Monday, January 18, 2010
Bobbleheaditis
For those of you who haven’t heard me yammer on about this, I’m working on my MFA in genre fiction at a school in Pittsburgh. And this semester, I asked for a new adviser for my thesis, as I wanted to be challenged more.
I’m starting to understand the funny looks I got when saying that, as perhaps I didn’t want to be this challenged. But there’s one comment he had about my writing that’s really stuck out to me. And since it’s been filling my head, I now get to share it with you.
In the opening ten pages of my WIP, there’s a lot of dialog. And interspersed with all this dialog is apparently a lot of nodding. A lot of nodding. As in, seventeen nods in ten pages. He counted.
His comment: “Congratulations, your characters have officially turned into bobbleheads.” Yikes! Then, to get him really worked up, I tried to convey one character’s shock, awe, and excitement by saying, “She blinked up at him.”
Now, in my defense, this sentence is used in a good percentage of fiction to convey shock (though, oddly, in a writing program, “but everybody else uses that sentence” isn’t a good defense J). He wrote in the margin: “She doesn’t blink. She reacts like a bloodhound who just caught the scent of a fresh kill.”
Now that creates an image in my head! With only that one sentence, I saw her entire upper body straighten, her eyes zero in on her new target, her shock quickly being replaced by the new pulse of excitement. Hell, she almost licks her lips in my head.
So I decided to take his advice and try this again. I have a boring piece of description: “The reporters swarmed the car as we drove away.” Not a terrible sentence. Swarm is a good verb that evokes something about reporters. But there’s no real image evoked, and certainly no emotion. So I tried again, and here’s what I came up with:
Through the tinted windows, reporter’s faces, their mouths frantically gaping, bobbed and hovered next to the window before being replaced by the next face in line, their microphones stretched out to the car like lifelines.
It was an inverted fish bowl. I was safely cocooned in the bowl; they were the dying, gasping fish, hoping my story could save them.
“You did good.”
The car pulled away, leaving the fish to flop on the pavement. Yeah, I’d done real well.
Still not perfect – the writing itself is rough – but there’s an image there. Does it evoke any emotion for you? Any mental pictures? Any suggestions for improvement?
So let’s hear it wenches! Who wants to fess up to the same bobbleheaditis I was suffering from? Anybody willing to give this a try? Take a plain piece of description, and let’s see what you can do to make it pop!
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20 comments:
My characters always frown or scowl. And I think mine might nod a lot too.
I like your examples. I need to keep this in mind moving forward, I think. I love the fish bowl image. Very good.
:)
PS, there's something seriously wrong about that fish bowl cartoon but I can't pinpoint it....
Hi, I'm 2nd Chance and I'm a grinner. Yes, my characters tend ta grin, a lot. And yes, they wink and blink, too. Noddin'!? Not so much, though they do tend ta look away, pause and change topic ubruptly.
I will strive ta do better fer them. Though not likely in the first draft, when I'm speed writin'...but I do tend ta notice these things when I revisit scenes...
I be describin' crowds in a new flash piece and they tend ta throng a lot... ;)
I am guilty of both smiling and nodding. (I'll have to check out the blinking, too.) Is it even worse to modify smiles and nods (since there are so few other ways to express those actions) with adverbs?
I have tried to look for alternatives in a lot of places, of course, and I'm becoming very cognizant of both, but CPs always help!
(My feed reader said this was by Marnee and I was shocked she hadn't told me about her MFA. But now I see it was Hal's post. Either way, I have another friend who loved that program. Her thesis became her first published novel [it came out last Jan], and she has her fourth and fifth books coming out in a few months. She's been busy!)
Marn, I'm trying to keep it in mind as well, as I go forward, but I think it'll kick in better during revisions. It's hard to remember all this stuff in the first draft. It's all I can do to keep the characters straight at this point :)
And yeah, the cartoon is so wrong. I loved it *g*
I loved the cartoon too. I think we're both just wrong. LOL!!
Jordan! Hi!! I haven't started my MFA. Girl, I can barely keep my head above water being super-mom and writer extraordinaire. :)
Grinning! I do that too! I agree, Chance, that this is really more of a revisions thing than a spew-it-out-first-draft kind of thing.
