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Rule 5 for New Writers

So, in dealing with PoV, Rule 4 of the Ten Rules segues logically to Rule 5, dealing with voice: Voice makes character. For the purposes of this post, we're not talking voice as in, "He's found his voice," but rather narrative voice, the degree to which idiosyncratic features of an articulation cohere and conjure a persona behind the words, cast it as an articulation of and by someone.

When I say that voice makes character, note that this is not the same as saying that character requires voice. It's simply saying that well-made prose can be engaging not just in terms of dynamics but because it generates a sense of the viewpoint character, brings them to life in the very lexis and syntax. I'm not going to say that you can't conjure character solely through their words and deeds, thoughts and emotions, but I will make this contention: voice is ultimately more effective even than action in that respect; voice trumps action; it's the words and deeds, thoughts and emotions that will ring hollow if the voice is inadvertently conjuring a character inconsistent with them.

Or if it's simply reminding us of the author indeed. In deposition, with a narrative flatly communicating where it should be conjuring, part of the problem is we hear only an inept author droning their testimony of how X happened, then Y happened, then Z happened. The writer who sees style as patina will only compound this by slathering on "artistic" expressions rather than actually exercising artistry -- decision, excision, precision, concision, incision, and (again) decision. In the purple prose that results we hear the same ineptitude, but with an additional quality of affectation. We still hear only the author, but now they're an Author, posturing and pompous. This could be said to be conjuring a persona, as the writer is likely just naive and enthusiastic, but clearly it's not an effect to be striving for.*

The minimum we might speak of as voiceless narrative then is actually narrative which simply has its own voice, where it's not just the tedious drone of all deposition made individual with the author's favourite mannerisms of purpling, but where the voice that's been found for conjuring the action is aiming only to do that, not to conjure a viewpoint character's persona in the manner of telling. As an example, let's take one product of the previous post:

Tal peered through the spyglass at the scene below. Over hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time, a desert rat scampered, busy with the daily struggles of its dismal life. It scurried across a crust of earth parched and cracked by a pitiless noon sun, on the edge of a weather-beaten trail that wound through arid scrub, through the sort of barren wastes all too damn common in the Norgolian Empire. The rat stopped, sniffed the air and... darted for safety as dust swirled up in blinding clouds at the hooves of three mounts galloping, whirling, rearing under the weight of their clashing riders.

High on his rocky ledge of cliff, Tal lowered his spyglass, unslung the longbow from his shoulder, reached for an arrow only to feel a hand grasp his wrist. Rising from a crouch behind him, a king of thieves known across Norgolia as Black Raq Skarrion arched an eyebrow at the impetuous rogue. Tal gave him a mock-innocent shrug. What? He was a rogue, after all.

Here the only voice is that of the narrative itself. Given that I've worked it over, there are undoubtedly features in there of an authorial default narrative voice that's distinctly Hal Duncan. There's a lack of the semi-colons and em-dashes that I tend to like for the way they can loosen up a text, but the ellipsis for dramatic pause is... very me. As is the dropping of "and" before the final clause in paragraph two's first sentence, and the short sentence at the end of that paragraph is something I think of as a "kicker," the opposite number to a "hook" line at the start of a passage. Still, given the source of much of it in Thiess, it's utilising elements I probably wouldn't have used if I was writing it from scratch. And if it were a different type of scene in a different type of story I'd have taken it in a different direction. At the end of the day, this is not Thiess's work rewritten "in the style of Hal Duncan," I'd say. It's Thiess's work restyled to a passage with its own voice.

Taking this as a baseline then, how does one go about imbuing it with voice in that character sense?

Since voice qualities are about conjuring persona via the idiosyncratic features of a character's way of articulating themself, although I do want to show how that works in third person, it's easier to demonstrate by first reimagining this passage in first person. And since a character's way of articulating themself is primarily manifest in casual speech rather than formal writing, we'll go the whole hog and put it in what could be termed anecdotal voice:

So I was up this cliff ledge, taking a gander through me spyglass, right, scoping out the scene below, yeah? This little desert rat were scampering over hoof prints -- well, I say "hoof prints" but they was near scrubbed down to nothing by the sands. Whatever. This little rat was just getting on with the day-to-day bollocks of its dismal life, scurrying across a crust of earth as parched and cracked as you've ever seen -- must've been about noon, see, so the sun were bloody pitiless. This were on the edge of some weather-beaten trail as wound through arid scrub -- you know, the sort of thing I mean, yeah? Them barren wastes as are all too damn common in the Norgolian Empire, if you ask me. Anyways, this rat stops, sniffs the air and bugger me if it don't go scarpering for safety. Cause next thing you know, the dust is swirling up in blinding clouds, and there's three horses galloping in, whirling, rearing. And three riders on them, I sees, engaged in a good old two-against-one.

Naturally enough, I lowers me spyglass and takes the longbow from me shoulder. But I've no sooner reached for an arrow to notch than I feels a hand grasp me wrist. And Black Raq Skarrion -- yeah, the king of thieves himself, notorious in all Norgolia -- he's coming up from his crouch behind me, arching an eyebrow at my impetuosity. So I gives him me best mock-innocent shrug. What? I am a bleeding rogue, ain't I?

Rather than past perfect tense, you'll see I've switched to past progressive ("I was... taking a gander") sliding into present tense at a key point of tension ("this rat stops.") I've brought in some more informal phrasings like "day-to-day bollocks" for "daily struggles," and some idiomatic phrasing like "take a gander" for "peer." There are dialectic variants in spelling, like "me" for "my," or even in grammar, as with the inversion of "was" and "were," or the third person "-s" on first person verbs. There are tag questions in place of declaratives. There's elucidation via digressive self-interruption rather than descriptive detail. And there are rerailing terms like "whatever" or "anyway" to accommodate that casual chain-of-thought freewheeling, bring the narrative back to the story.

Personally, I'd find a whole story written in that anecdotal voice insufferable, and not just because this particular variant is a hokey cliché of a stock "rustic" running from Shakespeare down to Mackenzie Crook and Lee Arenberg in the Pirates of the Carribean movies. Conjuring a full-on simulation of someone actually telling an anecdote requires a degree of redundancy and convolution that's just going to be tedious if that anecdote is thirty minutes long as opposed to three. Even without that sense of growing waffle, with an in-yer-face voice like this, the reader has to want to spend time with the character being conjured, and I'm not really liking this guy.

Is there a little hint of puffed chest in the opening line? A hint of a pub braggart buttonholing his audience with the double tag, forcing engagement? Is there a hint of dismissiveness at the hoof prints? A hint of habitual dismissiveness in the casual "whatever," furthered by his disregard for the rat's struggles? Does he sound irked that the noon sun is hot? Kind of resentful that his environs don't meet his expectations? If this is our protagonist, does he sound like the lovable rogue whose impetuous rascalry would be indulged by Black Raq, someone who can charm that indulgence out of his boss with a "come on, you know what I'm like" shrug? Me, I think he comes across as kinda charmless. If voice makes character, I don't think this is the kind of character we'd want to be making.

