I have just posted a question about tone/style in the comment section of last week's lesson. I am writing what might be a memoir, but also blog/essays here on my Substack page. I find myself writing in what seems to be a colloquial, conversational, non-flowery way. I am pretty sure I have internalized the efficiency of rap lyrics and how screenplays are written. Sometimes I can get too sing-songy. I like one-word paragraphs and variations in sentence length. It seems like I have adopted elements of sound, rhythm, balance, etc that are being discussed this week (without knowing it). Here are two short sections of Substack blog My Bruised Resume, as an example:
"I've spent most of my time on Earth in my head. I use my eyes and ears more than my mouth by a factor of ten. And by the grace of good sense and good genes, I've made it to the raggedy end of this mortal coil, way over here, on the far right of most graphs."
and...
"Why Substack now?
Honestly, too much has been too hot to handle for a very long time, and reacting is distracting. Plus, patterns only reveal themselves after mistake number three.
I know you know what I mean.
Do you remember that cute high school crush who hurt your feelings? Your asshole first husband? The second divorce that ruined you alive?
"Done!" you exclaimed. Only to realize it was you all along.
Hi Andrew, love these observations on your style — I can definitely see the sing-song element in your voice (and it has a lovely flow). Definitely a read-aloud kind of work.
This is an excellent conversation starter! I have one novel that is about a young woman leaving a fundamentalist church. All of the characters are working class and either midwestern or southern so that one feels (one hopes) salt-of-the-earth and plain spoken and a little funny. My other novel, which is undergoing a monster rewrite, is a speculative fiction story set on a parallel but basically-identical-to-earth planet. Very urban, except for a defunct monastery and castle-turned-prison on a nearby island. It's a class war story, with a group of artists who are looking for a crack in the system, and an elite ruling class which uses their private business language to keep the castes in place.
I wanted it to have fun genre elements, an old code, subtle mystical power, embezzlement, galas and a prison break, but wanted those things to be told in a gritty, realistic way. So there are a fair number of factories and industrial details, all of it soaked in rain. Best time ever.
I'm on my fifth revision and it has changed quite a lot. It had good bones before but was a sprawling mess. I think this rewrite has a much more consistent tone. At first I tended to have sections that sounded a little too formal and distant, and then sections that were a lot more earthy, and neither was done in an intentional way. I stopped in the middle to write the other novel, and the two years spent on a literary fiction book definitely improved my ability to understand character but also how to notice pacing and tone.
You can hear how much you enjoy the speculative novel in your description :D And wow, a whole load of voices to balance there, alongside the overall tone. Sounds like you've got it all really clear in your head though.
So much TV. And listening to people talk. I think the single biggest thing is to relax and let yourself play and try to forget about whether it's "good." Easier said than done, but I'm pretty sure if you experiment it'll come naturally.
I started writing about five years ago, pretty obsessively. Like I stopped showering and forgot I had children. I wrote a (not great) 200K word novel in 10 months. So it was a pretty intensive learning curve.
Whenever I read Harry Potter, I always read pages before realizing I’ve spent that much time on it. Does that mean Harry Potter is extremely rhythmic?
As for my novel, it’s written from the POV of a 16-year-old boy, so I hope it’s light and energetic, deep and thoughtful without sounding deep and thoughtful, but I’m a drama queen, so I doubt I’ve achieved it. It probably sounds melodramatic.
Here’s my opening:
The morning smelled rotten.
I squatted on the edge of the embankment under the bridge with a makeshift ladle. It was still dark out—beyond the trees, skypods still hadn’t begun their ten-thousand-foot descent, still dotted the predawn sky like faint little stars. Down here, the morning dew had thoroughly invaded the city. Everything I touched felt cold and damp, from the ladle’s wooden handle to the rough cement of the embankment under my naked toes, and even the air I breathed. All soaked.
I needed to wash my face, to get ready for the day. Papa Patril used to say people were more generous in the morning when their pockets were full. By noon, no one would toss a coin our way. So we had only a few hours to work with. I needed to get to the market before daybreak.
