Nick Bryan

writing about writing

“Actually”, it’s terrible

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Once I’ve completed a piece of writing, there are a few steps  I take before showing it to anyone else or slap it up online. Some involve factchecking, rephrasing and reading stuff aloud, but by far the most inevitable and aggravating is hacking “actually” and its tedious ilk outta there.

Equivocators, qualifiers, half-arsed fence-sitting non-words that do nothing except sound clunky and damage the meaning of whatever you were trying to say.

I like to think everyone suffers from an abundance of this crap in early drafts, but my work is always painfully riddled with it. “Actually”, “somewhat”, “quite”, “a little bit”.All of them can piss off and die in a medium-depth swamp.

Even on Twitter, if I don’t glance over messages before I send them, I often end up, much to my fury, somehow jamming two occurrences of “actually” or “actual” into only 140 characters. Where do they come from? Do I have a brain tumour spewing some kind of waste product into the rough area of my lobes that manifests itself as an actual abundance of kinda pointless little words with quite literally no use?

(Hope not.)

For longer pieces of work (meaning anything beyond 1-2000 words), I have a step in my redrafting where I do nothing but run a ‘Find’ in my word processor for all the stupid non-words I can think of and bring a Stalinist purge down upon them.

So, anyway, I thought I’d use what little platform I have to check: everyone else has this problem, right? Is there a cure? Because, even if it involves brain surgery, I’m ready to consider it at this stage.

The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger – Untimely Book Review

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You thought my review of Genus was tardy? Well, I’ve topped that: this Untimely Book Review covers The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, which has a battered sticker on the cover pledging allegiance to Richard & Judy’s Book Club 2005!

But I remember when this damn book was everywhere, so I’m hoping a few of you have read it. Let’s talk!

This is one of those amazing high-concept stories where the premise is in the title, but I’ll break it down anyway: this covers the meeting, wedding and more of Henry and Clare, out of order, because Henry has a strange genetic disorder causing random time travel. (No, I don’t consider their marriage a spoiler. For some unknown reason.)

That’s really kinda it. It’s romance with a sci-fi twist, and for about the first half, I was enjoying it. The out-of-sequence courtship was sweet, and there are enough clever uses of time travel thrown in to make it appealing to people like me, who are reading because they like soft sci-fi/Doctor Who, and want to see what the fuss was about.

Of course, the romance boot eventually drops as it was always going to. The inventive time-twisting continues to the very end, to be fair, but angst and melodrama kick in damn hard too. If you want to believe that life won’t immediately become miserable once you get married, don’t read this book, because that’s more or less the plot.

Oh, and Henry is a very obvious hot-indie-kid character at times. Yes, Niffenegger goes out of her way to say how damaged he is, but never makes it matter, because Clare will inevitably fix him. That’s one downside of the ongoing pre-determination theme, I suppose. Saps drama.

Which brings me to the ending (NON-SARCASTIC SPOILERS NOW) where the inevitable happens and then the book just stops, all character threads except the Henry/Clare relationship hanging in mid-air. It reads more like a memoir than a real novel, and if that’s what you’re trying to do, then fair enough, but I like novels to feel more plotted.

I feel bad looking back over this review, because there were lengthy spells, even in the grim second half, when I was genuinely enjoying this book. I’ve probably made it sound like the whole thing was drudgery, but if the central idea of “romance with sci-fi twist” completely appeals, it’s probably worth reading. I’m just not much of a romance reader.

I say all this as if everyone who cares hasn’t already read it, of course. But if you can remember what you thought of this book, feel free to disagree with me in the comments.

“It’s All… Papery” – Returning To Print Books

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I’ve had a Kindle for a year, and it’s fast become my primary method of reading. I love the interface, the convenience, the way I don’t have to fill up any more space with piles of books, which attract dust in vast quantities and give me allergy seizures.

So, yes, I am an ereader convert. But some people, my so-called friends, are behind me on the development scale and keep lending me books made of dead trees. I finished one such novel the other day and thought I’d share some thoughts on my re-entry onto paper.