So let's dial it down a bit and tweak the tone. If he's going to pull off that shrug, we need to sell him as a bit of a charmer. And nobody wants to spend thirty minutes listening to a blowhard anyway, so we need to make his speech less casual as is, more polished. Moving away from that anecdotal voice, back towards the lexis and syntax of writing, we can conjure a type of voice that might just be able to hold an audience for a bit longer than your average pub braggart, what we might dub a raconteur voice:

So... I was up on this rocky ledge of cliff, as chance would have it, taking a casual gander through me spyglass, scoping out the terrain below. Picture the scene, boys: hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time; a little desert rat scampering among 'em, busy with the daily shenanigans of his dismal life, scurrying across a crust of earth parched and cracked by a pitiless noon sun, on the edge of some weather-beaten trail a-winding through arid scrub -- through the sort of barren wastes all too bloody common in the Norgolian Empire, if you ask me. The rat stops, boys. He sniffs the air. Then, quick-as-a-flash, he's scarpering for safety, as dust swirls up in blinding clouds at the hooves of three mounts galloping, whirling, rearing. And who's on those horses, lads, but three riders engaged in a good old two-against-one?

Well now, naturally enough, I lower the spyglass, take the longbow from me shoulder. But I've no sooner reached for an arrow to notch, than I feel a hand grip me wrist. And Black Raq Skarrion -- aye, the king of thieves himself, notorious in all Norgolia -- he's rising up from his crouch behind me, arching an eyebrow at my... impetuosity, shall we say? Well, I give him me best mock-innocent shrug, of course, as if to say, what? I am a rogue, after all -- no?

A "So" and a pause to announce his start, to draw attention rather than demand it. A little arch "as chance would have it" weaving in the mock-innocence we're going to see shortly. An elicitation, an invitation to imagination, with a chummy "boys" to establish fraternity with the audience. A little daub of imagery at first, relaxing into that more lyrical conjuring, wandering off louchely into an aside that's wry rather than resentful. And now it might even be part of a performance, used to relax the audience in order to emphasis the sudden shift back to significance. The tag question at the end of that first paragraph as a way to underline: what do you think of that, eh? A "well now`" just to reinforce that sense of assumed rascalry, that air of "why, what else is a man to do in such circumstances but help these riders kill each other and relieve them of their possessions?" A pause before "impetuosity" and a "shall we say" as a verbal wink translating it to "shameless opportunism." You might, of course, find this character just as irksome as the previous one -- no character can charm everyone, no more than a real person can -- but the point is less to make him sympathetic than it's to show how he is made by the voice.

Still, even that sort of raconteur voice is not always going to be what you want. The artifice of simulated performance might be a fun thing to use in this story or that -- I've used it a fair wee bit in some of the Scruffians stories -- but it's not the usual order of business. Even in a first person narrative, do you want to make it all about that central character's storytelling showboating, or do you want to draw the reader into the action? More often than not, you just want to give enough of a flavour of persona to conjure character. So we can dial down a little further, take out all the verbal working of the audience, and go for a fully literary narrative in what we can term memoirist voice:

I took a casual gander through my spyglass at the scene below. Over hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time, a desert rat scampered, busy with the day-to-day shenanigans of his dismal life. The little critter scurried across a crust of earth parched and cracked by a pitiless noon sun, on the edge of a weather-beaten trail that wound through arid scrub -- through the sort of barren wastes all too bloody common in the Norgolian Empire. The rat stopped, sniffed the air and... quick-as-a-flash scarpered for safety as dust swirled up in blinding clouds at the hooves of three mounts galloping, whirling, rearing. And on those horses... three riders engaged in a good old two-against-one.

Well now, I thought. High on my rocky ledge of cliff, I lowered the spyglass, unslung the longbow from my shoulder, reached for an arrow only to feel a hand grip my wrist. And Black Raq Skarrion -- the king of thieves himself, notorious in all Norgolia -- rose up from his crouch behind me, arched an eyebrow at my... well, call it impetuosity. I gave him my best mock-innocent shrug. What? I was a rogue, wasn't I?

Note how a simple touch like "shenanigans" rather than "bollocks" or "struggles" conjures a more complex attitude to that desert rat, how that rat's dismal life is no longer "its" but "his," the object cast as a living being, granted empathy as a "little critter," but kept at a distance by a certain loucheness. This character isn't dismissing it callously but he's hardly troubled by pity for a desert rat. Translate back to third person and you have a narrative voice that should read as fairly natural -- the flavour of the character's personality coming through but not so aggressively as to overshadow the drama with the simulation of an actual verbal telling of the tale.

Tal took a casual gander through his spyglass at the scene below. Over hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time, a desert rat scampered, busy with the day-to-day shenanigans of his dismal life. The little critter scurried across a crust of earth parched and cracked by a pitiless noon sun, on the edge of a weather-beaten trail that wound through arid scrub -- through the sort of barren wastes all too bloody common in the Norgolian Empire. The rat stopped, sniffed the air and... quick-as-a-flash scarpered for safety as dust swirled up in blinding clouds at the hooves of three mounts galloping, whirling, rearing. And on those horses... three riders engaged in a good old two-against-one.

Well now, thought Tal. High on his rocky ledge of cliff, he lowered the spyglass, unslung the longbow from his shoulder, reached for an arrow only to feel a hand grip his wrist. Black Raq Skarrion -- the king of thieves himself, notorious in all Norgolia -- rose up from a crouch behind him, arched an eyebrow at Tal's... well, call it impetuosity. Tal gave him his best mock-innocent shrug. What? He was a rogue, wasn't he?

This is not, of course, a strategy for actually imbuing your work with voice -- to translate the narrative through such iterations. The practical strategy here is just to apply the principle of incision, look for the phrasings that will cut to the quick of the event in one particular respect, reveal the core of the PoV character experiencing that event. And ultimately to do that you need to apply that incision not just in writing but in reading, in life. Voice makes character because the nuances of how one articulates oneself in the real world are manifestations of character. Voice is the use of a verb like "flocking" as regards immigrants that might speak of xenophobia or outright racism. Voice is the use of "goshdarn" that might reveal primness or diffidence or just habit formed in upbringing. It's any and all features of lexis and syntax in which we might recognise how the people speaking around us are expressing more than just their meanings, how they're expressing their selves.

If you can develop an ear for voice by paying attention to it in the daily shenanigans of your own hopefully-not-so-dismal life, paying particular attention to it in the expedient demonstrations there to be studied in any number of books, then you can start to apply it in your own writing. Find the right voice for your viewpoint character and they'll come alive on the page with the insouciance of a "casual gander" that will start to generate the mock innocence of a shrug before you've even come to imagining that. Learn a facility with voice, I mean, and finding the right voice for a character will be a matter of clicking into that character's mindset, bringing the narrative out onto the page in that voice as if you're channelling that rakish wastrel; and the character manifested in that voice will come with attitudes such that when a Black Raq Skarrion arches an eyebrow at him, he'll respond with a shrug because that's who he is, what he would do. Hell, he might well give another response entirely, something better than the action you had penciled in to happen at that point.

But that's where we move onto Rule 6 -- that character makes action. And that's for another post.

***


* A mannered narrator is a different thing entirely. In a fairytale swashbuckler, for example, you might want an omniscient narrator with the playful erudition of a Stephen Fry, to imbue the whole with a performative wit, the storybook air of a tale told for the sheer wonder of grandiose fabrication. Essentially that means conjuring the narrator as a character, just an incorporeal one. The purpling of bad prose will not achieve this masking of the author. Where you want Prospero, we'll see Polonius, stumbling onto the stage in a fumble of cheap props -- a foam staff and Halloween wizard robes -- intoning fluffed and garbled lines so portentously it makes us cringe.

