Like “voice,” sophistication is something that can give your writing a professional touch, and set it apart from the masses (hopefully enticing people to buy it!). Take a look at the following sentence:
As Sabrina let her bra fall to the floor, she turned to face me.
Or what about this version:
Letting her bra fall to the floor, Sabrina turned to face me.
Both are correct grammatically and let the reader know what is happening in a clear way. But by writing the action of Sabrina’s bra falling to the floor as a dependent clause, the emphasis of action is placed on Sabrina turning to face someone. If the reason Sabrina is removing her bra is one of a sexual or seductive nature, the versions above remove the reader from that detail a degree or two. Taking off an undergarment is in itself erotic, and should be given equal attention:
Sabrina let her bra fall to the floor and turned to face me.
The as and –ing constructions can also make a reader say, “what?”:
Quickly fixing my hair, I answered the door.
How can someone fix their hair and open a door at the same time? How about:
I quickly fixed my hair and answered the door.
Doesn't this last version sound a little more, well, sophisticated?
Another way to add sophistication to your writing is to get rid of those damn clichés! For the love of God, won’t you? You should drop them like a bad habit! Remember, no guts, no glory. Not turning to clichés in your writing is hard, but if at first you don’t succeed, try try again.
Don’t create the waitress at the diner your protagonist is eating at to have the name “Flo” and use the word “hon” all the time. Don’t have your grandmothers be sweet little old ladies who bake cookies all day long and always have just the right thing to say. Instead of a boss who is loathed because he/she is a control freak who makes his/her employees work like dogs (Damn, a cliché!), have he/she depressed from a failing love relationship and constantly asking his/her employees for advice and/or wanting to spend time with them on a personal basis.
The final issue I will discuss here is one that I am guilty of all the time. It is the overuse of swearing or profanity. I write like I talk (as you may have picked up from my blogs), and when I am angry I tend to use a lot of swearing. However, it only takes one or two well-placed profanities to help your reader understand the effect you are going for. Even a hardened Italian mafia dude doesn’t need to say, “Fuck you, Joey!” every other sentence to get the point across.
Oh, yeah—sex scenes. This is one more that drives me fuc--oops, better follow my own advice--crazy. Let me just say that readers like to use their imaginations, especially on something exciting like a sex scene. I have said before that readers are a sharp bunch and the quickest way to bore them is to take away their imaginations. No two people enjoy sex the same way, so let each reader use his or her own ideas to “see” the scene. The less physical detail you reveal, the better. Be subtle. Not everyone has to sweat to have passionate sex.
Hope this helps, and more to come.
14 comments:
Can I get Sabrina's number?
You got it, BT:
1-800-867-5309 (I got the number of the wall!).
Hope all is well.
Chester was having a hard time keeping his pants up. They were too big in the waste and too short in the length. They needed a rope, and a rope seemed in short supply. Chester thought the best way to get a rope was to simply ask for one. He was, after all, dressed to ask questions. A trench coat and matching slacks-- sans the era fedora-- was an acceptable outfit for a detective on the streets of Big City. A trench coat and slacks were fine, as well, for a mission to find Mimi..
“Do you have a rope” seemed like a reasonably acceptable place to start, thought Chester. But if Chester released his pants from the grip he had on a folded bit of waistline, they simply fell..
“Who would answer me then?“ thought Chester. “Who? Answer me that!“
And wouldn’t it figure-- Chester's sex was in stand out mode again. It ached and pined like a full bladder with a distinctly different set of alleviating directives It pointed and pleaded. It throbbed and twisted Chester's words like it was directing Chester looking nervously for a date.
But Chester was a man-- and now a detective-- and not the molester everybody tried to make him out to be. He wasn’t looking for a date. He never was. He was looking for Mimi. He was helping Sam. He was annoyed by his erection, and that was all. Chester was not ever going to be a Molester. And that was that. Which meant touching sex was taboo. All sex.. Even his own, which stood out often like a cannon-fired preacher and begged and begged.
The only thing holding Chester’s pants from cascading to the floor, was a mindful and determined Chester. Chester the Upholder. Chester the Determiner. Chester the super heroic man with the will of steel and the fortitude of a fortress made of steel.
Chester was indeed a self-imposed determined man, in marvelous ways, with an amazing power of will and self-control. Chester knew all this. He gathered himself by the thoughts of such. He could handle all of these distractions while he entered the bakery and did what he needed to do. He could keep his pants up, ignore his sex’s impulses, and simply ask for rope. Chester was a man on a mission, a man on a quest, and this was his first test for the day. Chester needed a rope, of course, before he could find Mimi.
