• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Nathan Bransford | Writing, Book Editing, Publishing

Helping authors achieve their dreams

  • Blog
  • Writing Advice
  • Publishing Advice
  • About
  • Take a Class
  • Get Editing

Do you suffer from one of these writing maladies?

August 10, 2010 by Nathan Bransford 236 Comments

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)

Need help with your book? I’m available for manuscript edits, query critiques, and coaching!

For my best advice, check out my online classes (NEW!), my guide to writing a novel and my guide to publishing a book.

And if you like this post: subscribe to my newsletter!

Art: The Doctor’s Visit by Jan Steen

Filed Under: Writing Advice, Writing Novels Tagged With: Dialogue, Hemingway, How to Write a Novel, Old Spice Guy, writing advice

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Julia Rachel Barrett says

    August 10, 2010 at 10:46 pm

    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…

    Reply
  2. Joann Swanson says

    August 10, 2010 at 10:46 pm

    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.

    Reply
  3. Joann Swanson says

    August 10, 2010 at 10:48 pm

    *too harsh. Sheesh.

    Reply
  4. johnny says

    August 10, 2010 at 11:00 pm

    I'm suffering from one malady that wasn't listed here. I write my novel like a report, from one long paragraph to another.

    Reply
  5. Ruth says

    August 10, 2010 at 11:02 pm

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

    Reply
  6. Kari says

    August 10, 2010 at 11:04 pm

    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.

    Reply
  7. Catherine Lavoie says

    August 10, 2010 at 11:36 pm

    "…into totes every sentence" made me LOL. Like OMG!!
    Thanks for the brilliant post! šŸ™‚

    Reply
  8. RosieC says

    August 10, 2010 at 11:38 pm

    Clever and informative post. Thanks!

    Reply
  9. Steph Su says

    August 10, 2010 at 11:41 pm

    Also known as: things that many canonical writers have done, to their inexplicable great success.

    Reply
  10. Susan Kaye Quinn says

    August 10, 2010 at 11:41 pm

    Must you be so brilliant? Hurts the eyes, you know.

    BTW, I interviewed the lovely KM Criddle today, and I needed sunglasses for that as well! She's awesome.

    Reply
  11. Susan Kaye Quinn says

    August 10, 2010 at 11:41 pm

    Must you be so brilliant? Hurts the eyes, you know.

    BTW, I interviewed the lovely KM Criddle today, and I needed sunglasses for that as well! She's awesome.

    Reply
  12. Anonymous says

    August 10, 2010 at 11:47 pm

    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?"

    Reply
  13. Anonymous says

    August 10, 2010 at 11:48 pm

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

    Reply
  14. wordsareforwriting says

    August 10, 2010 at 11:49 pm

    Love this post!

    Overstuffed sentences and adjective combos are my weakenesses.

    Your Hemmingway impression was pretty good too!

    Reply
  15. Anonymous says

    August 10, 2010 at 11:54 pm

    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?

    Reply
  16. Tracy Hahn-Burkett says

    August 10, 2010 at 11:55 pm

    FABULOUS! (In caps. Of course.)

    Reply
  17. D.G. Hudson says

    August 10, 2010 at 11:58 pm

    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.

    Reply
  18. Anonymous says

    August 11, 2010 at 12:20 am

    Shorter Hemingway and Chatty Cathy ! You're sooo..
    like..whatevah!!!!! Funny !

    Reply
  19. Kristi Helvig says

    August 11, 2010 at 12:25 am

    This was flippin' hilarious. Yoda rules!

    Reply
  20. Cathi Stoler says

    August 11, 2010 at 12:30 am

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

    Reply
  21. Sasha Vilchynskaya says

    August 11, 2010 at 12:31 am

    LOL! This is hilarious, or as my friend would say – hysterical. Thanks for the post.

    And I admit I'm guilty of Yoda effect and overstuffed sentences. Working on it.

    Reply
  22. Kathryn Packer Roberts says

    August 11, 2010 at 12:31 am

    Hope you don't mind, but since I absolutely loved this blog post (really, it made my day!)I posted it on my blog…er um, parts…and it is really flattering, and um thanks!https://kathrynpackerroberts.blogspot.com/

    Reply
  23. Kelly Wittmann says

    August 11, 2010 at 12:38 am

    Just critiqued a manuscript that had so many caps and exclamation points, I thought I was going to go insane. I tried to be gentle, but…

    Reply
  24. kimberlymoore says

    August 11, 2010 at 12:42 am

    A perfect marriage of showing and telling. If I was a writing teacher, I'd ask for permission to use this post. Thank you!