I brought the ladle to my face, but a breeze came by and brought up the stench of the river. It wasn’t too bad on a cold morning, but on instinct I jerked back, wondering whether the water in the ladle stank too. A definite possibility, because we got the water directly from the river, untreated. Not just us but thousands in this slum. The trick was to get it during high tide, after the low tide had pushed out the trash and the rot to the sea and the high tide pulled in the fresh, clean water. That was the thought, anyway. In the past few years, more and more people had lost their homes, more living on the streets, more trash in the river, that it didn’t matter whether high tide or low tide, the trash and the rot were still lurking beneath the calm water. In summer, during low tide, the stench enveloped us like a blanket, like it tried to drag us down into the river to join the trash and the rot of the city.
To many though, we were already trash.
I sniffed the water but decided to go for it. Not like I had another source to wash my face. I poured the water onto my hand, but as the icy water hit my face, a spacecraft swooped down too close over the bridge and sent chills up and down my naked spine.
I like that you shared this. One thought and one question. It's really well written, to the point that it wouldn't have struck me as the thoughts of a teen. I've struggled with this exact thing, too, because one of the POV in my novel is a fifteen year old girl. And I had written her too poetically. Obviously some teens are going to sound exactly like adults (I was the kind of nerd who spent free hours at the library reading poetry, so there's that) but if you wanted it to "feel" young, you might have to consider saying, for instance, "still lurking beneath the calm water" in a slightly less elegant way. My two cents.
The question is this. It's very hard for me to picture someone young and living in slum not using slang or swear words. Was that intentional? Because I think there are examples, such as Arcane (the show), where it's pulled off well, but even the dialogue there feels very family-friendly. I suppose it depends on your audience?
Well written? Are you serious? I’ve been so insecure about my writing because many people have said my writing is stiff and stilted.
You found my weakness though. I know nothing about street slang. I definitely want him to have street cred, have a stronger voice. Where would be a good source for me to study to get better at slang? Should I buy a slang dictionary? Also, this is a society with spacecraft, not our current world, so how would you play with slang? Of course, everything is like a translation into our current language and culture, but I still can’t find an angle to do it. Playing with English words is basically out.
You're welcome! We're all insecure about our writing :) I definitely picked up on the space craft idea right away. And I'm in the same boat with my lit fic novel because none of the languages are earth languages. I have a note for readers at the beginning, like Neal Stephenson does at the beginning of Anathem, explaining that the story was translated and certain earth-specific terms were used because they're such good shorthand (in particular clergy names like cardinal and bishop). But it's a really arbitrary line, what to use from earth vocabulary and what not to use, and you have just set your own rules and stick with them. For me it was too much to use specific alcohol and wine names so I made up my own. But we can't get away from using "apple" or "potato" because we can't re-invent everything. It's fun, though, to invent a few things that give the story a fantasy edge, which readers will understand just from the context.
For slang, and this just a personal choice, I borrowed straight from American inner city type rhythms and it always immediately helps to get some swearing in there—if that's good for the audience you're writing for. I would recommend watching well done films and shows that are set in cities. For instance, The Wire is fantastic. I really think you need to hear it spoken and just get a feel for the rhythm, which words are dropped, combined, etc. You obviously don't have to get it perfect or identical, just borrow a little of the music. And have faith in yourself! We all have to do it badly before we do it well.
The Wire. Got it. Thank you. Any others you would recommend?
For world building, my current struggle is whether they would have cars, bicycles, skateboard, guns, and whether they all work and function the same way as ours do now. How do you handle those on yours?
N. K. Jemison has a great Master Class where she talks about the ins and outs of worldbuilding. If you can afford Master Class (it's like a hundred bucks a year for all you can watch), it's a really great way to learn. Some great writers talking about what they've learned. She recommends using a world you know (meaning earth) and just changing a few things.
But of course you could do earth in the 1700s or the 1200s. The key is just to write what sounds fun and interesting to you. Try an idea you like (let's say before electricity was available) and think about some of the repercussions for your world, and see if it feels right. The most important thing is to be consistent with whatever your internal rules are, and of course try to keep things reasonably logical. I think it would be pretty odd for a world to have spaceships but no bicycles—unless there is say, a religious reason for it. Or they've completely abandoned everything that isn't mechanized. So much of writing is listening to your instinct and trying to have fun.
