Nathan Bransford | Writing, Book Editing, Publishing

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Do you suffer from one of these writing maladies?

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Writing maladies

(Commercial voice):

There are pernicious writerly germs out there infecting pages all around the world. Left uncured they can be fatal. Talk to your book doctor or literary health provider if you notice any of these symptoms:

Yoda Effect

Difficult to read, sentences are, when reversing sentences an author is. Cart before horse, I’m putting, and confused, readers will be.

Overstuffed Sentences

An overstuffed sentence happens when a writer tries to pack too many things into one sentence in convoluted fashion, making it difficult for the intent of the sentence to come through and to follow it becomes an exercise in re-reading the sentence while making the sentence clearer in our brains so we can understand the overstuffed sentence, which is the point of reading.

Imprecision

When writers just miss the target ground with their word using they on occasion elicit a type of sentence experiential feeling that creates a backtracking necessity.

Chatty Cathy

So, like, I don’t know if you’ve noticed but OMG teenagers use so much freaking slang!!! And multiple exclamation points!!! In a novel not a blog post!!! And so I’m all putting tons of freaking repetitious verbal tics into totes every sentence and it’s majorly exhausting the reader because WAIT I NEED TO USE ALL CAPS.

Repetition

Sometimes when authors get lyrical, lyrical in a mystical, wondrous sense, they use repetition, repetition that used sparingly can be effective, effective in a way that makes us pause and focus, focus on the thing they’re repeating, but when used too many times, so many times again and again, it can drive us insane, insane in a way that will land the reader in the loony bin, the loony bin for aggrieved readers.

Shorter Hemingway

Clipped sentences. Muscular. Am dropping articles. The death. It spreads. No sentence more than six words. Dear god the monotony. The monotony like death.

Non Sequiturs

Sometimes when authors are in a paragraph one thing won’t flow to the next. They’ll describe one thing, wow can you believe that thing that happened three days ago?, and keep describing the first thing.

Description Overload

Upon this page there is a period. It is not just any period, it is a period following a sentence. It follows this sentence in a way befitting a period of its kind, possessing a roundness that is pleasing to the eye and hearty to the soul. This period has the bearing of a regal tennis ball combined with the utility of a used spoon. It is an unpretentious period, just like any other, the result of hundreds of years of typesetting innovations that allows it to be used, almost forgotten, like oxygen to the sentence only darker, more visible. And it is after this period, which will neither reappear nor matter in any sense whatsoever to the rest of the novel, that our story begins.

Stilted dialogue

Character #1: “I am saying precisely what I mean!”
Character #2: “Wait. What is that you are trying to tell me?”
Character #1: “Are you frickin’ listening to me? I am telling you precisely what I am feeling in this given moment. And I’m showing you I’m really angry by using pointed rhetorical questions and petulant exhortations. God.”
Character #2: “Sheesh! Well, I’m responding with leading questions that allow you to tell me exactly what you mean while adding little of value to the conversation on my own. Am I not?”
Character #1:”You are totally doing that. You totally frickin’ are. Ugh! I’m so mad right now!”

The Old Spice Guy Effect (excessive rug-pulling)

The character was standing on a rug. He falls through his floor to his death! The rug was actually a trap door. But wait, the character was already dead. He merely faked falling through the trap door. But wait, the trap door was actually a portal into another world. The character was actually alive, he just thought he was dead. Now he’s really dead. Or is he? I’m in a chair.

Have you spotted any other writerly viruses out there in the wild?

See also: Do You Suffer From One of These Writing Maladies? (Part II)

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Art: The Doctor’s Visit by Jan Steen

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Julia Rachel Barrett says

    Bwaaaa-haaaa!!! ROTFLMAO!!!! Oops!!! Was that a verbal tic???? Too much slang or perhaps I should write a few run-on and/or confusing sentences ending with a non sequitur and using perhaps too few punctuation marks but like the blazes I shall try to resist. Going to the dogs lets not are you?

    I love the Old Spice commercials – the best commercial to come along in ages. I don't know which ad guys decided to channel romance fantasies, but they are frakkin' geniuses.

    A post to live by…

  2. Joann Swanson says

    This post = pure awesome. (!!!)

    I'm reading a novel right now with truckloads of internal dialog and this particular MC LOVES to ask herself questions. Or does she? Perhaps I'm being to harsh? Is it that readers truly are too dumb to see the lovely breadcrumb trails left by the author in all the descriptive passages? Do we really need all those clarifying questions JUST IN CASE WE MISSED IT THE FIRST TIME? Good book, unfortunate trust issues on the part of the author.

  5. Ruth says

    I had planned to write a hefty amount of words tonight, but instead I will be healing my WIP. This post is the BOMB!

  6. Kari says

    Sadly, I think I can diagnose many of the Romantic British writers with OSS (overstuffed sentence syndrome). I am trudging through Frankenstein right now, and when I actually come across a simple sentence, I almost die of happiness.

    Reading should not be that way.

  12. Anonymous says

    The missing in action comma:
    This setence probably needs no commas because even if I knew where to put them which I don't they would only make you the person who is reading this out loud miss a great oportunity for a laugh.
    "Also" he said excitedly reaching out to turn on the light "did you know that commas make a difference in your quotation tags?"

  13. Anonymous says

    Love the description of the period! When do we get a description of the exclamation point? So like a bat and all it is.

  15. Anonymous says

    Which charcter is it:
    Jane and Janet are best friends and arch enemies of Janel and Jan.
    They are all in love with John and Jared but can't stand Hared and Jarom.
    Can you feel the pages flipping back and forth?

