Douglas Adams would spend two pages describing the entire history of a character. Then move on to the important part of the scene and never mention them again.
@sleepinggorilla Him and Tom Robbins make writing seem like a hilarious great time. I don't know how seat of the pants they are, but they create that feeling for the reader. Barbara Kingsolver, another great. Apropos of nothing, so it seems, you're one inch above the forest floor seeing all kinds of incredible detail until suddenly you're not. Or Dickens describing all the food on the table, somewhat counter to the poverty of the Pratchets (or despite their poverty, to convey how important Christmas is?), because who doesn't like a detailed description of good food? And Dickens got paid per word, right?
@ I believe Douglas Adams was a pantser. Which makes sense, it was about the wit in the end. The plot just served to create those opportunities for hilarity.
Gary Provost provoked a little more, here's the full quote: “This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals-sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”
I love James Michener's quote about writing: “I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.” And of course, the opening line to Voyage of the Dawn Treader. "There was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it." The use of "deserved" there just delights me.
My favorite fancy phrase? I got it in college in my French Lit class. "Vos yeux entendront ces sourires que vos lèvres ne pourront voir". This translates to English as: "Your eyes will hear those smiles that your lips cannot see". I think it was Victor Hugo.
I have a couple favorites from Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. 1. “They had been lurking in the fog for an hour now, but they had been pacing themselves and could lurk for the rest of the night if necessary, with still enough sullen menace left for the final burst of lurking around dawn.” 2. “Crowley: the angel who did not so much fall as saunter vaguely downwards” There is also: “My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die.” Which is the first sentence of Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta.
There's lot to be found from Pratchett's own works as well, but among my favorites the excellent usage of contrasting adverb in "The Fool jingled miserably across the floor." from Wyrd Sisters.
A sentence I really love is actually a lyric in the song Seven Days by Sting: Ask if I am mouse or man, the mirror squeaked, away I ran. Genius. Thanks for the video.
I love poetry because they're collections of beautiful sentences. Three word sentences are so punchy, especially for sudden realizations. It pulls me out of the story when a character deeply analyzes a situation first. Usually, you have that dreadful or exciting bare bones reaction, the "She's not normal." feeling that prompts you to think more deeply.
This video was the advice I've always needed. I wanted to be a writer since I was 12, but didn't pursue it until I was 42 because I thought my prose was no good and had no idea how to improve it, I thought real writers were just born on planet Shakespeare and I wasn't one of those. Eventually, I decided to just try to stumble through and fortunately did manage to improve. If I'd had this video 30 years ago I would have started writing as a teenager instead of waiting half my life. Thanks for this, I think it'll really help me to continue to improve.
The most challenging part in writing for me is not the actual story, but the prose that's used to convey said story. This is extra challenging to me, because I'm not a native English speaker, and thus had less experience than you all. That being said, I appreciate your tips!
Awesome video! Love that you highlighted the power of contrast and tension---juxtaposition is a delectable device! "I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life" is a classic example from Fitzgerald. Certainly, there are more artful sentences, but I salute its beauty and ability to reinforce so many other elements of the novel. It's smart, true, and lovely. Perfect for the mode of narration.
Thank you for your work putting these videos together! You are genuinely the best writing channel on the platform, and remain horrifically underrated. Great tips. Writing advice channels for the most part all repeat the same ideas; I still enjoy them even though they're repetitive, helps remind and drill down concepts. But you're the only channel I've found that genuinely on a regular basis provides new ideas I haven't heard before, or at least breaks down old ideas in a novel, direct way.
Thank you for the kind words. It's always my goal to be original with my fiction advice -- I was also frustrated by the repetitive advice out there and vowed not to be like that.
@Bookfox I'm a western born hindu and I absolutely loved your video on the hindu scripture from a dew week's ago! It made me realize I was on the right track, putting emotion first and creating my scene and setting around it! I'm a new writer but that's what I always did before. Love your content it's helped my writing a lot! Im working on a dark fantasy and sci fi novel.
Boat in a bog. Slimy bog. Fetid bog. Not my experience of bogs, but a bog can be deep and wide, so the depth and extent of this woman's ugly character come through. Wtf is a shiny boat doing in a bog? Bogs aren't naturally slimy or fetid, so some evil sht must have been pouring into it for years. I agree. Pretty damn good.
Perhaps one exception to tip 2 is with dialogue. “Said” is a perfectly fine verb that stays out of the way. It can get really tedious if every line of dialogue is exclaimed, shouted, inquired, or demanded.
The great thing about this video, if you know art but are a new write these technique will come to you naturally, even if you aren't aware of them. So it's really great to see you nail them done. I found myself doing this, even though I'm not the most astute, Grammarly correct write. I blame my noobness.
From “Suite Francaise” by Irene Nemirovsky, two come to mind: (1) “What separates or unites people is not their language, their laws, their customs, their principles, but the way they hold their knife and fork.” (2) “Waiting is erotic.”
