Two Words You Can't Write in Books
I've been saving this topic for a time when and if I could come up with more than two, but I'm being hit in the head by Robert Parker's fifth Jesse Stone novel, Sea Change, and I gotta get it out of my system.
This is as good a book as the others I've read in the series. That is to say, nearly the same. But you know that going in, and if you like it, you won't be disappointed. Still, though, I was again struck by how easy it is for Jesse Stone to solve crimes. Someone always seems to turn up and offer him something that advances the case. He can brood on it for a while, maybe do something here and there outside the office, but someone else will invariably drop by and tell him something new. The crime will of course eventually be solved and Stone's so good at it that he makes it look easy to us outsiders.
He actually reminds me a lot of the character Tom Selleck played (before Magnum (I think) and way before the Jesse Stone movies) on The Rockford Files. A complete reliance on my memory and disdain for research leads me to say his name was Lance and that he was a rival P.I. to Jim Rockford. Where Rockford ground away on his cases, often not figuring out who did what or why until the end of a lot of work, much of which got him beaten up regularly, Lance would simply look for a clue, find it, and solve the case.
In one of the cases someone had thrown a set of keys out of a car window; Rockford said it would be hopeless to even look but Lance, of course, said it was nonsense. They drove to the overgrown field, Lance told Rockford where to stop the car, figured out how far the keys would have traveled, then walked straight into the field and stooped over and came up with the keys. Rockford would shake his head and look like he wanted to shoot him.
Jesse Stone solves cases almost like that. But surprisingly I digress...
Like George Carlin's 'Seven Words You Can't Say on Television,' there are words that break me out of a book just about whenever I read them. So far I've only come up with two: giggle and even (when used as an adverb).
A little kid can giggle here and there, and that's okay. The hero should never giggle. An adult should almost never giggle (unless they're skillfully doped or drunk, and then maybe only once a book). In Sea Change several characters, chiefly a set of twin sisters, giggle throughout the book. Adults don't giggle. Adults don't giggle when they speak with other adults. Sisters don't giggle when they're discussing the death of their sister, even if they're somewhat left of center. They don't do it, and others don't discuss it, throughout the entire book.
When writers say a character even does something rather than explain, or usually better yet, shows how a character can do something, I feel cheated. I'm ripped out of the narrative thinking the author couldn't be bothered to show a character's prodigiousness at a certain task, shortcutting it to something like, "Bill could do mean tongue tricks. He could tie cherry stems into square knots. He could chew ice and quote Shakespeare with the proper accent. Bill could even spit watermelon seeds and hit the eye out of a cricket." If this is coming on the heels of a set of descriptive sentences, it makes me want to scream.
So not using these words is one of my own personal writing rules. And I think each writer should make their own rules, whether or not they overlap with anyone else's. Then the only really inviolable rule, and absolutely so, is to not break the ones you set for yourself. Because then you're shortcutting, you're allowing yourself to do something you know you don't think you should do, and you hope your readers won't notice the slight.
But they do. A writer can never insult the reader and be easily forgiven, not if they want to be read again and again.
This post has turned out to be a book review, a point about language, and a theory of writing rules. Coherent or not, others must decide.
This is as good a book as the others I've read in the series. That is to say, nearly the same. But you know that going in, and if you like it, you won't be disappointed. Still, though, I was again struck by how easy it is for Jesse Stone to solve crimes. Someone always seems to turn up and offer him something that advances the case. He can brood on it for a while, maybe do something here and there outside the office, but someone else will invariably drop by and tell him something new. The crime will of course eventually be solved and Stone's so good at it that he makes it look easy to us outsiders.
He actually reminds me a lot of the character Tom Selleck played (before Magnum (I think) and way before the Jesse Stone movies) on The Rockford Files. A complete reliance on my memory and disdain for research leads me to say his name was Lance and that he was a rival P.I. to Jim Rockford. Where Rockford ground away on his cases, often not figuring out who did what or why until the end of a lot of work, much of which got him beaten up regularly, Lance would simply look for a clue, find it, and solve the case.
In one of the cases someone had thrown a set of keys out of a car window; Rockford said it would be hopeless to even look but Lance, of course, said it was nonsense. They drove to the overgrown field, Lance told Rockford where to stop the car, figured out how far the keys would have traveled, then walked straight into the field and stooped over and came up with the keys. Rockford would shake his head and look like he wanted to shoot him.
Jesse Stone solves cases almost like that. But surprisingly I digress...
Like George Carlin's 'Seven Words You Can't Say on Television,' there are words that break me out of a book just about whenever I read them. So far I've only come up with two: giggle and even (when used as an adverb).
A little kid can giggle here and there, and that's okay. The hero should never giggle. An adult should almost never giggle (unless they're skillfully doped or drunk, and then maybe only once a book). In Sea Change several characters, chiefly a set of twin sisters, giggle throughout the book. Adults don't giggle. Adults don't giggle when they speak with other adults. Sisters don't giggle when they're discussing the death of their sister, even if they're somewhat left of center. They don't do it, and others don't discuss it, throughout the entire book.
When writers say a character even does something rather than explain, or usually better yet, shows how a character can do something, I feel cheated. I'm ripped out of the narrative thinking the author couldn't be bothered to show a character's prodigiousness at a certain task, shortcutting it to something like, "Bill could do mean tongue tricks. He could tie cherry stems into square knots. He could chew ice and quote Shakespeare with the proper accent. Bill could even spit watermelon seeds and hit the eye out of a cricket." If this is coming on the heels of a set of descriptive sentences, it makes me want to scream.
So not using these words is one of my own personal writing rules. And I think each writer should make their own rules, whether or not they overlap with anyone else's. Then the only really inviolable rule, and absolutely so, is to not break the ones you set for yourself. Because then you're shortcutting, you're allowing yourself to do something you know you don't think you should do, and you hope your readers won't notice the slight.
But they do. A writer can never insult the reader and be easily forgiven, not if they want to be read again and again.
This post has turned out to be a book review, a point about language, and a theory of writing rules. Coherent or not, others must decide.
posted by Rick Ollerman at 9:09 PM
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