The writing I do as an attorney creates problems for my fiction writing. The main difficulty, over-explaining things, is compounded by my years as a mathematics teacher at an underprivileged high school. If I wanted my 15- and 16-year-old general math students to hear my instructions, let alone follow them, I had to repeat them. Many times.
The combination of attorney and former mathematics teacher is deadly in fiction. I explain inferences most readers understand implicitly. I have to edit out “grocery store” syndrome. And I over-use dialog tags.
“Hello,” Daphne said.
“Hello,” John answered, “How are you today?”
Daphne said, “I’m fine. How are you?”
“I can’t complain,” John said.
(I’ll stop here to relieve those of you already gritting your teeth in frustration.)
What is “grocery store” syndrome?
Sometimes, all the reader needs to know is that Jane bought bread on the way home. In my earliest drafts, however, Jane gets in the car, drives to the store, leaves the car, enters the store, goes down aisle one and up aisle two, reaches up to shelf five to select Wonder Bread (Jane not being on a health kick or gluten-free diet), goes to the cashier line, puts the bread on the conveyor belt, pays the cashier, watches the cashier put the bread in the bag, describes the cashier (whom the reader never sees again) in detail, picks up the bag, returns to the car, drives home, enters the house and then either puts the bread away or uses it to make a sandwich. By the time we do that, I’m exhausted, Jane’s exhausted, and those readers persistent enough to stick with me until the end are exhausted.
Have you
found any pitfalls in your creative writing stemming from prior experiences? How do you deal with them?
I didn't teach math, but using it put food on my table. My writing tends to have more number references and directions than others - issues I check during rewrites.
ReplyDeleteMy preoccupation was what the family ate for dinner every evening, start to finish. I sliced and diced it down to one meal for the entire book.
ReplyDeleteI am howling! With you, not at your expense.
ReplyDeleteI spent most of my working life drafting litigation pleadings and know exactly what you mean. Building a case is so much different to building a story. You can't expect the judge to read between the lines or make logic leaps, and opposing counsel is sure to point out what you didn't spell out. In a novel - that's deadly! Hard habit to break.
Oh, I so know this feeling. That's what revision is for, right? I figure, if I'm bored, think what the poor reader is going through.
ReplyDelete