction, horror, or romance can benefit from the time-proven power of the hero's journey.  As I mentioned several weeks ago, many of Pixar's movies follow the same pattern.  People subconsciously expect it when they start reading an adventure yarn, especially.  When major parts of the hero's journey are lacking, people notice and feel unsatisfied.  I highly recommend that any writer researches and employs the hero's journey in their stories.