For selecting verbs (and other words), I've found that "Use the Right Word: Modern Guide to Synonyms and Related Words" by S.I. Hayakawa to be invaluable. It gives you the subtle differences in their meanings.
If every sentence "tries too hard" to be some flowery masterpiece, it will be exhausting to read. I think another tip could be to focus the weight of your writing into particularly important sentences, don't flood the text with competing sentences. Also, the cadence of the sentences and their level of complexity should vary based on which character serves as the perspective. A simpleton can have a lot of short sentences. A scientist might have narration which describes a concept with more fundamental understanding than a layman, etc.
I like the advice you've given about the important meaningful words in the beginning and end of the sentence. Pointing out psychologically it's what people remember. Gosh I really like your videos. Thank You. You have been so helpful. 👍💥
You're awesome. I love these videos. I learn so much, and they help give me a good depth of knowledge so I can approach the writing process of my first novel with more confidence. Thank you!
There is a lot of good advice here. I already make no small use of litotes, but some of the other figures of speech probably need my attention as well.
Thank You! Thank You for the education. The deep description of body functions, unveiled an added prospect to my sketched narration of the tests subjects inner body processes. Rather than constantly portraying to the reader the outer evaluation. What's going on on the inside. Thank You for opening my eyes to that angle of view. 👍💥
“He was still a handsome man, with a tanned, chiseled face and long, thick, wavy white hair, but his cells had begun to reproduce in a haphazard fashion, destroying the DNA of neighboring cells and secreting toxins into his body.” I really like this sentence because it is also a good example of something else that I like. Substituting a word with a definition of that word. It engages our brain to figure out, "What are they describing...oh it's cancer" and helps us look at the concept of that thing rather than just using our immediate mental associations with the word "cancer" and moving on to the next sentence.
This video is great! Thank you, Bookfox. 🏆 I'm adding it to my writing playlist, so I can reference it again, should I need it!. Btw, I've been watching your videos for a while, and have gleaned such useful information. I appreciate all the time and energy you put into making these videos! Thank you. Now, that I have my motivation, I need to get to work. I need to finally finish my novel! (I have seven-ish more chapters to go. I've only been working on it for the last Nine Years.) *frustrated chuckle* Thanks, again!✍
Forgive my self-indulgence, but this is my favourite sentence from my own current story, which a 350,000 word fantasy trilogy. Ultimately, there's probably nothing that astonishing about it, I think I just like the sensory experience - After an indeterminant amount of time, they emerged from the catacombs to the sounds of both the woodlands around them and waves washing ashore ahead, a salty tang on the air penetrating the forest boundary and mingling with the woodland scents.
I've entered poetry contests in my youth after the coaxing of my mother. I used to write colorful (but not over done purple pros.) poems for self enjoyment and for my mom. Things seem to come to me with a natural flow. As you said, (paraphrased) like in music. I like to think of show don't tell as Painting with words. I relax and imagine Bob Ross coaching me saying. Now, we're going to add a little something here, and how about if we have this going on the background as his indistinct voice fades in the background we work together. Painting with words. (But not too colorful.)
My favorite sentence from Kurt Vonnegut's 'God Bless You Mr. Rosewater' requires some context. The context: --- "This is the Rosewater Foundation. How can we help you?" "Mr. Rosewater-" said a woman, "there was a thing on the radio about you." "Oh?" Eliot now began to play unconsciously with his pubic hair. It was nothing extravagant. He would simply uncoil a tight spring of it, let it snap back into place. "It said they were going to try to prove you were crazy." "Don't worry about it, dear. There's many a slip betwixt the cup and the lip." "Oh, Mr. Rosewater-if you go away and never come back, we'll die." "I give you my word of honor I'm coming back. How is that?" "Maybe they won't let you come back." "Do you think I'm crazy, dear?" "I don't know how to put it." "Any way you like." "I can't help thinking people are going to think you're crazy for paying so much attention to people like us." "Have you seen the other people there are to pay attention to?" "I never been out of Rosewater County." "It's worth a trip, dear. When I get back, why don't I give you a trip to New York?" "Oh God! But you're never coming back!" "I gave you my word of honor." "I know, I know-but we all feel it in our bones, we smell it in the air. You're not coming back." --- And now comes my favorite sentence: "Eliot had now found a hair that was a lulu. He kept extending and extending it until it was revealed as being one foot long. He looked down at it, then glanced at his father, incredulously proud of owning such a thing."