How to Write a Point of View

In the entry on Rule Four of Duncan's Ten Rules-- PoV is not a communal steadicam -- I covered the basics of how an omniscient narrator can collapse to an amnesiac narrator, how multiple third person limited can collapse to muddled third person limited. But there I focused on theoretical pros and cons -- freedom versus restraint, detachment versus immersion -- and gave only a broad demonstration of the corrosion into headhopping that tends to happen when writers just don't know the difference and therefore blithely ignore fundamental protocols like the section break. What that post dealt with was essentially just how you can end up colouring outside the lines simply because you don't realise they're there.

There are gnarlier issues with the boundary between ON and 3PL though. Often it's not so much a matter of your story being firmly on this side or that, radically breaching its own protocols by blundering across the divide, colouring outside the lines; rather it's a matter of using techniques that point us to the other side of that line even if they don't themselves cross it. Many techniques are not strictly speaking breaches in X approach but so strongly signal Y approach that indiscriminate use will kneecap whatever PoV you're aiming for, bring it crashing down into a crawling wreck of a narrative, dragging its limp legs behind it. It might pretty much struggle its way to where it's headed, eventually, but it's not going to do so well. And really, you can't rely on the reader not to just gaze down coldly at this limp-limbed ruin, raise the Desert Eagle of disinterest, and just put the pathetic fucker out of its misery with a bullet in the brain.

You need to know the subtler signals of omniscience and limitation too then, understand how even the slightest difference in phrasing can point the reader at this PoV approach or that. For demonstration material, let's take the end product of the post on paragraphs, because it's a good clear example of omniscient narration -- what with the free-roaming god's eye viewpoint opening on an empty stage, a scene of a desert rat on a dusty trail, sans characters, only then bringing the protagonist galloping into frame. And because by adding one line we can also make it a good example of where bad signposting can confuse even such a straightforward example. So:

Over hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time, a desert rat scampered, busy with the daily struggles of its dismal life. It scurried across a crust of earth parched and cracked by a pitiless noon sun, on the edge of a weather-beaten trail that wound through arid scrub, through the sort of barren wastes all too common in the Norgolian Empire. The rat stopped, sniffed the air and... darted for safety as dust swirled up in blinding clouds at the hooves of three mounts galloping, whirling, rearing under the weight of their clashing riders.

High on his rocky ledge of cliff, the rogue lowered his spyglass, unslung the longbow from his shoulder, reached for an arrow.

Now there's an almost cinematic shift of frame that resets the context of the whole desert trail scenario, casts it as the vision of a character. One can almost imagine the movie expression of this, perhaps a black blur of rider filling the frame in that last instant, maybe a jerk of camera up to the horses, an unfocused fraction of a second just long enough to subtly signal sight through a scope -- and cut. And high on a ledge, the rogue lowers his spyglass... with the scene of battle visible beyond and below him, of course, to smooth the jump, snap us out to this new position in the narrative without a lurch of disjunction. Here, we could do something similar with a little "overlooking it all" or suchlike slipped in after "cliff," but it's not really necessary, I'd say, the shift less jarring in narrative mediated by words than it would be in the more direct ersatz experience of images.

Anyway, note that in this shift, the perspective remains that of outside observer. Now our focus is on the rogue, but he is no more the PoV than is the desert rat. The whole scenario of the opening paragraph has been rendered his experience, to all intents and purposes, and yet the narrative remains that of an omniscient narrator. The next line might well see that rogue's reaching hand stayed by the king of thieves who stands behind him, a wily rakish protagonist that all of this is only intro for. We would not be derailed by this shift of focus because this is omniscient narrative. With a well-crafted ON approach, the capacity to pull this sort of maneouvre is one of the advantages in the writing, one of the pleasures in the reading.

With a well-crafted ON approach, the omniscience allows even for that rogue's name to be given, without any loss of the sense that it's an outside observer conjuring him for us:

Over hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time, a desert rat scampered, busy with the daily struggles of its dismal life. It scurried across a crust of earth parched and cracked by a pitiless noon sun, on the edge of a weather-beaten trail that wound through arid scrub, through the sort of barren wastes all too common in the Norgolian Empire. The rat stopped, sniffed the air and... darted for safety as dust swirled up in blinding clouds at the hooves of three mounts galloping, whirling, rearing under the weight of their clashing riders.

High on his rocky ledge of cliff, a rogue by the name of Tal Duknan lowered his spyglass, unslung the longbow from his shoulder, reached for an arrow.

The rogue's name is given, but the way it's given is by no means insignificant. He is still a rogue -- not a particular rogue, just one. Registering in our imagination first as a rogue, he is primarily that, even though the ON then tells us in passing that his name is Tal Duknan. The fact that he is conjured as a stranger and only then introduced by name is a signal indeed not to forget that this is omniscient narration. Let's call this technique delayed naming. The sneakier effects of such a signal should be clear if we bring the king of thieves into frame now:

Over hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time, a desert rat scampered, busy with the daily struggles of its dismal life. It scurried across a crust of earth parched and cracked by a pitiless noon sun, on the edge of a weather-beaten trail that wound through arid scrub, through the sort of barren wastes all too common in the Norgolian Empire. The rat stopped, sniffed the air and... darted for safety as dust swirled up in blinding clouds at the hooves of three mounts galloping, whirling, rearing under the weight of their clashing riders.

High on his rocky ledge of cliff, a rogue by the name of Tal Duknan lowered his spyglass, unslung the longbow from his shoulder, reached for an arrow. Rising from a crouch behind him, a king of thieves stayed the rogue's hand.

There is another signal in that delayed naming, no, simply in the fact that it is a naming? We may have brought the king of thieves into play but we're not really inclined by this to take him for protagonist, quite the opposite. The PoV may not be that of the rogue, but that he is named while the king of thieves is not quietly tells us that the story is his. One could now name that king of thieves and carry on the tale with him as the lead, but that would render this bad signposting. What one really wants, if that's the case, is this:

High on his rocky ledge of cliff, a rogue lowered his spyglass, unslung the longbow from his shoulder, reached for an arrow. Rising from a crouch behind him, a king of thieves known across Norgolia as Black Raq Skarrion stayed the rogue's hand.

Or, to show the power of that simple subtle "by the name of," the power of delayed naming as a way to introduce the rogue as a plot-relevant but subsidiary character, this:

High on his rocky ledge of cliff, a rogue by the name of Tal Duknan lowered his spyglass, unslung the longbow from his shoulder, reached for an arrow. Rising from a crouch behind him, Black Raq Skarrion, king of thieves notorious across Norgolia, stayed the rogue's hand.

That simple difference in the manner of introduction makes the king of thieves trump the rogue, establishes that he is to be the focus of the story. He has been granted immediate naming, and that tells us he's more important. Switch it around and we invert the signalling, change the protagonist:

High on his rocky ledge of cliff, Tal Duknan lowered his spyglass, unslung the longbow from his shoulder, reached for an arrow. Rising from a crouch behind him, a king of thieves known across Norgolia as Black Raq Skarrion stayed the rogue's hand.

Now, consider the botching that will occur if we don't make this distinction, if we use delayed or immediate naming with both.

High on his rocky ledge of cliff, a rogue by the name of Tal Duknan lowered his spyglass, unslung the longbow from his shoulder, reached for an arrow. Rising from a crouch behind him, a king of thieves known across Norgolia as Black Raq Skarrion stayed the rogue's hand.

Or:

High on his rocky ledge of cliff, Tal Duknan lowered his spyglass, unslung the longbow from his shoulder, reached for an arrow. Rising from a crouch behind him, Black Raq Skarrion, king of thieves notorious across Norgolia, stayed the rogue's hand.

