(except for the totem, you kind of lost me on that one).

Don't worry! There's an important object in the current novel which is totemic, but I hadn't made it totemic enough to register with most readers, according to my agent. (She was right!)

For me 'this goes on too long' is way more useful than 'all these words aren't earning their keep'.

Not for me, however, because 'too long' implies that the solution is to cut it. But presumably the writer put those words in for a reason in the first place, so cutting will lose something you want to have in the piece. To fulfil that reason you need different words - words that earn their keep - doing the same job. Then it won't seem to go on too long, because assuming the reason is a good one, it will be properly bedded into the story and the reader will be absorbed in whatever the words are conjuring up. If, course, looking for the reason makes you realise there isn't one (or it isn't good enough) then cutting is the answer.

'I don't think Fergus works' couldn't be clearer, I don't know how anyone could be baffled by that.

I'd be terribly baffled if someone said that to me, even now, until they started telling me what didn't work about him. It's like those teachers who scribble 'you must improve your presentation' on your homework, without any clues as to how.

Sorry Emma, I don't mean to beat this point to death but I do wonder why you think these guidelines might be useful to your students if you don't find them useful for yourself.

Ashlinn, that's more-or-less opposite to what I actually said. I do find them useful myself. I think these guidelines are useful shorthand for certain technical issues among writers who understand that they are only shorthand. And, contrariwise, I'm extremely wary of using them with anyone who might memorise 'show-don't-tell' without understanding - from deep reading as well as writing - the contexts and reasons where showing and telling are relevant issues.

Emma

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Bloomin' 'eck! You spend a couple of minutes sorting out an answer, and half WW posts in the meantime! ;)

How about you post the kind of thing (though not the actual stories, obviously) that's ticking you off about some of the Cadenza entries? That would be useful.

I did ask Vanessa this, earlier, but it wasn't picked up on. If it's not appropriate, Vanessa, then fair enough. But it would be interesting to hear.

Was reading an interesting article by Julian Gough (winner of national short story comp) on comedy and he was arguing that it is partly that we have Aristotles writings (and "rules"? she suggests - totally playfully and totally against her own argument, bloody devil's advocate) on Tragedy but that we lost the equivalent on comedy. He argues that having the classical rules for one and not the other skewed all of Western Literature towards tragedy. Which is another matter. But that these rules should have been so influential down the ages...The original creative writing manual? What's wrong with that?

Interesting article actually. I better go before I'm chucked off...It prob wont let me on again..

I hope I am not being unfair to Vanessa or trampling on her views. If I have done that then I apologise. But I am entitled to have a different opinion. And because I respect her alternative view I'm interested in discussing it.

My own personal view is that when I read I like to analyse my reactions to the novel and understand why I felt that way. What did the writer do that engaged me or turned me off? However, my own personal experience is that the opposite is not very useful. ie applying a condensed list of things good writers have done doesn't make for good writing. What I hope is that my reading and analysis will improve my own writing by a process of osmosis rather than by distilling their techniques into some kind of 'how-to' guidebook.

IMO, I'd like even more healthy discussion about specific novels on WW and why we react differently as readers to them. However, there seems to be an aversion to disagreeing with other people as if having a different opinion is inherently an aggressive act. My favourite people are ones who disagree with me.

Lammi... I dont think it's really fair to use actual examples. That would be breaking a confidence.

My frustration beetled out, that so many people seem to believe that what they've produced is of prizewinning standard. But fuelling my frustration was also a sense of sadness... so many of the errors are avoidable. Easily.



Vanessa

I did specifically say not the actual examples.

But would it be possible to tell us what type of errors?

Yup, OK, going back to the last competition. (And remember two different brains look at every entry. No opinion is 'only mine'

There was a lot of what I would call 'purple prose'. Overwriting. Use of important sounding words when simpler ones would have called less attention to themselves. Thesaurus eaters.

Lots of overuse of modifiers. Incredibly baggy prose.

Poorly done dialogue. Loads of intrusive speech tags.

Big bang openers, not followed up by big bang work.

Thin stereotypical characters.

A lot of 'so what' stories... ie themes that were overdone, played out, not delivered well.

Stories where pace and weight were not used well, or not at all.

Author intrusion. Breaking the fictive dream.



vanessa









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I said most of the things were 'easy' to correct, but I'll qualify that. They are easy to correct if the writer knows they are doing them.

Purple prose is easy to correct.
Easy not to use modifiers.
Easy not to use poor speech tags.
Easy to recognise a big bang opener and not to use one unless the rest of the story is of the same standard of 'bangness'.

Pace/weight are worth looking at, take a bit longer, I reckon. Use of white space etc. Rhythms,sentence lengths. Fragments. Creative punctuation.


Characterisation is not easy.
Theme is a complicated subject.

Author intrusion ... Once you recognise what it is, its easy not to do it.