10:38 Sorry, buddy, but ‘hands’ here refers to an older term you young’ens don’t know. They were farm hands or ranch hands that refer to ‘help’, not a body part. Edit: I guess you did reference it correctly,… 😎
Excellent video, but I'd like to add one minor correction. Beowulf didn't use a sword to kill Grendel. They fought barehanded because that was Grendel's style. From Seamus Heaney's translation, pgs 29 and 31, "Now I mean to be a match for Grendel, settle the outcome in single combat....I have heard moreover that the monster scorns in his reckless way to use weapons; therefore, to heighten Hygelac's fame and gladden his heart, I hereby renounce sword and the shelter of the broad shield, the heavy war-board: hand-to-hand is how it will be, a life-and-death fight with the fiend." Page 55 concludes the fight, "Hygelac's kinsman kept him helplessly locked in a handgrip....The monster's whole body was in pain, a tremendous wound appeared on his shoulder. Sinews split and the bones-lappings burst."
@@Bookfox That brings up a sentence also from Heaney's translation which is relevant to your video. The sword Beowulf uses to slay Grendel's mother was made of ice. After he kills her it melts. Page 111, "Meanwhile, the sword began to slather and thaw." His choice of "slather" was an excellent departure from the word's normal use and similar to the weeping sunflowers.
The power words you use as example are mostly adjectives and adverbs. I often hear to avoid them in writing, because it implies that you're using the wrong verb or noun. Would it be correct to only use modifiers if they act as power words?
There’s no “correct” way to do this per say. It’s a matter of your own poetic voice, and how you want to communicate your story. Modifiers can be extremely useful and powerful in and of themselves. Power words, on the other hand, have no power and evoke no emotion if the story surrounding doesn’t have a strong enough structure to hold those words in their proper places.
Power words can be anything. The examples just happened to be adjectives and adverbs. But yes, you're right to be slightly suspicious of adj/adv, and to want to prioritize nouns/verbs. Still, it's all about style, whether you're going for more of a spare Hemingway or more of a verbose Faulkner.
Your phrase "prepositional phrase pile up" reminds me of something I'm doing in my novel, where a "messenger boy" bureaucrat lectures the protagonist with deliberately passive phrases, to make a point about useless ass-covering bureaucracy. Does it work? ?She thought she saw an ephemeral grimace, then he tonelessly recited a bullet-pointed yet lifeless list. “I am told that you appreciate bluntness. I am told to be certain you understand your situation. You are considered politically naïve and difficult. Your ideas are considered incorrect and dangerous. Social stability has been endangered. It has been decided by the United Nations Alien Response Team that you and GRITCorp are persona-non-grata. Media silence is required. Acting thusly is advised as being prudent.” He fell silent, eyes moving to the left, as if reviewing the list for completeness. There was the barest breath of a nod."
"You think you know how to write a sentence." For me it takes a lot of re-writes to get it right. In the first draft of my first book, I ended up with sentences that were a paragraph long, with no punctuation. I wrote it, and I could not understand it when I read it.🤣
For anyone looking for a deep dive, hopefully in accordance with all this great advice, see the book: "Sin and Syntax", by Constance Hale. Changed my life. (There's my three word sentence, yes it's incomplete)
The examples with really long sentences… oof, it’s difficult to keep track of. Reminds me of why I didn’t read much when I was younger. It would take me forever to finish reading the sentence because I’d get lost and had go back to the start-several times 😅. Eventually, I came across contemporary romance books. Those got me reading much, much more with their straightforward and shorter sentences lol.
If I spend all my time thinking about these things, I'm never gonna get anything written. So, maybe I'll look at the manuscript after I've got it out of my brain and onto electrons to see whether I sucked completely or occasionally got it write ... er ... right.
2 things. 1. Could you pin a list of those constructions in the comments; the auction went so fast I forgot to place a bid. 2. I disagree with banning passive sentences for two reasons. One, if the character being described views the world passively, the passive voice is a way to quietly add that concept to the story. And two, using only active verbs makes digressing from SVO hard. It can be done by changing the mood (interrogative, imperative) and occasionally something like '"The dog," he said.' (OSV) There is far less justification for linking verbs (to be). In other words, with SVO active voice sentences, it becomes a challenge to find what can be added to the front of the sentence to create variety, thereby creating its own monotony.
1. Not sure what constructions you're talking about. 2. I don't want to ban passive sentences. They are quite useful. But sometimes it's easier to write passively, and you should revise some of them into active.
@@Bookfox 1. All those Greek names, for example. They don't come up too often and spelling Greek is hard for most people. 2. The problem with passive is people are trained to put the key word first, or last, in the sentence, not bury it in the middle. One way to get that noun to the forefront is passive voice, which is why people use that voice subconsciously. I did not hear you say to use some sentences in passive, only active voice. So, good it was clarified here. One thing you did not mention was that the sentence's structure reflects what or who it is about. Which is why some things needs to have a short sentence; it can reflect their actual duration.
@@aSnailCyclopsNamedSteve That thing you said about duration. Yes. I've written one-word sentences for a contracted effect, I've written rambly, comma-laden sentences to induce the feeling of either a dreamy state or of monotony, in which everything blends or drags. Passive voice can work well for the dragging--but you must snap out of it fairly quickly or the reader will put the book down. Tough gig, this writer thing...
