“Two Excited Men Trudged Up”

Most “prizes” for bad writing, such as the Bad Sex in Fiction Award and the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, “reward” labyrinthine, clause- and adjective-festered prose. I propose that we come up with an award for worst simple sentence. After all, anyone can write poorly by heaping modifiers atop modifiers. But just as it’s generally tougher to write short than to write long, conjuring up in a handful of words a sentence that makes the reader lift his head up from a book and moan “What the …?” requires a special talent.

(Yes, I’m aware that with this post I’m leaving myself wide open to Muphry’s Law. Go on, buy a copy of my book Beyond Billicombe and have at me. )

One of my nominees for what I'm calling the WTF Awards cropped up in a book I read in April, yet I still remember the sentence eight months later. The protagonist is running from a murderous psycho (of course) in some sort of underground tunnel lined with stone busts and other sculptures: “The next instant, the great stone head plopped down on Lucas with a sickening crunch.”

Would a heavy stone sculpture, one weighty enough to make a “sickening crunch” upon landing, “plop”? A pebble might plop into a pond; I definitely plop onto a chair at the end of a crazed workday. I don’t think that, say, the head of Michelangelo’s David would plop onto a passing Florentine were an earthquake to strike the city.

My other nominee is even shorter: “Two excited men trudged up.” Remove “excited” from that sentence. You’re picturing two tired, maybe dusty, probably stoop-shouldered men, silent save for their heavy panting, barely making their way up. Now focus on just the first three words of the sentence, “Two excited men.” These men are chattering or yelling, their words tumbling one atop the other; gesturing; hopping from one foot to the next. If you’re excited, you aren’t trudging. If you’re trudging, you aren’t excited.

How does this happen? In the first instance, the author might have been trying her darnedest to avoid a pedestrian verb such as fell. In the second, um, maybe the author doesn’t know the meaning of trudge?

Regardless, those ill-chosen words yank the reader from the scene and shatter the illusion that the fictional world is a real one. They also make me doubt that the authors themselves fully imagined the scenes they were describing. 

For all the grief that Edward Bulwer-Lytton gets, it was clear that he saw and heard the scenes he described. Take the much-maligned opening of his novel Paul Clifford, the first phrase of which has been immortalized by Snoopy: “It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

I’ll take that over excited trudging any day.

Do you have any sentences you’d like to nominate for the WTF Awards? If so, post them in the comments section below. (Hopefully I’m not responsible for any of them…)    

Love My Dog, Love My Protagonist

My daughter had just turned eight when we moved to England several years ago, and while she made a few good friends right away, she had difficulty penetrating the cliques that are a part of grade school. When I heard that she was spending lunchtimes not in the schoolyard playing with her classmates but inside with one of the teachers, I was indignant, probably more so than she. How could the other girls and boys not want to play with her? How could they not appreciate how fun she is, how funny, how athletic, how smart? 

I wasn’t filled with the anger that accompanied the one time she was taunted (a boy called her pancake face, which is apparently a disparaging term for an Asian; my daughter was the only non-Indian Asian—not to mention the only American and the only Jew—in the entire school; she and the boy eventually became, if not friends, friendly). Instead I ached with a quiet mournfulness.

Now that I’m submitting my latest manuscript to agents, I ache in the same way for my character Steve.

Steve is one of the two narrators of 100 Days, the novel I’m shopping around. He is also one of the two narrators of the novel I wrote before Beyond Billicombe (which, by the way, is available as a paperback and a Kindle ebook). That I wrote a second novel about Steve without managing to get representation for the first one shows how much I love the character. (Or it shows how absolutely pig-headed and impractical I am—your call.)

Steve is a young man from Devon who suffers from undifferentiated schizophrenia. The first book tells of his budding friendship with a visiting writer and his move to London. 100 Days picks up five years later, as he is hospitalized for a suicide attempt and a psychotic break following his first romantic relationship.

