As a follow-up to my earlier post on What We Write About When We Write About Sex, I’m adding a few more points to consider:

• There are various awards for bad writing that’s funny and one of the most entertaining is the Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Here’s a line from The Shape of Her, by Rowan Somerville, the “winner” for 2010: “like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her.” Somerville, who is British, accepted his prize with grace: “There is nothing more English than bad sex, so on behalf of the entire nation I would like to thank you.” Great sport, that Somerville, but if you aren’t English and want to avoid writing about sex badly, you might want to re-think using the imagery of a butterfly collector in your love scenes.

• Speaking of love, there may be none at all; sex can be lust between enemies, for example. Nevertheless, “making love” is a euphemism–one of many–we often use to describe the act. My favourite euphemism (and great metaphor), from Shakespeare’s Othello, is “the beast with two backs.” But euphemisms can lead to purple prose and unintentionally hilarious metaphors and similes. (See the butterfly collector, above.) Also, IMHO, many euphemisms are just too cutesy-poo and have no place in fiction for adults.

• Here’s something that troubles many: What should we call body parts? Yes, the grown-up terms are “penis” and “vagina.” But would your characters refer to each other’s parts this way? Don’t forget who is having this sex, and write it “true” to them. And keep in mind that using anatomically correct terms can give your scene a clinical feeling.

• “How far should you go” in writing about sex? That depends on how far you go in other scenes. If your novel contains scenes of graphic violence, your scenes of intimacy will also have to be graphic. Also, consider your audience. Readers of romance, for example, want emotional detail while readers of crime fiction might want more of the physical.

• Go wild. If worry about making a fool of yourself in print is giving you writer’s block, try an approach that works with most writing—compose your hot scene with the assumption that no one but you will ever read it. You can always tone it down later.

• The above points are paraphrased tips from writers I’ve heard speak at various writing conferences. If you want to learn more, here’s a book I recommend: The Joy of Writing Sex, by Elizabeth Benedict.

Know of any other good guidebooks or web sites on this topic?  Please let me know.

Last night, I grabbed a bottle of wine off the shelf and, with the first sip of the evening, read from the label on the back of the bottle. My wine, South African, was a cheetah from a land where Nature reigns supreme, with dark blackberry notes, and a glass of it would be to experience the flavour of a primal land far from the everyday. My adventurous tastes would be rewarded. I’d just wanted something cheap and red to go with the sundried-tomato pesto I’d tossed into a fistful of pasta, and here I was with a wild animal in hand. The marketer’s copy, designed to make me swoon, had made me laugh. Which made me wonder: How do you know when your metaphors have gone too far?

Okay, I’ve written (harped?) on this before. (Are You in Love With Your Prose?) But it’s important. Never mind the love scene in your romance novel, let’s just stick with wine writing for now. Some wines can get away with over-the-top copy, especially wines with funny names like Dirty Red Socks or Sloth in a Gumtree or whatever. You know the copy was written tongue-in-cheek because it’s so over-the-top. And if your love scene or description of a cocktail party with the neighbours is meant to be this way, go ahead and overwrite. Really overwrite so that your intention is clear. But if making people smile at your writing isn’t your goal, pull back. A rough rule of thumb is to stick to one metaphor or simile per description, and even then you should sleep on it at least one night before you let anyone read it.

Of course, coming up with witty, wordy wine descriptions can be as much fun as that other well-known party game, Who got the cheetah in their glass? (And, allowing yourself to bounce descriptions off the wall can be a great creativity booster.) It’s fun to make fun of wine writing because so much of it is so damn pretentious. I love funny wine writing—I especially enjoy it with a glass of red—and if you’ve come across any descriptions you want to share, please comment!

photo credit: eljoja

In honor of Valentine’s Day, let’s talk about writers who love too much. You know, writers so smitten with a metaphor or simile, they let it go to print wearing the equivalent of a red lace teddy trimmed in pink marabou under a perfumed tiara. What I just wrote there–the lace, the marabou, etc.–is a line that’s trying way too hard; it’s purple prose. You don’t want this purply-pink overwriting in your work because 1) it doesn’t do what you intend, which is to describe a person, thing or emotion in a way that the reader can connect to, and 2) it pulls the reader right out of the story while he/she thinks, huh?

Overwriting shows up most often in passages that deal with matters of the heart. I once read a novel that compared the heroine’s hand on a man’s arm to “a delicate butterfly on a giant oak tree”; I realize what the author was getting at, but the image seemed so over the top it’s stuck with me for years–and not in a good way. In a novel I was reading last night, one character’s hot breath was stroking another’s neck “like a fever,” while the stubble on his chin “stung her naked shoulder like hundreds of tiny insects.” I admire this novel–it’s well-written overall and has a great sense of place–but this sentence pulled me out of the story. Even good writers can be blind to the purple in their prose.

It’s easier to spot stuff you don’t like in the writing of others, I know. It’s also a worthwhile endeavor. (Bad books: why they’re good.) If you look for purple prose in what you’re reading, it will be easier to spot the purple in your writing. This morning, I took a closer look at a story I’m working on.