@@Bookfox Slightly off topic, but another 'passive voice' complaint is where the body part substitutes for the person ('His eyes stared straight ahead.'), but where the POV is limited and the narrator does not see a person, perhaps due to prejudice, then speaking of body parts is a subtle way of showing that without saying it.
I hate to be "that guy"*, but no the sword did not kill Grendel. Beowulf killed Grendel by ripping his arm out. Beowulf killed Grendel's mother with a sword. *Not really true - I think most of us relish being "that guy" from time to time; not a gracious characteristic perhaps, but a very common and very human one.
“He was still a handsome man, with a tanned chiseled face, and long, thick, wavy white hair, but his cells had begun to reproduce in a haphazard fashion, destroying the DNA of neighboring cells and secreting toxins into his body.” This is one of the worst sentences I have seen in a while. 1. It is 100% tell rather than show. 2. It switches concepts from external descriptions to internal ones. 3. I switched POV from third person limited to third person omniscient. 4. It has an excessive and inappropriate use of commas. Not a good example of excellent prose at all, in my opinion.
1. Sometimes it's good to tell rather than show. 2. Yes, that switch is exactly what I'm highlighting about the sentence -- it creates a story arc. 3. The whole book is 3rd person omniscient. 4. Matter of taste.
First impressions count, so telling your viewers what they think first off is pretty rude. You have no idea what I think. Why take advice from an author that doesn't consider their audience and has never had a full-length novel published? If I thought I wrote great sentences I would not be looking for help on TH-cam would I? Sorry for the howler, but I am absolutely hacked off with TH-camrs telling me what I think and do and that I'm "Doing It Wrong". I wouldn't bother commenting if I didn't think you had potential, but please, this is a total steering wheel in the pants. Please acknowledge you have no idea who you are speaking to, you will get much more sympathetic engagement.
Chill dude, good lord. Take your own advice. And pack some torches; you think you're ascending a mountain to righteously punch up, but you're descending into a molehill (surprised you fit) leading into your own ass (it's dark in there, keep a torch charged).
It's a rhetorical device. Chill. It's like titling a video, 5 Things You Didn't Know About Star Wars. Maybe I do know some of them. Big deal. I'm not offended.
@@kit888 guess what. I don't even watch videos with clickbait titles. That tells me the content was probably generated by chatGPT. Using cheap rhetoric to sell your writing course is somewhat counter-productive don't you think?
“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way as bricks don’t” - Douglas Adams in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Now that’s a memorable sentence.
This one always cracks me up! The non-metaphor!
This one is great. I love the implication of the ships resembling bricks. Heavy, ugly and unnatural as they fill the sky.
Douglas Adams would spend two pages describing the entire history of a character. Then move on to the important part of the scene and never mention them again.
@sleepinggorilla Him and Tom Robbins make writing seem like a hilarious great time. I don't know how seat of the pants they are, but they create that feeling for the reader.
Barbara Kingsolver, another great. Apropos of nothing, so it seems, you're one inch above the forest floor seeing all kinds of incredible detail until suddenly you're not.
Or Dickens describing all the food on the table, somewhat counter to the poverty of the Pratchets (or despite their poverty, to convey how important Christmas is?), because who doesn't like a detailed description of good food? And Dickens got paid per word, right?
@ I believe Douglas Adams was a pantser. Which makes sense, it was about the wit in the end. The plot just served to create those opportunities for hilarity.
Gary Provost provoked a little more, here's the full quote: “This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals-sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”
Thanks for posting the whole thing.
Beautiful.
I love James Michener's quote about writing: “I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.”
And of course, the opening line to Voyage of the Dawn Treader. "There was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it." The use of "deserved" there just delights me.
I love that C.S. Lewis line, too! Such a funny line.
And good quote by Michener.
My favorite fancy phrase? I got it in college in my French Lit class. "Vos yeux entendront ces sourires que vos lèvres ne pourront voir". This translates to English as: "Your eyes will hear those smiles that your lips cannot see". I think it was Victor Hugo.
I have a couple favorites from Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.
1. “They had been lurking in the fog for an hour now, but they had been pacing themselves and could lurk for the rest of the night if necessary, with still enough sullen menace left for the final burst of lurking around dawn.”
2. “Crowley: the angel who did not so much fall as saunter vaguely downwards”
There is also:
“My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die.” Which is the first sentence of Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta.
Ha! Love the "lurking" repetition.
And saunter vaguely downwards is so funny.
That's a great first sentence.
There's lot to be found from Pratchett's own works as well, but among my favorites the excellent usage of contrasting adverb in "The Fool jingled miserably across the floor." from Wyrd Sisters.
I signed up for a writing competition with the challenge being a word count at 250- words.
This is gonna help me a lot.
A sentence I really love is actually a lyric in the song Seven Days by Sting: Ask if I am mouse or man, the mirror squeaked, away I ran. Genius. Thanks for the video.
