My new literary style.

My new literary style, and the resulting format, evolved over some time. It eliminates dialogue tags, adverbs, and things like semi-colons. Scattered through this blog are bits of short fiction. Some of them are in the older style.

“Run!” John shouted suddenly.

“Why?” she asked. “What’s up?”

She looked wildly around but could see nothing.

That’s the older style, and we can still find plenty of it out there. There are brand-new books being released by highly-regarded authors using this style every day. The books come from respectable mass-market publishers.

The new style, which I did not invent, looks more like this:

“Run!” John grabbed her arm.

“Why? What’s up?” Mary looked wildly around, but saw nothing.

Basically it just saves a lot of words. I never have to use ‘he said, she said’ again. Any number of other authors advise against adverbs, like ‘suddenly,’ especially in dialogue tags. I still use adverbs in the exposition. I used to use too many semi-colons; not that I haven’t found semi-colons in the work of mainstream authors living and dead. I’m not contradicting anybody, but I have a certain goal in mind.

I don’t care if I’m better than a bunch of not very good authors. I would prefer not to be ‘just as good’ as a whole bunch of mediocre or unremarkable authors. I want my work to stand up in comparison to the very best authors, no matter what style they may write in. It has nothing to do with overall sales numbers, but the work itself. This must hold true not just at the sentence and paragraph level, where I’m actually pretty good, not just the ability to write a good chapter that looks all right on its own, but the overall story. Have I put in enough to link it all together into one coherent whole?

This is where I stand right now—I’m just on the brink of a higher level and I don’t really know the answers to certain things. That’s one reason why I don’t rush the thing so much these days. It has to be right above all else. Let’s assume a person could conceivably write in Impressionistic style, or Surrealist style, or ‘write like Michelangelo.’ It still has to be complete—saying you’re a Fauvist writer isn’t going to get you too far if there are holes in the plot, flaws or contradictions in the logic, and at the end of the story the reader just doesn’t get it. Assuming they even got that far.

I’m reading a book now, and it’s not my favourite genre. It’s not particularly well written. Yet I can’t help thinking that the average reader wouldn’t care anyway. I haven’t abandoned the thing yet. I’m still reading it. But most readers simply wouldn’t notice the style or the writing. In that sense, the author did succeed in that the writing would be invisible to the majority of the readers. But I’m not there as a fan, I’m a writer with an analytical eye.

I want my work to adhere to the highest international literary standards. The work stands a better chance of meeting the test of time. It can be read and understood by the greatest number of people. It still makes sense fifty or a hundred years later. It's not an instant antique.

The considerations, I think, are artistic. The notion that writers should ‘just learn to tell a story’ and ignore style is ludicrous. You must have a basic level of competence. I don’t care how many major authors couldn’t spell. Some of them couldn’t even write—they hired ghost writers. I don’t have that luxury. Neither do I have that level of vanity. If I couldn't do it, then it's just a lie and we're all better off if I quit.

***

In the fine arts there are three types or levels of content. There is the actual content of the picture—whether it’s a still life of flowers, or a naked lady, or a guy on a horse with a big sword. Then there is the meaning of a picture. The artist had the intention of conveying some theme or message. The third level of content is what it meant to the viewer—how it made them feel or what they thought upon viewing the work.

The same is true for literature. In terms of editing for content, I do the very best I can in telling a good story. Content is not just what I put into it, but what the reader gets out of it. What that means is that style really doesn’t matter as long as it remains unobtrusive and gets the story across.

With the new style, the challenge the author faces is attribution. Who said what?

“This is conveyed by the format as much as anything else.” John looked up at the reader. “If you don’t get it, you’re not paying attention.”

I couldn’t have said it any better myself.

Here’s something you will never find in a Shalako book—although you might still see it in ‘mainstream’ books put out by major publishers even today.

“Run!” John grabbed Jane’s arm. Together they took off running. Jane’s shoe came off. Bill and what he said yesterday still dominated her thoughts. Dale wasn't there that day, as he'd called in sick. Larry’s breathing was harsh and loud in his chest. Ed was so frightened he couldn’t speak. Virginia, unfortunately, for reasons unknown, wasn’t there to share the terror of her creation run amok. “That thing’s fast!”

There is a reason for everything I do. Sometimes it’s a reaction to something I saw that I didn’t like. The above (fictitious) example was done for one reason and one reason only. The designer of the book preferred big, square blocks of text. It saves paper, and this used to be, (and might still be,) a mass-market industry. Saving one page of paper per book did in fact add up to significant cost savings over a large print run. It’s just that simple. (Funny thing is, I've probably achieved the same thing.)

But we are no longer bound by these considerations.

We are within our rights as writers to experiment with something new, even if it steps on the toes of the old, the shopworn, the outmoded, or the obsolete.


Photo: Franz Marc, 'Deer in the Woods.' A coherent whole.

Experimenting with Literary Styles.

This is an excerpt from ‘The Shape-Shifters,’ a paranormal fantasy. Never say ‘abnormal’ fantasy. The book is available in a number of fine bookstores, and has a couple of very nice reviews.



Editing an excerpt in a new style.

