Excellent post over on Help I Need a Publisher! about over-writing: how it comes about, what it is, and how to deal with it.

http://helpineedapublisher.blogspot.com/2009/09/big-mistake-3-over-writing.html

Emma

This I liked in the comments -

May I add a vote for abolishing sentences that sound pretty but don't actually mean anything?

My first boss did his best to cure me of this way before I became a writer - he'd make me explain any over flowery sentences and woe betide me if I couldn't

Sadly I still have frequent relapses but it helps me think about it at least!

Sarah

Brilliant. I love that blog (although it frequently brings on chocolate cravings).

The only thing i would slightly disagree with (although i doubt she was being entriely serious) was the primary school part.

Thanks for the link, Emma. It's a nice, balanced piece, isn't it? And it puts across well the eal difficulty of spotting what is and what isn't over-written in your own work.

Rosy x

Yes, it's a nice piece, isn't it.

The only thing i would slightly disagree with (although i doubt she was being entriely serious) was the primary school part.

I would too, if I hadn't seen it in action with my own two offspring.

I suppose the trouble is that all the stuff you hear all the time about don't over-write and cut adjectives and adverbs and so on (which, when you think about it, first starts appearing in the generation of writers whose own teachers were brought up on the Victorians IYSWIM), assumes that you have a well-stocked cupboard of them, and need to learn when enough is enough. Whereas when schools are teaching children to find and use them, and the more the merrier (and the higher mark) they're trying to stock the cupboard in the first place. One of the things I liked about the piece was that it doesn't say that the school training is a bad thing of itself, (whereas you should hear some CW teachers snorting and fuming when they encounter it!)just that we need to grow beyond it.

Emma

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I also like the way she knows there isn't a 'one size fits all' rule about it - that it depends hugely on what kind of beast you're writing.

The only thing i would slightly disagree with (although i doubt she was being entriely serious) was the primary school part.

I've seen it too - and it's continued into secondary school.

In defence of the encouragement of kids in schools to use adjectives, adverbs and imagery in their prose... I think the thing is that teachers' job is not to cater to the needs of the two or three children who might go on and become professional writers. Their job is to try to open up doors to the majority of kids, whose writing might otherwise never progress beyond the purely functional: kids who will benefit from being introduced to more of the rich possibilities of language. OK, so the few kids who want to write for plesure or publication might come out over-using adjectives a bit - but they probably have the ability to re-learn, to acquire judgement and to modify their style as they get older. Better to err in this direction, I believe, than to tell everyone right from the start that language should be simple and plain and pared down and uncomplicated, and never introduce kids to the richness of langauge in the first place.

Rosy x

Rosy, I'd agree, which was the point I was trying to make - that the cupboard needs stocking in the first place. The writers-in-the-making learn soon enough that it's not as simple as that.

Just as long as they don't get an English teacher as utterly useless as the one my niece had, who didn't actually know the difference between effect and affect, let alone be able to explain it. My 15yr old niece had to tell her. And that was the least of her utter incompetence.

Emma