Not the word

[mrissa]

I have put another library book into the return pile without reading it, and there were several reasons. (Oh, several.) But there's a particular prose tic I've seen from underedited works before, and I wanted to speak out against it:

"That was the word for it."

If you are ever, in authorial voice, using this phrase, stop and eliminate it. You are the author. You don't have to tell us that was the word for it. We only have your words for it. If you say that the love interest was brooding (please, for the love of Pete, do not say that the love interest is brooding), then following it up with some self-soothing is not the thing. "He was brooding. That was the word for it." No. Stop. Simply do not.

See also: "There was no other way to describe it." You are the author. We have to accept your descriptions (or reject the book entirely, which is, as you see, always an option). So if you say, "Her room was a mess. There was no other way to describe it," well, I immediately think of other ways to describe it. There are lots, actually. There are hardly any things in this universe with only one way to describe them. Even lone electrons have both position and momentum, not to mention charge and mass and like that. They can be described in many ways. So can your characters. Telling me there was no other way to describe it will simply make me wonder why you need to reassure yourself so.

Even in character voice, this should be used sparingly--but the character, at least, has some excuse to be a wibbling doofus. You do not.

Comments

[desperance.livejournal.com]

the character, at least, has some excuse to be a wibbling doofus. You do not.

Hee. *steals that phrase, for his students*

Did you ever read "On Cooking The First Hero In Spring", by Ian Watson? Short story from the mid-70s, where (I might be making this up - it's 35 years ago! - but my memory says) everything on the alien planet was so amorphous and changeable the dominant language only had one word: you could (I think) say that a thing existed, here and now. That was it. So, yup. That was the word for it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My cousin knew a toddler whose world was like that. Instead of asking, "Do you want milk or water?", his mother would always ask, "Do you want this or that?" Further, she would always put the parentally desirable choice in the first position. So the only word the kid learned to say was, "that," because it covered all his needs. Everything he wanted was that.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Preach it!

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

Word up.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

"It was a...a lightning bug. That was the word for it!"

[genarti]

Indeed.

[also-huey.livejournal.com]

I think you're missing the obvious use for both of these: irony. For instance

"The room was tragically festooned with innumerable stuffed opossums and other various opossum-related tchochkes. Possumtastic, that was the word for it."

or

"The noise level was quieter than that of Free Vuvuzela Day at a South African World Cup qualifier that was also giving promotional-rate tickets to the hard of hearing. That was the only way to describe it."

The moral is this: never be afraid to put your underwear on your head.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

See, the above examples strike me as putting your underwear on your head and then saying, "Hello, everyone! I have put my underwear on my head! I just hoped you noticed!"

[p-j-cleary.livejournal.com]

I am sad that nobody comments when I wear my underwear on my head.

[also-huey.livejournal.com]

Maybe different underwear?

[also-huey.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah. I mean, on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog, or wearing underwear on your head, or both. You have to write sentences that make people think "Y'know, that sentence sounds like it was written by someone with their underwear on their head. Possibly a dog, even."

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

(How. How in the heck do you know Mrissa when you also know Misquoted? Unpossible. I know how you know Heidi. But not Mris. Iiiiiit's a small world after allllll)

I don't know when it started...

[freelikebeer.livejournal.com]

but I frequently have to stop and amend myself. It have the bad habit qualifying and interpreting what I think is important for the reader. [I just edited that to nix the passive voice]. If it isn't clear, rewrite it, no?

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I think it would work brilliantly in the POV of a precocious eight year old proud of her vocabulary:

It was nocturnal and had a long nose, and although she'd never seen one before she'd seen its silhouette in innumerable alphabet books. It was an aardvark. That was the word for it. And it was sitting on the architrave, admiring the architecture. She jotted it down, then stopped and chewed her pencil. Would "adding up the architecture" be better? She looked back. The aardvark smiled at the curlicues of the Georgian ceiling. Aunt Augusta always said they gathered dust, but the aardvark clearly admired them. She underlined the words "Admiring the architecture." That was the only way to describe it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't call that in authorial voice, though. And it's the sort of thing I would use for establishing that narrative voice and then back off of fairly quickly, because if every paragraph has those qualifiers in it, they may be authentic to the reactions of an 8-year-old of that personality type, but they'll also bog down the story.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

* It was probably actually a tapir. People often mistake them for aardvarks, and, as aardvarks generally are disdainful of anything above ground, an aardvark would be much more believable if it were contemplating the catacombs.

[seabream.livejournal.com]

:)

sorry for doing that.

[biguglymandoll.livejournal.com]

Wibbling doofus. Yep, that was the word for it.

Thank you for making me giggle!

[luyistew.livejournal.com]

Very intereresting reading. thx