Baby Carrot Algorithm Method

It’s surprising to me to find it’s almost sunrise and here I am taking a breather from fact-checking. It’s that point where I’m having to go back over everything, remember when I switched a paragraph five chapters back, and keep a running tab of random characters that were placed with the expectation of bringing them to the forefront later. If I can tie them in later, then it’s worth it to keep that extra seemingly unrelated bit of data, but it’s got to seem to work with the rest of the early chapters as important detail about the setting then, rather than a boring setup for later.

Too many movies do that. Make you sit through the boring early setup only to pay it off later at the very end. It’s like grading a paper. You were going to give them a C, then it turns to a B- at the last minute only because they remembered to thread it back through at the end.

There are two ways to deal with extraneous characters. The first as noted above, is to work them in as integral figures later in the plot so that a sense of community is established. The second is to take a crowd of characters that have amassed by the end, and find ways to make them deeper by giving early snippets of them in opening chapters so that for the reader it becomes clearer near the end that so much has changed for the characters actively engaged. The world has changed. Something has happened.

For my part I finally broke down and got note cards. I’m creating the freaking dewey decimal system of a characterized world. I’m not that I’m aiming to end up one of those eccentric LOTR card playing mother’s basement dwellers, it’s that I want to make sure I’m not asking anyone to read a word more than they have to in order to get some joy out of the experience. If someone’s going to be there in each line, there’s got to be a reason for it.

It’s putting the deus in the machina. The peas and carrots mix, but not like someone building the mountain in their mashed potatoes. More like those display case food plates.

Nobody needs to know you’ve scientifically engineered to arc radius of each baby carrot using the golden ratio. For all intensive purposes, it should look roughly like the fibonacci sequence.

That’s when you know you’re cribbing from the best.

Check out seventeensyllables for some happy little trees and a haiku for lunch.

The Zen of a Practiced Art Form, Otherwise Known as the Invisible Steps

Having tea with a friend of mine today was a nice reprieve to trotting home to research and write. That’s not exactly accurate in that it paints the research as a toil, which it isn’t. It’s engrossing. I look up and hours have gone by and I don’t know where. But the word is a little fuller and more defined. Both of them, actually – on paper and walking down the street soaking up the sunshine.

There’s something very right about it. Even if a piano falls tomorrow, just doing what I do is enough. Even if not another soul ever reads it. It’s like looking out from a mountain. Sure, there’s more to be polished and refined.

In fact, better work on that now.

But first here is a word of advice based on some otherwise very meaningful writing I read. Because you know anyone with a blog is entitled to some sort of baseless, high horse opinion. Anyway.

Don’t forget to count the ly words in the above before you take anything I say with much weight.

Don’t use adverbs. Not any and all, but the ones that most easily slide off your fingertips. The ones that end in -ly. THOSE adverbs.

If you find yourself repeating an ly word more than once a paragraph, stop using them. Entirely. Begin by finding a way to fit them at the end of your sentence. Then put the period in on the word before. Sit there and think on it. Do you really NEED that ly word to say what you’ve got to say? Writers like Stephen King would say no. Writers like Ursula Leguin would write amazing rebuttles for, and you will have tea and milk snorting through your nose while you read her. But then again, she knows what she’s doing. You don’t.

Every time you step down to -ly level in your writing, you’re trying to modify the meaning of an action to suit some other definition you haven’t bothered to explain though your plot. Did you ever notice the best poets don’t use -ly words but maybe once a stanza? Look at Stan Rice some time. The spark of good poetic writing is all in the connection between the words, jangling new ideas and connections. It is not the Jinga approach to stacking modifications on the base structural meaning of the language.

You would think poetry would be more about adding detail to the actions that occur, and perhaps bad poetry came about because of all those people hanging out at Walden after it was fashionable, trying to flint together the same magic of an internal soul, but failing, instead taking to the pattern of dramatizing the snowflake-like pattern of bird poop dripping from leaves. It wasn’t that exciting for the bird the first time around, and it’s not exciting now to hear how it sporadically, iridescently spools off the delicately (read: horrified) leaves.

Imagine a cat in snow. No matter what, that cat is your reader, shaking you off with every shuddering step through your flowery prose, unable to grasp what is modifying who, and what relevance it will have to the plot of your increasingly murky writing. Your reader feels out of breath and you’re writing about purposefully meddled-with crap. Don’t make them hold their breath with anything but suspense. Crap with a stick through it is still crap. Aerated, but crap. Crap that apparently doesn’t do anything meaningful but follow a gravitational swirl so predictable you have to add things that make it sound deeper than the doo you will find yourself in if you ever wake up from your trance and try to sell that dehydrated, shriveled pile to anyone who sits there through the whole recitation going “But wait. The bird missed you. Is that a metaphor for feminism? It had a traditionally feminine pose when it landed on the gravel, no?” Do you really want that on your conscience? No. Trust me, you don’t.

Your garden variety ly words are like garnish. If anything use them in the high-brow hoity toity device of misdirection to slap down those unhealthy misconceptions your reader holds dear. Use the twisting of the meaning for effect.

Don’t cling to your poetry with the somberness of an emu tweenster. If you’re going to be funny, do it on purpose. If you do it by accident, don’t do it again until you figure out why. Unless they pay you. And even if they pay you, is it enough? Eventually it won’t be. Figure out what the heck you’re doing, and don’t take the lazy approach of dressing up bored activities with bits of dramatic literary airbrushing.

Whenever possible try not to take a word that could stand on its own just to throw it on its knees to some other word you don’t actually want. You’re modifying the meaning of the unwanted action, and so your character is outwardly doing something that has no bearing on the turning of your story. You have them in a situation so unimportant that you have to focus on dolling up the minutia. The secret is that you should never have to work so hard to bring about any insight to who and why this character exists. Proper plot turning is all the fertilizer you need.

Worse, a lazy use of the -ly fosters stereotypes which if used unexpectedly-on-purpose can be quite funny as a contrast, but if used simply because this ly word goes poetically with the handle of a shovel, will only have your reader enjoying the mental equivalent of ditch digging with no backdrop.

When you use an adjective, you’re not plying the words, you’re defining characterization. “Tall man” is both clear and to the point, yet vague enough to let your reader fill in all sorts of personal preconceptions, allowing them to add real-life resemblances to your imagined characters in the events you create, just before you bash them all on the rocks and say “didn’t expect that, did you?” With such simple language, you create a very strong characterization. If you say “The man with the lengthy stride” you’re not doing anything bad, and in fact it’s a bit more toward the scale of poetic. You’re reader is not choking on rose petals. Yet. But keep that up and soon you have to work hard not to say “the gloweringly disputatious sneer of mendacity from the gangly man impatiently fleeing with extremely lengthy stride” is about ten words of nothing but time from my life that I want back. The tall man glowered. With sly mendacity he fled with an easy stride.

Note that I have the character doing something frictional (misdirecting) yet set in contrast to his relaxed outward behavior. I’ve established the question of “why?” before revealing the answer of “how,” which is how suspense and drama are allowed to begin instead of being cut out before the reader ever gets a chance to wonder. Lengthy would describe his stride, but I want to describe him. He’s not low on insulin now, an animal without a choice or psychological tension, instead he is complicated, easy, all in the same passage.

If you were bored on a desert island, which would you date? Periphrastic comparison is euphemistic poo dripping in the forest. It doesn’t get invited back to parties. Even deserted island parties.

Coincidentally, you and the deserted island? Guess who will be visiting you while you write?

Do make them interesting.