Janet managed to get her dad and the kids in the truck, all properly bundled up against the cold, with the kids clutching a few small presents for Grandma and Grandpa Herbert.

She eased down the snow-covered street, greasy from being churned up and half-melted by traffic. There were literally dozens of cars parked along the curb as everyone was attending to the roles of guest and visitors, hosts and hostesses. Many of the neighbouring homes were lit up, and people could be seen coming and going in a self-conscious manner, mostly strangers but for this once-yearly ritual.

“How’s the truck running?” asked her dad, predictably enough.

You could almost set your watch by it.

“Um, it’s hard to start sometimes,” she said. “I think it needs a new battery.”

“Why don’t you get it fixed, and I’ll pay for it,” suggested her father.

Janet gulped in thanks and said she’d try to get it done after Christmas, but before New Year’s.


Experimenting with style.

A rational goal for 2012 is to bring up our game a notch and elevate the prose style to international, professional standards. This is the sort of level where acquisitions editors don’t just chuck the manuscript after three lines without actually reading the story. Readers browsing the online bookstore don't click 'close' and move on. The best place to experiment with style is in the short story market, because we can re-write old stories that were rejected and try them somewhere else.

This is a valid test, because over the last six months, I’ve had a uniform 100 % rejection rate, and that can’t be entirely blamed on the economy and increased competition, or an influx of submissions from people who wouldn’t normally submit, but are presently unemployed. Also, some of them stories have been rejected multiple times. We have some data, in other worsd. If I don't experiment and change the style, the only real difference is that I have been submitting entirely to professional markets, which are a hard sell at the best of times. The idea is, if I start to place stories again, stories for money, then maybe it was the style they were written in that stopped them from being picked up before.

So let’s edit the piece above in the light of new knowledge, and some soul-searching, which I would prefer not to do. It goes with the territory, though.


Janet managed to get her dad and the kids in the truck, all properly bundled up against the cold. The kids clutched a few small presents for Grandma and Grandpa Herbert.

She eased down the snow-covered street, greasy from being churned up and half-melted by traffic. There were dozens of cars parked along the curb as everyone was attending to the roles of guest and visitors, hosts and hostesses. The neighbouring homes were all lit up, and people were coming and going in a self-conscious manner, mostly strangers but for this once-yearly ritual.

“How’s the truck running?”

Her dad’s question was predictable enough. You could almost set your watch by it.

“Um, it’s hard to start sometimes. I think it needs a new battery.”

“Why don’t you get it fixed, and I’ll pay for it?”

Janet gulped in thanks. “I’ll try to get it done after Christmas, but before New Year’s.”


Notes: we’ve removed the word ‘literally,’ which some editors hate, and done a few things with the dialogue. We’ve changed a few words and taken some out. In this piece we’ve gone for the ruthless suppression of dialogue tags and adverbs, which is arguably the most prevalent modern style among professional writers and editors. Nothing has been added to the piece, only rearranged or taken away.


Study the competition in your market.

The nice thing about having an Amazon account is that you can download all sorts of free e-books and see where other people are at in their writing. Some of them will impress as very competent. Those are the ones to compete with. If we work hard, learn the craft, and set out to compete with the best, instead of just being content to be ‘better than some other guy,’ we will make out just fine.

The trouble with Facebook is that while you can develop a stream of sources and information, by looking for and clicking on all writers or all editors and publishers, you indicate a ‘preference’ for certain types of people. Facebook’s algorithms will then present you with an ever-increasing ratio of the exact same kind of person. Somehow the readers get lost in all of this.


Reading is a relationship.

Reading is an intimate form of relationship. Relationships require honest effort. It is by establishing a relationship with readers that a writer can be more successful in expanding the circle of people who read their books. When I read posts by people who are also interested in writing, it makes me ask questions about my own work. It has definitely been a phase in my own development.

But...

Who is the reader? The reader is a person who really doesn’t know a darned thing about writing, who doesn’t much care if the story follows some arbitrary or academic rules of composition. They may never try to write a story, or a book. They don’t care. They are looking for a good read, not a blog post on grammar and punctuation. We’re not out to impress the reader with our knowledge or our ability to study and improve. All we want to do is to improve our skills, and tell a better story. We must tell it as well as we can. The more we understand our tools, the better will be our story-construction. Ultimately, the writer and all their tools should just evaporate and disappear from the page. This leaves only the characters and their challenges, surrounded by their environment, speaking their minds clearly and engaging in actions that are easily followed by the average reader.

Listening to other writers all the time will drive you crazy. Listening to the readers, figuring out exactly what they need, is far more important.

As for adverbs, dialogue tags, statement attributions, there are schools of thought and each has its advantages and limitations. They must, because they are tools.

Everything else is just style. To arrive at a style is the result of accident or choice. As for getting more readers, it just takes time, and some well-written books and stories. Going for the most modern, up-to-date literary style for the magazine market, where space is at a premium and where they are perhaps more avant-garde stylistically, is an experiment that is certainly worth trying. I always check and sometimes re-write short stories before submitting them anyways, so this is just one more little thing to look out for. And now it's in the tool-box.