  17. D.G. Hudson says

    Of course not. Never. Admit. Anything.

    I don't believe in divulging my maladies.

    Point taken on the writerly germs and the literary health of my writing. Didn't know I had to worry about those, too.

  20. Cathi Stoler says

    Wow, how'd you come up with all of those? They're great!
    I think Tom Wolfe has the Chatty Cathy syndrome.

  25. Anonymous says

    Laughed so hard I cried…despite seeing my own tics thoroughly ridiculed. I'm keeping this on the desktop for revisions. Thanks.

  28. Anonymous says

    Caleb J Ross, thanks for mentioning Saramago in this post. When I think of Saramago, I think story telling- sophisticated, intelligent, story-telling. I think camp-fire with experience. That is what a good book is. You nailed it with that mention.

  29. Anonymous says

    Awesome. I started reading haughtily, judgementally. Until I got to Chatty Cathy. I ate humble pie somewhere around Shorter Hemingway, and hung my head in shame by Non Sequiturs.

    Thanks Nathan!!! (just kidding about the !!!)

  31. J. T. Shea says

    EFFECT YODA SUFFER FROM DO NOT I!!!!!!!!!

    I never, ever, EVER repeat myself over and over and over and over again and again and again!

    Shorter Hemingway? You mean Heming?

    That period sounds dotty, Nathan, full stop.

    TOM: Why are we talking like characters in a Stanley Kubrick movie?

    JERRY: You think we're talking like characters in a Stanley Kubrick movie?

    TOM: Yes, I think we're talking like characters in a Stanley Kubrick movie, echoing everything we say back to each other over and over and over again.

    JERRY: So you're not Tom Cruise?

    TOM: No, I'm not Tom Cruise. BUT YOU FORGOT TO ECHO MY LAST LINE!

    JERRY: YOU may be talking like a character in a Stanley Kubrick movie, but I'm NOT! We're not in a Stanley Kubrick movie. Except maybe a Stanley Kubrick cartoon.

    TOM: There are NO Stanley Kubrick cartoons. Unless you're a mouse. Are you a mouse?

    JERRY: I am not a mouse. Now YOU forgot to echo! Are you a cat?

    TOM: NO! I am neither a cat nor Tom Cruise! We're in a J. T. Shea comment on Nathan Bransford's blog and J. T. is just using us to fill up space because he can't think of a good overstuffed sentence or non-sequitur this late at night. (He lives in Ireland, a lush green land full of green lushness (and lushes) and lush greenness and comely maidens dancing at the crossroads with leprechauns and Irish Wolfhounds.)

    JERRY: So, he lives in Riverdance.

    THE END

  34. MBA Jenna says

    Oh Nathan, so brilliant it drew me out of lurkerdom. How long did this take? It was worth it.

  37. John Jack says

    Tautology, a special species of repetition, repeating in different terms what's already been written, saying the same thing in a different way, beating them over the head three times to make sure they didn't miss it. Tautology between words or phrases or sentences.

    He changed into a devilish demon on Kittanicos days, every ninth day of the Titian moon calendar. In his demon form he committed devilish acts most foul. His devilish acts earned him a reputation as a demon underlord.

  38. Andrea Dale says

    This is hilarious, thank you!

    BTW, Yoda speak = Engineering speak.
    (What that means, I don't know, but it's intriguing….)

  39. pattyjansen says

    I would add:

    Stage directions.

    The evil knight swung at the hero with his sword. The hero stepped back, and ducked, and hefted his own sword to about waist level. Could he escape? The main exit was blocked by two of the evil guy's henchmen, who stood on either side holding evil-looking scabbards. The guy on the right was clearly bored, picking his nose. The guy in the left watched the fight with a grim expression. No, both of these dudes were too strong for the hero to defeat.
    There was a small set of stairs in the courtyard that led down into the kitchens. He could go down there, but he would have to shift the two bags of potatoes that blocked the entrance.
    Meanwhile, the evil guy was still slashing at the hero with his sword–

    Oh man, enough already! We're in the middle of a fight. There's no way anyone could notice this much detail!

    This style comes to the fore in action scenes, and is characterised by inane amounts of description of minute details of scenery or minute details of actions.

  46. Linda Godfrey says

    I rather liked the over-description of the period. That is probably not a good thing, but I found it so entertaining that I would have read at least a few more paragraphs describing that colorfully black period.

    My own worst verbal tic is beginning too many sentences with "however." I learned this hard way from my most recently edited ms. HOWEVER, I now use the "find" feature to hunt the H words down and either kill or capture and relocate the varmints.

  47. Lee Rowan says

    Bookmarked. But where? In writing? Humor? Other blogs?

    Your apotheosis of the period is sublime. I can't wait for you to tackle the exclamation point!

  48. Nikki Hayes says

    Ah, you missed the great series of adventures in the life of a period!

    There's the period itself, but sometimes it brings along its buddies… Sometimes it hikes up to the top of the cliff; sometimes it falls off and brings half the cliff with it! Sometimes it plays games which leave the attuned reader in a constant state of "?". And rarely, you see it playing leapfrog…:

  50. Linda Godfrey says

    Actually there are a couple of tics that drive me nuts when reading. I am sure I have also sinned — and still do — in these ways:

    Awful alliteration is always annoying.

    The grating over-use of pet words — surely an author is allowed only one use of muzzy and/or muzzily per book — grates gratingly on me.

    When too many sentences are written in passive mode, books are abandoned by bored readers.