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Writer's Roost
Home Page
Last update: 19 July 2010
Welcome to the author website of Steven Houchin. I have written three complete
novels and am currently pounding out short stories. My second novel won the
Pacific Northwest Writers Association's 2007 Literary Contest in the
Mystery/Thriller category. My third was a finalist in PNWA's 2009 contest in
the same category. I served as a judge in PNWA's annual literary contest in
both 2009 and 2010.
Your visit is much appreciated. Please return often
to see what new things are added.
Check out my article "McGraw Square" in
the Summer 2009 issue of
Columbia Magazine, a publication of the Washington State
Historical Society.
My
BLOG contains a number of postings on stuff I've seen and learned
as a writer. After you read it, I'd appreciate your posted comments.
Take a look at my list of upcoming Literary
Conferences and Contests on the
Potpourri page.
It's Soooo Obvious, I Didn't See It
I was reading a posting on Anne
Mini's excellent blog "Author! Author!" titled
The dreaded Frankenstein manuscript, part XXI: Millicent holds these truths to
be self-evident. Trust me.
It discusses two aspects of editing
your manuscript to eliminate phrases that drive agents (or their slavish
manuscript-reader underlings) crazy. One she calls "statements of the obvious".
These are phrases like "nodded his head" (what else would he nod?) or "shrugged
her shoulders" (what else would she shrug?). The second is the "Walking Across
the Room" (WATR) problem, where you describe your character's every movement as
she rises from the chair and walks across the room and bends over to pick up
the tray of biscuits. Once you tell us she rose from the chair, the reader can
fill in the rest until she picks up the tray. That is, unless she has suddenly
suffered a stroke and is now dragging her left leg.
The examples Anne gave prompted me
to scan my latest manuscript - the one I am currently shopping around - for
these terrible language faux pas. It was an enlightening exercise, even though
I found only a few of the bad phrases. Some of the phrases that didn't cross
Anne's lines, did have other things wrong with them, or could be written
better. Here are the words I searched for:
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Blink
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Wave
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Nod
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Shrug
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Walk
I noticed "blinked rapidly" several
times. I tried to do that, and found it thoroughly unnatural. So, the word
"rapidly" rapidly got the axe. I had used "waved her hand", one of Anne's
obvious no-no's, and discovered a few bad nods and shrugs as described above.
But, the exercise caused me to reevaluate many of these gestures in context and
rewrite them slightly, or caused me to notice that I'd overused them in a
particular scene.
As far as examining "walk", I was
able to eliminate a few altogether, and to change some to other words, such as
"stroll" or "saunter" to better fit the feel of the action.
When I was all done, one hundred
words had vanished from my manuscript, which I'm struggling to keep below
120,000 as I continue to do edits.
Steven Houchin -- 19 July 2010
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