V

Thanks, that's interesting. None could be tackled with a set of rules, though, could they? Except the broadest, most general sort, all needing very specific, tailored follow-up - 'make your prose tight', 'make your characters rounded', 'deliver your theme effectively', 'use pacing effectively'.

Or could they?



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Cross-posted.

Yes, you can certainly look at how to use speech tags. As long as it's not delivered as: 'don't use/cut all speech tags'.

"Purple prose is easy to correct." - Only to an extent. A lot depends on someone's personal style, and what to one person may be purple, to another might be lush. And the prose is going vary from piece to piece, too. I'd have thought that was quite a tricky one to solve at one blow, as it were.

"Easy not to use modifiers." - Well, you need some modifiers, don't you? If by modifiers you mean adjectives, that is.

Nessie, that's fascinating. I judged a competition recently, and though I only got the long-list to read, which were all very good, I can certainly recognise a tendency towards some of those things too, and I imagine that the rest of the entries would have had lots of them.

Interesting what a mixed bag it is, and yes some easier things to pin down and take apart than others.

Emma

Lammi, I thought we'd agred that no one is talking about a set of simplistic, six worders... as in do this, dont do that.

Baggy prose is generally poor. Unless you dont agree? Where can I find an example of good but baggy prose, where taking out bagginess wont improve it?

Purple prose is ... er. purple. Again, give me an example of a passage of purple prose that would not be improved by unpurpling it.

To use pace and weight effectively, you need to be taught, possibly. Or have the ability to extrapolate what is right for the prose you want to write from wide reading. Likewise with theme.

'Make your prose tight' could be an objective. One that perhaps needs guidleines as to how to get there? Or individual feedback. Where possible.

Emma... I am relieved to see you have experienced the same thing. And as caddy does its own longlisting/shortlisting we see everything!

Vanessa

And if we go back to your original question, when should we break the rules, then the answer is never, if the rules are things like keeping your prose tight, doing your dialogue well, making your characters realistic etc.

No, I'm not saying that bagginess is good, lol.

So you don't subscribe to the Kill All Adverbs theory? or that dialogue openers are per se bad? And you wouldn't penalise a story that came into you which began with dialogue or used an ly adverb in the first sentence? Then it sounds as if we're singing from the same sheet.

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So what you call rules - tight prose, well-delivered theme etc - I call good writing, and as I said above, then you shouldn't be breaking away from that. Why would anyone aim to do that?

Opps, the dreaded dialogue opener chestnut.

Out of the last six Cadenza competitons, there was one entry that opened with dialogue that was a winner. It was awarded a third place. So one out of eighteen placed stories.

Not sure what that says. Apart from the fact that most of the stories picked as winners dont begin with dialogue.


and yes... absolutely. When writers want to break away... get away, experiment... do everything. You may just be starting something new. But don't expect to be recognised as a genius for a while...and please, dont do it until youve learned how to write good prose first.



Vanessa

Not sure what that says. Apart from the fact that most of the stories picked as winners dont begin with dialogue.

- Well, to be fair, it might mean you personally don't like stories that begin with dialogue.


and yes... absolutely. When writers want to break away... get away, experiment... do everything. You may just be starting something new. But don't expect to be recognised as a genius for a while...and please, dont do it until youve learned how to write good prose first.

Not sure what you mean by that. Do you mean we should be breaking away from the 'rules' of writing rounded characters, strong themes, effective pacing, tight prose?

Thats is precisely why I prefaced my reply with the fact that two separate editors (I am Assistant) read everything, and judge.

I believe the same type of result will be found if you look at the results of other short story competitions of the same broad genre'. I have several anthologies of winning work from Bridport for example. And Fish. There are a few pieces that start with dialogue. A few. And they, like the others in those anthologies, are good stuff.

But the fact remains. Not many.

I have the recent Honno anthology on my desk.

28 stories. 3.5 dialogue openers. (point five? One is mine. It's almost a dialogue opener! It starts Social Workers. "Call me Angela," she says.thats the only one I've started like that. But it works... so thats fine.

I have also got the Alice Munro anthology, "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage." One of the best short story writers in the world.

9 stories. 1 dialogue opener.

So it is always 'a few'... at least.. it is in the books I have.


Why? I don't know. Unless of course, people have found that generally, there is a better way to open a story?

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Do you mean we should be breaking away from the 'rules' of writing rounded characters, strong themes, effective pacing, tight prose?


No. Not 'should' at all, Llammi. That would be a 'rule' wouldn't it?

Im saying writers of all sorts have to experiment, fly, do their own thing, write anything that comes. Write wonderful lines of fancy. Write free.

But that they will find it more meaningful an experimentation if it is done on the bedrock of solid craft, rather than doing it without learning any craft at all. And it will (although this is a gut feel) make more of a connection with the reader? Like esperanto did. Becasue it was a new language based on shared understood newnesses.

Vanessa