The Right Word
Mar. 13th, 2016 04:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepenny[Storytellers Unplugged, December 7, 2008; found via the Wayback Machine by an awesome reader]
(In penance for having forgotten to post on my assigned day two months in a row, I’m taking Elizabeth Bear’s day so she can have a vacation.)
(Also, I feel like I need to issue a disclaimer. I’m very woolly-headed today, in a fatigued and megrim-ridden fashion. So I’m gonna do my best here, but if I’m more than usually incoherent, I apologize.)
A question from a reader of my blog:
I don’t know if this is concrete enough for a whole post or if you may have already done something similar, but–one of the things that I simultaneously admire greatly and envy the crap out of is your facility with evoking atmosphere. Do you have a specific spot in the drafting process when you do that–like a late draft thing–or is the tone/mood/atmosphere of the place your characters are (mentally and physically) something that is present for you from the time you start drafting? Is it word choice, or rhythm, or all of the above.
I don’t know if that question even makes sense. But the mood and atmosphere of your settings and situations always seems so tangible and right for the story at that point–you evoke dread, or oppression, or chaos, longing, sadness, etc., so well and it’s something I struggle with.
I’ve been thinking about this question, and thinking about this question, in my current glum and woolly-headed fashion, and I think the answer has to be word choice. I think this because atmosphere is not something I set out consciously to evoke (in fact, if you’d asked me, I would have said I did it badly). It certainly isn’t something I go back and put in. And that means it’s something I do as I’m writing, as an integral part of the writing process. And that means that it’s down, very simply, to the words.
I’m reading right now a book called Buffalo Bill’s America: William Cody and the Wild West Show, by Louis S. Warren. It’s a very interesting book, and by and large it’s a good book, but Warren has a glitch, a tic that I wish to goodness somebody had edited out for him: he has a tendency to use the almost right word.
(I saw this a lot when I was teaching college English, where it was symptomatic of students trying to make their writing look sophisticated. The thesaurus is a false friend.)
The clearest example is in his discussion of Dracula, where he says, “He [Dracula] prevails first upon Lucy Westenra” (Warren 329). Now, prevails is not entirely the wrong word. Warren’s meaning is discernible, and you may have to stare at the sentence for a moment or two before you can figure out why it doesn’t sound quite right. But prevails is also not the right word. You prevail upon someone when you get them to do something for you--a favor, especially of the more tedious kind. The connotations of the word, of imposing your will on another person, are not unlike vampirism. But there’s still a palpable gap between Mina prevails upon Lucy to lend her her favorite hat, and Dracula “prevails” upon Lucy to become a vampire. The almost right word is still wrong.
(And I shall now prevail upon Mark Twain to support my contention: “The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter–it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”)
So I obsess over word choice. I fiddle and fuss. I tend (as my writing partner, Elizabeth Bear, can attest) to overload my sentences with adjectives in draft, trying to find exactly the right one. I get very stubborn with copy-editors about not changing my obscure word for a more familiar one. I read my drafts aloud when I can, listening for rhythm, for inadvertent rhymes, for repetition. The words are the vehicle for the story, but for me, they’re also an end in themselves. I mostly don’t write poetry, because I can’t easily get the metaphors packed densely enough to warrant it, but I approach prose with something of the same spirit, with the belief that no word should be allowed to coast or waffle or be almost good enough, that if you use a word, it should be because it’s the right word.
Like building a wall without mortar. It’s all in choosing and placing the stones.
(I’m not sure that really answers the question. But it’s the only thing I can point to and explain. I don’t know how I evoke atmosphere. I do know how I use words.)
(In penance for having forgotten to post on my assigned day two months in a row, I’m taking Elizabeth Bear’s day so she can have a vacation.)
(Also, I feel like I need to issue a disclaimer. I’m very woolly-headed today, in a fatigued and megrim-ridden fashion. So I’m gonna do my best here, but if I’m more than usually incoherent, I apologize.)
A question from a reader of my blog:
I don’t know if this is concrete enough for a whole post or if you may have already done something similar, but–one of the things that I simultaneously admire greatly and envy the crap out of is your facility with evoking atmosphere. Do you have a specific spot in the drafting process when you do that–like a late draft thing–or is the tone/mood/atmosphere of the place your characters are (mentally and physically) something that is present for you from the time you start drafting? Is it word choice, or rhythm, or all of the above.
I don’t know if that question even makes sense. But the mood and atmosphere of your settings and situations always seems so tangible and right for the story at that point–you evoke dread, or oppression, or chaos, longing, sadness, etc., so well and it’s something I struggle with.
I’ve been thinking about this question, and thinking about this question, in my current glum and woolly-headed fashion, and I think the answer has to be word choice. I think this because atmosphere is not something I set out consciously to evoke (in fact, if you’d asked me, I would have said I did it badly). It certainly isn’t something I go back and put in. And that means it’s something I do as I’m writing, as an integral part of the writing process. And that means that it’s down, very simply, to the words.
I’m reading right now a book called Buffalo Bill’s America: William Cody and the Wild West Show, by Louis S. Warren. It’s a very interesting book, and by and large it’s a good book, but Warren has a glitch, a tic that I wish to goodness somebody had edited out for him: he has a tendency to use the almost right word.
(I saw this a lot when I was teaching college English, where it was symptomatic of students trying to make their writing look sophisticated. The thesaurus is a false friend.)
The clearest example is in his discussion of Dracula, where he says, “He [Dracula] prevails first upon Lucy Westenra” (Warren 329). Now, prevails is not entirely the wrong word. Warren’s meaning is discernible, and you may have to stare at the sentence for a moment or two before you can figure out why it doesn’t sound quite right. But prevails is also not the right word. You prevail upon someone when you get them to do something for you--a favor, especially of the more tedious kind. The connotations of the word, of imposing your will on another person, are not unlike vampirism. But there’s still a palpable gap between Mina prevails upon Lucy to lend her her favorite hat, and Dracula “prevails” upon Lucy to become a vampire. The almost right word is still wrong.
(And I shall now prevail upon Mark Twain to support my contention: “The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter–it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”)
So I obsess over word choice. I fiddle and fuss. I tend (as my writing partner, Elizabeth Bear, can attest) to overload my sentences with adjectives in draft, trying to find exactly the right one. I get very stubborn with copy-editors about not changing my obscure word for a more familiar one. I read my drafts aloud when I can, listening for rhythm, for inadvertent rhymes, for repetition. The words are the vehicle for the story, but for me, they’re also an end in themselves. I mostly don’t write poetry, because I can’t easily get the metaphors packed densely enough to warrant it, but I approach prose with something of the same spirit, with the belief that no word should be allowed to coast or waffle or be almost good enough, that if you use a word, it should be because it’s the right word.
Like building a wall without mortar. It’s all in choosing and placing the stones.
(I’m not sure that really answers the question. But it’s the only thing I can point to and explain. I don’t know how I evoke atmosphere. I do know how I use words.)