I love poetry because they're collections of beautiful sentences.
Three word sentences are so punchy, especially for sudden realizations. It pulls me out of the story when a character deeply analyzes a situation first. Usually, you have that dreadful or exciting bare bones reaction, the "She's not normal." feeling that prompts you to think more deeply.
Cherry picking the verb couldn’t be a better way of explaining it 👏 that’s what I do!
This video was the advice I've always needed. I wanted to be a writer since I was 12, but didn't pursue it until I was 42 because I thought my prose was no good and had no idea how to improve it, I thought real writers were just born on planet Shakespeare and I wasn't one of those. Eventually, I decided to just try to stumble through and fortunately did manage to improve. If I'd had this video 30 years ago I would have started writing as a teenager instead of waiting half my life. Thanks for this, I think it'll really help me to continue to improve.
The most challenging part in writing for me is not the actual story, but the prose that's used to convey said story. This is extra challenging to me, because I'm not a native English speaker, and thus had less experience than you all. That being said, I appreciate your tips!
Awesome video! Love that you highlighted the power of contrast and tension---juxtaposition is a delectable device!
"I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life" is a classic example from Fitzgerald. Certainly, there are more artful sentences, but I salute its beauty and ability to reinforce so many other elements of the novel. It's smart, true, and lovely. Perfect for the mode of narration.
“You should have at least one!” Comment about the 3 word sentence had me laughing out loud 😂 what a genuine reaction
Thank you for your work putting these videos together! You are genuinely the best writing channel on the platform, and remain horrifically underrated. Great tips. Writing advice channels for the most part all repeat the same ideas; I still enjoy them even though they're repetitive, helps remind and drill down concepts. But you're the only channel I've found that genuinely on a regular basis provides new ideas I haven't heard before, or at least breaks down old ideas in a novel, direct way.
Thank you for the kind words. It's always my goal to be original with my fiction advice -- I was also frustrated by the repetitive advice out there and vowed not to be like that.
@Bookfox I'm a western born hindu and I absolutely loved your video on the hindu scripture from a dew week's ago! It made me realize I was on the right track, putting emotion first and creating my scene and setting around it! I'm a new writer but that's what I always did before. Love your content it's helped my writing a lot! Im working on a dark fantasy and sci fi novel.
i'm 1 minute into watching this and already know I'm gonna memorize all these steps. this is so immediately helpful
“The city traffic brawled through the streets, threatening to assault him.”
My favorite sentence so far: "in her smile he saw the depth of her beauty, and it floated on the surface like a shiny new boat on a slimy, fetid bog."
Who wrote this?
It's from an unpublished book I'm proofreading for a friend.
Boat in a bog. Slimy bog. Fetid bog. Not my experience of bogs, but a bog can be deep and wide, so the depth and extent of this woman's ugly character come through.
Wtf is a shiny boat doing in a bog? Bogs aren't naturally slimy or fetid, so some evil sht must have been pouring into it for years. I agree. Pretty damn good.
Goddamn
Thanks for this!!! This has helped me with my writing. ❤❤
Thanks for sharing your experience and expertise. Your passion for your work shows.
Perhaps one exception to tip 2 is with dialogue. “Said” is a perfectly fine verb that stays out of the way. It can get really tedious if every line of dialogue is exclaimed, shouted, inquired, or demanded.
I just made a video about Elmore Leonard's 10 writing rules and talked about dialogue tags and this very thing!
"It was early morning but that really ugly part of the morning where everything's blue." Is my personal favorite sentence I've written.
The great thing about this video, if you know art but are a new write these technique will come to you naturally, even if you aren't aware of them. So it's really great to see you nail them done. I found myself doing this, even though I'm not the most astute, Grammarly correct write. I blame my noobness.
Thanks so much ✨
Wow, you are really great at introducing the love of language to your audience. Those are some truly brilliant and witty examples there!
Thank you! I do my best!
Thanks for this video. I like this sentence: "Tendrils of electricity stretched toward her but stopped short of hitting her."
Thanks for the video, i started writings ff for my own enjoyment in English this year. Its always a pleasure to learn more 😄
From “Suite Francaise” by Irene Nemirovsky, two come to mind:
(1) “What separates or unites people is not their language, their laws, their customs, their principles, but the way they hold their knife and fork.”
(2) “Waiting is erotic.”
For selecting verbs (and other words), I've found that "Use the Right Word: Modern Guide to Synonyms and Related Words" by S.I. Hayakawa to be invaluable. It gives you the subtle differences in their meanings.
Here was every tip in the video!
1. Words that here
2. Babaganosh
3. The right stuff
4. It's awesome
5. Filler stuff
6. Thousand
Ha ha! I wanted to blur more but it didn't look like words any more!
If every sentence "tries too hard" to be some flowery masterpiece, it will be exhausting to read. I think another tip could be to focus the weight of your writing into particularly important sentences, don't flood the text with competing sentences.
