Faffy Words

Batjutsu left a comment on my last post asking for other examples of words that may well be superfluous. This is often a matter of style and narrative voice, so consistency of application is more important than anything. Being a busy (some would say lazy) writer, to help out I’ve gratuitously stolen the following list from Marc Gascoigne, Overlord of Angry Robot and former Head of Black Library. Much of this applies more to journalistic writing than to prose, but it’s worth bearing in mind even with stories and novels.

REDUNDANT PHRASES

Twelve noon/twelve midnight………………………..Noon/midnight

A total of X items………………………………………….X items

Circle around……………………………………………….Circle

Close proximity…………………………………………… Proximity

Completely unanimous………………………………….Unanimous

Consensus of opinion…………………………………….Consensus

Cooperate together……………………………………….Cooperate

Each and every…………………………………………….Each (or every)

Enclosed herewith………………………………………..Enclosed

End result……………………………………………………Result

Exactly the same………………………………………….The same

Final completion………………………………………… Completion

In spite of the fact that………………………………… Although

In the event that………………………………………….If

Particular interest………………………………………. Interest

A period of X days………………………………………. X days

Personal opinion………………………………………….Opinion

Return again……………………………………………….Return

Revert back………………………………………………..Revert

Small in size………………………………………………. Small

Surrounded on all sides………………………………..Surrounded

Take into consideration………………………………. Consider

There is no doubt that………………………………….No doubt

We are in receipt of……………………………………..We have received

INTENSIFIERS THAT DO NOT INTENSIFY

Really                                                      Extremely

Very                                                         Severely

Quite                                                        Truly

PHRASES YOU CAN JUST LEAVE OUT

All things considered

Have a tendency to

As a matter of fact

In a manner of speaking

As far as I’m concerned

In a very real sense

At the present time

In my opinion

Because of the fact that

In the case of

By means of

In the event that

By virtue of the fact that

It seems that

For all intents and purposes

The point I am trying to make is that

For the most part

What I mean to say is

For the purpose of

Note that any or all of these could be used in dialogue, as people use a lot more stock phrases and cliches when speaking than a writer should when writing!

Addendum – Another one to look out for is characters who ’start to…’ or ‘begin to…’ perform actions (personal bugbear of mine). Sometimes a character will start an action and not finish it, or dialogue intervenes, but more often it’s just a long-winded, soft way of saying a character did something.

Bad=

Michael knelt down and began to pick up the pieces of the broken mirror. He carefully carried them to the bin.

Good =

Michael knelt down and picked up the pieces of the broken mirror, then carefully carried them to the bin.

‘Before’ is another I also accidentally slip in without cause.

Michael knelt down and picked up the pieces of the mirror before carefully carrying them to the bin.

Obviously he had to pick them up before he carried them… Usually ‘and’ is required instead.

Know Your Weaknesses

Those who are following DennisHamster on Twitter will be aware that Shadow King has been moved up the release schedule, and is now coming out in January 2010. This meant that I spent the second half of last week and much of the weekend reading through the proofed files to make a few last tweaks and to address a couple of points raised.

Alongside a couple of instances of name confusion and timing questions, there was one thing that really leapt out at me. Throughout the document, the proofreader had changed ‘toward’ and ‘forward’ to ‘towards’ and ‘forwards’ (the second usage being more common in British English, the former in American English). The change in itself is pretty non-descript, but because I was looking at a marked-up Word file, every instance had a little red underline. Reading through the document it became apparent just how much I use both of these words.

I had a similar comment on my sample chapters for the Crown of the Blood concerning ‘now’, and I’ve also noticed in the past how much I used to employ ‘then’. While none of the usages were technically incorrect, they certainly added additional ‘waffiness’ to sentences. When writers and editors talk about ’sharp’ or ‘tight’ writing (or some similar adjective) it is these sorts of minor but unnecessary ‘weasel words’ that can make a text feel subtly bloated, like the written version of a speech impediment, lengthening a sentence without adding any extra meaning.

