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.