Thursday, January 25, 2007
Fill in the Blanks
OK. Right. Blah Blah Blah, Yadda blah. Etc. Got a little writing done (I worked on the Scandal synopsis) but then had to go to a Junior High orientation thing, for parents of Jr. High School students to be, which shot most of the evening.
Moving right along to the point of this post. I am reading a book to my son in which just about every bit of dialogue is in this form:
"Blah blah yadda yadda," pronoun verb, gerund phrase.Example:
"Stop that, you twit!" he complained, turning to the talking monkey.This is invariably followed by yet another gerund phrase. Ohmybutlerjames! Save me from weak lazy-ass writing like this. I'm dying reading this book. Seriously, it's killing me.
Sigh.Lookit - the gerund has its place. (In the example above it's the word "turning") It can even been effective. But I am here to tell you I wholeheartedly agree with John Gardener when he said, and I paraphrase, that the gerund is the sign of a writer who does not have command of her craft. The gerund makes transitions too easy. It's so simple to slap in that gerund phrase to get you to the next bit instead of putting a period after "said" and thinking up some detail that provides depth and complexity to the moment and also lets the reader make her own conclusions about what's going on.
Really. It's absolutely true. For one thing you should never ever put your reader in a place where he knows well beforehand the rhythm of the coming sentences. The minute he's thinking,
Yadda yadda blah blah instead of "what is that talking monkey going to do next?" he's out of your story.
This is a draft-itis problem and if is the writer's job to edit it out. Search your MS for words ending in
ing. How many are gerunds?
OK, off that subject. I'm going to bed.
Labels: Scandal, writing craft