Also, the cadence of the sentences and their level of complexity should vary based on which character serves as the perspective.
A simpleton can have a lot of short sentences. A scientist might have narration which describes a concept with more fundamental understanding than a layman, etc.
I like the advice you've given about the important meaningful words in the beginning and end of the sentence. Pointing out psychologically it's what people remember. Gosh I really like your videos. Thank You. You have been so helpful. 👍💥
You're awesome. I love these videos. I learn so much, and they help give me a good depth of knowledge so I can approach the writing process of my first novel with more confidence. Thank you!
There is a lot of good advice here. I already make no small use of litotes, but some of the other figures of speech probably need my attention as well.
Thank You! Thank You for the education. The deep description
of body functions, unveiled an added prospect to my sketched narration of the tests subjects inner body processes. Rather than constantly portraying to the reader the outer evaluation. What's going on on the inside. Thank You for opening my eyes to that angle of view. 👍💥
Your content is very detailed and great! Love all the examples and the insights
I appreciate that! Glad you enjoyed it.
“He was still a handsome man, with a tanned, chiseled face and long, thick, wavy white hair, but his cells had begun to reproduce in a haphazard fashion, destroying the DNA of neighboring cells and secreting toxins into his body.”
I really like this sentence because it is also a good example of something else that I like. Substituting a word with a definition of that word. It engages our brain to figure out, "What are they describing...oh it's cancer" and helps us look at the concept of that thing rather than just using our immediate mental associations with the word "cancer" and moving on to the next sentence.
This is wise advice and I will learn from it.
This video is great! Thank you, Bookfox. 🏆 I'm adding it to my writing playlist, so I can reference it again, should I need it!. Btw, I've been watching your videos for a while, and have gleaned such useful information. I appreciate all the time and energy you put into making these videos! Thank you. Now, that I have my motivation, I need to get to work. I need to finally finish my novel! (I have seven-ish more chapters to go. I've only been working on it for the last Nine Years.) *frustrated chuckle* Thanks, again!✍
Thanks for watching! And so glad the videos have helped.
I'm cheering you on to finish your novel!
Forgive my self-indulgence, but this is my favourite sentence from my own current story, which a 350,000 word fantasy trilogy. Ultimately, there's probably nothing that astonishing about it, I think I just like the sensory experience - After an indeterminant amount of time, they emerged from the catacombs to the sounds of both the woodlands around them and waves washing ashore ahead, a salty tang on the air penetrating the forest boundary and mingling with the woodland scents.
Great Video - which style should you use for a fast paced paragraph - slow paced paragraph...
From Ray Bradbury's, Fahrenheit 451:
Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame.
I am a fan of "pithy." One of my favorite sentences (and book openings) is "Call me Ishmael."
Love your videos!
Great video. I especially like the multiple examples per case.
The background music annoys me.
"If anything happens," Odessa repeated slowly, nodding her head with terrible significance, "eat my eyes..." The Elementals by Michael McDowell
Thanks a lot ❤
I've entered poetry contests in my youth after the coaxing of my mother. I used to write colorful (but not over done purple pros.) poems for self enjoyment and for my mom. Things seem to come to me with a natural flow. As you said, (paraphrased) like in music. I like to think of show don't tell as Painting with words. I relax and imagine Bob Ross coaching me saying. Now, we're going to add a little something here, and how about if we have this going on the background as his indistinct voice fades in the background we work together. Painting with words. (But not too colorful.)
Here is a one word sentence for you. Excellent.
My tongue was a motorman's glove. - Raymond Chandler in The Big Sleep
My favorite sentence from Kurt Vonnegut's 'God Bless You Mr. Rosewater' requires some context. The context:
---
"This is the Rosewater Foundation. How can we help you?"
"Mr. Rosewater-" said a woman, "there was a thing on the radio about you."
"Oh?" Eliot now began to play unconsciously with his pubic hair. It was nothing extravagant. He would simply uncoil a tight spring of it, let it snap back into place.
"It said they were going to try to prove you were crazy."
"Don't worry about it, dear. There's many a slip betwixt the cup and the lip."
"Oh, Mr. Rosewater-if you go away and never come back, we'll die."
"I give you my word of honor I'm coming back. How is that?"
"Maybe they won't let you come back."
"Do you think I'm crazy, dear?"
"I don't know how to put it."
"Any way you like."
"I can't help thinking people are going to think you're crazy for paying so much attention to people like us."
"Have you seen the other people there are to pay attention to?"
"I never been out of Rosewater County."
"It's worth a trip, dear. When I get back, why don't I give you a trip to New York?"
"Oh God! But you're never coming back!"
"I gave you my word of honor."
"I know, I know-but we all feel it in our bones, we smell it in the air. You're not coming back."
