Out of Egypt:

Arty things you can do to make your fiction annoying

Pt. I of an occasional series

This was inspired by reading Claire Messud's The Hunters for Contemporary Lit and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon for American Novel, both of which are great novels, yet fall victim to some trends I see in prose style in general.

1. Modify a clause with another clause. Repeat.

She was addicted to despair, teenage angst, a disraught feeling brought on by trivialities.

How to fix: Seperate the clauses or cut, as the case may be. You're trying to say too much at once and are in danger of creating run-on sentences.

She was addicted to despair. She became disraught at trivialities.

Even better (because not passive voice):

Despair overtook her like a habit. She became disraught at trivialities.

2. Put two parallel clauses at the end of a sentence without a conjunction. Don't make them actually parallel.

She found solace in books, fantasies that would have pleased a child.

How to fix: Once again, separate the clauses or cut

She found solace in books. But her fantasies would have pleased a child.

or (the sentence as it stood was ambiguous)

She found solace in books - fantasties that could have pleased a child. (or "fantastic books, that could...")

Excellent points! Strunk & White would be proud.

Ugh. I read the most horrible thing recently. The whole book could have been shrunk to one page. The prose was augmented by appositives and synonyms to such an inflated extent that it could've passed as a thesaurus. It was very tiresome.

Posted by: Jeannette at December 13, 2004 4:51 PM

What was its name? The tendency I'm talking about is something I've noticed mainly in fiction, but the non-fiction prose of John Eldridge is often guilty of it as well. So guilty that it makes me sick almost to read it.

Posted by: Evan Donovan at December 13, 2004 8:44 PM

Life is a jungle of non sequiters and dangling modifers--subdue with conjunctions and punctuationad naseum. My own personal pet peeve (derived from literary concerns rather than grammatical/technical errors) is fiction in the first person. Ninety percent of the time, first person dissolves into ultra-introspective self-pity parties that have nothing to do with advancing the plot!

Posted by: funkefreak at December 14, 2004 10:11 AM

*sigh* Evan, I couldn't tell you. It was one of those moments where you pick up a book, flip through it, eyes light on a page, begin reading, are horrified, close it, and move on without recalling its particulars (i.e. title, author, ISBN, etc.). You know, the ol' Barnes and Noble routine: I want something frothy that I can read along with my frothy beverage, but I don't want to buy it and I don't want to hate it.

Posted by: Jeannette at December 17, 2004 11:10 PM

its boring

Posted by: fdhsbgvd at October 28, 2008 6:50 AM