Kudzu Writing--Attack of the Killer Verbiage

It's understandable and forgivable that the work of beginning writers is frequently bloated with overwriting, the bane of pace and tension. For example…

He tasted her in his mouth. (Where else would he taste her?)

Her heart clenched in her chest (Better there than in her purse, I guess.)

What pains me are far worse examples in published novels. Take the following trudge from The Experiment by John Darnton.

The scene: the female protagonist enters a darkened bedroom. In the bed sleeps a man who she assumes is her love interest. Minutia spreading like a blanket of Kudzu, Darnton writes…and writes…and writes…

She thought that perhaps she should try to take a nap, too; the trip home had exhausted her. She walked around the bed, sat in a chair and unstrapped her shoes and took them off, placing them to one side. She stood up and unzipped her dress, letting it fall to the floor in a heap and bent down to pick it up and drape it over the back of the chair. She slipped her thumbs into the waist of her panties and slid them down her legs, placing them over the dress. Then she unfastened her bra and placed it on top. From the bed, she heard his breathing shift as he moved to a different level of sleep.

She walked to the right side of the bed, lifted the sheet and slipped underneath, pulling it up to her chin. The cotton felt cool to her skin.

Does the word "turgid" come to mind? If not, see a therapist immediately. Trust me on this: the entire purpose of this passage was to get the woman into the bed. Her method of disrobing had absolutely no bearing on anything that had gone before or anything that happened afterward.

It didn't matter that she walked around the bed. Or sat in a chair. Or where she placed her discarded shoes. Or what she did with her dress or bra. Nor did her panty-removal process have any bearing -- the person in the bed was asleep, and there was no sexual intent to the scene. And it didn't matter which side of the bed she got into, either. Don't get me started on other deficiencies in this poorly written dawdle.

When it comes to description, I'm with Stephen King, as expressed in his On Writing. To quote from his book…

"Look -- here's a table covered with a red cloth. On it is a cage the size of a small fish aquarium. In the cage is a white rabbit with a pink nose and pink-rimmed eyes. In its front paws is a carrot upon which it is contentedly chewing. On its back, clearly marked in blue ink, is the numeral 8."

As King points out, the paragraph doesn't tell us what the cage is made of. Wire mesh? Steel rods? Glass? It doesn't tell us because it doesn't matter. Whatever the reader "sees" allows him to visualize the rabbit inside and the most important story part of the description, the number on its back.

King says that good description makes the reader a participant in the story. Exactly right. Crisp, tight description lets the reader fill in the details, especially if they don't matter to the storyline.

In the above example from Mr. Darnton's book, all that verbiage boils down to this:

Exhausted by the trip home, she thought she should try a nap. She undressed, slipped underneath the sheet and pulled it up to her chin, the cotton cool on her skin.

Here's a technique that might have helped Mr. Darnton avoid his logorrhea -- read your narrative aloud. If, at some point, you detach and drift, your voice a drone in the background while your mind searches for something interesting to think about, your narrative has been binge expositing, and you need to apply the cure -- vigorous exercise of the delete key.

Please let me hear from you. Even better, email me with an example, published or unpublished, of something that peeves you or you have a question about, and I'll level a beady-eyed editorial glare at it. If it's from your own work, tell me if I can post it or if you want a "private reading."

Comments

[Chris]

Hello Ray....

One thing that ought to be mentioned in analyzing Darnton's paragraphs: readers naturally assume details are important to the story. Where she puts down the shoes can be important (think: potential weapon). Such detail isn't always a story-killer, but providing a seemingly important detail and never returning to it will ALWAYS annoy the reader, and put him/her off. For example, "she kicked off her shoes" adds a bit of reality to the scene, while "she kicked her shoes into the corner, where they fell in a heap between the wall and the bed" indicates to the reader that those shoes have some further role to play.

[Ray]

Chris, you're exactly right, readers are often on the alert for significant details. As I mentioned, the details in the passage from Darnton's novel had nothing to do with anything. A waste of the reader's time...and the entire book was like that, badly needing editorial liposuction.