---
And now comes my favorite sentence:
"Eliot had now found a hair that was a lulu. He kept extending and extending it until it was revealed as being one foot long. He looked down at it, then glanced at his father, incredulously proud of owning such a thing."
10:38 Sorry, buddy, but ‘hands’ here refers to an older term you young’ens don’t know. They were farm hands or ranch hands that refer to ‘help’, not a body part.
Edit: I guess you did reference it correctly,… 😎
Excellent video, but I'd like to add one minor correction.
Beowulf didn't use a sword to kill Grendel. They fought barehanded because that was Grendel's style.
From Seamus Heaney's translation, pgs 29 and 31, "Now I mean to be a match for Grendel, settle the outcome in single combat....I have heard moreover that the monster scorns in his reckless way to use weapons; therefore, to heighten Hygelac's fame and gladden his heart, I hereby renounce sword and the shelter of the broad shield, the heavy war-board: hand-to-hand is how it will be, a life-and-death fight with the fiend."
Page 55 concludes the fight, "Hygelac's kinsman kept him helplessly locked in a handgrip....The monster's whole body was in pain, a tremendous wound appeared on his shoulder. Sinews split and the bones-lappings burst."
Thank you for the correction. As someone else pointed out, he used the sword to kill Grendel's mother. Guess I need to brush up on my Beowulf!
@@Bookfox That brings up a sentence also from Heaney's translation which is relevant to your video. The sword Beowulf uses to slay Grendel's mother was made of ice. After he kills her it melts. Page 111, "Meanwhile, the sword began to slather and thaw."
His choice of "slather" was an excellent departure from the word's normal use and similar to the weeping sunflowers.
The power words you use as example are mostly adjectives and adverbs. I often hear to avoid them in writing, because it implies that you're using the wrong verb or noun. Would it be correct to only use modifiers if they act as power words?
There’s no “correct” way to do this per say. It’s a matter of your own poetic voice, and how you want to communicate your story. Modifiers can be extremely useful and powerful in and of themselves. Power words, on the other hand, have no power and evoke no emotion if the story surrounding doesn’t have a strong enough structure to hold those words in their proper places.
Power words can be anything. The examples just happened to be adjectives and adverbs.
But yes, you're right to be slightly suspicious of adj/adv, and to want to prioritize nouns/verbs. Still, it's all about style, whether you're going for more of a spare Hemingway or more of a verbose Faulkner.
@@BookfoxLiterary fiction lends itself more to the adjective/adverb pairing than genre fiction. Seems to me, anyway.
the advertising is strong with you
I let my verbs enhance the mood. The fog didn't slither. It's a love scene. The fog crept silently and kissed her with cool lips.
Nice shirt!
Oeh this video is what i was looking for :D
“Trim” your sentences. ☝️😃
However, "bitter prayer" has another layer... Bitten, in German, means "to ask". And Bitte simply means, "Please."
Oh, love that! Great insight.
10:07
Me who isn't fluent in English and doesn't understand technical terms when it comes to grammar:
*Cries In stoopid*
Your phrase "prepositional phrase pile up" reminds me of something I'm doing in my novel, where a "messenger boy" bureaucrat lectures the protagonist with deliberately passive phrases, to make a point about useless ass-covering bureaucracy. Does it work?
?She thought she saw an ephemeral grimace, then he tonelessly recited a bullet-pointed yet lifeless list. “I am told that you appreciate bluntness. I am told to be certain you understand your situation. You are considered politically naïve and difficult. Your ideas are considered incorrect and dangerous. Social stability has been endangered. It has been decided by the United Nations Alien Response Team that you and GRITCorp are persona-non-grata. Media silence is required. Acting thusly is advised as being prudent.” He fell silent, eyes moving to the left, as if reviewing the list for completeness. There was the barest breath of a nod."
I find myself cutting a lot of fat when I do a first draft review.
"You think you know how to write a sentence." For me it takes a lot of re-writes to get it right. In the first draft of my first book, I ended up with sentences that were a paragraph long, with no punctuation. I wrote it, and I could not understand it when I read it.🤣
For anyone looking for a deep dive, hopefully in accordance with all this great advice, see the book: "Sin and Syntax", by Constance Hale.
Changed my life. (There's my three word sentence, yes it's incomplete)
That's a great book! I like Constance Hale, and have read that one and also Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch (the verb book).
Wow wow wow, what's wrong with "transpire"? One of my favorite words!
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." -- Stephen King
The man in black slithered through the desert, and the gunslinger scuttled after.
@@ApexJanitor LOL. Anyway, the power word in the original is "fled". Traversing a dessert is difficult and typically a well planned affair.
The examples with really long sentences… oof, it’s difficult to keep track of. Reminds me of why I didn’t read much when I was younger. It would take me forever to finish reading the sentence because I’d get lost and had go back to the start-several times 😅. Eventually, I came across contemporary romance books. Those got me reading much, much more with their straightforward and shorter sentences lol.