The woman behind the counter looked foreign and kind.
“If I had a rope, I could...” Chester tried to query the woman.
“Excuse me? I not understand.”
“If I could use a rope, my pants would be better off...”
Chester pulled his trench coat open to show her his pants. He did this without realizing what he was presenting.
Chester’s Chester.
“Your pants off?” asked the woman.
“I need a rope for my pants off,” Chester tried. It seemed like good simple English. He tried to demonstrate how they would fall if he let go of them. The robust woman moved forward and leaned over to see more of what this situation offered. Chester should not have released the fold of waistline he had held in his hand for quite sometime. Things fell down from there for poor Chester.
All the way to the floor.
Chester had just met Bettina. Bettina from Hungary. Bettina’s English was not ok but her libido was fantastic. Bettina didn’t understand Big City men. She was a ripened purple plum just waiting to be picked, a ripened orange just waiting to be squeezed, an olive full of oil; but most men only wanted donuts. That’s all they seemed to come here for. Glazed and unglazed. Old-fashioned and full of cherry filling. So Bettina’s fantasies were created while getting up at three am, twisting twisty glazes and dipping maple bars and pouring yellow custard out of a bakers’ decorating bag and watching porno on videos while she worked.
And here was Chester. A man with a staff, looking for a rope? What was a hungry Hungarian to do? She had no panties on. She had no one in line. This man had come on into her shop and dropped his pants. She had seen this on the TV before. She knew her favorite part.
She rushed Chester by leaping over her counter in her skirt, knocking creamers and straws and napkins and business cards to the floor and colliding into Chester’s chest and lust with an old world passion. Passion that came from Istanbul by camel caravan and sweltered in the sun. Passion that ripened in olive groves for centuries. Passion that grew with the seasonal grapes and was stomped into wine. Passion that intensified like a war of the world. Passion that intensified like another world war. Passion that would cross the sea and end up in a donut shop, climbing atop a bespectacled Chester-- like a molester-- mounting him with a single stab of ass that found his piercing staff, throwing herself onto him and taking Chester’s untested sex into the history of her soul. Chester could feel a strong swell stirring. Chester could feel a wet dream coming on. Chester could do nothing but hold on to the hammering hips of a hungry Hungarian, and hope she didn’t rip the dang thing off.
Chester’s nightmare became a dream. Bettina became a real event with unintended consequences. Her boobs were cut loose to Chester and Chester took one in his mouth and suckled it with a newfound fondness for boobs He took the other nipple in his mouth. This too, tasted like a dream.
Donuts were shaking on their shelves. A fat man eyeing donut holes for a dollar a bag skipped the impulse to buy and simply watched. Bettina took in Chester like a frisky, naughty naked nun cutting loose on a bishop. Everything was building to explode.
Everything did. Chester. Bettina. The man in the window. Everybody secreted something in a moment of pure abandonment and amplitude. It was a moment of unrepentant pleasure. It was a moment that smelled of white sugar and grease.
Bettina fell into Chester’s chest and the two of them caught their breaths and clung to each other’s satisfaction and held this moment for quite sometime as Bettina let his sex toy shrivel in her like a passing fad.
The fat man at the window moved on.
Chester’s eyes had blurred by orgasmic lust on a donut shop floor. Chester’s glasses had been knocked off. But Chester saw the world anew and he sniffed in the new smells as well as old familiar donuts and a whiff of coffee.
“This is great,” said Chester to himself. “This is frigging fabulous..”
I TRIED to follow your advice...
This is hack writing, Scott. I almost get the impression you are just being a smart ass by publishing your story here. It is your story, right? Plagiarism is for the simple minded.
Your mechanics are horrible (find an editor), and the amount of redundancy you employ has me yawning after the first "paragraph." My advice regarding sophistication contained a some information on clichés, which I think you may have overlooked. Try a Google search on the subject and see what you can find. I would enjoy you posting an editied version on here if you take the time to finish it.
CORRECTION: "contained some information," not "contained a some information." Sorry 'bout that.
CORRECTION: "edited" not "editied." I need more coffee.
Well, Mr. Word Doctor, after reading your response, I was about to write you off as irrelevant.
I had a rethink at work this morning, and I decided to give you one more go.
Your blog is new and also new to you, so its direction and purpose are still being formed. For that reason, I present to you these (possibly) parting words.
I pasted a bit of unedited writing as an act of kindness and in the spirit of communal "sharing".
