Purple Prose and the Word Surgeon’s Scalpel
By Tom Bentley | August 31, 2021 |
An editor waiting to eviscerate the nearest adverb
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the very best thing you could do for your writing is to tighten it up, just a little. Still with me?
With bowing and scraping apologies to Jane Austen, my take on that initial sentence that clogged your pores: it’s a gasbag, a dirigible without a destination. Why? Because it’s filled with unnecessary words and phrases. It’s filled with air, not substance. But this is air that doesn’t breathe life into your reader’s lungs—it suffocates them.
Consider: any sentence that has a qualification, a dodge, is a sentence that whimpers. Words like “very” and “really,” which seem to be intensifiers, are the opposite—they are diminishers. They are the celery left a year in the cellar: no snap. And a clause or phrase like “It’s a fact …” or “just a little” might seem to refine a sentence, give it some razoring of thoughtful gradation, but instead it hobbles it.
Really, Just Very Bad
Remove some of the fluff, and you get a working-class sentence: “The best thing you can do for your writing is tighten it.” But wield the scalpel again, and you get something crisp: “Tighten your writing.” That sentence, which turns a key in a lock, implies that the tightening will improve the understanding, rather than making it bloatedly explicit.
Of course, if you’re an essayist, a fiction writer, a vaunted creative, you might chafe at the constraints. There are times when sentences need luxuriant branching, elliptical orbits to trace their flight across the heavens. But even then, the “verys,” the “justs,” the “reallys,” the “it’s clear thats”—those blackguards rob your writing of vigor.
Vigor = good. Languor = bad.
All Modifiers Are Not Created Evil
Sometimes modifiers can add nuance to a sentence so their absence is loss, not gain. “He took a few, halting steps, expelled a gust of breath and took a voluptuous fall.” If there is intent behind your diction, your use of “halting” (and even “voluptuous” in this instance) could serve a narrative purpose. At least it’s arguable. But the actually here: “Actually, I couldn’t stand him” actually, factually, does nothing. Same with “quite” and “rather”—something that’s “quite exciting” fails to excite.
I am very guilty of veritable volumes of verys in my writing; for me, “just” is also just a spasmodic touch-type away. One of my favorite Mark Twain quotes is, “Substitute damn every time you’re inclined to write very; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” Verily.
Adverbs Under Editing Threat!
There’s been a threadbare-but-broad blanket of denunciation of adverbs and adjectives thrown over prose the last few years, but that’s employing a squinty eye blind to when modifiers can add color and spark to a page. All of those urchin adverbs and adjectives aren’t bad—just the ones that are padding, or those that substitute for strong verbs and nouns. Used with discretion, they are ketchup with fries. (Or sriracha, if you need more kick.)
But when you have expressions like “loud explosion” or “violent vomiting” (or “loud explosion of violent vomiting”), you have redundant words that put a wrapper between you and the reader. Fewer words say more. Or as our lad Twain said (with a wink) in his evisceration of James Fenimore Cooper’s writing: “Eschew surplusage.”
Big Words, Big Deal
One category of surplusage is big words, the pomp-and-circumstance diction that declares that the writer is educated, sophisticated, and a wee bit smarter than the reader. But if you aren’t writing for your reader, you are writing for no one.
I am the guiltiest of wordslingers here: I love words, love the chewy ones, love some with peacock flair or sly intimation. Sometimes the right word is the big word, but sometimes when you write fornication, you should write—oh, never mind.
I’ll let some old-fogey stylists smarter than me put that in perspective:
“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”
— Strunk and White, The Elements of Style
But gosh, is it tempting to gussy up a sentence or two. I can’t always resist.
Tools for Tightening
There are a couple of interesting online tools that can help with your editing: the Hemingway app highlights overly complex sentences, long words, and those cussed adverbs. The Natural Reader is an editing approach from a different angle—your ears. The software reads your work to you aloud, which lets you hear, sometimes painfully, sentences that plod, or wander, or die a slow death from pulling a bulging cart of wayward words.