In both cases, the narrative is firing signals at odds with each other. We're unsure if we're meant to shift our attention from the rogue to the king of thieves, which of them we ought to be following.

With the former, it's possible that this is the point, that these two are a double act, Skarrion and Duknan, Tal and Black Raq. Perhaps the very point of using the ON approach is to maintain a balance between our Butch and Sundance. If so, don't underestimate the power of that little flourish of delayed naming in the intro; in signalling ON, it is signalling the PoV you need if these two are to remain on equal footing in their scenes together.

With the latter, the immediate naming of both is riskier. Do this with a whole D&D style ragtag band of adventurers, and the absence of ON signposting, the presence of protagonist signposting all round, is liable to muddle our whole reading. Turn from these two to another two -- a barbarian prince and an apprentice sorceress, say -- introduced again with immediate naming, and you're dropping the reader into an ensemble cast you better have the skills to handle. You better be able to maintain that ON approach without slipping into third person limited.

The capacity to undermine an ON PoV with even such a simple thing as immediate naming can be better illustrated if we go from the familiarity of "Tal Duknan" versus "a rogue by the name of Tal Duknan" to the downright intimacy of a single name:

Over hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time, a desert rat scampered, busy with the daily struggles of its dismal life. It scurried across a crust of earth parched and cracked by a pitiless noon sun, on the edge of a weather-beaten trail that wound through arid scrub, through the sort of barren wastes all too common in the Norgolian Empire. The rat stopped, sniffed the air and... darted for safety as dust swirled up in blinding clouds at the hooves of three mounts galloping, whirling, rearing under the weight of their clashing riders.

High on his rocky ledge of cliff, Tal lowered his spyglass, unslung the longbow from his shoulder, reached for an arrow.

Now we're playing with fire. Here the familiarity of immediate naming becomes the intimacy of casual naming, and it's "casual" naming in more ways than one: the name itself is casual, the first name used among friends and family, the name by which the character thinks of themself; and the use of it is casual in the narrative, off-hand, as if no introduction is required. This is a signpost not just of protagonist status but of viewpoint.

With one sentence, one word in that sentence, we've pulled the rug out from under the omniscient narrator and out from under the reader's feet. Suddenly, we're on that ledge with a character we know as well his friends and family, a character we know as well as himself. Suddenly, there's a huge signpost of casual naming pointed clearly at third person limited. That's all very well if Tal is indeed the protagonist. Everything up to then could indeed have been his vision through the spyglass so there is no breach of PoV here. But if you're about to bring on Black Raq as the wily rakish protagonist, this is going to bite you in the ass.

Rendering that whole desert scenario as something seen by a character is also a signal of 3PL, as we can bring out by making this fact clear from the get-go. Even drawing back from casual naming to immediate naming, notice how the framing impacts the reading:

Tal Duknan peered through the spyglass at the scene below. Over hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time, a desert rat scampered, busy with the daily struggles of its dismal life. It scurried across a crust of earth parched and cracked by a pitiless noon sun, on the edge of a weather-beaten trail that wound through arid scrub, through the sort of barren wastes all too common in the Norgolian Empire. The rat stopped, sniffed the air and... darted for safety as dust swirled up in blinding clouds at the hooves of three mounts galloping, whirling, rearing under the weight of their clashing riders.

High on his rocky ledge of cliff, the rogue lowered his spyglass, unslung the longbow from his shoulder, reached for an arrow. Rising from a crouch behind him, Black Raq Skarrion, king of thieves notorious across Norgolia, stayed the rogue's hand.

Blithely oblivious to the impact of these signals, one might imagine that this is fine for a narrative in which the king of thieves is to be the protagonist. We've introduced a relevant secondary character by name, because he's a sidekick, but it's not like we're more familiar with him than with Black Raq. We haven't had a single thought from the rogue, and that switcheroo of having a subsidiary character briefly the centre of attention before we bring out the hero -- that would work in a movie so it should work here, right? Tal reaches for an arrow, a hand comes in to stop him, and the focus swings round to reveal Black Raq Skarrion rising dramatically, with a flourish of cape. We can just carry on with a description of Black Raq now, right? And we can have him think something to establish that he's the hero, yes?

No on all counts. Regardless of the equivalent immediate namings, the framing of the setting within his experience in that opening line binds us to his PoV. It doesn't nail us to it, just lashes us loosely, but the binding is more than secure enough that jumping to Black Raq now will jar. The description of him will read as Tal's vision. Even backstory woven through that description will read as Tal's knowledge. The omniscient narrator is undermined sufficiently that entering Black Raq's thoughts will more likely read as a breach of 3PL than as ON in action. Such framing, especially in an opening, is strong enough as a signal that even if we did not name the rogue at all in that opening line, it would be awkward even to tack on some omniscient insight into Skarrion's attitude to Tal at the end of the last line:

The rogue peered through the spyglass at the scene below. Over hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time, a desert rat scampered, busy with the daily struggles of its dismal life. It scurried across a crust of earth parched and cracked by a pitiless noon sun, on the edge of a weather-beaten trail that wound through arid scrub, through the sort of barren wastes all too common in the Norgolian Empire. The rat stopped, sniffed the air and... darted for safety as dust swirled up in blinding clouds at the hooves of three mounts galloping, whirling, rearing under the weight of their clashing riders.

High on his rocky ledge of cliff, the rogue lowered his spyglass, unslung the longbow from his shoulder, reached for an arrow. Rising from a crouch behind him, Black Raq Skarrion, king of thieves notorious across Norgolia, stayed the rogue's hand, smiled to himself at his friend's impetuous nature.

This isn't a breach per se. It isn't colouring outside the lines. The clash of signals pointing in different directions is arguably just about subdued enough that many a reader will gloss over it. But the effects of such dissonance are cumulative. And these aren't the only signals to watch for.

Free indirect style is another technique liable to slip in where a writer doesn't have a good handle on the way a signpost may point to 3PL or to ON. With just one word, for example -- "damn" -- we can turn "the sort of barren wastes all too common in the Norgolian Empire" into another prime signal of 3PL. We can render it a reflection of a character's thoughts/attitudes written into the narrative itself:

The rogue peered through the spyglass at the scene below. Over hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time, a desert rat scampered, busy with the daily struggles of its dismal life. It scurried across a crust of earth parched and cracked by a pitiless noon sun, on the edge of a weather-beaten trail that wound through arid scrub, through the sort of barren wastes all too damn common in the Norgolian Empire. The rat stopped, sniffed the air and... darted for safety as dust swirled up in blinding clouds at the hooves of three mounts galloping, whirling, rearing under the weight of their clashing riders.

High on his rocky ledge of cliff, the rogue lowered his spyglass, unslung the longbow from his shoulder, reached for an arrow. Rising from a crouch behind him, Black Raq Skarrion, king of thieves notorious across Norgolia, stayed the rogue's hand, smiled to himself at his friend's impetuous nature.

In the original, the "all too common" evaluation is subtle enough that it can read as normative. The omniscient narrator judges the wastes to be that way simply because everyone does, anyone would. That "damn" makes it a distinct attitude in its commitment and in its cussing. In context, we're going to read it as the rogue's. In an ON approach we might well solve the somewhat expository thrust of that sentence by directly reporting this as an attitude: "the sort of barren wastes he considered all too damn common in the Norgolian Empire." But eliding the "he considered" weaves that attitude into the narrative itself. This is free indirect style and it renders the desert trail scenario as experienced by the rogue every bit as much as the framing does. More, even. Now it's replete with an affective response to the scenario.

