The September Writers Digest Magazine is designated the “Big 10” issue, featuring a plethora, an abundance, myriad Top Ten lists by various writers. It features a lot of good stuff.

But one thing irritated me. So naturally I'll concentrate on that.

One list, on pages 64-65, is called “Brush Up On Your Style in 10 Minutes Or Less.”

In the opening paragraph, the author, Brandon Royal, says, “Everyone can benefit from the occasional reminder of the principles of strong writing....”

Then he lists his list. Good stuff here, like “Use Straightforward Language,” “Trim Long Sentences,” and “Avoid Redundancies.” Meat-and-potatoes advice for punching up your prose. It's well thought out and useful. Just the sort of thing young writers (especially but not exclusively) need to learn, to produce publishable manuscripts.

Until you get to Tip # 10. Here's how it starts:

10 Avoid the Masculine Generic. The masculine generic refers to the sole use of the pronoun he or him when referring to situations involving both genders. As much as you can, make an effort to avoid using he when referring to either a he or a she, and using him when referring to either a him or a her....

He goes on to appeal to fairness, and the need to avoid putting off female readers.

Now I can understand promoting gender neutrality in your writing on the basis of making your work more saleable. I can understand it as a justice issue (though I bridle at that characterization). I can understand it as an appeal to self-interest, and the obvious dangers of making half the population mad at you.

But this bit of advice has no place on a list giving tips on strong writing. “He/she” or “him or her” is not stronger writing that “He” or “him.” “Humankind” is not a stronger word than “mankind.” “Chairperson” is not a stronger title than “chairman.”

Everybody knows this. But I'm saying it here.

And that, friends, is the strongest writing of all. When you say what you really think, rather than what you're expected to say.

Today's Word of Wisdom from Walker:

As I look back over my lifetime, I find that I have only two regrets.

The things I've done, and the things I haven't done.

I'm pretty much OK with the rest.

Michael Medved reviewed George Clooney's new movie, The American, today. He said it's a beautiful film in which nothing much actually happens.

This reminded me of one of the most surprisingly bad movies I ever saw. My brother and I were in St. Paul one evening a while back with time on our hands, and decided to see a movie. We went to the nearest cinemaplex, and saw it was playing Robert Duvall's newest film, Assassination Tango. We're both big admirers of Robert Duvall, so we immediately bought tickets.

It was horrible. Read the rest of this entry . . .

In 100 simple but silly steps

This reminds me a bit of the LifeHacks guy (if that's the right label for him) who was offered a book contract and spend the whole time designing the cover.

Loren Eaton links to some misconceptions often repeated to would-be writers or about writing, like the money people will throw at you, the public respect you will receive, and the ships that will come in for you. Let me have a fit of transparency here and tell you that I get most discouraged by advice that I need to read piles of work in a certain genre in order to write well or have the credentials to be considered for publication, but I'll never be able to read as much as I'd like to.

Never mind. I'm just complaining, and I have better things to do.

Earlier this year, the Guardian asked several writers for ten rules for the craft, similar to the ten rules Elmore Leonard published this year. I abide by this particular rule of Leonard's, which was taught me by my journalism professor:

Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But "said" is far less intrusive than "grumbled", "gasped", "cautioned", "lied". I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with "she asseverated" and had to stop reading and go to the dictionary.

Here's another good one, this time from Geoff Dyer:

Beware of clichés. Not just the ­clichés that Martin Amis is at war with. There are clichés of response as well as expression. There are clichés of observation and of thought – even of conception. Many novels, even quite a few adequately written ones, are ­clichés of form which conform to clichés of expectation.

This is good stuff. Care to argue over any of these? They aren't all golden.

Our friend, S.D. Smith (but you should refer to him as Mr. Smith), wrote a little something about the word amazing. At least, that was my take-away.

By way of Mr. Smith's post, I have learned that the great Walter Wangerin Jr. has a new novel. Out this month is Wangerin's book, Naomi and her Daughters. Publisher's Weekly calls it a short, but profound biblical tale come live.

