Thursday, May 31, 2012
The
Art of Writing No. 46
I’d like to continue the refrain of Jack
Sanger good, Jack Sanger not bad which I began in the last blog. It was in answer
to the question I posed myself after my illustrious writer friend opined that I
maybe should not deign to build a central character who is a successful writer.
My first answer involved the notion of ‘critical introspection’ from my
academic days.
Admittedly I am not (yet) a household name
in the world of fiction but who knows, I have ambition! Let me think a little
more about my weaknesses as a writer, some of which will have leaked on to the
screen of previous blogs, more as incidental remarks than focused literary self-criticism. So, let’s go.
These are areas I have recognized I should watch carefully in order not to
pollute my prose with infelicity.
I appear to have a problem with
prepositions. I make more adjustments to prepositions than any other part of my
syntax. Why? Maybe it goes back to childhood at school, maybe the cadences of
my inner dialogue betray me with alliteration and other sound resonances which
then produce the wrong word. Maybe it's because I hate repetition in a
paragraph and stick in an inappropriate preposition in an attempt at variety
and then revert or change again, sometimes having to alter the whole sentence
to avoid repeats. Occasionally I can’t think which preposition is the right one
and stare blankly at my notebook or screen.
Another failing I have is over-extending
metaphors. I begin well enough but find myself moving from fluidity into a
stick morass as I chase the meaning into cul de sacs of ornate meaninglessness.
Why is Kamil in Azimuth a fearful
detective? Well, he is not used to it being a man of the library rather than of
action. But, having spent a sentence or two delivering this picture I go on and
on, reveling in his fears and historical anti-heroes. The answer to this is worth a note. What can be said in an
effusive paragraph can be spread more thinly through the whole book so that the
picture of Kamil is in the form of a drip-feed and we have, from the novelist’s
point of view, a kind of character striptease. Since, like most writers other
than the most obsessively pedantic, I hate rewriting or erasing my ‘flow’, this
was a hard lesson for me.
There are times when I am too pleased with
the sound of my own voice. That is, I find my own views coming from the mouths
of characters rather than theirs. It is obtrusive and crass and has to be
scratched regardless of the sheer beauty of the text (!).
I can write pages of dialogue without the
scaffolding of description or helpful positioning pointers, assuming the reader
can follow who is speaking. This, of course becomes increasingly cryptic if
there is more than one person involved in dialogue.
I rely too much on my own definitions of
words and later I have to check in a dictionary what they actually mean.
Occasionally it is the opposite of my assumption, a sort of malapropism. I used
the word ‘enervate’ entirely wrongly at first. our This can then throw my
careful building of poetic expression.
Weaknesses become apparent over the years
and we attend to them laboriously and somewhat truculently. That’s the way of
it. We play to our strengths and excommunicate our evils. Now should I have
used that word there?
<< Home