I have just posted a question about tone/style in the comment section of last week's lesson. I am writing what might be a memoir, but also blog/essays here on my Substack page. I find myself writing in what seems to be a colloquial, conversational, non-flowery way. I am pretty sure I have internalized the efficiency of rap lyrics and how screenplays are written. Sometimes I can get too sing-songy. I like one-word paragraphs and variations in sentence length. It seems like I have adopted elements of sound, rhythm, balance, etc that are being discussed this week (without knowing it). Here are two short sections of Substack blog My Bruised Resume, as an example:
"I've spent most of my time on Earth in my head. I use my eyes and ears more than my mouth by a factor of ten. And by the grace of good sense and good genes, I've made it to the raggedy end of this mortal coil, way over here, on the far right of most graphs."
and...
"Why Substack now?
Honestly, too much has been too hot to handle for a very long time, and reacting is distracting. Plus, patterns only reveal themselves after mistake number three.
I know you know what I mean.
Do you remember that cute high school crush who hurt your feelings? Your asshole first husband? The second divorce that ruined you alive?
"Done!" you exclaimed. Only to realize it was you all along.
Lesson learned. And boy, do they pile up."
Hi Andrew, love these observations on your style — I can definitely see the sing-song element in your voice (and it has a lovely flow). Definitely a read-aloud kind of work.
This is an excellent conversation starter! I have one novel that is about a young woman leaving a fundamentalist church. All of the characters are working class and either midwestern or southern so that one feels (one hopes) salt-of-the-earth and plain spoken and a little funny. My other novel, which is undergoing a monster rewrite, is a speculative fiction story set on a parallel but basically-identical-to-earth planet. Very urban, except for a defunct monastery and castle-turned-prison on a nearby island. It's a class war story, with a group of artists who are looking for a crack in the system, and an elite ruling class which uses their private business language to keep the castes in place.
I wanted it to have fun genre elements, an old code, subtle mystical power, embezzlement, galas and a prison break, but wanted those things to be told in a gritty, realistic way. So there are a fair number of factories and industrial details, all of it soaked in rain. Best time ever.
I'm on my fifth revision and it has changed quite a lot. It had good bones before but was a sprawling mess. I think this rewrite has a much more consistent tone. At first I tended to have sections that sounded a little too formal and distant, and then sections that were a lot more earthy, and neither was done in an intentional way. I stopped in the middle to write the other novel, and the two years spent on a literary fiction book definitely improved my ability to understand character but also how to notice pacing and tone.
You can hear how much you enjoy the speculative novel in your description :D And wow, a whole load of voices to balance there, alongside the overall tone. Sounds like you've got it all really clear in your head though.
It sounds like you’re very good with voice. How did you learn or practice writing different voices?
So much TV. And listening to people talk. I think the single biggest thing is to relax and let yourself play and try to forget about whether it's "good." Easier said than done, but I'm pretty sure if you experiment it'll come naturally.
May I ask how long you’ve been writing?
I started writing about five years ago, pretty obsessively. Like I stopped showering and forgot I had children. I wrote a (not great) 200K word novel in 10 months. So it was a pretty intensive learning curve.
Whenever I read Harry Potter, I always read pages before realizing I’ve spent that much time on it. Does that mean Harry Potter is extremely rhythmic?
As for my novel, it’s written from the POV of a 16-year-old boy, so I hope it’s light and energetic, deep and thoughtful without sounding deep and thoughtful, but I’m a drama queen, so I doubt I’ve achieved it. It probably sounds melodramatic.
Here’s my opening:
The morning smelled rotten.
I squatted on the edge of the embankment under the bridge with a makeshift ladle. It was still dark out—beyond the trees, skypods still hadn’t begun their ten-thousand-foot descent, still dotted the predawn sky like faint little stars. Down here, the morning dew had thoroughly invaded the city. Everything I touched felt cold and damp, from the ladle’s wooden handle to the rough cement of the embankment under my naked toes, and even the air I breathed. All soaked.
I needed to wash my face, to get ready for the day. Papa Patril used to say people were more generous in the morning when their pockets were full. By noon, no one would toss a coin our way. So we had only a few hours to work with. I needed to get to the market before daybreak.