What if we use immediate naming to cement it just a little more? What if we give it a little more of the omniscient quality by referencing him as "Tal Duknan the rogue"? What if we describe him raising a hand as if to reach for an arrow, a description that begs the question of who is making that judgement?

Tal Duknan the rogue peered through the spyglass at the scene below. Over hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time, a desert rat scampered, busy with the daily struggles of its dismal life. It scurried across a crust of earth parched and cracked by a pitiless noon sun, on the edge of a weather-beaten trail that wound through arid scrub, through the sort of barren wastes all too damn common in the Norgolian Empire. The rat stopped, sniffed the air and... darted for safety as dust swirled up in blinding clouds at the hooves of three mounts galloping, whirling, rearing under the weight of their clashing riders.

High on his rocky ledge of cliff, the rogue lowered his spyglass, unslung the longbow from his shoulder, raised a hand as if to reach for an arrow. Rising from a crouch behind him, Black Raq Skarrion, king of thieves notorious across Norgolia, stayed the rogue's hand, smiled to himself at his friend's impetuous nature.

Does it feel like a bona fide breach yet? Does it feel like we've started colouring outside the lines? It might not, but give it a few pages of this and a reader will likely be starting to feel at very least... unsettled. The more you mix signals -- with 3PL framing here, omniscient insight there -- the more a tension between the two will develop. Where 3PL framing should make the story more immersive, it will instead read as neglect of the omniscient narrator's scope. Where omniscient insight should allow us to engage equally with a Tal and Black Raq partnered like Butch and Sundance, it will read instead as a curious disconnection from both, a failure to ever truly moor us in either's third person limited PoV. Even without significant breaches, the result will be weak, a narrative wearing the blinkers of 3PL and viewing everything from the distance of ON.

The ultimate result is likely to be free of breaches only because it ceases to have a distinct approach to breach. Throw in an "unaware of the furrowing brow on the face looking over his shoulder" at the end of the second last line, and this early in the narrative the conflict of signals is likely to just leave us wholly unsure what PoV this narrative is meant to have, whether a coherent approach has been decided on at all. Appreciating how important these signals are can make all the difference, allow you to craft a narrative with a clear and powerful PoV from the first line, whichever approach you go for.

There is, of course, more to it than just third person limited versus the omniscient narrator, but it's a bit outside the province of a Writing 101 post like this to get into the technicalities of a narrative, say, in which the "outside observer" narrator's PoV is so backgrounded it all reads like fast-cut multiple third person limited, until you pull a deliberate twist and reveal the whole damn thing to be a second person omniscient account by a character inside the worldscape. (And you thought "Escape from Hell!" was just a shamelessly pulpy Carpenter pastiche. Feh!) No, I'm just out to give you a basic grounding in how to write a PoV here. And with first person the constraints are pretty self-evident, so it's third person I see mostly botched in the manuscripts I critique, where the result is all too much like that last example above, when it should be like this:

Over hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time, a desert rat scampered, busy with the daily struggles of its dismal life. It scurried across a crust of earth parched and cracked by a pitiless noon sun, on the edge of a weather-beaten trail that wound through arid scrub, through the sort of barren wastes all too common in the Norgolian Empire. The rat stopped, sniffed the air and... darted for safety as dust swirled up in blinding clouds at the hooves of three mounts galloping, whirling, rearing under the weight of their clashing riders.

High on his rocky ledge of cliff, a rogue by the name of Tal Duknan lowered his spyglass, unslung the longbow from his shoulder, reached for an arrow. Rising from a crouch behind him, a king of thieves known across Norgolia as Black Raq Skarrion stayed the impetuous rogue's hand. An arched eyebrow from Raq was met with a mock-innocent shrug from Tal.

Or like this:

Tal peered through the spyglass at the scene below. Over hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time, a desert rat scampered, busy with the daily struggles of its dismal life. It scurried across a crust of earth parched and cracked by a pitiless noon sun, on the edge of a weather-beaten trail that wound through arid scrub, through the sort of barren wastes all too damn common in the Norgolian Empire. The rat stopped, sniffed the air and... darted for safety as dust swirled up in blinding clouds at the hooves of three mounts galloping, whirling, rearing under the weight of their clashing riders.

High on his rocky ledge of cliff, Tal lowered his spyglass, unslung the longbow from his shoulder, reached for an arrow only to feel a hand grasp his wrist. Rising from a crouch behind him, a king of thieves known across Norgolia as Black Raq Skarrion arched an eyebrow at the impetuous rogue. Tal gave him a mock-innocent shrug. What? He was a rogue, after all.

These are, it should be obvious, the openings to quite different stories.

How to Write a Paragraph

So, having covered the basics of how to write a functional sentence of narrative, I thought it made sense to scale that up to the paragraph level. To kick off then, let's find some material to work with, turning again to The Eye of Argon, the very opening this time:

The weather beaten trail wound ahead into the dust racked climes of the baren land which dominates large portions of the Norgolian empire. Age worn hoof prints smothered by the sifting sands of time shone dully against the dust splattered crust of earth. The tireless sun cast its parching rays of incandescense from overhead, half way through its daily revolution. Small rodents scampered about, occupying themselves in the daily accomplishments of their dismal lives. Dust sprayed over three heaving mounts in blinding clouds, while they bore the burdonsome cargoes of their struggling overseers.

One thing worth picking out for special attention here is the shift in a past tense narrative to present tense, with "dominates," a type of rupture of the narrative's own conventions that's as often as not a blaring signal of exposition. If you're conjuring an illusion of what was, slipping into phrasings that speak of what is -- that's a breach of your framing conventions.* As that opening sentence slides into present tense exposition of the locale's terrain being one "which dominates large portions of the Norgolian Empire," it ceases to be narrative and becomes notes toward narrative.

This is the detail you jot down in your notebook as you thrash out worldscape: the empire is called Norgolia; its lands are largely barren. This is the description you bore a friend with as you blather the background of your story to him: so it's set in the Norgolian Empire, like, which is mostly dusty wasteland, see? This is the present tense of summary, of synopsis. Where the narrative slips into that present tense here, it has ceased to be narrative for that reason, because we're dealing with summary that has not been fleshed out into story now. This is just a detail grabbed out of the sketches for story, slapped onto the page as is.

Aside from that point though, I'm not going to work these sentences individually through each individual principle, just fire through the process to get to the end result. And I'm not going to work the sentences too rigorously, just give them a quick and dirty rebuild to deal with the worst deficiencies. So...

First we fix the sundry spelling errors, and the two major malapropisms -- the wet "splatter" and "spray" attached to dry "dust." Then for the sake of clarity, if the hoof prints are "worn" by age, can they be "smothered" by time? Are they eroded or buried? Let's pick one and stick with it. For consistency, the sands should have "scoured" the hoof prints, I'd say. And how can anything shine dully? A light source can be dim, but if a surface is reflective then it's not dull. This is an oxymoron. Does it even make sense for the hoof prints to stand out at all if they're eroded/buried by time and the elements? If they're on the way to complete erasure you can't even say they "were visible" without logic demanding some sort of "only just" hedging.

