Question one: What’s this?

Question two: What’s this?

The moral of the story? It’s not all about the words.

You know what the top picture is, what it means, where you might encounter it, and what to do with it. The second picture is a lot less meaningful, and yet what is it lacking, exactly? The text is identical. Each and every letter in each case is exactly the same as the corresponding letter in the other example. It’s the rest of the presentation that’s missing. The look and feel, if you will.

Some time ago, I took down the handful of works I had published in various ebook formats on Smashwords. There were several reasons for this, including the fact that the site was repeatedly telling me that the works weren’t properly formatted while not telling me why, but the primary reason, and the reason I haven’t made any further forays into epublishing, is that I’m gravely concerned about the direction ebooks are taking us.

Open up a phone book, and look at a page. Now open up a King James Bible, a dictionary, a math textbook, a “literary fiction” novel, a “commercial fiction” novel. They aren’t all the same. The book itself is an object, and the words in it are not the only characteristics it has, nor are they the only ones that are used (or at least, should be used) by the author. The shape of the text block on the page, the weight and nature of the typeface, the embellishments and decorations are all there to speak to the reader. They all do speak to the reader, and what they are saying should be as carefully controlled by the author as what the words themselves are saying. Even the pages themselves, the starts and stops and turnings, the hiding and revealing, are all part of the book’s voice.

And I am very deeply concerned that the headlong rush to digitalize everything will take these aspects of book design away from us. In our haste, we will simply discard anything about book design that might be a little hard to do now, rather than wait and do it right. We will end up a world of tone-deaf readers, floundering in a sea of toneless books, each one sounding as unique as the sound of two rocks clacking together.

Given time, the process of evolution will bring out the capabilities we need in epublishing software, but for now, I just don’t think it’s there yet. The ability to change typefaces to suit the whims of the reader is seen as a good thing, as is the ability to flow text to new page sizes and shapes. We even rely on automatic thingies to translate our books from one language to another. What about vocabulary? Will it be a good thing when the reader can select G, PG, PG13, etc, and simply have the book alter its vocabulary to match the whims of the reader? Will we be able to turn the heat up and down on the sex scenes as easily as we turn the volume up and down on the radio?

It is often said that art should be transparent. I’m not really sure what that means. If it means when you read my book, you shouldn’t be seeing (as I do when I read yours, or that guy over there’s, or Dick Francis’s) the actual nuts and bolts of diction and syntax, then fine. If it means your shouldn’t see how I affected you by my choice of typeface, then fine. But if it means that the choice itself is simply irrelevant, that any typeface will do as well, that diction and syntax are irrelevant, that the story is all about the words, and not the formatting, then I say horseradish.

It’s not about the words. It’s about the story. All of it.

• They are a couple.
• It is a retreat for couples.

In others, you cannot:

• I will list a couple of examples here.
• She has a couple of books in her house.

Here’s the key: replace couple with pair, and see if you need of:

• They are a pair.
• NOT: They are a pair of.
• It is a retreat for pairs.
• NOT: It is a retreat for pairs of.
• I will list a pair of examples here.
• NOT: I will list a pair examples here.
• She has a pair of books in her house.
• NOT: She has a pair books in her house. (We’ll disregard the fact that “couple” in this usage was probably not meant to be literal.)

End o’ the rant. Please carry on.

To the first, I say that if teh is a perfectly valid way to spell the, then so is xdz. If there is no “correct” spelling, then how can any spelling possibly be incorrect? If there is no “correct” syntax (the branch of grammar dealing with the construction of sentences), then “He threw the ball to her” and “He threw her to the ball” obviously mean exactly the same thing. Yes, language changes. Words are made up, every single one of them, and there is nothing in life that says we’re done doing that. Words will be made up every day in every language, words will change meanings, words will change spellings. But unless and until a new spelling or meaning ceases to be seen as sub-standard, then if you use it, your writing will be seen, by extension, as sub-standard. If that’s what you want, that’s fine by me.

To the second group, the ones asking what diction is, I say this:

Diction (as in dictionary) is word choice.

Stories are made up of words (and words inherently tell, they do not show, but that’s a different rant). Word choice may very well be the single most important tool an author has available. One of the most memorable assignments from all of the creative writing classes I ever took (all of which were in high school – all my post-secondary education is in industrial design and manufacturing technology) was this:

• Pick a story from today’s news. Pick one for which you can see a “pro” side and a “con” side, such as a report of an alleged crime, in which you can assume guilt or innocence.
• Get out your trusty thesaurus and change the article. You’re going to do this twice, once making the article strongly “pro,” and once making it strongly “con.”
• You’re going to do this solely by replacing words with different words, words listed as synonyms of the word you’re changing.

