"somehow"

[truepenny]

"Somehow" is the weaseliest of weasel words.

The Turkey City Lexicon categorizes it under Fuzz: An element of motivation the author was too lazy to supply. The word "somehow" is a useful tip-off to fuzzy areas of a story. "Somehow she had forgotten to bring her gun."

And it isn't necessarily just motivations that "somehow" can be substituted for. It can also stand in for feats the author doesn't know how the character could have pulled off: "Somehow Superman freed himself from the kryptonite handcuffs." Or for secondary characters and antagonists doing three-quarters of the author's work for them while conveniently off-stage: "Somehow the Balrog had heard about Gandalf's weakness for chocolate liqueurs." And so on.

Moreover, "somehow" isn't limited to fiction. The book I'm currently reading, Angus Fletcher's Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode (Cornell UP, 1964), has this shining example in the middle of Fletcher's trying to explain why he can claim genre fiction (mysteries, westerns, and science fiction) as allegorical without having to do all the tiresome, degrading work of, you know, proving it: "But somehow the literal surface suggests a peculiar doubleness of intention" (7). "Somehow" here translates to "because I said so."

Which is its real meaning in fiction as well.

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I disagree, I think; at least in third limited, "somehow" seems to me to have a legitimate use to communicate the viewpoint character not getting what just happened. Blurring at the "somehow" level between author and reader, I agree with you on, but not as a POV issue.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

This is exact, but let's be positive here; sometimes it's a useful diagnostic tool, rather than a fault. If you find you used the word in an early draft, or even if you're at the keyboard and feel yourself being pulled actively towards the word, it's a safe sign that your thinking is still fuzzy on this point of plot or motivation or whatever. It's only reprehensible when it gets into print (as in your final example above, which is (a) shocking and (b) all too common).

But really I just wanted to say thanks for pointing me at the Turkey City Lexicon, which I hadn't come across before...

[xjenavivex.livejournal.com]

my son would say that goes with maybe and "we'll see"

[libskrat]

There's also an ironical, responsibility-deflecting use of "somehow" that I like to read. "Gee, somehow this highly useful frannistan just happens to be in my pocket rather than yours!" "Gee, somehow I'm all over moss-troll ichor!" When everybody knows how it happened but nobody wants to say it.

Spanish has a weird semi-passive se construction ("se me olvidó la bolsa") that gets this and similar notions across marvelously, but English doesn't really have a matching syntax. The closest we get is the weasel-worded "mistakes were made," but the Spanish construction doesn't have quite the weasel-wordy connotation.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

In the modern era, we do not need "somehow" at all. We have the underpants gnomes (cf. South Park) instead. In addition to delivering clean underpants to your underwear drawer, they will discover new laws of physics, derive exciting magical problem-solving incantations, and help a hero who has had the everliving crap beaten out of him stand up and run miles without vomiting.

They're amazingly useful.

[aranel.livejournal.com]

When I use "somehow" in criticism, I tend to use it as a signpost for "hm, this is puzzling, let's look closer at it, shall we?" I think it's only a problem when the critic stops at "somehow author does x" and doesn't proceed from "author seems to me to be doing x" to "let's try to figure out how."

[jim0052.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, though, it works. Somehow. :-)

=====

There's a place for us,
A time and place for us.
Hold my hand and we're halfway there.
Hold my hand and I'll take you there.
Somehow,
Some day,
Somewhere!

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

and then of course there is the additional problem of writing epiphanies. :-P

Because, sometimes, you just know something.

Somehow.