NPR's Talk of the Nation has a good segment about writing with three authors who are honest about the struggle to put words on paper, so to speak. One caller asks if pain is a requirement for writers, noting a particular unhappy author who stopped writing during a short happy spurt then returned to writing once the sadness settled back.

Yesterday I wrote about a couple Stephen J. Cannell novels I'd just read, including Cold Hit. Thinking about the book some more, I came up with further thoughts about something I'd praised Cannell for—his handling of characters.

The book is oddly dated by its presentation of a worst-case scenario based on aspects of the Patriot Act. Remember back around 2005, when everybody was scared that George Bush was turning the country into a police state, and how all the powers given to Homeland Security would have progressives herded into concentration camps for crimes of sedition? All that stuff's still in force, right? Apparently, now that the Democrats are in charge, those same laws are suddenly benign.

Anyway, much of the tension in Cold Hit arises from friction and territorial infighting between the local police and federal agencies. One character in particular, a federal agent whom Cannell spends a lot of time teaching us to hate, turns out—in the end—to be a decent public servant, one who'll never be the hero's best buddy, but who deserves and gives respect.

It seems to me one of the weaknesses of contemporary Hollywood (I know I'm jumping abruptly from novels to movies. That's because I think fiction sins far less in this regard these days) is that characters in movies almost never surprise us anymore. Hollywood has become all about stereotypes. All southerners (I'm sure you've noticed) are gap-toothed, undereducated bigots (except for Tommy Lee Jones). All preachers and priests are hypocrites at best, and probably sexual predators. If someone hunts, or votes Republican, they will be unsympathetic. All Latinos are “simple but proud” (to quote a good line from Thomas M. Sipos' Hollywood Witches, which I reviewed not long ago), all Native Americans are simple but proud with mystical powers added, and all African Americans are wise. Young white males are drunken slackers. Young kids are smart-mouthed, and more intelligent than their parents. The moment a character appears, you already know all about them.

If you're writing a story, surprise us with your characters. Find good in the ones you don't like. Find flaws in your heroes. Your work will gain a lot of depth.

Algis Valiunas at Commentary writes on the legacy of Norman Mailer.

Capote showed Mailer the way by sympathetically detailing the character of one of the murderers, who like Gilmore seemed fated to suffer and inflict hell on earth; but Capote also did what Mailer did not, which was to portray the victims in their appealing humanity, to render the full horror of their final moments, and to emphasize what was lost by their deaths. With the rapt intensity of a man staring into a cobra’s eyes, Mailer gazes into and cannot look away from human malignancy, which seems the most riveting subject a writer can have and which he congratulates himself for searching so boldly again and again. If only he did not love it so.

I just wish Valiunas would stop holding back, and tell us what he really thinks of Mailer.

Caution for disturbing subject matter.

Tip: The Paragraph Farmer.

Guest blogger Celestine Chua writes, "Top bloggers of excellence have 8 consistent habits – 8 habits, which, when we practice duly, are guaranteed to bring you results." I don't see wordiness on the list, so that may be a ninth habit thrown in for free. [/snark]

Writer's Digest "polled 40 literary agents to see which journals they read with an eye for new talent. Then, [they] rounded up 12 of their picks and contacted the publications’ editors for an inside glimpse at each one—and exclusive tips on how you can break in."

Mary DeMuth has some common writing mistakes, like weak verbs and wordiness. That needs another "ness," doesn't it? Wordiness-ness. Wordliness. That's better. How about verbessence?

Garrison Keillor writes about the days when being a tortured literary soul, wrestling for your livelihood with the printed word over a typewriter, was worth something. Money, to be specific.

What is the purpose of public education? Is it only to employ teachers? If I was were an English teacher with hopes to achieve certain goals with my class, I would scrap those goals if my kids couldn't write. See another sad example: failure to communicate. The writer observes, "Many of the students whose work I correct are smart, motivated, and quick to incorporate suggestions. But they have either forgotten the rules of writing, or they never learned them in the first place."