Do not add or subtract anything, do not use any scare quotes (the “alleged” suspect, etc), don’t use any antonyms. Replace every word you think needs to be changed, but only with a synonym. You might be amazed at how differently you look at words (and at the news stories you read) after trying this a few times.

The word you’re looking for isn’t just different.

It’s the right word. There is one perfect word for the use you have in mind. There are a bunch more that are close enough and will work, and there are a bunch of choices that are just plain wrong, synonym or not. You can’t just change words because they seem too simple, or too common, or too over-used. Pick a register of diction and use it, at least for that one character, or that particular encounter, or whatever. When a character says “Put on your trousers,” we get an entirely different resonance than if the character says “Put on your pants.” The words themselves carry different denotations and different connotational clouds, and the use of a particular word also says something about the character.

So watch your diction!

Further reading:

How to Write Badly Well, 11 Jan 2010

There’s No Such Thing as a Synonym

Maybe not so nicely this time.

When your friend approaches you with a manuscript, hot off the printer and dripping ink, and your friend says to you “Hey, you! (says your friend to you) Tell me what you think of the choices I’ve (that would be your friend again) made in this thing. Choices like voice and diction and pacing and so forth (says your friend). Tell me what you think,” says your friend, that you’ve known all your life, when that happens, then answer the question. Did I mention that this is when a friend approaches you, someone you know in real life? You know, meatspace? Where the meat lives? Where we can see faces and hear tones and all that stuff? Did I mention that this is a friend? I think I did.

Most of the things we can do “right” or “wrong” in fiction are choices.

You choose to write in first-person present tense or third-person past tense or third-person future tense (oh, yes you can). You choose to write in a soft dreamy tone that’s supposed to mean your character is stoned. You choose to say “dollars” in one sentence and “money” in the next (yeah, guess where I’ve been), as in “I have three dollars. How much money do you have?” You choose all of the things that make your voice your voice, and your story your story. You choose diction, and syntax, and grammar, and tone, and pacing. You choose whether to include Character X’s viewpoint or not. You choose which infinitives to boldly split.

The fact that your choices were not the ones I would have made do not make you wrong. They make you a different writer than me. Maybe better, maybe worse, maybe just different, but different. If we all made the same choices, we’d all write the same story, and the art of fiction would have stopped right after Oodge told his story about the saber-tooth. Fortunately, time split right about then, and we all took the other branch. Oodge and his buddies are still sitting around that same fire, waiting for someone to make up a new fable.

Point is, you can discuss the finer points of choices with friends, but only in the light of making choices. You can’t simply say things like “Caftan is a strange word. Say ‘tunic’.” It was a choice! There is nothing “wrong” with it! Say “Caftan. That’s an odd word, isn’t it?” and I’ll tell you why I used it, and we can go from there, but don’t simply assume that you’re right and I’m wrong.

And it only gets worse when you try to “correct” total strangers.

People you’ve never heard of, never talked to. You have no idea why they might have said what they did, but you know they’re wrong? Come on.

Time out to go breathe.

Ok, back again. Calm, I’m calm.

“I have three dollars, how many dollars do you have?” John asked Jane.

Bet you didn’t know that’s better than the first quote about money, given above, did you? See, the thing is, you apparently can’t use “dollars” once and then use “money” the next time. Maybe it was supposed to be like this:

“I have three money, how many money do you have?” John asked Jane.

Whatever.

Writing is composed of matters of choice at least as much as matters of “right” or “wrong.”

And you can’t even begin to discuss whether a choice was right or wrong until you know the goals of the person who made the choice. If the goal is to show a woman in a long, drapey, open-bottomed garment that can be seen into from below, then “tunic” is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. And if the goal is to establish a certain sense of foreignness, then using the “foreign” name for money is the right choice. Having established that, the use of the word “money” is then the better choice. Establish what the writer wanted to do, then talk about choices. In other words, the only rightness or wrongness for choices is in relation to their success.

