Contronyms are words that have opposite definitions. The one I always remember is “cleave”—does it mean to join together, or to split apart? Both. Another reason why English is a ridiculously confusing language.
Want more examples? Mental Floss lists fourteen contronyms, and Daily Writing Tips lists 75!
Click those links to check over the lists and see if you have used any of those words ambiguously in your own writing.
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In the Introduction to Fifteen Blinks, I mentioned that people blink less frequently when they are interested. The difference between engaging writing and dull writing is diction—voice—how the words sound in your head and out loud.
Let’s get all multimedia up here and use video to illustrate. Compare the following two videos. Take a mental note of the types of words each speaker is using.
From Ferris Bueller’s Day Off:
and from Dead Poets Society:
The first video is filled with academic, Latinate language, with a pop or two of some Anglo-Saxon. (Read more about the difference between Latinate and Anglo-Saxon diction here.)
alleviate, tariff, revenue, federal government, sank, depression, revenue, voodoo
The second video has some clichés, Latinate language, Anglo-Saxon language, slang, and even onomatopoeia.
Seize the day, DING, food for worms, breathing, cold, die, peruse, haircuts, hormones, invincible, world is their oyster, full of hope, one iota, gonna, fertilizing daffodils, legacy, extraordinary
Which diction is more interesting?
“Avoid clichés like the plague.” Clichés are like shorthand for writers. Sometimes it makes sense to use them, because the reader will except the metaphor as an idiom. A cliché is better than “new” imagery that makes the reader question your better judgment or sanity.* My husband’s family has a motto: “Work smarter, not harder.” Sometimes using a cliché is being smart; other times it’s lazy writing. If one of your characters is a bit dull, then let him speak in a cliché once or twice. Outside of dialogue, use sparingly.
*Read about the Bad Sex writing award over at The Guardian for a laugh and cautionary tale (NSFW)
Perhaps you’ve heard of the phrase “purple language” or “flowery language” before. When every other word was looked up in the thesaurus, it’s obvious that you are trying to impress the reader, and we are pretty sure that you are just overcompensating. See my references to Christopher Paolini’s debut here.
Diction is often overdone in sentimental fiction. It’s also overdone in classrooms. I was hoping for some good examples of bad imagery when I saw a Google result titled “How Not to Suck at Writing—Imagery.” Instead, I got some bad examples of “good” imagery. The examples of “good” imagery in that post come across as a Mad-Libs gone terribly, terribly wrong. If you take a writing class and the teacher praises this kind of writing, ask for your money back and buy a copy of Stephen King’s On Writing. Money better spent.
But read King with a grain of salt if you do happen to pick up On Writing. He says things like this:
“Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.”
…Apparently a drunk and high Mr. King is of a more sober mind than I, bearer and rearer of children, because I forget words all the time, and thesauruses are a great aid in digging up vocabulary which is half-buried in toddler talk and animal noises. Unless my husband is around. Then I forgo the thesaurus, speaking utter nonsense to him until I remember the word I was trying to think of. It’s usually accompanied by grandiose hand gestures:
“What’s that word for when… You know how… When you feel like… I think it starts with a P…”
If you don’t pay a whole lot of attention to diction, if you don’t worry about being fancy, your writing will probably come across as conversational, sort of like this blog. Your writing isn’t going to be very exciting—it’s going to be invisible. Everybody can write conversationally of they write the way they speak.
That’s why overdoing it is usually the problem with new (and some seasoned) writers. They want to stand out. Problem is, people notice them standing out for all the wrong reasons and they praise them for it. I see many writers try to get away with purple language by submitting their work as “literary,” when their work isn’t literary at all—it just hasn’t been edited for diction.
The great news is that getting diction right is incredibly simple. You ready for it?
Read out loud.
Controversial, right? Imagine actually reading your written text out loud! Why, someone might hear you! You might hear yourself!
