The Guinea Pig Report: Uses For Scribblins, #4 of a series
Becoming A Writer, Chapter Eight
Chapter Seven, “The First Survey,” recommended a brief primary read-through of all those pages of writing you’ve been accumulating by writing every morning upon waking up and by appointment at different times of the day. It dealt with those things you might thus discover about your natural writing inclinations: what topics you return to again and again, what genre and format of writing you favor, what your natural stylistic rhythms might be.
In Chapter Eight, “The Critic At Work On Himself,” Brande gets surprisingly closer. “Suprisingly,” because the self-critiquing she recommends here strikes me as more appropriate to an intentional first draft than to this sort of don’t-think keep-pen-on-paper timed writing exercise. Nevertheless, Brande’s next assignment is to…
- Critique your writing output
On a line-by-line, word-by-word level, what do you do well and where could you stand improvement? Are there words or phrases you have a habit of repeating automatically? Do these indicate a need to think more precisely about what you’re trying to say, or perhaps an area where you might expand your vocabulary? Do you tend towards long run-on sentences? Do you use ten words where only five are required? Do you overuse the passive voice? Or maybe your prose is full of florid, unnecessary description from following the “show don’t tell” philosophy over a cliff?
Just for example, I have a writing teacher who is amazing at finding repetitive phrases. Thanks to her, I will never again be tempted to write “kneels down” (really, can you kneel up?), “nodded her head” (what other body part do you nod?) or “he thought to himself” (unless the story includes the possibility of thinking to someone else, i.e. telepathy).
Speaking more broadly, as you read through these pages, what kind of writing do you think you do best? Dialogue, narrative, charater sketches? By the same token, at which of these are you not so accomplished? Brande suggests applying corrective reading to these areas….
The reticent writer can force himself to read Swinburne, or Carlyle, or any one of a number of contemporary authors who are more sensational than decorous. The oversensational can reverse the recommendation and read the eiteenth-century Englishmen, or such writers as William Dean Howells, Willa Cather, Agnes Repplier. If you have a dull and prosy note, a course in the novels and stories of G. K. Chesterton should be of advantage….
It is perhaps worth a reminder that Brande was writing prior to a publication date of 1934.
When you have found your antidote, read with humility, determined to see the excellence in writers who are natively antipathetic to you; while you are performing your stylistic penance, give yourself no quarter. Leave the books which usually attract you strictly alone.