When someone presents a piece of writing online, and that piece of writing is clear, concise, and well-written, with a strong voice and a powerful presence, if there was a choice made that was different than the choice you would have made, here are your options:

• Examine the piece carefully, see why the choice was made, and see what you can learn from it. Ask questions if you must, but ask them nicely, from a position of respect. Otherwise, shut up.
• Don’t examine the piece. Don’t learn anything. But shut up.

Rant over.

He’s studied the Rules extensively, not so that he’ll know what to do and what not to do, but so that he’ll know what to do openly and what to sneak around at.

–The Bumbler’s Apprentice, Other Loves

“The Rules of Drafting,” the teacher writes across the top of the board, in large squeaky letters. Underneath, he writes “1” like he’s starting a list. He circles it, but he doesn’t actually list anything for “1.” Instead, he turns to the class and asks us to guess.

Well, it’s a first-year drafting class. There aren’t many guesses. Twenty students, all boys. The girls are all in home-ec. Yeah, I know, but this is many, many years ago. To give you an idea how long ago it was: you had to have a slide rule to take the class. What? Yes, I’ll wait while you go google “slide rule.”

Oh, good – you’re back. You know what a slide rule is now? Cool. My chosen career path being what it was (industrial design), I thought “Well, I’d better get a good one. I’ll need it all my life.” So I blew about four week’s pay from a part-time job on a used fourteen-inch, 32 scale, K&E Log Log Duplex Decitrig. Several years older than myself, it was made of laminated bamboo, with ivory faces (yeah, the elephant stuff – this was a long time ago), and a rock crystal cursor with an adjustable hairline made from a single strand of a horse’s tail. By the time my high school career was over, it wasn’t worth five bucks, shot as dead as any crippled horse by a smart-aleck upstart called the HP-35.

Back to the drafting class. There were three of us who had taken similar classes before, and we offered our guesses as to the “First Rule of Drafting.”

“Always use the alphabet of lines?” asked the boy on my left.

“Not it,” said the teacher.

“Use the proper tolerances on your dimensions,” said the boy to my right.

“Not it,” said the teacher, but he hiked one eyebrow up above his scalp a foot or so, which we were to learn meant he was impressed.

“In the beginning was the centerline,” I said, cribbing from last year’s teacher, three thousand miles away.

He just points at me for a good five seconds, his eyebrow hovering up there like magic.

“No,” he says finally. “But that’s a good one. I’ll make that number two.” He turns to the board and writes “Anytime anything can be gained in clarity by breaking any of the rules of drafting, including this one, break it, but only when there is a gain in clarity.”

Drafting, he explained, is communication. You are creating a set of instructions and directions. In all communications, clarity is paramount. The rules exist to provide clarity, and nine times out of ten, clarity will be best served by obeying them. But when the rules stand in the way of clarity, go around them.

My career path turned out to have a good many more speed bumps and u-turns in it than I had expected, but it did eventually come back around to drafting and industrial design, and I never forgot the “First Rule of Drafting.” Somewhere along the way, I lost my slide rule and gained a scary understanding of such new things as personal computers, MS-DOS, and linear track drafting machines. Then another upstart called AutoCad killed off the linear track. I acquired some advancements to my education, and I ended up in charge of a network of some pretty high-powered machines, but I never forgot that rule and that floating eyebrow.

Through the processes of interviewing and hiring, I discovered that the truly excellent drafter always looks like he’s obeying the rules, even when he isn’t, because the rare violations are so necessary and the need so obvious that the violation becomes its own kind of obedience, obedience to the higher goal, clarity. This philosophy carries over into other aspects of the drafter’s professional life, including résumé writing.

I never had to advertise an opening. In a typical week, I might get twenty résumés, of which I’d toss at least nineteen. I’d scan them in seconds, looking for mistakes. I didn’t care about schooling, or work experience, or references. Not first. You want me to hire you, you want me to sit you down in front of my computer, and give you the big bucks to crank out communication documents for my bosses, but you can’t take communication seriously enough to see to it that your own résumé is correct?!

So what’s my point, you ask.

Why am I dragging in all this stuff about drafting? Because drafting is communication. And so is writing. If you want to be taken seriously as a writer, it has to begin with you. Take yourself seriously enough to learn the craft, and to hone it every chance you get. Learn the rules, and learn when to obey them and when breaking them will better serve your purpose.