Another that can crop up is superfluous ’subject reinforcement’ with pronouns (‘he’, ’she’, ‘his’, ‘her’, etc.). Often article confusion (mixing ‘a’ with ‘the’) can also subtly change the flow of the prose, or may be excess to requirements entirely.

A real example from Shadow King:

Alith took a step forwards, his hand outstretched in a placating gesture, but the stag suddenly looked to the west and then bounded away into the forest.

A little bit sharper after editing:

Alith took a step, hand outstretched in a placating gesture, but the stag suddenly looked to the west and bounded away into the forest.

As a reader and a writer we assume that a step is forwards unless we’re directed otherwise. Similarly, unless the subject of an action might be confusing, we usually know who is performing it and don’t need telling again.

Others I have noticed – lunging forwards, using ‘forwards’ instead of ‘closer’. In all, ‘forwards’ appeared 132 times and ‘towards’ 232 times ina 150K document. That doesn’t seem like much as a bare statistic, but once you have it highlighted it really shows up how often one can fall into a bad habit…

This is where modern word processing can really help. I have a list of ‘Gav’s weasel words and phrases’. Rather than get hung up during the actual writing, I can use the Find function to locate these words during the first edit and assess whether they are really needed at all.

Have a close look at your writing to see if you have any such words and stock phrases that crop up too often. You may well be surprised.

What’s the Plan, Stan?

Sometimes when writing one backs oneself into a corner and it’s incredibly difficult to find the way out. I’ve just done that with Path of the Warrior… It’s just entered a vague area between an important character development and the rip-roaring finale, and is in danger of meandering around for its own sake without going anywhere meaningful.

The reason? Well, clearly I’ve gone ‘off mission’. That is, events glibly tossed away in one or two sentences in the synopsis have taken on far more significance, but I’m not sure what that significance is yet. Arse.

The solution? Well, clearly it’s not what I’ve been doing for the last day and a half – distracting myself pimping Space Hulk: The Novel and generally faffing about writing on forums and, well, this post… I need a plan, and I need it pretty quick!

So, I shall explain a bit of my mental process at this stage (in order that writing about it may help me resolve the issues at hand and also mean that this blatant displacement activity ends up with some useful outcome).

The sequence in question is about character relationships, and how they have changed following a fundamental shift in the protagonist’s life. All well and good so far. The problem is, I don’t want this part of the novel to become a simple whistle-stop tour of the other characters, a series of unrelated encounters and conversations that update the reader on the changes wrought but without anything actually happening.

Hmm, what I need is a framework. An excuse, to put it another way, for the protagonist to have the encounters necessary to move his story along and get to the point.

There are a few ways this can be done. Firstly, the protagonist can seek out certain individuals. Secondly, certain individuals can seek him out. Thirdly, there’s always chance encounter (but you can’t really use that more than once in any particular sequence without risking Deus Ex Machina).

Right, so that’s a bit more to be going on with.

I need to outline all of the involved parties: their relevance to a) the protagonist, and b) the plot or sub-plots of the novel.

That’s where the problem might lie, thinking about it. As is my wont, I’ve thought quite a lot about the psychology and character dynamics of the story. What I haven’t quite concluded, and is now becoming apparent, is what relevance those dynamics have beyond themselves. They exist beside the plot, not a part of it.

You can get away with some parts of a story being little side-trips and meanderings, but you don’t want to spend a whole chapter detailing events that don’t actually mean anything to the overall story. And that’s the danger here.

I’ve been going about this the wrong way, trying to tackle the problem head-on. What I need to do is get away from the keyboard, back to the pen-and-paper to come up with something that makes these changing dynamics not only character development points, but also plot factors (or more likely sub-plots).