Leaving the fix for "shine dully" aside for now though, that "scoured by... time" also renders "age-worn" redundant. We can remove "of incandescence" as another redundancy. We can cut "halfway through its daily revolution" for a "directly" in front of "overhead." Since "climes" is just a way to reference a terrain considered with reference to its climate, "the [...] climes of the [...] land" is basically "the terrain of the terrain." The default size for rodents is small, so we need not specify. "Rodents" is generic for "desert rats." There's a single word for stopgap "barren land" -- "wastes" or "desert." As we work our way through, there's plenty to take the scalpel to. Even without inappropriate splatter and spray, three uses of "dust" is just repeating yourself, so we can switch "dust-racked" and "dust-strewn" for other relevant qualities. Going for one focused on climate and the other on terrain, let's decide on "arid" and "cracked".

There's one fairly big issue here though. How are we even meant to make sense of that last sentence? Surely, the dust is being kicked up by the wind as three pack horses "heave" their "cargoes" (up a "winding" hill track,) these beasts of "burden" led onward by "overseers" who have to "struggle", hauling on the reins to keep the stubborn animals going. No?

As it turns out, no, not at all. For all that everything else in the sentence conjures just such an image -- in part because of concision gone wrong, because of the extra import(s) carried in every single word quoted above -- these are nonetheless mounts. And the only way to make sense of what follows is if their riders are battling, if there are no literal "cargoes" to be "burdensome" here, simply those riders as burdens. Is "heaving" meant to be "rearing" then? I'm going to presume it is. While we're at it, a burden is not a burden if it's not being borne, so we can eliminate that redundancy, take "rear" as the verb for the mounts. So, lightly applying the principles of how to write a half-decent sentence, we end up with this:

The weather-beaten trail wound ahead through the arid wastes which dominated large portions of the Norgolian Empire. Hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time [were only just visible] against the cracked crust of earth. The tireless sun cast its parching rays from directly overhead. Desert rats scampered about, occupying themselves in the daily accomplishments of their dismal lives. Dust swirled in blinding clouds around three mounts while they reared under the burdens of their battling riders.

Now we can start to think in terms of writing this as a paragraph.

Again the scalpel is your instrument. Following on from the principle that added that last extra "thrust" clause to the sentence, you need to be ready to carve up sentences where need be. Do not just murder your darlings. Cannibalise them. The key problem of the second sentence is how to link the two phrasings of "hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time" and "the dust-strewn crust of earth"? But do these really need to be linked at all? Murder that sentence, cut out the nonsense "shone dully" that is its heart, and you have two dismembered limbs that might well fit better elsewhere. You need to be ruthless enough that you don't hesitate to try such maneouvres.

What is the sun casting its rays upon? Couldn't it be that crust? What are the desert rats scampering over or among? Couldn't it be those hoof prints?

Note that the function of "from directly overhead" can be carried out with a simple "noon," so we can conjure the sun in its midday position and free up that position in the sentence. Into that position we can then just as easily insert the target of the sun's parching rays as their source. Note that "about" is a broad, generic term, a hand waved in the general direction of movement around any locale, whereas "among hoofprints scoured by the shifting sands of time" is specific, precise. So we end up with this:

The weather-beaten trail wound ahead through the arid wastes which dominated large portions of the Norgolian Empire. The tireless noon sun cast its parching rays upon the cracked crust of earth. Desert rats scampered among hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time, occupying themselves in the daily accomplishments of their dismal lives. Dust swirled in blinding clouds around three mounts while they reared under the burdens of their battling riders.

There's a lot still wrong with those sentences. The first still does a hard-left into blatant exposition, The second is overstuffed with all those adverbs. The tone and register of "occupying... accomplishments" in the third is utterly dissonant. And the fourth cuts to the quick of the moment about as well as a blunt spork bouncing off a brick. But each sentence is individually functional just enough that these flaws are now, I'd say, somewhat overshadowed by a greater issue of how they work together -- or rather how they don't work together. Where each might just about be forgiven by a tolerant reader if it occurred in another context, there is a cumulative effect that damns them all individually with the paragraph as a whole, an effect I've come to term deposition.

Deposition is narrative as flat testimony, as a droning account of events aimed not at conjuring the murder, so to speak, but merely at communicating the pertinent facts of the deed, as to a court. This happened. That happened. This was because of that. And so on. It is failed narrative for that reason, no matter how functional the prose is as prose. To repeat the axiom, where a sentence of prose is purposed to communicate, a sentence of narrative is purposed to conjure. And deposition does not conjure. To demonstrate the how and why of this, let's pretend that communication is our only concern here, break these sentences apart to convey the necessary information of what is happening in the most straightforward way. If communication is the name of the game, after all, aren't we just aiming for a text that even the simplest child can download into their brain through the eyeballs? So:

The weather-beaten trail wound ahead through the arid wastes. This was a barren land which dominated large portions of the Norgolian Empire. The tireless noon sun cast its parching rays upon the cracked crust of earth. Desert rats scampered among hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time. They were occupying themselves in the daily accomplishments of their dismal lives. Dust swirled in blinding clouds around three mounts. They reared under the burdens of their battling riders.

In case that's not excruciating enough for you, let's take a crowbar to the cracks, unpack it to a level of agonisingly belaboured fucktardery that should make any reader want to take a power drill to their forehead.

The trail was weather-beaten. It wound ahead through the arid wastes. This was a barren land which dominated large portions of the Norgolian Empire. The noon sun was tireless. It cast its parching rays upon the cracked crust of earth. Desert rats scampered among hoof prints. The prints were scoured by the shifting sands of time. The rats were occupying themselves in the daily accomplishments of their dismal lives. Dust swirled in blinding clouds around three mounts. They reared under the burdens of their battling riders.

For all that this is shorn of the worst bodgings of the original, for all that it's a perfectly adequate communication of the basic details Thiess was trying (as best I can tell) to conjure, it's a mind-numbing piece of flat deposition, bereft of all dynamics, dead on the page.

Note the subject-fronted sentences, the trudging repetition of the structure: A was X; B did Y; C was Z. This is a crude monotony of syntax not just dull in and of itself on both those counts -- simplicity and repetition -- but actively precluding the incision that would modify structure to reflect, for example, the sequence in which targe, steel, brawn and blade are registered by a soldier attacked and skewered in the guts.

This is crucial. With the whole principle of syntactic decision, it is not simply some vague rule that one should kinda mix it up just to keep things interesting; it is about the logic of story generating the logic of structure, the latter reflecting the causal relationships and focal shifts of the former. Deposition scissions the one from the other, thereby eliminating a requisite feature of narrative dynamics. It is not just boring narrative; like a ballet stripped of choreography, it is no longer truly an example of the art form it's aspiring to be.

Note also the sheer proportion of declarative sentences describing state rather than action. Even the first action that occurs -- the sun's rays being "cast" -- is really just a gloss on an ongoing process, as is the swirling of dust. The only true sentences of action here are the two in which the desert rats scamper and in which the horses rear. Static description of setting can be narrative if the absence of action by agencies is compensated for by an exercise of agency on the writer's part, if the framing and shifting of focus makes the very conjuring of the scene a coherent sequence of actions, but we do not have this here. Instead we have only the explication of the backdrop, the explanation of what little action takes place. Deposition can be understood as the exposition of story itself. There is no narrative, only the infodumping of a scenario.

Returning to the less deliberately depositional example then, it's not simply a matter of hacking the structure of those sentences about to create some variety. We need to apply incision on the paragraph scale, look for the logic of story that should be engendering the logic of structure. Look for more logical shifts of focus in and between sentences, as for example where, having shifted focus from sun to earth, there is a more logical shift from earth to trail. Which is to say, switching sentence order creates a smoother join:

The tireless noon sun cast its parching rays upon the cracked crust of earth. The weather-beaten trail wound ahead through the arid wastes which dominated large portions of the Norgolian Empire. Desert rats scampered among hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time, occupying themselves in the daily accomplishments of their dismal lives. Dust swirled in blinding clouds around three mounts as they reared under the burdens of their battling riders.