Of course, I don’t love Steve as fiercely as I do my daughter. But I think it’s fair to say that I adore him as much as I do my dog, a statement that may sound odd to those who don’t have a pet but one that surely makes sense to those who do. Just as I want everyone who meets my dog (that's him in the photo above) to acknowledge how cute, how sweet, how irresistible he is, I want everyone who reads about Steve to admire his self-deprecating wit, his gutsiness, his determination.

So it hurts me when agents read the first few pages of 100 Days and reply along the lines of, It’s well written, but it’s not for us; I just don’t love it enough to represent it.

How can you not love Steve?

So in keeping with the fiction writer’s mantra of “show, don’t tell,” I’m including the first chapter of 100 Days below. Would anyone like to read more? 

Chapter 1

Steve

This time I’m going to do it right. No half-arsed slicing and dicing with a butter knife in a public toilet. No overdose of pills that makes you wish you were dead without actually doing the trick. No noose around a clothes rack that’s too rickety to support the weight and comes crashing down before you even have the chance to kick the chair away.

            First, I lock the bedroom door. Next, barricade it with my nightstand. Then the pills, every one of them I have, except the ones for my high blood pressure and that. They wouldn’t be much good, would they? I wash them down, two and four at a time, with straight vodka. Like I said, I’m not taking any chances this time.

            It feels good to focus. To have something to focus on. For the past few weeks, since getting out of hospital, or even since landing back in hospital before then, everything’s been blurred. Like those paintings that look like a landscape when you’re standing a meter away but when you get up close are nothing but dots. Sometimes I can barely make out where I am, what’s surrounding me. What all the colors are supposed to be. What all the shadows are from. But now everything is clearer than it’s ever been. The lettering on some of my pills. The grain of the wood on the floor planks, each lazy curve. Each tiny point of the knife along its edge, winking at me. A friendly wink.

            By the fifth or seventh mouthful, I’m having a tough time forcing the pills down, even with the vodka easing the way. Last time I didn't take the pills in one fell swoop. Just shoveled down a few here and there when I remembered. Though last time I don’t think I was trying to kill myself. I didn’t have my shit together enough to have a goal, really, other than to shut up the mumbles and stop thinking. About Diandra, and everything else.

Harder and harder to swallow. Even though after all these years I’m a dab hand at pill-taking. Just about the only skill I have, isn’t it? Though as Cat would say, that and fifty cents will get you a cup of coffee—not even, she adds whenever she uses that expression.

            Woozy. Filmy. Hope to hell I don’t sick the pills up. Grit your teeth, hiss the mumbles. Swallow, you arsewipe, swallow. For fuck’s sake, surely you can do this right. I thought I’d drowned the mumbles once and for all back in December, during the bender that landed me in hospital and now here. But they’re back. Or maybe it’s their ghosts.

            Now, the steak knife. I swiped it from the kitchen. The knives are supposed to be in one of the locked drawers, so only the staff can get to them. But you know what care staff are like. You can’t blame them for getting sloppy. They’re paid, what, eight quid an hour? Besides, it’s been so quiet here in the house, at least in the weeks since I arrived. No real fights. Most everyone agreeing to take their meds when they’re supposed to, coming to group more or less on time, all but one or two showering regularly. Julia’s the most troublesome of us, and she’s half-catatonic five days out of seven, so the main issue with her is getting her to actually eat and to use the toilet instead of pissing and shitting herself.

            So I’ve got the steak knife, and I’m tying around my arm a scrap of an old T-shirt I’d ripped up last night. Tying it above the elbow. Like they do before taking blood, so that the veins on the inside of my left arm pop right up to the surface. Nurses have a hard time taking blood from me, seeing as I’ve got so much scarring on my wrists and arms. I don’t want to have a hard time cutting myself open. Especially not the way my fingers are growing thicker and harder to manipulate. That’s a good word, manipulate. Cat buys me these word-a-day calendars every year, which is where I picked up that one.