Get Some Physio

Considering how much Kindle hatred there is out there, you’d expect picking up a real book to be a revelatory experience, making the story a million times better and exuding some magic smell. (Because it’s always about the smell, isn’t it? Hey, guys, computers can have odour too, especially when the cooling fan fails and the motherboard burns.)

But you know, I didn’t notice much different. Yes, it’s weird measuring your progress in page numbers again, rather than abstract percentages, and feeling a physical change under your right hand as the plot falls away. And flicking through regular books to check stuff for your reviews is way easier, that is one big plus point for them.

But you know what I have to do with paper books? Protect the fragile little darlings from getting bashed around, especially this one that wasn’t mine, find my place manually rather than automatically, carry a heavier rucksack, accept that other people on the tube can see what I’m reading. (Fortunately, it wasn’t porn, it was The Time Traveller’s Wife. Untimely Book Review to follow.)

Get Some Therapy

So, inane revelation time: books and ereaders are different in some ways and not others. And, yes, there are problems with Kindle brand dominance – I’m not a huge fan of Amazon being the only place I can easily buy stuff.

But. I’d rather we talk about actual issues like that, rather than throwing a tantrum about methods of reading. It’s just data, and I say this as an experienced IT professional. I’ve always been insistent that how I display and consume my data is up to me, ever since I was a little boy and my Mum tried to make me read the Radio Times instead of using Teletext. (Sorry, American readers, I may have lost you there.)

And speaking of young kids: people who do things like refer to the Kindle as “the K-word”? Not a great look, folks.

So, where do you stand on the Kindle/book debate? Have you gone back to books, and did you experience whiplash? Comment! Below!

(And yes, I took that picture of my Kindle on top of a pile of books. I know, I know, the layers of meaning are stunning.)

Dialogue – The Writer’s Crack?

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Close followers of my work here, specifically the Friday stories, might note I’ve done a few in an all-dialogue format. Like this one, also one of my only “science-fiction” stories. Or kinda this one too. And the new one I’ve just written for Friday. So clearly I’m a big fan.

It’s just easy to write, isn’t it? Flows off the tongue like, well, speech. Maybe it’s the hours I spent reading those Aaron Sorkin script books, but I kinda love it. Unfortunately, I also worry I enjoy it too much sometimes. (Hence the title – apologies if anyone was expect an ode to the creative arse.)

“Ah, Rupert, I see you are removing the badger from the toaster.”

This is the biggest issue I have when writing largely in dialogue, and I’ve been knocked around for it by tutors: the danger of getting over-theatrical.

This results in characters saying things like the above, basically filling in for the absence of prose or stage directions. After all, the reader won’t know what’s going on if the characters don’t state it, but they also end up talking in a way no-one does in real life.

On the other hand, this is a very specific problem. If you have any prose (or stage directions if you’re writing script) then, hey, problem solved.

“The angry badger has embedded itself in the wall whilst trying to extinguish the fire in its tail.”

Dialogue often has the fun bits, doesn’t it? This problem is particularly common in speed-writing projects like NaNoWriMo, but for me, it’s a never-ending battle: dialogue rolls off easily, prose requires hard work.

So, when editing, I end up chopping out a lot of the dialogue. Yes, even if that joke was awesome, sadly, it often isn’t necessary, so you have to kill your babies. (NOT LITERALLY FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.) I’ve also been writing more in the first person, which circumvents the problem by making narration more chatty. Clever, eh?

“Um, I don’t wanna, y’know, moan, but would someone reeeally put a badger in a toaster?”

It’s been established by smarter minds than me that fictional dialogue is rarely “realistic”. I may love the stylised dialogue of Aaron Sorkin, but people don’t really talk like that.

So we stumble across the distinction between “realistic” and “believable”. Strictly realistic dialogue would feature a lot of “um” and “kinda”, and reading it would be a nightmare. Awful BBC improv drama True Love featured actors improvising the banal conversations real people would have, and watching it was like dying and discovering hell is a never-ending bus queue.

