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-ing and old drafts
Sep. 2nd, 2007 09:46 pmI can tell it's a holiday weekend in the States. The internet is quiet! Which probably means nobody is listening, but that's okay. Not that many people are fascinated by -ing sentences.
Because I live in a non-English-speaking country, a lot of books I buy are sight-unseen. Sometimes they end up to be great. Other times I wish I had been able to thumb through it first. Usually I can read a book without getting hung up trying to critique it (unless I really love or hate the story--and want to know why.) But there have been a few books that I admit I haven't been able to finish, and it's because of the writing. I know, I'm not published, so what can I say, but there was one with a high number of adverbial dialogue tags (7-8 per page--on every page) that I couldn't get through, even though my son liked the book. (For the record, I don't notice Rowling's, even though people tell me they're there. So if it bothers me, there must be a lot!) Another prose issue that bothers me is excessive use of -ing. As a device, it's fine. It's just that people (myself included) tend to overuse certain patterns, such as this:
"Blah blah blah," he said, taking a sip of lemon juice.
And doing that for every line of dialogue. There's nothing wrong with it per se; it's just that you have to mix it up with other kinds of sentences or it gets boring. I admit I have to watch for that in my own writing. The bigger problem with -ing, though, is that the writer uses it to describe things that are physically impossible (according to the laws governing the story, as well as natural laws):
Getting on the bicycle, they whizzed down the street to Grandma's.
Well, you CAN'T get on your bike AND whiz on it at the same time. I notice this happens a lot with sentences that begin with an -ing phrase. It doesn't cause the problem, but the two things often coexist. And when the whole book is full of writing like this, it starts to get distracting.
Then of course there's the -ing where you're trying to set the stage for some action, and the -ing is the background. Which again, is fine, as long as you don't overdo it. At some point, you can usually switch to a straight verb without damaging the sense of stage setup, thus saving you words and granting you more forward action in the text.
Anyway, I went back to my very firstest draft of a first novel last night after trying to read some other books. I wanted to see if I'd improved at all as a writer. Wow. Talk about embarrassing!!! I wasn't sending it out like that--but I was six drafts later, and let's just say that there's been improvement, even from that. Waaaay too much unnecessary info, especially at the beginning. Infodump city! Let me introduce myself, my dog, my friend's dog, my friend's cousin's half-brother's dog. And of course, lots of sloppy writing. Eek!
Hmm....I wonder what I'll say about my current writing next year...
Because I live in a non-English-speaking country, a lot of books I buy are sight-unseen. Sometimes they end up to be great. Other times I wish I had been able to thumb through it first. Usually I can read a book without getting hung up trying to critique it (unless I really love or hate the story--and want to know why.) But there have been a few books that I admit I haven't been able to finish, and it's because of the writing. I know, I'm not published, so what can I say, but there was one with a high number of adverbial dialogue tags (7-8 per page--on every page) that I couldn't get through, even though my son liked the book. (For the record, I don't notice Rowling's, even though people tell me they're there. So if it bothers me, there must be a lot!) Another prose issue that bothers me is excessive use of -ing. As a device, it's fine. It's just that people (myself included) tend to overuse certain patterns, such as this:
"Blah blah blah," he said, taking a sip of lemon juice.
And doing that for every line of dialogue. There's nothing wrong with it per se; it's just that you have to mix it up with other kinds of sentences or it gets boring. I admit I have to watch for that in my own writing. The bigger problem with -ing, though, is that the writer uses it to describe things that are physically impossible (according to the laws governing the story, as well as natural laws):
Getting on the bicycle, they whizzed down the street to Grandma's.
Well, you CAN'T get on your bike AND whiz on it at the same time. I notice this happens a lot with sentences that begin with an -ing phrase. It doesn't cause the problem, but the two things often coexist. And when the whole book is full of writing like this, it starts to get distracting.
Then of course there's the -ing where you're trying to set the stage for some action, and the -ing is the background. Which again, is fine, as long as you don't overdo it. At some point, you can usually switch to a straight verb without damaging the sense of stage setup, thus saving you words and granting you more forward action in the text.
Anyway, I went back to my very firstest draft of a first novel last night after trying to read some other books. I wanted to see if I'd improved at all as a writer. Wow. Talk about embarrassing!!! I wasn't sending it out like that--but I was six drafts later, and let's just say that there's been improvement, even from that. Waaaay too much unnecessary info, especially at the beginning. Infodump city! Let me introduce myself, my dog, my friend's dog, my friend's cousin's half-brother's dog. And of course, lots of sloppy writing. Eek!
Hmm....I wonder what I'll say about my current writing next year...