Chris Pash reports the phrase at the end of the day "is the most popular cliche in journalism globally. It is all-pervasive." Headline writers also love "Man Bites Dog" in some fashion. For example:

• "Man bites dog: Pawlenty has kind words for Obama" from the Minneapolis Star Tribune on May 4
• "The Nation: What Happens To Welfare Mothers?" Lead sentence: "It's the man-bites-dog story that never ends." from NPR today
• "Groin ailment slows St. Louis Cardinals' Holliday" leading with "This is man-bites-dog material." What the? That's from the St Louis Post-Dispatch May 8.
Get more fun journalist's cliches through the link.

Author P.D. James has a book about detective fiction with an excerpt here. She writes:

And why murder? The central mystery of a detective story need not indeed involve a violent death, but murder remains the unique crime and it carries an atavistic weight of repugnance, fascination and fear. Readers are likely to remain more interested in which of Aunt Ellie’s heirs laced her nightly cocoa with arsenic than in who stole her diamond necklace while she was safely holidaying in Bournemouth. Dorothy L. Sayers’s Gaudy Night doesn’t contain a murder, although there is an attempt at one, and the death at the heart of Frances Fyfield’s Blood from Stone is a spectacular and mysterious suicide. But, except in those novels of espionage which are primarily concerned with treachery, it remains rare for the central crime in an orthodox mystery to be other than the ultimate crime for which no human reparation can ever be made.

Loren Eaton at I Saw Lightning Fall links to an interesting piece by jazz musician Eric Felton over at the Wall Street Journal. I don't think Felton will make a whole lot of enemies with his complaint about the unnecessary length of much current entertainment, such as movies, music and books.

It will be objected that any number of canonic masterpieces are gargantuan. Yes, of course. But even many of those could stand a trim. Did "Moby Dick" really need the chapter called "Cetology," Melville's rambling effort to prove that whales weren't mammals?

One of the constant occasions for worry in my novel-writing career has been that, once I write the story I want to tell, I generally find it's only about 60- to 80,000 words long. Jim Baen liked novels to come in around 100,000 words. I believe he felt (and many publishers today are of the same view) that when a consumer plunks down $7.99 for a paperback novel, he wants to feel he can take a short vacation in that book's world.

The idea of publishing shorter books, and charging less, is not up for discussion, it would appear. Read the rest of this entry . . .

Matthew Stibbe is giving away his ebook on his website, BadLanguage.net. No, it isn't about that. It's called 30 Days to Better Business Writing.

Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do is a guessing game from Albert-László Barabási who claims that "despite the seeming randomness of human behavior, humans actually act in very predictable patterns." Looks like fun.

Loren Eaton talks about willpower, genius, and creativity.

Jeffrey Overstreet talks art all of the time. Find him at a coffee bar, and you'll hear him talking art. He doesn't give directions to his dry cleaners without literary allusion. Here's a quote from an interview with Heather Goodman:

If an artist focuses on the idea, the compulsion, the inspiration, then questions about how to engage the audience will probably find their answers along the way. I think a great deal of contemporary art is compromised and weakened by too much concern about who’s out there paying attention, and what they want to see. An artist’s first responsibility is to listen, and then to engage whatever questions or ideas or mysteries they’re encountering.

My favorite stories and movies don’t give me a sense that an artist is eager to please. They give me the feeling that I’ve stumbled onto a project that has the full attention of its artist. . . .

The Auralia Thread is being criticized by some readers of Christian fiction because it contains things that readers of Christian fiction don’t like to read. And it doesn’t have feel-good conclusions or obvious allegories, which readers of Christian fiction sometimes want. Well, perhaps that’s because I was just writing the story that seemed best to me . . .

Andrew Peterson has a beautiful post from his writing retreat. “What I do when I build roads isn’t that much different from what you do," an old logger told him. "I have to figure out how to get from here to there. I look at a place and imagine a road. Takes a fair bit of creativity.” He goes on.

J. Mark Bertrand has a two-part interview on writing and shifting genres on Boxing the Octopus, which looks like a blog I should follow. Here are a couple quotes:

I don’t believe in “writing what you know,” but I do think it’s sound advice to write what you’re good at. For me, that’s turned out to be crime. The art of storytelling doesn’t change from genre to genre, and I’m more interested in telling a good story than a good genre story, if you see what I mean. The conventions are there, and for the most part I respect them, but at the end of the day I’m making use of the genre to tell a certain kind of tale about the detective as existential seeker and skeptic.