I read your post, considered it, and then thought "I have abit of draft that falls into many of the categories you were trying to touch upon. A sex scene. Lots of cliches (predominately intentional for effect) yaddy yaddy. I was simply trying to provide you fodder for your blog, which, as far as I can tell, is still languishing in the blog wannabe category.
It is very easy to rip and tear, or be dismissive, on any level, in any field. What is the point of it, when it is the lowest common human denominator and as such, a behavioral cliche in and of itself?
If you like, I can rip this blog apart for you, show you how the whole Jack drinking, bird flying thing has been done to death...
And that "angry" thing. You must have gotten bumped out of the "snarky" club and been left with no other common ties to that sort of nonsense.
And th eposts about "style". Heck, for 99cents on the sale table at my local bookstore, I can get the original version of the same advice.
And think of the irony about talking about "cliches". Shit, the first time I heard that speech, was in the seventh grade. So your "lesson" on cliches was a horrible cliche. Imagine that?
I'm not sure what you are trying to do here. What is your blog for? What do you want it to DO?
I'll give you a little more of my time, as you try to figure that out.
But if you want snarky discourse, I CAN play, but I don't wanna...
Well, Scott from Oregon, unlike my Snarky counterpart, I am not going to censor your hypocritical post because anyone with experience in the publishing business will recognize that your writing speaks for itself. Do you not think I deal with writers of your temperment on a daily basis? Thus the blog, my friend. And the Jack. And the "Fuck Off." See "Nailing The Defensive Writer" in my archive if you require more explanation.
Best of luck to you, and please do make these our parting words.
I will be in Portland for a conference this spring if you would like to meet face to face and discuss your concerns in greater detail...get what I'm sayin'?
Wow. I just found this blog from your website. Pretty heated over here. I appreciated your posts, because I am always looking for good advice. Especially if it's free. I read the "Chester the Molester" post and thought it was pretty funny until I realized that the author was serious. At least he seemed serious based on the reply to your follow-up comment. You are right about the writing-it stinks. Don't let him ruffle your feathers. Great blog and I'll be back. Any more Jack?
Thanks to B.T. and my new anonymous writer. I am used to this sort of thing, so no worries. I appreciate you taking the time to visit and comment.
-Doc
Dude. You are starting to make me feel sorry for you.
Of course what I posted was crap. That was the point. To spur you on as an “Editor at large” and see what kind of mind you have.
And the best you can come up with-- I am being a hypocrite? In what way do you find me being hypocritical? Now I know you know what the word means, so you should very easily state my hypocrisy. Go on. What was it?
And was that some silly threat about meeting in Portland? What the hell is that all about? I am big, easy going and stronger than fuck itself. You don’t need or even wanna go down that road. So let’s try another.
Tell me your views on style verses reader connectivity.
For example, Updike had some serious chops, but I couldn’t care less about Rabbit or his whole Rabbit series, but Anne Frank could burn my soul...
How about your opinions on audience verses sophistication?
I mean, AC/DC sold HOW MANY more albums than Mose Allison?
Repetition in prose. One I am guilty of. It is very effective in musical lyrics, (i.e. the chorus) Why do you think it fails in prose? Do you think it is a lazy device? Do you think prose should avoid repetition for avoidance sake? Can you think of a situation where repetition IS effective? (It was used to grand effect in “The World According To Garp.” Remember the Undertoad?)
And my temperament is one you obviously don’t or can’t fathom. (BTW, there is an “a” in the word temperament.) I couldn’t give a flying banana hammock what you think of me or anything I create in any medium I create it in. You JUST AREN’T THAT SPECIAL.
So, drink your Jack and fly your birdies and give your style lessons to those who haven’t read the book to begin with...
and the snow will still fall, and the river will still churn, and my beer will taste just as good as it did a few day ago...
Toodles.
You are correct: "Temperament."
Word Doctor,
I really enjoy your blog so far. Your wit is refreshing. I have waited to comment, but after reading all these remarks, I felt I needed to.
This person, "Scott from Oregon," seems like a real jerk. I agree with your first anonymous commmentor; I thought the "Chester" post was a joke when I first read it, but that obviously was not the case.
Why do these people get on blogs and write this sort of thing? I cliked over to his blog, Aeol(something or other), and found his writing to be poor, at best.
I hope he takes your hint and leaves your blog alone. It is well done, and I expect it will become more popular as the weeks go by.
I will remain anonymous (for now), because I don't want someone who is "stronger than Fuck" finding me and posting garbage on my blog.
Keep up the good work.
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