Category Archives: Writing and Editing

Writing and Editing

Things I Don’t Want to Read About: The Bored Character

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James sighed in exasperation as the presenter at the conference droned on and on in her flat monotone. He wasn’t even taking in anything she was saying anymore. God, how bored he was. In fact, he couldn’t remember when he’d last been so excruciatingly bored. He drummed his fingers on his desk restlessly to try to amuse himself, but it didn’t help. All he could think about was that he wished desperately he was not in the auditorium listening to the dullest presentation that anyone had ever given. He felt his mind shutting down and his eyes glazing over, and the time seemed to tick by incredibly slowly. Letting out a gaping yawn, James wondered when it would all be over so his boredom could come to a merciful end. His eyelids grew heavier and heavier, and soon he knew he would be falling asleep, his head drooping as he drifted off. He was really that bored.

* * *

Tell me the truth: at what point in the above paragraph did you decide that you really didn’t give a fig about James? Was it within the first couple of sentences?  If, after reading the first two or three, you simply skipped ahead to the second paragraph, hoping for something much more stimulating to read, I can hardly blame you for your impatience. Perhaps you are no longer even with me, as you’ve fallen asleep in front of your computer screen. If so, I offer my deepest apologies for torturing you with James’s tedious story, which I wrote myself.

Someone’s boredom has to rank among the top ten things I really don’t care to read about. But judging by how often the subject appears in writing, not everyone agrees with me. Many a writer has spilled far too much ink conveying in devastatingly mind-numbing detail the intolerable state of being bored, and many a poor protagonist has suffered the agony of being in this state.

One observation I’ve made is that authors who dwell on boredom often tend to be rather young. Perhaps, even with social media and all the other delightful distractions of the twenty-first century, many young people still experience much more boredom than older people do and are therefore much more likely to write about what it feels like. But this is not something I know for sure–I am only surmising.

Reading about boredom is, well, boring. For one thing, when an author goes on and on about the exquisite torment of his character’s boredom, the plot tends to come to a complete standstill, which is rarely a good thing in fiction. For another, bored characters  chafe at my nerves. They’re dull themselves and often unreasonably whiny. Sometimes, with the way they carry on, you’d think they’re the only people in the history of the world who have ever been so bored. And I usually want to ask (no, demand) that they try harder to be more resourceful and find creative ways of amusing themselves. After all, I’ve sat through some awfully boring presentations too, but I at least managed to come up with some impressive doodles while the presenter was droning on and on. There’s no reason why bored characters can’t choose to break out of their dreary states and become much more interesting to readers in the process.

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Writing and Editing

My Writing Has Gone to the Dogs

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I consider myself primarily an editor, but every once in a while, I cross over to the other side of the great divide and write. It’s seemingly for pleasure, if you can call fussing over your own words instead of someone else’s pleasurable. Mostly, I write blog posts, but I also write fiction. Part of the reason you haven’t seen a blog post from me over the last couple of weeks is that I have been absorbed in writing a short story for a contest. It has been a sort of exquisite agony for me.

Writing fiction when I’m much more accustomed to editing it is good for me because it deepens my appreciation of what my clients go through when they’re developing their plots, characters, and settings. I’ve always been in awe of those who seriously undertake the daunting process of creating fictional worlds, and when I struggle to create my own, it reinforces my respect for the process and reminds me to tread lightly and tactfully upon the manuscripts that writers submit to me for editing.

But of course, I don’t just write fiction because it’s good for me. Certain themes spark my imagination. When I discovered that there was a short story competition dedicated to dog-themed fiction, I knew I had to enter it. I puzzled over the challenge of creating my canine protagonist, who could express his thoughts and emotions only through body language, behaviour, and vocalizations (but as stated in the contest rules, he was not allowed to speak). I struggled over how to make the dog the engine that drives the plot and how to make him upstage his human companions and take the spotlight. I agonized over how to make my furry main character show the same depth of character and emotion that any human protagonist should have.

My inspiration for the character came, not surprisingly, from my own dog. I began observing Trinka’s body language and behaviours and thinking about them in relation to what she was trying to communicate. She’s an amazingly vocal dog who apparently wants to have conversations with me–if only she could figure out how to speak English. After this period of careful observation, my plot seemed to come effortlessly to me one night, a genuine bolt from the blue. But getting everything down on the page was, of course, another story.

I fussed and I fiddled for days; you know how it goes. I had the whole thing packaged up and ready to mail today when it occurred to me that I’d forgotten a small but crucial detail. So I opened the envelope, only to find that I was also missing an important word, right there in the first paragraph. Even though I had probably read the story fifteen times before, I sat down and read it out loud, determined to catch any other niggling little errors that remained.

The tweaking could have gone on forever, but it was time to put a stop to it. I was well and truly done and, I admit, rather pleased with my work. When I finally sealed the envelope for good, I experienced a rush–or rather, a fantastic big whoosh–of elation that made the thought of all that fussing and fiddling fade away into nothing.

Trinka, the inspiration for my recent foray into fiction
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Writing and Editing

Usage Misdemeanours: Palate and Palette

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Homophone duos and trios are notorious for creating confusion–witness there, their, and they’re, for example. People sometimes aren’t sure when to use which word, and unfortunate usage misdemeanours ensue, such as “Their going to have to learn to use there homophones properly.” Lately, I have noticed problems with using the duo palate and palette correctly.

