Friday's Links to Writing & Marketing Blog Posts

CREATING LEAN BUT DESCRIPTIVE PROSE

By: Connie J. Jasperson

Some work is written so starkly it may as well be a phone-book. This tells me that author X has really taken to heart the much-bandied, amateurish idea of no adverbs and adjectives, ever.

That concept is flawed.

It is true that when we carve away unneeded modifiers, we move from telling the story to showing it, which is the goal of every author. But the key here is the word ‘unneeded.’

Some modification of your verbs and nouns is necessary, or you have a ‘Dick and Jane” novel.

See Jane. See Jane run.

Even if the concept for the plot has some merit, a stark, completely bare-bones approach won’t make it worth reading. The idea behind the novel might intrigue me, and I could be curious as to where the author is going with the idea.  But despite being curious, if I don’t enjoy reading the narrative I won’t finish it.

We all know fluffed-up prose (A.K.A. ‘purple’ prose) is daunting and hides the action, butdon’t let a knee-jerk reaction to a bad beta-read by an armchair critic make you go the route of completely eliminating modifiers and descriptors. A well-written narrative is sparing with descriptors and modifiers, this is true—but modifiers and descriptors do exist within every good narrative and are there for a reason.

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To read the rest of the post, click here:

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If you missed my writing & marketing tweets and retweets yesterday, here they are again:

• ELF-e And The World’s Authors: Is English Our Lingua Franca? | Thought Catalog http://ow.ly/WiNAq
• What’s My Motivation? Why Writers Need to Motivate All of Their Characters | Drew Chial http://ow.ly/WiNC3
• #amwriting: creating lean but descriptive prose | Life in the Realm of Fantasy http://ow.ly/WiNKn
• Working With a Freelance Editor—Part 2, the Process — Wordy Bird Studio http://ow.ly/WiO2D
• Finding a Narrator on ACX | Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors http://ow.ly/WiO9i
• I’m Getting Married in the Morning* | Confessions of a Mystery Novelist... http://ow.ly/WiOaK
• Blogging with Facebook “Notes” to Improve Visibility | Indies Unlimited http://ow.ly/WiOcg
• The Ebook Retail Universe - The Book Designer http://ow.ly/WiOew
• Why Mysteries Matter | http://ow.ly/WiOfN
• Vow of silence: how much do you talk about your novel in progress? | Nail Your Novel http://ow.ly/WiOhi
• Worksheets for Writers | Jami Gold, Paranormal Author http://ow.ly/WiOxO

Happy writing and running, Kathy