From the second part, Kathryn Paterson notes, "I find your suggestion of writing a 50-paged treatment prior to drafting to be daunting, but fascinating." Mark replies:

In the film industry, a treatment is a summary--more detailed than a quick synopsis, but not yet a fully realized, scene-by-scene script--that communicates the rough contours of the story. Some are more detailed than others, but since Dan was convinced the problem with most of us young novelists was that we didn't know our stories well enough, he recommended writing a fairly detailed treatment before starting. For writers who don't like to stick with an outline, this advice can be liberating. Writing the treatment helps you to discover the story.

"You have to allow yourself the liberty of writing poorly." Loren Eaton talks about writing through the mess of initial drafts.

Sherry reposted a collection of authors commenting on other authors, like these:

William Faulkner on Ernest Hemingway: “He has never been known to use a word that might send a man to a dictionary.”

Ernest Hemingway, in reply: “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think emotions come from big words?”

I wonder what the living authors are saying about each other.

Stephen King said: “The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good.”

Mr. King also said: "Somebody who’s a terrific writer who’s been very, very successful is Jodi Picoult. You’ve got Dean Koontz, who can write like hell. And then sometimes he’s just awful. It varies."

It's going to take me a while to find more of these, so I'll have to leave it for now.

I heard Ken Myers talk to a guest about time and experience in what I believe was one of last year’s issues of the Mars Hill Audio Journal. He referred to the creation account in Genesis, saying that regardless of one’s interpretation of the days and events, we can’t deny that God took time to create everything. That must mean time has value, and the time it takes to do some things is good, even God-honoring. Music, for example, takes time to perform and enjoy. Solitude soaks in slowly over an afternoon. The love and loyalty of friends takes years to mature.

When we talk about an artwork, we often ask people who experienced it to summarize it for us. We ask them, or even ask ourselves, what the music or poetry or movie was about and what it meant. We ask what its point was. Sometimes understanding that point is a natural part of the work, but perhaps more often than not, summarizing an artwork down to its gist is impossible. To attempt to do so is to completely miss the value of the work.

Who asks for the point of Dvorak’s “New World” symphony? That’s ridiculous, because the music itself, all 40 minutes of it, is the point. Maybe a theme can be verbalized for it, but saying it’s about the wild beauty of America doesn’t capture anything of the music. This goes for good poetry too. A poem may be about the pain of betrayal or the wonder of a bird in flight, but if someone were to ask us for the gist of the poem, our best answer may be to encourage them to read it themselves.

A good work of art isn’t a vehicle for its gist. It is a man walking on his own feet. It may have plenty of themes or meanings which can be summarized and plenty of quotes with stand-alone value, but the work itself is something to experience over time. Read the rest of this entry . . .

Loyola University in New Orleans, Louisiana, will open the Walker Percy Center for Writing and Publishing next Wednesday, March 10. The center intends "to foster literary talent and achievement, to highlight the art of writing as essential to a good education, and to serve the makers, teachers, students, and readers of contemporary writing by providing educational and vocational opportunities in writing and publishing."

Percy taught at Loyola and had a heart for new and struggling writers.

Laura Miller does not plan to write a novel, but she reads plenty of them. "More to the point, I've started 10 times the number of books that I've finished," she says, and in this post on Salon.com, she offers pointers on what readers look for. Here's a good point: "Remember that nobody agrees on what a beautiful prose style is and most readers either can't recognize "good writing" or don't value it that much. Believe me, I wish this were otherwise, and I do urge all readers to polish their prose and avoid clichés. However, I've seen as many books ruined by too much emphasis on style as by too little."

Phil used to post a Friday Fight every week in this space, so I was amused when Floyd at Threedonia posted a “Friday Night Fight” this afternoon. Even more amusing, it's this clip from a TV movie, “Hulk vs. Thor.”