Misuse of this pair is rampant in restaurant reviews, advertising, and websites. Palette is typically used when palate is meant. I found the most compellingly awful example of this misuse on a restaurant website that declared that they offered an “ecclectic [sic] menu to suit any pallette [sic].” What made this example particularly bad was that palette was misspelled and should have been palate anyway. (And the extra c in eclectic was a nice touch.) The error pile-up in this example takes it from the level of a misdemeanour to that of a crime.

In an effort to rid food writing of palate versus palette errors, I’ll do my best to eradicate the confusion. First, let’s consider palate. Anatomically speaking, your palate is the roof of your mouth, that structure, both hard and soft, that separates your oral cavity from your nasal cavity. Your palate is also your sense of taste, and the idea of taste extends from your taste buds to notions of aesthetic taste and appreciation in general. So it would be quite correct to say that “the exquisite wine satisfied Cynthia’s discriminating palate,” but you could also say that “the raucous sounds offended Ariel’s palate.” However, the word seems most often used in connection to the gustatory sense.

Then there’s palette. It is used to refer to an oval or oblong board with a thumb hole upon which an artist mixes paint, but it also refers to the colours that are arrayed on such a board. So an artist could be said to use “a rainbow palette of colours covering the entire spectrum.” Famous artists are said to have particular palettes, or characteristic ranges of colour, in their work. Palette needn’t be restricted to paint, of course, as fashion designers, interior decorators, and graphic designers using computers also have their colour palettes.

The definition of palette can also extend beyond visual art to describe a whole range of materials or techniques in other realms. For example, you could say that “the symphony consisted of a rich palette of evocative tones” or “the chef used a dazzling palette of exotic spices to season the stew.” The latter type of example could explain the current palate versus palette confusion, as the sense of taste is involved here.

I should note that there’s a third homophone, pallet, which most often refers to either a straw bed (from the old French word for straw, paille) or a wooden frame or skid upon which you’d stack goods in a warehouse. I found at least six other definitions for pallet as well, including a potter’s tool. And at least one source I consulted stated that you could use pallet when referring to a painter’s palette. But because pallet seems rarely confused with either palate or palette, I haven’t made it my focus here.

Sometimes when I read about usage, my head starts to swim when I uncover all the assorted meanings and subtle nuances of words. As I don’t want to leave you feeling similarly dazed, here’s a good rule of thumb for using palate versus palette: remember that palate contains the word ate and is most often used in connection to the taste buds. So unless you’re describing a palette of flavours, aromas, or colours, you’re most often going to be using palate if you’re writing about food. I hope you’ll find this rule of thumb more than–ahem–palatable.

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General Musing, Writing and Editing

The Perfectionist Syndrome in Writing

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James Scott Bell is a novelist and the author of several wonderful books on the craft of writing including Revision & Self-Editing. This book is a model of clarity and succinctness when it comes to delineating the essential elements of great fiction, and I’m convinced that it should be in the reference library of every fiction writer. The book is also wildly entertaining, peppered as it is with references to classic movies such as Casablanca and interesting little anecdotes.

One of my favourite anecdotes from the book concerns the writer Marcel Proust, who was once found writhing on the floor of his study by his housekeeper. No, Proust was not in the throes of a violent seizure. Instead, his contortions reflected his angst over what word he was going to write next. According to Bell, Proust was probably suffering from what he calls the perfectionist syndrome: the compulsion to make each sentence perfect before moving on to the next one.

Editors are well acquainted with perfectionism. Attention to fine, nitpicky detail seems to be in our blood, and we have sought out the editing profession because words are something we can control and strive to make perfect and beautiful. And our editorial training reinforces the idea that nothing less than perfection will do. Mistakes can be costly, we are told, and they are embarrassing as well, undermining our professional credibility. The perfect sentence is not just important, but crucial to our livelihood.

So what happens when people who spend an awful lot of time editing switch gears and write for a change? Not surprisingly, we often experience the sort of brain freeze that poor Mr. Proust was afflicted with. Our critic, which prides itself on its editorial prowess, dukes it out with our artist, which just wants to write. The critic, rather than going into hiding while we’re writing, is as opinionated and yappy as ever. It strikes fiercely at our creativity like someone pruning a sapling before it’s had half a chance to grow. In that quest for perfection, in which we painstakingly polish up each sentence before we dare write another, we stifle the artist, which just needs to get everything that’s inside us out there on the page, regardless of what condition it tumbles out in. It often seems that our creative impulses don’t have a hope.

Where’s the mute button? How do we go about shutting up the critic and letting the artist take centre stage? Bell has some good suggestions. Among them is a warm-up writing exercise involving just letting our prose flow for a few minutes without stopping to evaluate it. I’ve had some success with this technique, though I can’t deny that it’s difficult to lose myself in the process, as I’m often tempted to stop and fix mistakes as I make them. Which brings me to another one of Bell’s suggestions. “Any problem can be fixed,” he writes. Of course we know this–after all, our critic is an expert in fixing. But it needs to learn when to do the fixing, which is not while we’re struggling to get our words on the page in the first place. Otherwise, we end up like Proust–writhing, not writing.

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