Still, in that second sentence focus is first pointed ahead to the middle and far distance (the arid wastes) and then widened out beyond even what is visible (the Norgolian Empire). This makes for an untenably drastic transition back to the immediate locale, especially on the small-scale of the desert rat. But since the flow of focus in that sentence has a movement from rats to hoof prints to sands, we might think of a broader structural logic, beginning with the rats among the hoof prints, widening to their immediate sun-parched locale, broadening out to the human-scale trail, to the wastes the trail is in, to the empire the wastes are in:

Desert rats scampered among hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time, occupying themselves in the daily accomplishments of their dismal lives. The tireless noon sun cast its parching rays upon the cracked crust of earth. The weather-beaten trail wound ahead through the arid wastes which dominated large portions of the Norgolian Empire. Dust swirled in blinding clouds around three mounts as they reared under the burdens of their battling riders.

If this is better on a broader scale though, it remains supremely awkward in the details. The focus is returned to the rats with the last clause of sentence one, so it's a hard jump to the sun that is parching the earth those rats are scampering across. But, wait. Isn't that our answer -- that the cracked crust of earth is a development of the rats' context? Where that second sentence is a description of state, indeed, can't we turn the focus back to the context -- the cracked crust of earth upon which the tireless noon sun cast its parching rays? If there's no action in that articulation now, we need only let the desert rats scurry on from the first sentence into the next.

Desert rats scampered among hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time, occupying themselves in the daily accomplishments of their dismal lives. They scurried over the cracked crust of earth upon which the tireless noon sun cast its parching rays. The weather-beaten trail wound ahead through the arid wastes which dominated large portions of the Norgolian Empire. Dust swirled in blinding clouds around three mounts as they reared under the burdens of their battling riders.

But this breaks the smooth link between earth and trail. Now no sooner do we cast our eye on the wider terrain than the sun grabs focus with its action. Do we really want it to have focus at all, we must ask ourselves, as a force acting here and now, or should it be relegated to the background, gestured at as the force explaining a quality of the locale more immediately pressing -- given that we're dealing with the hoof prints, the sands, the earth, the trail?

Desert rats scampered among hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time, occupying themselves in the daily accomplishments of their dismal lives. They scurried over the cracked crust of earth parched by the rays of the tireless noon sun. The weather-beaten trail wound ahead through the arid wastes which dominated large portions of the Norgolian Empire. Dust swirled in blinding clouds around three mounts as they reared under the burdens of their battling riders.

Now those two sentences positively reach out for each other. Given the hoof prints, that cracked crust of earth must surely be the trail, the trail that wound ahead:

Desert rats scampered among hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time, occupying themselves in the daily accomplishments of their dismal lives. They scurried over the cracked crust of earth parched by the rays of the tireless noon sun, the weather-beaten trail that wound ahead through the arid wastes which dominated large portions of the Norgolian Empire. Dust swirled in blinding clouds around three mounts as they reared under the burdens of their battling riders.

But how do we get to that final sentence? This is a sudden jump from a setting with only the desert rats as agents into the action of humans on horses suddenly just there in clouds of dust. Ouch.

But a sudden shift of focus is not necessarily a bad thing. This is a quiet scene shattered by the human agents bursting onstage. Focus is being usurped from those little agents who have become now, up until this point, the subject of the paragraph. But we cannot reflect that shattering of quietude without returning from the vast scope of the Norgolian Empire to the immediate small scale locale, returning to the ground-level perspective of the rats about to have their dismal lives so rudely interrupted. We need a stitch here, a rat logically linked to what's beyond its ken -- the boundaries of empire, the riders that have not yet arrived. Insert a rat with its attention on the beyond and we can then smash its peace, send it fleeing, surrendering focus and subject status to the sudden new arrivals.

We can even deepen the effect by making that one little rat the sole subject of the paragraph up to that point, focus in from the general to the specific -- again, from the general to the specific. We'll use a few little tweaks to better conjure that perspective while we're at it. A rat is not an office worker occupied in accomplishments, for example. It is not educated in geography, so we want to avoid the parlance of the schoolroom as we slip in the ubiquity of this terrain across the empire. The trail is not "ahead" to it.

A desert rat scampered among hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time, busy with the daily struggles of its dismal life. It scurried over a cracked crust of earth parched by the rays of a tireless noon sun, a weather-beaten trail that wound through arid wastes all too common in the Norgolian Empire. The rat stopped, sniffed the air, and darted for cover. Dust swirled in blinding clouds around three mounts as they reared under the burdens of their battling riders.

But let's go further. Let's frame with the hoof prints, to have a glint of setting before we bring the little agent in. Note how this also makes a smoother shift from its action of scampering to the purpose of that action, and on to the continuation in the next sentence. Note how the slight disruption of jumping back from the far reaches of the "Norgolian Empire" to "the rat" is echoed in the disruption of the rat's motion, how it becomes a subtle structural signal of disruption -- a surrogate for the untold disruption that causes the rat to stop, a foreshadowing of the disruption about to send it running. Let's milk that moment's tension a little, draw out the pause structurally and slingshot into the the eruption of human-level activity. Let's bring the hooves of the opening line back with a vengeance as a key image of that disruption. Wouldn't the untold disruption be their thundering, after all? Wouldn't the blinding clouds of dust be kicked up specifically by them rather than just the mounts?

Over hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time, a desert rat scampered, busy with the daily struggles of its dismal life. It scurried across a crust of earth parched and cracked by the rays of a tireless noon sun, a weather-beaten trail that wound through arid wastes all too common in the Norgolian Empire. The rat stopped, sniffed the air, and... darted for cover as dust swirled up in blinding clouds at the hooves of three mounts, rearing under the burdens of their battling riders.

It's still not quite enough. Those horses can't suddenly just appear on stage, rearing, as if they were there all along; they have to enter dramatically. They need to come galloping on -- but not keep galloping on out of frame. In the absence of any attempt to make this sensible in the original, let's just use the rearing to suggest the stopping and turning to engage that would have to take place. Given that it's a wild eruption of action, in fact, it's quite in line with the principle of incision to simply throw some verbs at the reader, quickfire, to make a structural pivot out of which we swing into the image of the fight. And with a few more tweaks and twiddles, maybe we've finally got a working paragraph:

Over hoof prints scoured by the shifting sands of time, a desert rat scampered, busy with the daily struggles of its dismal life. It scurried across a crust of earth parched and cracked by a pitiless noon sun, on the edge of a weather-beaten trail that wound through arid scrub, through the sort of barren wastes all too common in the Norgolian Empire. The rat stopped, sniffed the air and... darted for safety as dust swirled up in blinding clouds at the hooves of three mounts galloping, whirling, rearing under the weight of clashing riders.

Like the sentence example, it's far from deathless prose. Given the source it's hard to avoid a certain clichéd quality of pastiche. I can't resist, in fact, switching "pitiless" in for "tireless" just to get the alliteration with "parched," because really as far as I'm concerned, the idiom is calling for a dash of such relish, hokey as it is. But again the point is not to turn shite into gold, just to show the basics of how one... works the conjuration, so to speak, on this next level up. It's about showing the link between the logic of story and the logic of structure, about unpacking some of the dynamics of narrative focus, demonstrating just how fatal the effect of deposition can be. Make the mistake of imagining narrative to be mere communication, and you may well end up killing your story with every sentence, over and over and over and over, every single trudging flat declarative a bloody tortuous murder of the craft that will make your reader -- believe me -- scream and weep.