A useful exercise is to take a 1,000-word piece of your writing and condense it to 700 words. It’s enlightening (and lightening) to take the frosting off your phrasings and get to the actual cake. And then take that same piece down to 500 words: the cake is still spongy and sweet, but denser, deeper. Chasing the “littles” and the “sometimes” and the “oftens” out of sentences—and putting some caffeine in passive-voice phrasings—removes fat and makes muscle.
But the most powerful tool is focus. Inspect your paragraphs and sentences for diction, flow, grammar and clarity: is the expression of your ideas crisp, cliché-free, clean? Do verbs have verve? Does a subject play hide and seek with its predicate so that even a sugary gingerbread trail of subordinate clauses can’t lead the way home to understanding?
If you’re a one-person writing crew, you’re going to need to put on your editor’s cap. Clunky grammar and typos close books: beady-eyed vigilance is the price of reader contentment. Here are a few editing tips to keep the peace.
- Onscreen proofing is okay for quick fixes, but if you really want to see your words (and errors) in their sharpest resolution, print them out.
- To emphasize what software like The Natural Reader does (but giving you the chance to read to yourself in your own mellifluous tones), reading writing aloud will often reveal holes in its composition, whether in rhythm, grammar or other shapes of written expression. Speak it, and you’ll know its truths and its terrors.
- Speed is fine with fast food, but not with first-rate writing. Let the project sit for a couple of weeks. Then, settle in and read slowly—perhaps once for sense and logic, and again for typos. Slow initial editing makes for savory final reading.
Keep in mind that when you clean up your writing, you’re not scrubbing it of the voice that makes it distinct and delightful. You’re clearing your throat so that voice sings out strong and true.
WU Wrecking Crew: Are you hungrily searching for where I’ve left an errant “just” in this screed? Seek and you’ll find, because I am blind to my illness. What are the word excrescences that filthy your writing? What is your process of self-editing? Do you hire developmental editors, copyeditors, proofers? Don’t you wish editing tasted of chocolate gelato?
Tom Bentley is a novelist, essayist, and business and travel writer. (He does not play banjo.) He’s published hundreds of freelance pieces in newspapers, magazines, and online. He is the author of three novels, a collection of short stories, a how-to book on finding and cultivating your writing voice and a memoir of his sordid teenage criminality. His singing is known to frighten the horses. See his lurid website confessions at tombentley.com.
The ghosts of Patrick O’Brian and C.S. Forester are on to you. I suggest you avoid the open seas.
As some one who dabbles in historical fiction this is a bright and never ending challenge. Research will roll you in thick velvet language down spring like fresh mounds of words. My tool for clarity, reading aloud to a teenager.
Sam, I always avoid the open seas (though I do like a bit of branch water with my bourbon). I love the texture of the “thick velvet language” statement—good one.
As for reading aloud to teenagers, I do hope you have them safely caged.
Hi Tom. Tweeted. Shy about commenting. After your post, what words would you allow?? For writers, editors wield swords. But——-thanks.
My goodness, Beth, I’d allow all words. To paraphrase Lear, “Blow, words, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!”
I suggest you write a 3300-word comment here, and make a new record for WU!
(And man oh man, I’ve been edited many a time myself, with sword wounds to show.) Thanks for the tweet!
Thank you for an inventive, enjoyable example of showing not telling, etc.
Thanks, Lynn—I appreciate the appreciation!
Very! Now I can’t write a very thing. I too have the filigreed verbiage disease. I love the sound of my own typing. This is a needed nudge for me. On the other hand, we do make fun of Hemingway.
Michael, I can hear you typing from here. Quite nice, but watch the plunge on the “p” key.
I need nudges on this editing stuff all the time, one of the reasons I have a bunch of editing books on my shelves; I even look at the titles now and then.
And yes, I make fun of (and read) Hemingway too, but he did know his way around a typewriter (and a daiquiri).
In my experience as a writer and an editor, I’ve learned that adverbs used with adjectives can add nuance, expand meaning, insert vital flavor. I almost never use adverbs with verbs because they are, at best, lame attempts at description.
Ray, that’s a good one about the adverb/verb joust. I wish I’d said that (and want you to insert it in my post as though I had).
I fully agree about the flavor-addition possibilities in the adverb/adjective dance. More cowbell!