    Reply
  25. Anonymous says

    August 11, 2010 at 12:43 am

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

    Reply
  26. Perry says

    August 11, 2010 at 12:49 am

    The Negating Nellie.

    This one talks like Hugh Grant.

    It's almost but not quite, of course not that I don't love you.

    Reply
  27. Jen says

    August 11, 2010 at 12:59 am

    Too funny! I'm printing this out…

    Reply
  28. Anonymous says

    August 11, 2010 at 1:00 am

    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.

    Reply
  29. Anonymous says

    August 11, 2010 at 1:01 am

    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 !!!)

    Reply
  30. Anonymous says

    August 11, 2010 at 1:02 am

    Talk about beating a dead horse. Blah..blah..

    Reply
  31. J. T. Shea says

    August 11, 2010 at 1:07 am

    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

    Reply
  32. Jennifer Swan says

    August 11, 2010 at 1:23 am

    Confession – I just left a comment on your LOST/WTF post from Aug 5th. I was decidedly "chatty cathy". But it felt great!
    Thanks,

    Jennifer Swan

    Reply
  33. Michael says

    August 11, 2010 at 1:29 am

    Nathan, old bean. This is one of your best, I'd say. By Jove! Yes, indeed. It certainly is.

    Reply
  34. MBA Jenna says

    August 11, 2010 at 1:32 am

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

    Reply
  35. Laura Martone says

    August 11, 2010 at 1:38 am

    Hilarious. Truly hilarious. And, yet, sadly apt as I prepare to revise my novel – and fix said novel of these very same tics. Ugh.

    Reply
  36. Anonymous says

    August 11, 2010 at 1:39 am

    It's called the "Diablo Cody" syndrome.

    Reply
  37. John Jack says

    August 11, 2010 at 1:43 am

    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.

    Reply
  38. Andrea Dale says

    August 11, 2010 at 1:45 am

    This is hilarious, thank you!

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

    Reply
  39. pattyjansen says

    August 11, 2010 at 1:45 am

    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.

    Reply
  40. Dana Fredsti says

    August 11, 2010 at 1:47 am

    SNORK!!! You hurt my brain with this one… but hey, don't dis my Old Spice Guy. He supports libraries, y'know. šŸ™‚

    Reply
  41. Anne R. Allen says

    August 11, 2010 at 1:48 am

    Yet another reminder that you are a writer as well as a literary agent. This piece is brilliant.

    Reply
  42. Rebecca Stanborough says

    August 11, 2010 at 1:49 am

    This post has to be one of your best ever! Thanks–

    Reply
  43. bethanyward says

    August 11, 2010 at 2:14 am

    I love this! Especially "I'm in a chair."

    Reply
  44. Anonymous says

    August 11, 2010 at 2:15 am

    Pray ye, pattyjansen, put me in the scene. I want to fight!

    Reply
  45. Rick Daley says

    August 11, 2010 at 2:19 am

    Inside Jokes: They are really funny to one reader. Me.

    Reply
  46. Linda Godfrey says

    August 11, 2010 at 2:21 am

    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.

    Reply
  47. Lee Rowan says

    August 11, 2010 at 2:21 am

    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!

    Reply
  48. Nikki Hayes says

    August 11, 2010 at 2:22 am

    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…:

    Reply
  49. Anonymous says

    August 11, 2010 at 2:27 am

    "Repetition" has put me into a pleasant hypnotic state, it has. Ohmmmmm…

    Reply
  50. Linda Godfrey says

    August 11, 2010 at 2:38 am

    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.

    Reply
« Older Comments
Newer Comments »

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

About Nathan

Hi, I’m Nathan. I’m the author of How to Write a Novel and the Jacob Wonderbar series, which was published by Penguin. I used to be a literary agent at Curtis Brown Ltd. and I’m dedicated to helping authors achieve their dreams. Let me help you with your book!

My blog has everything you need to know to write, edit, and publish a book. Can’t find what you need or want personalized help? Reach out.

Learn more about me

Need Editing?

I'm available for consultations, edits, query critiques, brainstorming, and more.
Learn more!

My Books

How to Write A Novel
Cover of How to Publish a Book by Nathan Bransford
Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapo
Jacob Wonderbar for President of the Universe
Jacob Wonderbar and the Interstellar Time Warp

Forums

Need help with your query? Want to talk books? Check out the Nathan Bransford Forums
Footer Logo
Nathan Bransford

Helping authors achieve their dreams

  • Editing Services
  • My Books
  • About Me
  • Blog Directory
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy
Twitter Logo Facebook Logo Instagram Logo
As an Amazon and Bookshop Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Amazon and Bookshop links are usually affiliate links.