            Fuck Cat, snarl the mumbles. The mumbles, so the doctors say, aren’t coming from anywhere but instead my head. Most times I agree with them, the doctors, I mean. But when the mumbles start chanting Fuck Cat, fuck the bitch, I have to doubt what the doctors say. Because while I may have a lot of crazy thoughts, I’d never think something like Fuck Cat. She’s pretty much all I’ve got.

Though I don’t really even have her.

            I press the serrated edge of the knife against my wrist. I can’t feel it. Can’t even feel the knife in the grip of my hands, my fingers curled around its handle. Not until I’ve been watching a gorgeous pure red, gleaming rivulet of blood trickle down my arm, in no hurry as it glides toward my elbow, do I realize I’ve actually cut through.

            It’s so wet, the blood, so bright. So clean. The way it pulses so slowly, it really is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

            And right now it’s pretty much all I can see. Everything around it has constricted. I’m not even sure if I’m still slicing away.

            I finally know what it’s like to be completely happy. No worries, nothing to fear. My eyelids close, but I can still see the blood. Nothing but blood. Not even my arm anymore. I’m floating on the blood, and it’s floating me away.

Features and Benefits, Telling and Showing

It’s not often that catalog copy blows me away—and let’s face it, it’s not supposed to. It’s supposed to persuade you to pull out your credit card and make a purchase. But the copy for the latest Lands’ End catalog impressed me by exemplifying how effectively and easily copy can balance features and benefits.

Most catalog and online copy seems to emphasize product features: The dress has an empire waist; the table is made of kiln-dried wood; the drill has 195 inch-pounds of torque. That’s certainly important information. And if the consumer is somewhat knowledgeable about the product category, that along with the imagery may be enough info to close the sale.

But let’s say the consumer doesn't know whether an empire waistline best suits her figure, or that kiln-dried wood is less likely to warp and shrink than other wood, or just how much torque she needs for the projects she has in mind (clearly I have no idea about how much torque is the right amount of torque, which is why I’m being so vague here).

This is where the copy needs to focus on the benefits. Instead of simply stating “This dress has an empire waist,” you could show the benefit of said feature by writing something like “The flattering empire waist helps elongate the figure.” Ah, says the 5'2" shopper to herself, that dress will make me look taller and thinner—I’m sold.

Just as important, the 5'11" shopper says to herself, That schmatte will make me look like a beanpole; now I know to avoid empire waists altogether. Thank you, Ms. Copywriter. Why is preventing this sale just as important as closing the previous sale? Because it saves your company from having to accept a return for a product the shopper ordered and hated or, worse, losing that customer altogether because of her disappointment with the product.

(And yes, I’m aware no one in the history of humanity has ever thought or uttered the phrase “Thank you, Ms. Copywriter,” but a copywriter can dream, can’t she?)

Here are a few examples of how Lands’ End explains benefits in the context of features to drive a sale:

Princess seams sweep from the bodice into diagonal welt pockets that add a slimming element to the skirt. And the ponté fabric is structured yet soft. So it even smooths lumps and bumps. (Not that you have any.) I couldn’t tell you what a princess seam is, but who cares: It'll help me look slimmer, which is what I really need to know.

[The tee-shirts’] all-cotton knit fabric has ultra-fine ribs. Barely visible to the naked eye, those ribs give these tees exactly the right amount of body and shape. So they’re never clingy, never sheer, never skimpy. So a ribbed shirt will hold its shape and won't cling to my bra straps or nipples? Well, that’s definitely worth shelling out a few bucks more for.

And that’s just the sku/product copy. The Lands’ End catalog also judiciously uses callouts that even more explicitly connect the feature to the benefit. For instance: What makes piqué cool? The fabric has thousands of tiny vents. Which makes our Piqué Polo sort of like wearable air conditioning. As someone who breaks into a sweat as soon as the temps climb into the 60s (sadly, I’m not exaggerating), I’m dog-earring every page of the catalog with items made of piqué.

Granted, with products that are nonessential or purely decorative, it can be tougher to isolate the benefits. But every product has ’em. 