If you start shaking uncontrollably at the thought of reading aloud, even to an audience of one, then you can download a text-reader that will read your text out for you. And it’s a computer, so you don’t even have to share your work with another human being. Because, you know, that would be terrible, getting someone else’s opinion.
Eh, sorry for the snark. Some people really love text-to-speech and use it. I’m the cheapest person alive, so I choose the free version—my own vocal chords. If someone here uses text-to-speech software, please share your recommendations!
Read my guest post on Better Novel Project: 7 TIPS FOR WRITING REALISTIC DIALOGUE
When writing something short—a poem, flash fiction, or memoir vignette—every word needs to count. Diction is so important, I’m giving you a pretty lengthy exercise this time, so you can see good diction for yourself. Optional writing prompt at the end.
Instructions:
The next time you come across something particularly horrible, repeat this exercise (1-9) with that unfortunate work, and rewrite it to make it better.
Remember, you don’t become a better writer by criticizing other writers. You become a better writer by reading and rewriting, rewriting, rewriting, rewriting.
Click any Fifteen Links button to be taken to the most recent Fifteen Blinks post.
No, I have not written correspondance with Anne Lamott, and I don’t have copies of any of her epistles. I do, however, have a copy of Bird by Bird, which I reread cover to cover today.
Two things that resonated with me particularly during this read had to do with letters, namely the first five of the alphabet.
In her chapter on Plot, Lamott reference’s Alice Adam’s formula for writing short stories. It goes like this:
There are two basic types of writers: the plotter and the pantser. I’ll use extremes to illustrate my point, and hopefully you’ll find yourself somewhere in the middle.
The extreme plotter plans before writing and risks writing something plot-driven rather than character-driven (I talk about that here). These are the people that write 28 trashy novels per year and somehow end up on the best-seller list. Their films generate a buzz and sell a lot of popcorn, but end up in the discount DVD bin five months after release. The extreme pantser writes by the seat of his or her pants, letting the story develop naturally and organically, and risks having an artfully written convolution that is unpublishable. These are the people who write fine literature that nobody particularly understands. Their movies are discussed primarily in film classes.
Sometimes you plan out a 4-foot-by-4-foot garden plot. You plant the seeds in even little rows, pushing them inches down into the Ph-balanced soil. But then you have a number of cold days, or not enough rain, and the spinach wilts and the corn grows and casts an eternal shadow over the unsuspecting peonies. Before you know it, the tomatoes are creating their own political party of radicals, hatching a plan to overthrow the oligarchy that is your authorship. Then you have to wonder if your garden needs a serious thrashing, if you should just plow it up and turn the whole thing into a compost pile, or if you should start a new, nonfiction book entitled “1001 Uses for Tomatoes.”
Sometimes you wander, barefooted, into a patch of wildflowers and lie gazing up at the clouds and enjoying the smells and sounds of the rustling, absorbing them into memory. You come back, day after day, while the Earth spins around and the seasons change, observing and absorbing, until you have a collection of lovely vignettes. But your editor just doesn’t see a story there. So you go back to your wildflower patch with a shovel, find a spot with a nice view, and you dig yourself a grave there and bury yourself up to your waist in dirt, and call a friend to come finish the job for you, because you can’t cover yourself completely without leaving some arm waving around pathetically.
Whether you are a plotter or a pantser, whether you’ve got a messy draft or are in the middle of a draft with no foreseeable future, you might want to consider a plot treatment.
A plot treatment addresses what happens and why. It tells you “who the people [are] and what the story [is],” (page 91).
Here’s how Lamott did it:
“I sat down every day and wrote five hundred to a thousand words describing what was going on in each chapter. I discussed who the characters were turning out to be, where they’d been, what they were up to, and why. [And] I figured out, over and over, point A, where the chapter began, and point B, where it ended, and what needed to happen to get my people from A to B. And then how the B of the last chapter would lead organically into point A of the next chapter. The book moved along like the alphabet, like a vivid and continuous dream.” (92-3)
Sound familiar? It’s a lot like Suzanne Johnson’s Relationship Arcs. Try my twist of a plot treatment with my Chapter Outlining Like a Pantser technique.