What a fun post that teaches an important lesson. One I learned by cutting a 2000 word short story to 1500 words for a contest. And had I read this post first, I could have cut another 500. I almost put “probably” in there and caught myself. Aren’t you proud of me?
I loved the quote from Mark Twain: “Substitute damn every time you’re inclined to write very; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” Verily.
I may never have another “very” in my work. But, damn, oh damn there’ll be a lot of cussing.
Maryann, proud I am. I once breezed through a writing contest’s rules, only to see when about to submit that I was 500 words over the limit. Cutting it made it stronger. A great exercise, even if those weasel judges didn’t choose me.
Twain said so many quotable things, that even when he didn’t say them they were quotable. As for the cussing, I have moved far from the “skilled amateur” level into “journeyman professional.” Just ask my furniture.
Hi Tom. Everything you say here–absolutely, positively, incontestably–is true. Focus is all, and printing out what you’ve written, and then reading it aloud is the best way to gain focus. But the Hemingway App isn’t the only guide to clarity. In fact, truth to tell, and by the way, the ability to create powerful, complex sentences is one attribute that separates the men/women from the boys/girls.
He said.
Barry, you did make me laugh on that one. Really.
Tom – What a funny, engaging and useful article. Well done!
Now I need to do a “very count” on my work. I worry that the results will be bad. Perhaps even very bad.
Keith, “very” and “just” are the cardinal offenders in my work—even when I am alert, they slip in, the buggers.
Perhaps related to my enthusiasm in saying at some life moments (in a sotto voce voice), “This is bad. Very bad.” And then looking courageous.
That Strunk and White paragraph is ironically bloated.
Funny that you say that, Augustina, because I felt some resistance to putting that in.
I probably should have included something with more dashing footwork, perhaps from “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” or “Dreyer’s English,” which have more word whimsy.
Fiction and non-fiction need different rules.
Dialogue and description and internal monologue need different fiction rules.
Autocrit’s counting functions – words, phrases, adverbs, cliches… – keep me clean.
I eschew any other advice from a computer program.
Alicia, yes, I should have made that definite distinction in the post. Wholly so regarding dialogue and internal monologue, though they too can get tedious with throwaway words. However, establishing character does ask for different language quirks and expressions.
Some expository/narrative passages in fiction can use a good look as well, because descriptive language can be smothering if it’s mostly wool. But you are right that the editing approaches differ for fiction.
I have used the free level of Autocrit before, and thanks for mentioning it.
“They are the celery left a year in the cellar: no snap. ”
LOVE that analogy.
And your use of “urchin,” and this line: “I love words, love the chewy ones, love some with peacock flair.”
Last but not least, this is a well phrased, perfect summary of the point of your post:
“Keep in mind that when you clean up your writing, you’re not scrubbing it of the voice that makes it distinct and delightful. You’re clearing your throat so that voice sings out strong and true.”
This was delightful. Thank you!
As a longtime copywriter constantly under wordcount constraints, I value tight writing. I enjoy bragging that I cut 10k words from my debut novel without losing a single scene. As a freelance editor, I see this need to tighten things up in every manuscript I edit.
Tom, I loved the humor in this piece. Another example of teaching with flair. Especially liked the reference to clearing one’s voice to sing. Good writing is like good music. Sometimes simple, sometimes complex, but always purposeful, eliciting response from the reader/listener/performer. Thank you for this masterful missive.
Judith, many thanks for the friendly thoughts. I admire the “good writing is like good music” line and how both stir response.
As for voice, I have been working on my wiseguy stance since I was 14, patterned on my hooligan friends, all of whom deserved jail.
I have a list of kill words, which I, erm, kill when I’m editing. (Autocrit is my lifeline; believe it or not, Tommy my lad, I’ve done extensive editing before ever you’ve seen my manuscripts.)
The balance between readability and style is challenging. Purpose is the balance pole. Are we writing a song or an instruction manual? Or perhaps an instruction manual meant to be sung (up for another collab, Tom?)
You have indeed written the occasional winding swath of words, but reading them is like being served “too much” dessert. As if.
Joel, I enjoyed your comment perspective so much that I’ll be calling on you to answer any comments on my work in the future.
I will purposely balance on that composition pole. And I’ll serve dessert too.