Friday Fave

Friday Fave: Quippy Little One Liners

If there were any classes in middle and high school I truly enjoyed, they would of course have been my English courses. The rest of them, well…take ‘em or leave ‘em. I liked some, but that was more because of the teacher’s personality or because all my friends hand wrangled the same block with me (by the time college rolled around, I could also enjoy history and art...but it took a while!). But English classes? Love! So helpful! So practical! Books. Reading. Writing. And quippy little one-liners teachers drilled into my memory.

Like “Show, don’t tell.”

Why is this the one so many of us seem to forget? It’s not like we don’t know it. It’s not like our scatterbrained grade nine English teach, the one who always ate bananas and was utterly convinced she should marry Sean Connery, hadn’t screamed those hallowed words at us during her fits of passion. I’m guessing most people visiting this page have heard this phrase a hundred, a thousand times.

But it seems to go right out the window. I run into this quite often when editing; I do it myself much more often than I’d like to admit. It seems to be more of an issue when writing longer fiction pieces. I imagine it’s just easier to catch bouts of heavy “telling” when it’s a piece that takes three minutes to reread, rather than three days. Still, no excuses! No prisoners! Raaah!

Here’s an example of something I see frequently—written by me, for our purposes today:

“Miranda looked at Greg. Greg knew she was watching, but he didn’t want to do anything about it. Determined to ignore her, Greg looked at the computer screen. He moved the mouse with his hand. Greg watched as the cursor moved his video game persona to the top right corner. He felt Miranda’s eyes on the back of his neck. He could tell she was mad, irate even, because he could smell the subtle shift in her scent. When he breathed in that scent, it was almost like a burning. He thought she’d be mad even before he’d done it, and still, he’d sneaked back inside, and played his game. Actually, he’d not thought it—he’d known it.”

Now. Yes, there are a number of problems here, but what is the main one? It’s just telling the reader what’s happening—or rather, what little is being allowed to happen. The author isn’t relinquishing control of the scene and characters. It’s all “He did this,” then “he did that.” Not only is the sentence structure horribly bland, but it’s also completely devoid of life. Nothing is happening. Take a look again, with this in mind:

“Miranda looked at Greg. Greg knew she was watching, but he didn’t want to do anything about it. Determined to ignore her, Greg looked at the computer screen. He moved the mouse with his hand. Greg watched as the cursor moved his video game persona to the top right corner. He felt Miranda’s eyes on the back of his neck. He could tell she was man, irate even, because he could smell the subtle shift in her scent. When he breathed in that scent, it was almost like a burning. He thought she’d be mad even before he’d done it, and still, he’d sneaked back inside, and played his game. Actually, he’d not thought it—he’d known it.”

See how glaringly obvious it becomes? Who cares that the cursor moved? What does it have to do with anything? The pacing is destroyed when we, as overly-caffeinated writers all hopped up one writing The One, the Great ______(American, in my case) Novel, and in our rush to meet our wordcounts, forget what our teachers taught us. What to do, what to do?

Enter one of the other common public school English class sayings: “There are no great writers. There are only great rewriters.”

So take a big breath and get to it. Here’s a revised sample of what that original paragraph:

“Even safe and sound in front of his computer, clicking away on his video game, there were bound to be serious repercussions for Greg’s sneaking. Miranda had a way of finding things out—things that naturally pissed her off, no matter how long the perpetrator hid in his computer room. The door to the computer room creaked open, and with the steps there came a burning smell—the smell of anger. Greg was in for it now. He knew it.”

Is it pretty? Nope. Definitely not. Is the pacing right? Not yet. Is it better? Infinitely. Just part of the process. Don’t skip it! Before you send anything out, pleasepleaseplease remember what your teachers taught you!

Speaking of, what were some of the one-liners English teachers drilled in your heads?