Don’t be afraid to plot. Plotting helps make your story a story. It gives you that beginning, middle, and end. Without it, you might have some nice images, but so does the Alzheimer’s patient down at Happy Acres. They might be real, truthful, and beautiful, but if you don’t link together the cat with three legs, your great aunt’s penchance for covering furniture with doilies, and the lingering smell of buttercream frosting together in a logical order, no one is going to have any idea what you are talking about, or why those things are important.
I’m a plotter, and I have an outline, but that plan has grown from my knowledge of my characters. They still surprise me from time to time, so if my outline changes, it changes. I don’t change my characters to fit the story, I change the story to fit them, but I have a pretty good idea of what decisions they’ll make for themselves based on their character.
I’ve spent half a decade with my characters, virtually taking them out to eat. Gareth and I always get cheeseburgers or waffles at indecent hours, constantly wiping our mouths of the ketchup or blueberry syrup as we talk about movies. Isolde and I get frozen ice cream topped generously with fruit and white chocolate or coconut, unless we are having a self-conscious day, when we’ll chat over salads between sips of lemon water. Robin is less predictable, wanting salmon one day and Wisconsin cheese baked macaroni another. I gaze at the menu in indecision while he talks about his latest wedding gig.
If you know your characters, the story will develop while they develop. If you don’t know your characters, take them out for coffee and let them order whatever they want. Listen to their story, and then go home and write it down.
I recommend borrowing Bird by Bird from the library, at least. If you are a habitual highlighter or underliner like myself, however, you can buy the book on Amazon here: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
No, I haven’t written 50,000 words yet. NaNoWriMo hasn’t even started (it starts TOMORROW)!
But if you are a fellow NaNo, you might be wondering how on earth you can write 50,000 words in 30 days. I know I am.
NaNoWriMo suggests writing 1,667 words per day for 30 days.
If you are a human being, like myself, and not a machine, it might be difficult to have a daily goal. That’s why I’m going with a weekly goal, with two days off for Thanksgiving. Here’s my plan:
November 1–7, write 12,500 words.
November 8–14, write 12,500 more words (total 25,000 words)
November 15-21, write 12,500 more words (total 37,500 words)
November 22-23, celebrate Thanksgiving and maybe even hit the shops on Black Friday (or wake up at 3 am and write, making up for a low word count)
November 24-30, write your final 12,500 words (total 50,000 words)
If you want to take weekends off, write 2,500 words per day, 5 times per week.
Since the NaNoWriMo week starts on Thursdays this year, here’s my ambitious plan that will likely not come into fruition.
November 1,2, 3: Write 5,000-7,500 words total
November 4: Take day off
November 5, 6, 7: Write 5,000-7,500 words to bring weekly total to 12,500
November 8-14, 15-21: Repeat pattern above 2x
November 22-23: Take Thanksgiving off from writing (but maybe do some final plotting and planning)
November 24: 2,500 words
November 25: See if I’m up to writing 2,500 words.
November 26-30: Write up to the 50,000 words.
Take a few moments today to completely forget about what you signed up for and are getting yourself into.
Didn’t work? Okay, then distract yourself by creating a desktop wallpaper for your computer with your own wordcount goals, including some images that will inspire you as you work. I’m thinking of creating one with all my “cast members” (famous or interesting-looking people that fit my mind’s image of the characters). Though I won’t likely do it today—I’ll probably do it one of the days I am experiencing some writer’s fog.
The last year I did NaNo, I took a pastoral picture of a castle and pasted my word count goals on to that for my wallpaper. If you are doing a historical novel like me, perhaps you can make a wallpaper collage of historically-accurate source images, like costumes of the era. Be creative!
See you on the other side—in November!
Lara
Lara Willard 