I brought the ladle to my face, but a breeze came by and brought up the stench of the river. It wasn’t too bad on a cold morning, but on instinct I jerked back, wondering whether the water in the ladle stank too. A definite possibility, because we got the water directly from the river, untreated. Not just us but thousands in this slum. The trick was to get it during high tide, after the low tide had pushed out the trash and the rot to the sea and the high tide pulled in the fresh, clean water. That was the thought, anyway. In the past few years, more and more people had lost their homes, more living on the streets, more trash in the river, that it didn’t matter whether high tide or low tide, the trash and the rot were still lurking beneath the calm water. In summer, during low tide, the stench enveloped us like a blanket, like it tried to drag us down into the river to join the trash and the rot of the city.
To many though, we were already trash.
I sniffed the water but decided to go for it. Not like I had another source to wash my face. I poured the water onto my hand, but as the icy water hit my face, a spacecraft swooped down too close over the bridge and sent chills up and down my naked spine.
I like that you shared this. One thought and one question. It's really well written, to the point that it wouldn't have struck me as the thoughts of a teen. I've struggled with this exact thing, too, because one of the POV in my novel is a fifteen year old girl. And I had written her too poetically. Obviously some teens are going to sound exactly like adults (I was the kind of nerd who spent free hours at the library reading poetry, so there's that) but if you wanted it to "feel" young, you might have to consider saying, for instance, "still lurking beneath the calm water" in a slightly less elegant way. My two cents.
The question is this. It's very hard for me to picture someone young and living in slum not using slang or swear words. Was that intentional? Because I think there are examples, such as Arcane (the show), where it's pulled off well, but even the dialogue there feels very family-friendly. I suppose it depends on your audience?
Well written? Are you serious? I’ve been so insecure about my writing because many people have said my writing is stiff and stilted.
You found my weakness though. I know nothing about street slang. I definitely want him to have street cred, have a stronger voice. Where would be a good source for me to study to get better at slang? Should I buy a slang dictionary? Also, this is a society with spacecraft, not our current world, so how would you play with slang? Of course, everything is like a translation into our current language and culture, but I still can’t find an angle to do it. Playing with English words is basically out.
And thank you so much for your comment.
You're welcome! We're all insecure about our writing :) I definitely picked up on the space craft idea right away. And I'm in the same boat with my lit fic novel because none of the languages are earth languages. I have a note for readers at the beginning, like Neal Stephenson does at the beginning of Anathem, explaining that the story was translated and certain earth-specific terms were used because they're such good shorthand (in particular clergy names like cardinal and bishop). But it's a really arbitrary line, what to use from earth vocabulary and what not to use, and you have just set your own rules and stick with them. For me it was too much to use specific alcohol and wine names so I made up my own. But we can't get away from using "apple" or "potato" because we can't re-invent everything. It's fun, though, to invent a few things that give the story a fantasy edge, which readers will understand just from the context.
For slang, and this just a personal choice, I borrowed straight from American inner city type rhythms and it always immediately helps to get some swearing in there—if that's good for the audience you're writing for. I would recommend watching well done films and shows that are set in cities. For instance, The Wire is fantastic. I really think you need to hear it spoken and just get a feel for the rhythm, which words are dropped, combined, etc. You obviously don't have to get it perfect or identical, just borrow a little of the music. And have faith in yourself! We all have to do it badly before we do it well.
The Wire. Got it. Thank you. Any others you would recommend?
For world building, my current struggle is whether they would have cars, bicycles, skateboard, guns, and whether they all work and function the same way as ours do now. How do you handle those on yours?
N. K. Jemison has a great Master Class where she talks about the ins and outs of worldbuilding. If you can afford Master Class (it's like a hundred bucks a year for all you can watch), it's a really great way to learn. Some great writers talking about what they've learned. She recommends using a world you know (meaning earth) and just changing a few things.
But of course you could do earth in the 1700s or the 1200s. The key is just to write what sounds fun and interesting to you. Try an idea you like (let's say before electricity was available) and think about some of the repercussions for your world, and see if it feels right. The most important thing is to be consistent with whatever your internal rules are, and of course try to keep things reasonably logical. I think it would be pretty odd for a world to have spaceships but no bicycles—unless there is say, a religious reason for it. Or they've completely abandoned everything that isn't mechanized. So much of writing is listening to your instinct and trying to have fun.