So, in summation, dialogue is amazing, as long as it isn’t over-theatrical, over-used or too believable. Did I cover everything? What are your dialogue issues? Feel free to comment below, I need fodder for the follow-up post.

Genus by Jonathan Trigell – Untimely Book Review

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My book reviews will rarely be prompt, as I read painfully slowly and pick most novels up in the Kindle sale. Nonetheless, I did recently finish one: Genus by Jonathan Trigell. After taking a month to read it, I should get some thoughts down before I forget them, so let’s go!

So, we’re looking at a future London, where society has turned dystopic after genetic modification becomes widespread and physical perfection becomes purchasable. Which, of course, leads to those who can’t afford it becoming a clearly advertised underclass. Crime, corruption and general shouting ensue.

Most of the story takes place among said underclass, specifically the rundown “Kross” region (formerly known as King’s Cross, London), because I suppose it would be dull to watch the pretty people be obnoxiously content. Although if you do want that, you can always watch Made In Chelsea.

This is one of those science-fiction books where the allegory doesn’t exactly hide itself– Trigell is upfront about his fears concerning gene improvement, and the real possibility of that technology helps draw you in. And yet, despite it being a grounded premise, he has a lot of cool (or worrying) ideas about where this would lead.

He’s also using a lot of stark descriptions to convey urban squalor, which I’m on board with, and despite rapid flicks between POV characters, they all have their clear vocabulary and backdrop marked out. Some of the catchphrases to identify certain characters (especially Detective Gunther) get samey, but it does fit his crude, hammering self. I also enjoyed the tangential vignettes.

I wasn’t as taken by the actual story as I was by Trigell’s vision, which is an issue for me (perhaps more than it should be) because I admit to being a very plot-orientated reader and writer. The broad nature of the climax seemed slightly predictable, although the execution meant it never stopped being readable.

So, yes, this is an interesting contemporary sci-fi book if you’re looking for one, and is available on Amazon in the usual formats if the mood strikes you. Let me know below if you’ve read it and have strong opinions. Or any opinions. Everyone is welcome. Why not tell the group how you feel about paying to improve your babies?

Computers In Literature – Balls, Ones and Zeroes

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The real world isn’t as conducive to beautiful literary representation as it was back in the day. Real-life dialogue too often takes place via text, email or instant messenger, which means ur book might have 2 feature awful abbrvtns and smiley faces. 🙁

Many authors would rather be kicked in the crotch by a centaur (or a binary camel – see illustration to right) than incorporate any of that modern nonsense, but it’s increasingly hard to avoid. Everyone is obtainable all the time, so what’s your excuse for any character being out of the loop when they could call, email, text or tweet someone? Isn’t it funny how they keep losing their mobile phones?

And that’s not even getting into the woe of the crime/mystery writers, who have to explain why the puzzle wasn’t unravelled in seconds thanks to modern forensic technology. Small wonder that many detective stories are now set in the past, where authors can wallow in old fashioned sleuthing without having to worry about whether the murderer left a DNA sample when he shoved his thumb into the victim’s eye socket.

Personally, I’m weirdly fascinated by the possibilities, but I have worked in IT for five years, own a smartphone and use Twitter to an unsettling (or just annoying – follow me now on @NickMB!) degree. So I’ve written a range of stories, not to mention a novel, exploring the exciting new worlds of internet communication.

But even I hit problems occasionally. Primary among them: people using a computer is not the most dramatic activity. It becomes harder to really get body language among the dialogue when, often, you’ve only got one half of the conversation visible, and all they’re doing is typing. Are you going to sully your novel with internet messages containing actions between asterisks? *cries*

Of course, you can always send them off on merry internal monologue and that’s your one scene or short story sorted, but it’s hardly the long-term solution. What happens next time?

As I say, I like this stuff, but still work hard to find new ways of expressing the use of computers. So, how do you get around this? Is there an easy answer, beyond “stop writing about geeks, you geek”?

All suggestions welcomed. As hinted earlier, this is somewhat of a pet topic, so I imagine it’ll come up again.