There are any number of good reference books. Many of them can be read online, and all of them can be purchased with a mouse click and a piece of plastic. Failing that, ask someone. Ask someone, if you need to know whether to say its or it’s, who’s or whose. Ask someone, if you need to know where the apostrophe goes (or if it goes) in a given contraction or possessive. Ask about grammar, syntax, spelling, diction, anything. If you’re embarrassed about asking your friends, then email me. I’ll keep your secret, and I’ll help you become a better writer. And if I don’t know, then I’ll ask someone, and I’ll pretend it’s just for me.

Every piece you ever write, online or off, story or post, comment or novel, is your résumé. Every single time you fail to capitalize, every single wrong word, every error of grammar, is another reader lost.

Fiction’s forgiving. You can do all kinds of things and get away with it. You can always claim it’s character voicing, at the very least. But you see, you have to look good doing it. If your writings look like the scribblings of someone who doesn’t know the rules, or who doesn’t care about them, then you can’t expect respect.

Here’s a hint, a general rule of thumb: if you’re not reading at least a couple of hours a day, you’re probably not taking your craft seriously enough. Just from where I sit, without even moving, I can see two dictionaries, the best thesaurus ever published, seven books on writing, four novels, and a book of short stories. That’s just the stuff that’s piled up in here since the last time my wife got after me about getting my stuff off the kitchen table! Each and every one of these is a way for me to learn, a place to see rules being followed and rules being broken, a place to hone my craft on the mistakes and successes of others. Build your own pile, and plow it assiduously, and you can’t help but improve your writing.

Read. Write. Repeat.

A million years ago, when I took my first drafting classes,

it was assumed that laying out a drawing required certain skills, and that those skills could be taught. Indeed, the learning of those skills was the primary focus of early-level drafting classes. Of course, the need for those skills still exists, but but the efforts to teach them have gone the way of the dodo bird, along with the teaching of syllogistic logic, sentence diagramming, and critical thought. Nowadays, the assumption is that the computer will do all of your thinking for you, and all you need to know is how to run AutoCAD. I wish I had a dollar for every hopelessly unreadable CAD file I’ve seen. Personally, I’d rather teach AutoCAD to a drafter than try to teach drafting to some hot-shot CAD jockey.

Among the things we were taught, back in the Stone Age, along with (dead serious) how to hone the points of a ruling pen and how to sharpen a drafting pencil, was to beware of lines in a drawing that define a surface that can’t exist in the world around us, such as the Three-Pronged, Single-Slotted Widget shown above. The Widget is fairly easy to accomplish on paper, but you can’t make it in the real world (although I have seen similar things in some of the nasty CAD files I’ve had to deal with!).

So what’s the point, you ask?

Simple. You can make the same mistakes writing that you can make drafting. You can have verb/noun mismatches, singular/plural mismatches, tense issues, etc. My (ahem) favorite is the mismatched list:

“You can hunt, fish, as well as water-ski.”

Um, no. Don’t do that. Do something like this:

“You can hunt or fish, as well as water-ski.”
“You can hunt and fish, as well as water-ski.”
“You can hunt, fish, or water-ski.”

More favorites:

Don’t do this:

“He went as far along the beach that he could.”

Do this:

“He went as far along the beach as he could.”

Don’t do this:

“Thankfully, the tide was out.”

Do this:

“He was thankful that the tide was out.”

Don’t do this:

“His goals in life were joining the Marines, going to college, buying a Corvette, a knife, and a dog.

Do this:

“His goals in life were joining the Marines, going to college, and buying a Corvette, a knife, and a dog.

These skewed structures, like the Single-Slotted, Three-Pronged Widget, lead our minds toward a goal we never reach. We set out thinking that we know where we’re going, but we end up somewhere else. Most English-speakers read a drawing from left to right. We see the square-sectioned, bar-with-a-slot-in-it structure of the left end, and we set off to the right, expecting to see a structure that matches. Instead, we see surfaces disappear, mass become empty space, slots turn to prongs. Confusion reigns.

If we begin to read a sentence, expecting a continuous structural backbone, and instead we find mismatched comparisons, dangling modifiers, incomplete ranges, and clauses that don’t fit together, then confusion is the inevitable result.

Don’t get me wrong. I like a little confusion in my reading, and I’m more than happy to throw a little into my writing. But I want situational confusion, not a confused style. I want questions that might be answered on the next page, or the next, or the next, not questions with no answers. I want such questions as “Will he . . . ?” “Can she . . . ?” “Do they . . . ?” I do not want “Hunh?”