I’ve avoided doing this because I really want to crack on, time is ticking. As is usually the case, it’s probably cost me more time and distraction trying to come up with a solution through writing than it would have done if I’d stepped back earlier on. I don’t think any of the writing time has been an actual waste – it’s good stuff on the page – but by trying to think and write at the same time, my pace has slowed to a crawl, which really doesn’t suit me and gets very frustrating.

I’ve just realised, this is probably the same sort of problem I discussed in my Converting the Catalyst post, only viewed from the opposite end of the rainbow. That is, my issue at that time was transferring from the opening sequences into the bulk of the story, now I am coming down the other side, getting from the bulk of the story to the ending… Maybe I’ll learn for next time!

Okay, that’s the plan – come up with a plan!

Thanks for listening, you’ve been a great help

Project Ssh Revealed!

Hamsterites may remember mentions of Project Ssh! from posts earlier in the year. Now is the time to reveal all:

Space Hulk: The Novel

This 30,000 word novel (similar to Assault on Black Reach and Battle of Skull Pass), follows the exploits of Sergeants Lorenzo and Gideon of the Blood Angels Chapter, as they attempt to destroy the alien menace of a genestealer nest aboard a massive space derelict.

This was written in conjunction with the newly unveiled boxed game - I wrote the background for the Missions Book at around the same time (the second part of of Project Ssh, so to speak). It’s an interesting evolution of the original Space Hulk story, which was written before some of the elements of 40K evolved into those now recognised (for example, the nature and names of the Blood Angels was nowhere near as developed in the first edition of the game).However the basic story remains the same, and I kept as many of the old quotes as possible.

In writing, I keptto the themes of the game, so that the two both give a similar experience but in different media – the claustrophobia of the space hulk , the tactics of the Space Marine Terminators, the sense of tension and the unremitting speed of combat. It’s a fast-paced story, but not entirely restricted to the simple matter of man versus alien in desperate battle. There are a few twists and turns along the way, not least in the experiences of Sergeant Lorenzo, a survivor of a massacre by genestealers some six centuries earlier. Lorenzo battles his own fears and memories even as he must bring the fight to the loathsome xenos. And if that’s not enough, the Blood Angels’ exploration of the space hulk uncovers something incredible from the Chapter’s past!

Order your copies, or come along to Games Day UK, where I’ll be signing Space Hulk: The Novel and my other books.

Crunch Time!

As you may have guessed from my relative silence of late, I’ve been busy working on Path of the Warrior. Now officially announced for next summer, this is the first in a trilogy entitled The Eldar Path, the later two books being Path of the Seer and Path of the Outcast (yes, I know being an outcast is technically not part of the Eldar Path, but continuity of titles trumps pedantry in this case!). I’ve still got a couple more weeks of intensive writing to finish the novel, and then a we break to plan a couple of projects before getting stuck in to The Crown of the Blood.

It’s tricky sometimes keeping one’s mind on the project at hand – I keep thinking about those future projects, blithely assuming that Path of the Warrior is done and dusted, when in reality there’s still plenty of thinking and writing to be done to make sure it’s up to scratch. It’s also been tempting to distract oneself with blog posts – people keep asking for advice on writing, which leads to me concocting new posts in my head. Time, though, is of the essence, and for the moment Mechanical Hamster will have to wait a couple of weeks before I can add some more posts.

It hasn’t helped that there’s not been much to tell recently. No signings of late or other announcements. It’s also possible to veer into some serious displacement activity writing a running commentary on the current project, all of which may seem like a good idea, but ends up taking even more time away from the primary task of getting a novel written.

I haven’t forgotten my hamsterites, there’ll be plenty to come in the future! If you’re after random titbits, you can follow DennisHamster on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook.

Event News – Along with many other Black Library ‘names’ I shall be at UK Games Day on September 27th, and I’ll also be signing books and doing other authorly things at GamesFest on 24th October. More details to come…

Addendum – In Path of the Warrior news, you can now check out this utterly awesome cover! This is Korlandril, the main character from the novel. I guess the title and picture give you a clue what he ends up doing!