Maybe my Short Sentences video might help you!
@@Bookfox will check it out, thanks!
The ending of your videos has always been an example of cutting the fat.
first to another awesome video 🎉
“There is no god, and we are his prophets.”
The Road, McCarthy
If I spend all my time thinking about these things, I'm never gonna get anything written. So, maybe I'll look at the manuscript after I've got it out of my brain and onto electrons to see whether I sucked completely or occasionally got it write ... er ... right.
McCarthy borrowed form Augusto Monterroso, "When he woke, the dinosaur was still there." 🤣
14:23 cut fat
2 things.
1. Could you pin a list of those constructions in the comments; the auction went so fast I forgot to place a bid.
2. I disagree with banning passive sentences for two reasons. One, if the character being described views the world passively, the passive voice is a way to quietly add that concept to the story. And two, using only active verbs makes digressing from SVO hard. It can be done by changing the mood (interrogative, imperative) and occasionally something like '"The dog," he said.' (OSV) There is far less justification for linking verbs (to be). In other words, with SVO active voice sentences, it becomes a challenge to find what can be added to the front of the sentence to create variety, thereby creating its own monotony.
1. Not sure what constructions you're talking about.
2. I don't want to ban passive sentences. They are quite useful. But sometimes it's easier to write passively, and you should revise some of them into active.
@@Bookfox 1. All those Greek names, for example. They don't come up too often and spelling Greek is hard for most people.
2. The problem with passive is people are trained to put the key word first, or last, in the sentence, not bury it in the middle. One way to get that noun to the forefront is passive voice, which is why people use that voice subconsciously. I did not hear you say to use some sentences in passive, only active voice. So, good it was clarified here.
One thing you did not mention was that the sentence's structure reflects what or who it is about. Which is why some things needs to have a short sentence; it can reflect their actual duration.
@@aSnailCyclopsNamedSteve That thing you said about duration. Yes. I've written one-word sentences for a contracted effect, I've written rambly, comma-laden sentences to induce the feeling of either a dreamy state or of monotony, in which everything blends or drags. Passive voice can work well for the dragging--but you must snap out of it fairly quickly or the reader will put the book down. Tough gig, this writer thing...
@@5Gburn agreed
@@Bookfox Slightly off topic, but another 'passive voice' complaint is where the body part substitutes for the person ('His eyes stared straight ahead.'), but where the POV is limited and the narrator does not see a person, perhaps due to prejudice, then speaking of body parts is a subtle way of showing that without saying it.
“A pregnant pause filled the room”
I hate to be "that guy"*, but no the sword did not kill Grendel. Beowulf killed Grendel by ripping his arm out. Beowulf killed Grendel's mother with a sword.
*Not really true - I think most of us relish being "that guy" from time to time; not a gracious characteristic perhaps, but a very common and very human one.
True! I appreciate the correction.
Aaaaand like
anAPHora, with the accent on the second syllable, like liTOtese and hyPERbole..
I bought some Sephoras for my lady
“He was still a handsome man, with a tanned chiseled face, and long, thick, wavy white hair, but his cells had begun to reproduce in a haphazard fashion, destroying the DNA of neighboring cells and secreting toxins into his body.”
This is one of the worst sentences I have seen in a while.
1. It is 100% tell rather than show.
2. It switches concepts from external descriptions to internal ones.
3. I switched POV from third person limited to third person omniscient.
4. It has an excessive and inappropriate use of commas.
Not a good example of excellent prose at all, in my opinion.
1. Sometimes it's good to tell rather than show.
2. Yes, that switch is exactly what I'm highlighting about the sentence -- it creates a story arc.
3. The whole book is 3rd person omniscient.
4. Matter of taste.
First impressions count, so telling your viewers what they think first off is pretty rude. You have no idea what I think. Why take advice from an author that doesn't consider their audience and has never had a full-length novel published? If I thought I wrote great sentences I would not be looking for help on TH-cam would I? Sorry for the howler, but I am absolutely hacked off with TH-camrs telling me what I think and do and that I'm "Doing It Wrong". I wouldn't bother commenting if I didn't think you had potential, but please, this is a total steering wheel in the pants. Please acknowledge you have no idea who you are speaking to, you will get much more sympathetic engagement.
Nah man you’re just butthurt. He didn’t say one rude thing, he’s only helpful, and his videos have insanely high production value
Chill dude, good lord. Take your own advice. And pack some torches; you think you're ascending a mountain to righteously punch up, but you're descending into a molehill (surprised you fit) leading into your own ass (it's dark in there, keep a torch charged).
It's a rhetorical device. Chill. It's like titling a video, 5 Things You Didn't Know About Star Wars. Maybe I do know some of them. Big deal. I'm not offended.
@@kit888 guess what. I don't even watch videos with clickbait titles. That tells me the content was probably generated by chatGPT. Using cheap rhetoric to sell your writing course is somewhat counter-productive don't you think?