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darlingdeathbird
darlingdeathbird
30 November 2018 @ 11:49 am
jennifer cringed, rambling to herself about everybody doing this shit  
Random writer's thought of the moment:

STOP ABUSING THIS SENTENCE STRUCTURE: Character verbed, verbing.

Example: 1.) "She sauntered towards the fridge, plucking out a soda for both of them."  2.) "He looked her in the eye, leaning over her and caressing her forearm." 3.) "He ignored his invitation, fidgeting with his keys and passing him in a hurry."

First of all, as I said, just STOP. There are other ways to craft a sentence! There are COUNTLESS other ways to explain what's going on that are equally, usually MORE, precise about the order of actions, and the significance of each. This is a sure-fire way to level out significance everywhere.

But second of all, people do not seem to understand, even authors who are writing a really good story and have clearly been writing stories for a while, that this structure means BOTH ARE HAPPENING AT THE SAME TIME. Take sentence one: "She sauntered towards the fridge, plucking out a soda for both of them." This cannot be done at the same time. She saunters towards the fridge first. Then she plucks out sodas.

I have had enough. Don't we all read our stories while we're writing them and notice this sort of laziness? It is lazy. It's lazy. I spend more time keeping tallies on when the author defaults to using this structure than really appreciating what's going on, sometimes. It's not something I want to do, I just can't help it. If I had to write in this structure all the time to get through my narrative, I would feel incredibly limited and bored.

Other ways to show a sequence of actions:
"She sauntered towards the fridge, plucking out a soda for both of them" becomes
"Once she'd sauntered towards the fridge, she decided to pluck out a soda for both of them."
"He looked her in the eye, leaning over her and caressing her forearm" becomes
"As he looked her in the eye, he began to lean over her and caress her forearm."
"He ignored his invitation, fidgeting with his keys and passing him in a hurry" becomes
"It would seem he was ignoring his invitation the way he fidgeted with his keys and passed him in a hurry."

Need I go on?

So simple.

The other options are just as simple but adding in that variety keeps your flow from getting stale and predictable.

This has been a PSA from a frustrated person who's not even writing anything right now. lol
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Igenlode Wordsmith[personal profile] igenlode on August 30th, 2021 10:34 pm (UTC)
Example: 1.) "She sauntered towards the fridge, plucking out a soda for both of them."  2.) "He looked her in the eye, leaning over her and caressing her forearm." 3.) "He ignored his invitation, fidgeting with his keys and passing him in a hurry."

I'm not sure it's inherently wrong, but *any* structure repeated too often rapidly gets annoying.
I've just been reading someone's story chapter presented 'for opinions' -- except that I know full well that means 'tell me it's good', and it really isn't, so there's not much I'm able to say about it. And one of the things that's wrong with it is that every single sentence in the first paragraph,of which there are about twenty (short sentences, long paragraph), starts with the structure "He did X". In fact seven out of the first ten sentences literally start with either the word 'He' or 'His', so a few subsidiary clauses or present participles would be really welcome there...

Take sentence one: "She sauntered towards the fridge, plucking out a soda for both of them." This cannot be done at the same time. She saunters towards the fridge first. Then she plucks out sodas.

Now I actually hadn't noticed that implication :-D
darlingdeathbird[personal profile] darlingdeathbird on August 31st, 2021 05:46 pm (UTC)
Oh gosh, welcome to possibly the sassiest post of my entire journal, where I probably just sound like a straight up b*tch. XDD
But yes, you are right, repetition of any structure gets old fast, because what it also entails is that the pacing stays relatively the same, and so the impact of the action on the reader also doesn't vary, and that creates so many missed opportunities for the author to emphasize what is most important, what *stands out* in time AND space! And in the case of *this* over-used structure... it outright defies the laws of physics sometimes!