March 19, 2013
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She Said
I am editing today.
Editing is not for the faint of heart.
I belong to a writers group (two, actually) and my writers group hates my writing. (okay: they don’t hate my writing. They hate my fondness for creatively describing a character’s act of articulating thoughts and emotions through tone, expression and eye contact. This boils down to constant arguments about ‘he said’.)
For instance, in the middle of a complex interaction of characters, deaths, kidnappings and stolen dogs, one of my fellow authors has one of her characters worry that she might be responsible for the kidnapping of her close friend, ‘she stated’. I wrote, ‘I know you’re not going to like this but ‘she stated’ is so flat here.’ And she laughed and she said, “I’m sorry, but you’re wrong.” (In fact–although she did laugh–she would probably object to my saying that because her comment is not overtly ‘funny’.)
If I say, ‘he agreed’, or ‘she intimated’, or they…really did anything but asked/said, it is ‘distracting’.
I accuse them of being trendy.
Last week I read six books in six days and I honestly don’t remember how any of those writer dealt with ‘he said’. Interesting. You might think after the number of discussions I’ve had about that subject alone lately, thought delivery systems would stand out for me as I read. They don’t.
So what I have done for the past 5 chapters is run through and cut out the following, soon to be included in the same list where I store ‘a little’, ‘some’, ‘once in a while’ and ‘pretty much’:
he said
she said
he agreed, concurred, admitted, acknowledged, checked, confirmed, guessed, hoped, implied.
she asked, queried, inquired, questioned, wondered
But I’m on a roll now.
If you write a long sentence they want a shorter one; if you write short sentences they want longer ones.
I hope like a crow on roadkill every time the balding head of the passive voice pops up: they gush, ‘I just loved that sentence you used, what was it…something about a crow on roadkill…I’m just not sure what you mean….
Ah, well–it’s lunch time. The announcement has been made.
I must to find something for this woman to eat.
And now, the dog wants out. He could just go through his dog door, but….
Comments (2)
Reason #235 why I’m too scared to edit.
@Viewtiful_Justin - Oh, it’s not awful. In this particular case it’s a matter of letting go of some things and figuring out other ways to others. I do get exasperated when I’ve labored at great length over a piece of writing, read it to the group, and they want to know…all of that shit it will take you the rest of the book to explain. But then, I’m not all that patient with my readers–they should just ‘get’ it.