Jordan's CP are fabulous for spotting stuff like this! I never spot it in my own writing.
Who did you know who went through this program? That's awesome - I think it's a great program. I've already seen an improvement in my own writing. But man, is it intense!
Aye, that cartoon is so black, it shines.
Wish I'd gone ta the presentation fer this degree when at RT in Pittsburgh. Sounds really interestin'... And wish there were somethin' like it on the West Coast...
Ha! Probably is, I jus' have no idea where ta look fer it!
actually, Chance, there isn't. most MFA programs are in literary creative writing. There's only one other that allows genre writing (that I could find) and it's in Maine.
We actually have a lot of people fly in from the west coast. though they usually have to fly in a day earlier to deal with the time difference!
I had to eliminate a lot of grins in TLWH, Chance, and I had to find some other way to express my hero's pain from an injury than having "pain radiating up his arm."
Hal, are you at Seton Hall? Some romance writer whose categories I loved in years past was an adjunct in that program the last I heard. Her name escapes me at the moment. I'm sure I'll recall it when I'm in the middle of something else.
Well, fiddle! Hey, maybe me personal economics will improve enough to consider that sort of commute in the future! I do have a friend I made at RT who lives in Pittsburgh...
OK, gonna show me ignorance... What does MFA stand fer?
Hal - I just checked my "ready to be submitted" manuscript, and only found six nods in the first three chapters, but now it seems like a lot. Re-write tonight!
I love the description of the reporters around the car. In your studies, have you found a formula for how often in a book we can use that much metaphorical description without turning the book into a purple prose disaster?
I don't even want to think about this! I'm struggling through the first draft still and just this weekend included "she looked up at him and blinked."
I'm going to have to review all these awesome blogs for the revision stage if....strike that...when I finish this darn first draft.
MFA = Master of Fine Arts (I had to look it up. *g*)
And I just went to see the Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus. Talk about WEIRD, but amazingly creative. It's like Baz Luhrmann...on acid.
Thanks, Terrio! Hmmm, so a Master of Fine Arts would need ta first follow a Bachelor of something else... Not going ta happen, I'm not going back for that much schoolin'!
First drafts always look like that! Nodding, blinking, grinning, head tilting... But sometimes the simpler way is the only way that says what you want to say. Adding more be great, but I do think ya have ta be careful not ta do it every time.
I have ta watch it wit' metaphores. I save me mania fer them...and use them when I blog. ;)
Well, I found lots of bobbleheaditis, but better yet, I actually opened the document to look! First time in a week I think. So what I like best about this blog is the prompt to go looking...once I was there I actually worked on a paragraph and then a few more. Hey...I've been tricked. *LOL* I like that though. Seriously, it's a perfect small way to get started.
Well, Hal is a pirate...trickery be part a' the job description.
I once did a search for "blush." Holy cow, my heroine was pink from head to toe for 400 pages.
I'm sorry for not updating for 2 years. Computer and software maitenance is NOT a gift of mine.
I'm also sorry for being unable to comment yesterday because I managed to get a worm on my computer that has put my computer out of commission. (See above.)
As for my characters, they grin. All the time. Even the scowlers grin. I'll have some professorly non-socialized bloke for a hero, and invariably, he'll start flirting and grinning like a rake in the middle of the scene even though he is the least like rake you'll ever meet.
My characters also love to give "Gimlet stares."
Better description and metaphor WOULD serve us much better. *LOL*
I think it was contagious Hellie - our internet went down for most of the day yesterday.....grrrrr....
Laura - you bring up a good point about balance. There is a fine line, isn't there? But no, I have no idea what that line is. I just figure my CP's will slap me when I cross it :)
Melissa - I'm sneaky like that. Congrats for opening!!
Maggie - blushing! I have a CP who does this (no worries, I'm not calling out somebody on here :) ). I tease her about it on a regular basis.
Hellie - I do love flirtatious men, but I could see how the sudden metamorphosis could be disconcerting. Though it makes for an awesome character arc! So....on the chance this makes me sound like a huge idiot...what's a gimlet stare?
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