Marvel Comics' Thor was always a dilemma for me. I only saw a few issues as a kid, and I was grateful that they paid some lip service to actual Norse mythology. But they made Thor a blonde, and shaved off his beard. (A friend told me that he understood that the artist had determined from the first that he wanted Thor to wear a red cloak, and red hair would have tended to bleed into that. I say that if you prioritize wardrobe over authenticity, you must be gay.)

Aside from the aforementioned cosmetic problems, the big change Marvel made was to make Thor bright. The Thor we meet in the Norse myths does not have what you'd call an analytical mind. He solves problems by a) hitting things with his hammer, or b) getting help from a smarter friend.

Historically, this may be a residue of class prejudice. The myths as we have them come from Viking Age poems. These poems were written by poets (skalds) who congregated around royal courts and made their fortunes by their language skills. They were intellectuals. Odin, being a god of poetry, attracted their worship, and they gave him credit for high intelligence. Thor, on the other hand, was the popular god of the common people, and the skalds portrayed him as a country rube. I suspect the farmers had other myths which portrayed Thor in a more positive light, but they didn't get into poems that have come down to us.

The Norse gods have been something of a challenge for me in my fantasy novels, and Thor in particular. I try to follow orthodox Christian theology in my presentation of the supernatural. Christianity has generally considered heathen gods to be either a) a delusion, or b) demons (“No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God....” 1 Corinthians 10:20). It works best for fantasy purposes to treat the old gods as existent beings.

Odin's easy. He's smart, crafty, a liar, and it's no stretch to imagine him as completely evil.

Thor is harder. It's hard to envision a dumb demon.

So when I gave him a scene in The Year of the Warrior, I pretty much played him as what he is in the myths—sort of a force of nature, powerful and dumb. I cast him in a comic scene, which I think was just as corrosive to his worship as demonization.

Loren Eaton, at I Saw Lightning Fall, writes today about the Via Negativa. That's the technique of telling a moral story through depicting vice, and revealing its destructive effects.

Uncle Tom's Cabin, if I understand the concept correctly, was largely (not wholly) a Via Negativa story, in that it denounced slavery by examining slavery (it was also a Via Positiva story, in that it showcased the exemplary life of the main character).

When I was a boy, a teetotal relative gave me a copy of the book, Ten Nights in a Bar-Room. This was an 1854 novel, written by T. S. Arthur, in the form of a series of reminiscences by a man who stayed (at infrequent intervals) at a particular inn where liquor was served. By showing the gradual deterioration of the inn, the family that ran it, and the community it influenced, he argued for the prohibition of alcohol. It was a very influential book in its time, and a pure example of Via Negativa.

I often think of a particular scene my own The Year of the Warrior—if you've read it, you'll probably recall the Great Summer Sacrifice scene. I used it to try to express all the horror which (I firmly believe) lurks behind true heathenism (as opposed to the pasteurized, humanist version generally promoted in the West today). No one has ever complained to me about the scene that I recall, but frankly it bothers me. I think I went a little too far, and if I had it to write over, I'd probably do it slightly differently.

I recall a particular novel published in the Christian market (and no, I won't tell you which one it was), in which the author tried to do something similar, and I felt he'd crossed a line. Maybe I was wrong (the book certainly sold more copies than any of mine, and to a Christian audience). But I know there's a danger here.

Loren's article speaks of one danger of the Via Negativa—that the audience will miss the message, and root for the wrong side. I think there's further danger—that the author will look into the abyss, and find the abyss looking back into him.

In my estimation (and maybe I misunderstand entirely) I thought novelist Thomas Harris succumbed to this temptation to some extent in dealing with his charismatic villain, Hannibal Lector. When Lector first appeared in Red Dragon, and when he reappeared in The Silence of the Lambs, Harris was able to keep his balance, getting deep into the psyche of the villain, but never taking his side. But in the follow-up novel, Hannibal, it seemed to me he lost his bearings, and began to delight, to some extent, in Lector's atrocities. I never even looked at Hannibal Rising.

That doesn't make the Via Negativa too dangerous to try. It just means we need to take care.

And choose wise readers to give us feedback.