Take a 12" blue glass vase. Because it’s glass, it would make a great weapon for clobbering a burglar should your life come to resemble a Chuck Jones cartoon. But most retailers, alas, would shy away from that sort of benefit. So for this sort of product I might write that it will add color and height to a tablescape, for instance, or will brighten a room even when flowers are in short supply.

Okay, it’s not brilliant. But it’s better than one of my pet peeves, which I come across all the time: the loading up of adjectives in lieu of substance. Don’t tell me that the vase is “striking, eye-catching, and lovely”—there’s a photo, and I’ll be the judge of whether the vase in it is indeed any or all of those things.

Novice fiction writers are constantly admonished to “show, not tell.” You could say that emphasizing features is telling, while explaining benefits is showing. Contrary to what those writing teachers say, you can’t avoid telling altogether in a work of fiction; sometimes you have to move things along with a simple "For two months the fugitives remained absent" (Wuthering Heights) or "she said." But you do often need to show as a way to get the reader/consumer to buy what you’re telling and selling, whether it’s the prowess of a protagonist or the suitability of a vase. 

Querying the Query

“Dying is easy. Comedy is hard”—attributed to Edmund Kean.

Writing a novel is easy. Writing a query letter is hard.

Okay, easy isn’t perhaps accurate in describing writing fiction. But it’s sure as hell less effort, and much more rewarding and pleasurable, than writing query letters designed to interest agents in your book.

Having met my self-imposed deadline to have my work in progress, tentatively titled 100 Days, ready for submission to agents by New Year’s, I’m now struggling with the query letter. This is the sixth book for which I’ve written a query, so you’d think I'd be somewhat nonchalant about the task. But while I did have an agent for my first three novels, the two I wrote subsequently, some two decades later, were never picked up. I received requests for pages and full manuscripts, so I guess my queries weren’t complete failures. But all the same, summarizing a 30-chapter novel into 250 enticing, alluring words is, for me, a minuet of self-doubt and angst.

When writing 100 Days (and my other novels), I didn’t worry about pleasing anyone but me and of serving anyone but the characters. With the query letter, though, I have to home in on what will make a complete stranger, one who reads for a living with an eye for commercial prospects, want to try to sell my book to editors who read for a living with an eye for commercial prospects. And in the past, the lack of commercial prospects was the primary reason agents and editors gave for not taking on my books.

I should take consolation that the agents and editors who rejected by books never denigrated, and usually praised, my writing. But the book I recently self-published, Beyond Billicombe, was to my mind commercial: It could be considered a genre (mystery); it had as a protagonist a young Hollywood actress; it took place primarily in a setting that was somewhat off the beaten track (north Devon, England) but not disorientingly foreign; it was compact (73,000 words).

100 Days, on the other hand… Well, here’s where my query stands so far:

After slicing his wrists and overdosing on pills and vodka, 27-year-old schizophrenic Steve finds himself in hell—or is it a hospital? Yes, it’s a hospital, but as far as Steve’s concerned, it might as well be hell. So once he realizes that his latest suicide attempt failed, he persuades his friend and guardian, Cat, to kill him in 100 days unless he changes his mind. But does she actually agree to this, or is it just another of Steve’s delusions? And will Steve recover enough to decide he doesn’t want to die after all?

My 68,000-word novel 100 Days recounts Steve’s breakdown, the events leading up to it, and his unsteady steps toward functionality, in sometimes conflicting first-person narratives from both Steve and Cat that combine fear and sadness with surprising humor. While committed to a London hospital and struggling to differentiate reality from psychosis, past from present, Steve recalls his relationship with his girlfriend Diandra and its sudden end. At the same time, Cat races to help Steve become the fully functioning, engaging man he had been prior to this latest breakdown even as he continues counting down to the day when he expects her to put an end to his life.

My own husband has already informed me that he won’t be reading it; he “doesn’t do” books about mental illness. (Given that it took him eight months to get around to finishing Beyond Billicombe, one could argue that he “doesn’t do” books written by wife, full stop.)

What do you think? Does the query grab you? Should I mention that it has a more-or-less happy ending? Is 100 Days something you’d like to read?