Writing Wednesdays: Strong Prose

So I got a really awesome question through Facebook (follow me! It's cool!) about prose, and since this is a subject I don't believe I've ever touched on here at Pretentious Title, I thought it would make a great Writing Wednesday!

Here's the question in question:

Tom Shreeve asks,

"Hi Rachel, I've been enjoying your blog for a while. What are your tips on writing strong prose? As much as I plan the content of what I'm writing on a scene by scene basis (plot, exposition, character, flavour etc) when it comes to the actual writing - at a paragraph level - I wing it, hoping everything I want to happen in the scene just happens intuitively.

At a granular, nuts and bolts level, do your paragraphs follow a particular structure? Do you break down scenes into smaller pieces? How reductive do you go? 

And how often do you find yourself rereading what you just wrote to make sure the next bit follows naturally? I do that way too often!"

I love getting questions like this because, quite frankly, I'd never really thought about this aspect of writing in quite this way before I read your question. But I've thought about it a good bit since, and I think I have an answer. Or, at least, my version of an answer.

(And Tom, I hope you don't mind that I'm answering you on the blog!)

Onward!

Writing Wednesdays: Strong Prose

I've never considered myself to be a lyrical writer. This isn't to say I think my prose is weak, but I freely admit there are authors and poets who can evoke more emotion in four sentences than I manage over an entire novel. I mean, just read this:

That is beautiful. That is writing that makes me want to write books. It's also a sort of writing that, to my eternal despair, I've never managed to create myself.

I've long since made peace with the fact that I will never join Margaret Atwood or Ursula LeGuin or any of the other great writers who elevate words to eternal artforms. But while it makes me sad to know there's something I love but can't do (I feel the same way about drawing, which I love but utterly suck at), I don't consider my inability to write deathless prose a failing.

Being able to turn a good phrase is an inescapable element of writing, but there are more paths to being a good author than just creating beautiful prose. Every writer brings their own strengths to their stories. Some are great plotters, others write amazing tension, some create characters we'd gladly read doing anything, some are just flat out hilarious, and some write beautifully, but no writer is fantastic at every single element of storytelling. We all have our "areas of growth," and part of being a mature, professional artist is understanding where our weaknesses lie and coming up with our own ways to address them.



For me, this meant focusing on the kind of writing I was good at. As a reader, I absolutely love beautiful, lyrical prose, but as a writer I knew right from the beginning that this sort of writing wasn't for me, nor was it appropriate for the kind of fun, fast, plot-driven books I wanted to write. So, instead of trying to force myself to become something I wasn't, I focused on getting better at my prose by identifying what I wanted from my writing voice.

This turned out to be the critical step for me as a new author. Author voice--the phrases we choose, the way we describe things, the manner in which we write--is the main component to creating a book's atmosphere. Cozy and Noir are both sub-genres of Mystery, but the difference in their respective tone is night and day. That tone is created by author decisions at the sentence prose level, and once you've got it, you can't stray too far without risking your book reading like it was written by two (or more) different people.

Seeing that, I decided right from the beginning to write in the voice I was most comfortable with, the voice that just came naturally when I started writing scenes in my head. This is what I now think of as "my" writing voice--conversational, funny, clear, and dramatic when necessary, because sometimes life gets serious. But just because I was using the voice that felt the most natural to me didn't mean I was free from trying to improve.

These days, I put a lot of work into making sure all my prose sounds like me. Part of this is sticking to the general rules of good writing--basic good grammar, eliminating excessive adverbs, keeping my phrases clear, not trying to get too fancy, all that Strunk and White stuff--but mostly, I try to put myself in my reader's position.

At this point, I feel I should say that I never worry about word choice on a first draft. When I'm writing a scene for the first time, my #1 concern is just getting it down. Prose polishing is a job for the edit, because everything you write in a first draft is probably going to get changed anyway. There's no point in killing yourself over detail work on a paragraph that might end up getting axed. So please, don't waste your time fussing over this stuff if your book isn't finished yet!! There will be plenty of time to add this kind of polish once you're sure all your big stuff is in the right place.

But when it is time to put the final layer of finesse on a sentence or paragraph, the questions I'm always always asking myself are, "Is this clear? Is this suitably funny/gripping/dramatic? Would my reader like this?" Beyond a basic competency level, I don't even worry about rules of good writing or sentence construction. My focus here (as in every other aspect of my writing) is entirely on reader experience.

When I'm fiddling with a paragraph, I like to picture myself standing on a stage reading it to an audience (or telling it to a friend if you have a fear of public speaking) and seeing if I can make them laugh or gasp or whatever reaction it is I'm trying to evoke. I don't write to impress them or show off my skill with words, I write to reach them, to dig past the cynicism of daily life and make them care about my story and characters. If I have to get a little sappy or cheesy (or even break a few rules of good writing) to do that, then I do it, because I'm not a great and lofty artist trying to please an invisible critic. I'm an entertainer, and if I'm not giving my reader the show they paid for, then I've failed my most important job.

There are a lot of writers out there who would say this way of writing is pandering to readers, that books should be challenging to read. These people aren't wrong, but they're not right either. The world needs all kinds of books from high lit to rolicking fun genre. There are millions upon millions of readers out there with all different tastes and demands from their fiction, which is exactly why we need so many different kinds of writers to meet those demands. There is no shame in writing fun, entertaining books with quick, funny, straightforward prose.

So if you're struggling with your prose and you don't think it's good enough for whatever reason, ask yourself--who are you writing this for? Who is your reader, and what do they want from your book? Find your person, and then write your very best, most creative prose for them. Don't ignore the basic rules of good composition, but don't become obsessed with them either. We're not trying to get a good grade from our English composition teachers here. We're trying to write good books, and that's a lot more open to interpretation than most people think.

So to actually answer Tom's question, I actually write exactly as you describe. I plot, I plan, I draft, and then I write. I don't worry about what I'm writing during the first draft because first drafts are for the big stuff. But when the story is all in the right place and I'm happy with everything, that's when I dive into my paragraphs and get all my words into the form I think will work the best for my reader, because they're the person I'm doing all this work for.

In the final run of things, if you're writing with your audience's experience first and foremost in your mind, you're already miles ahead of the pack. Just like every other aspect of writing, the secret to strong, good, narrative prose is thoughtfulness. If you take time to think about what you're writing, how best to phrase it, and how your final audience is going to react, then you're already doing the best work you can. It still may not be good enough. I still write paragraphs I'm unhappy with, but I don't let them stay. I do them again, I do them better, because writing is an evolving art.

The more we write and practice and learn what makes our voices good, the better and more sophisticated we become. The process is never finished, either. We can always become better writers so long as we never stop writing.

And thus concludes another Writing Wednesday! I hope you enjoyed it, and thank you to Tom for asking such a fun question! If you have writing questions you'd like me to answer on the blog or in private, you can write me through my website or just ask me on social media (Twitter / Facebook / Tumblr / Google+). I do new writing posts every Wednesday plus fun stuff in between (such as this post I put up on Monday about self pub numbers and money), so please subscribe to the blog or follow me on any of the social media links above for more writing shop talk, book deals, and other authorial fun!

Thank you as always for reading, and until next time, Happy Writing!

Yours always,
Rachel