And I found a river sparking in the sun like it thought it was some hydro-electric superhero. Okay, the line wasn’t exactly this; I’m using poetic license here to make it even worse. But, trust me, this (draft) sentence was indeed purple. When I wrote the line, I loved the image. Have you heard the old writer’s tip, Kill your darlings? If you’re in love with a certain line, it could be you’re also blind to the fact that red lace, pink marabou and tiaras are a little too-too. I killed my darling and it was the right thing to do.

This Valentine’s day, don’t fall for your own prose.

photo credit: Bruce Guenter

One of the hats I wear is Writing Coach. I coach MBA students and I love the work. One recent student was a professional musician. She wrote of her love for the arts, and as we read her essay aloud parts of it flowed like music…but then other sections just kind of trailed off…

This student was overly fond of the ellipsis. She had one in the title and three in the body of her essay. I told her to choose one. She argued. I stood my ground: One ellipsis only. It’s an unofficial rule of writing.

The ellipsis is not an everyday punctuation mark. When we see it, we notice it. And if we see another one a paragraph or two later, we are pulled out of the writing to make a mental note of it. The third one becomes irritating and if there are any others…well, let’s just say the writer who overuses the ellipsis could be giving her readers a reason to put the writing aside…

It’s not just ellipses. Exclamation points should be used with care, as well! Too many, and you risk looking like you’ve had a few javas too many! And don’t use two together or you’ll look like a teenage girl!!

I pointed out to this student that in two instances, she could just as easily—and in fact, more correctly—use a dash. (No, I didn’t use the term em dash. I’ve never met anyone who’s ever actually used an en dash, so why differentiate?) Okay—I admit it—the dash can be overused, as well. And I suppose—though no editor has called me on this lately—that I overuse it in my own writing now and then. But for me, the dash is almost an everyday punctuation mark. I say, dash away. But then go over your writing and ask yourself about every single dash: could a comma or semi-colon or period be used here instead? And if so, use one of the latter.
Save that lovely dash for something more important.

But the ellipsis: one per essay, article or short story. In a book-length work, maybe two.

I’m not and never have been an editor (note my two incomplete sentences above) but here’s what I tell students about punctuation marks:

• Period. The everyday workhorse;
• Comma, the pause that refreshes, and be careful, not to use it when you
don’t, need a pause;
• Parentheses (when you want the written equivalent of an aside);
• Dash—for when you want to set something off with panache (couldn’t
help myself);
• Semicolon; I’ve seen writers and editors get downright heated discussing
its use and some want to ban it outright but I say, sometimes the semi-colon
is the best mark for the job and people should just chill;
• Colon: the semi-colon’s big brother and use it only when you want to
give something emphasis or to start a list;
• Exclamation point! You know you shouldn’t always be using this!
• …Ellipses…

And while we’re on the subject, be careful of using unusual, attention-getting words more than once in any piece of writing. But that’s for another post.

It seemed like a good idea at the time: Pick a book off the shelf not because I’d read the review or had it recommended to me by a friend, but simply because the title caught my eye. This book was a mystery, a genre that goes well with rainy winter afternoons and mugs of tea, and it was set in a country I’m interested in.

I wasn’t expecting anything especially literary but the clumsiness of the prose surprised me. I read on for several chapters, partly because I hoped it would get better, partly because of the setting—and partly because you can learn from bad writers as well as excellent ones. If you want to see why writing teachers tell you to beware of the cliché, be it in description or plot, or of dialogue that does nothing to advance the story, there’s no better way than to see such things in action.

Stephen King puts it this way: “Every book you read has its own lessons, and quite often bad books have more to teach than the good ones.” (He uses The Bridges of Madison County and Valley of the Dolls as examples of bad books, by the way.)

About a week later, I picked up a novel by an author frequently called the Queen of Suspense. By chapter two, my enthusiasm was flagging. Writing instructors will tell you to beware of adverbs but reading lines like, “Our client is innocent, he thought, sarcastically,” really make the point. (People actually think “sarcastically”?)

You can learn a lot about writing dialogue, too. Here’s one cop talking to another outside a mansion in which a murderer is almost certainly advancing on his victims:

“[the bad guy] may be dangerous, and he may be armed. More police officers will be here soon. If you see [the bad guy], try to avoid any contact with him, and alert the other officers as soon as they get here. He may try to drive out. Tell the guard at the gate what is happening and make sure he closes the gates as soon as the other police arrive.”

Do people speak in full sentences in the heat of the moment? I certainly don’t. And, aside from the fact the first cop thinks the second cop is an idiot, would anyone in such a situation speak as if his contraction-hating, high school English teacher was within earshot? (ie., Why not “what’s happening”?)

“Show, don’t tell,” is a well-worn—but worthwhile—cliché of writing manuals. As the above example demonstrates, showing can have more power than telling when it comes to learning about how (not) to write, too.

(On the other hand, when it comes to plotting this Queen knows what she’s doing!)