If you can learn to write a decent paragraph, on the other hand... well, now we're starting to get into the territory of PoV and voice, and if you can master those I'd argue that a whole lot of the rest of it simply follows.

***

* Unless it's not. The whole narrative could be cast as the reflection of a first person narrator character, for example, (past tense) but with the action of narration itself taking place within the worldscape of the novel (present tense). This is to say that there's an extra level of framing in the narrative. That present tense narrative frame might well be revealed in glimpses as your first person narrator interjects the odd comment on what is to elucidate what was. This is not what's happening here though.

Ten Rules for a New Writer

So, you may have seen this before when I posted a link to the interview outtakes on Craig Gidney's blog that I'm cribbing from. But I thought I'd bring it over here to stand as an intro to a sort of Writing 101 series of entries. Once this is posted I'll be wiring it into the menu above, and if you look under the Analysis menu option you should see a Writing 101... option, with a submenu for entries in that series. I'll be looking to click into that series, as they're written, any posts that deal with the basic nitty-gritty pragmatics of writing narrative. I'm not making any promises about timely developments, but as you'll see from the entries already written and collated, we're up to Rule Five in the Ten Rules of Writing outlined below -- which are mostly not really rules at all, to be honest, not Dos and Don'ts to apply to your writing, but rather glosses on the fundamentals of how narrative works, as I see it.

This series is my advice for any "new writer" then, this post the intro to... the sort of course I'd set out if I was stuck in front of a creative writing class, tasked with instilling them with the core skills. My ten rules?

1. You are not a new writer.
2. Any sign that you don’t know the ropes, is a sign that you’re not ready to go in the ring.
3. There is no story without style.
4. POV is not a communal steadicam.
5. Voice makes character.
6. Character makes action.
7. Action makes setting.
8. Making tea is not protagonising.
9. Don’t hide the story behind your back so you can sucker punch the reader with it later.
10. Find the tenth rule.

Some of these are simple, others maybe not so. The first is about mentality. Are you really just “beginning”? You’ve been writing since you first scrawled your name. You’ve been making up narrative since your first daydream. Does it matter if you didn’t even start doing those together until you hit forty, if you write The Naked Lunch? That’s the point: all that really matters is whether you’re skilled or unskilled, and thinking of yourself as a novice or amateur… that’s a rationalization that you lack skill because you’re a learner, an amateur. Bollocks to that. You’re always going to be learning. You might never be published. The nearest you come to a graduation is the day you cease to accept any excuse for a lack of skill in your work. In fact, if you’re looking at other writers like they’ve achieved a special status you wish you had — call it established, professional, whatever — you’re engaging in a fantasy of being a writer when you should be writing. Because you are a writer. Not a beginning writer. Not a new writer. Just a writer.

The second rule is basically just presentation — functional prose in the required format. It should go without saying, but a lot of writers aren’t wired into the sort of online communities or writers' groups where you learn this. The third is possibly a bit contentious, but as far as I’m concerned style versus content is a false dichotomy. Words are the only substance. Style is just how you put them together at all levels — sentences, paragraphs, passages, scenes, chapters, acts. Whether you end a chapter on a wrap-up or a cliff-hanger is a stylistic decision. The key point is that your narrative is an articulation and if it doesn’t work as such, it won’t conjure the story. You can’t just slap some words together into a rough semblance of a vague description of the movie running in your head and expect readers to enjoy the story without that “patina” of style obscuring the “content.” Plot, theme and character are interpretations of story, which is conjured by the narrative. There is no “content.” Words are the only substance.

The others mainly speak for themselves. The confusion of multiple third person limited and omniscient narrator into muddled third person limited and/or amnesiac narrator is the first thing to watch for. Mastering narrative voice (which will also help you stick to a POV) will bring your characters more alive than spieling a profile — physical description, traits and attributes, backstory summary. Actually it’ll bring other characters alive in your viewpoint characters attitude to them; they’ll be fleshed out in that character’s perception as coded into the narrative itself — as will action and setting. But more pointedly, action is only action if it matters to a character; otherwise it’s just stuff happening. It’s the character’s attitude to peril that makes it peril. And the conflict of a narrative — the agon — depends on your characters having agency; without that you just have tin soldiers being smashed against each other. Setting maybe isn’t dependent on action per se, but time and change is a part of any locale, and the principle of the “telling detail” applies here; a leaf falling from a tree can do as much to conjure a forest as reams of blather. And in terms of making tea? Sometimes that’s literally making tea. Mundane tasks like that can be protagonising — as when making tea after a death in the family is a character distracting themself from grief — but dawdle and dross are just tedious.

The penultimate rule -- the only one that really is a rule -- addresses something I’ve been surprised to see in quite a few of the works I’ve critiqued — authors not just keeping a card up their sleeve to make a dramatic revelation with a shocking twist, but completely obscuring the story itself by keeping a POV character’s backstory, for example, a secret to the reader… even though the character knows it, everyone else knows it, the logic of their interactions makes it absurd they don’t talk about it, and most of the action is in fact predicated on that backstory. Aha! the writer says, when they suddenly reveal on page 450 that the POV character is the son of the antagonist… as both of them knew all along. This is especially bad when “later” equals “in a sequel.” Hiding the story till then means not having a story at all.

The tenth rule you’ll have to explain, once you find it.

Anyway, as I say, if you look at the menu bar atop the page you should find the entries in that series so far. If you want a better sense of exactly what each of these "ten rules" are about, start at the top and work your way down.

Enjoy.

Oh, yes, and... BFS Awards 2012...

I AM JUDGING YOU!

Along with fellow jurists:

• James Barclay
• Maura McHugh
• Esther Sherman
• Damien G. Walter

So I hope all you BFS members are nominating some cool shit for me to read.

How to Write a Sentence

In the paid critiques I do for the Writers' Workshop, I'm often faced with writers with a level of narrative prose so rudimentary that I really can't just tell them it needs polish in this respect or that; I pretty much have to tell them the basics of how to write a sentence. Of narrative, that is. Even when the prose is perfectly acceptable as prose in and of itself, there can be so much that's wrong, to be honest, in terms of how it works as narrative, that the easiest thing to do is just pick one sentence in particular and show them how to rewrite it, take them step-by-step through the application of some basic principles. Hell, even when their prose isn't too bad, it's easier to demonstrate than to explain the how abstractly.

So I've thought for a while that maybe I should turn all that work into some sort of Sentence Writing 101 post for the blog, but of course, I can't exactly use a client's text even anonymously. What to do, then? What to do? It's actually kind of hard to deliberately write a sentence that's fucked up in all the ways I need for such a demo. But fear ye not. A flash of inspiration hit me, I had a quick shufty online, and came up with this prime example from Jim Theiss's seminal 1970 novel, The Eye of Argon:

A sweeping blade of flashing steel riveted from the massive barbarians hide enameled shield as his rippling right arm thrust forth, sending a steel shod blade to the hilt into the soldiers vital organs.

I think we can safely all agree that this is unmitigated shite, yes? OK, then. Let's take a closer look at it and see if we can't perform a little alchemy, transform it... well, if not into gold then at least into a serviceable steel. Because really, the principles involved in writing a decent fucking sentence of narrative... they're not that fucking complex.

1. Decision

There are many things you want to say in a sentence, but you can't say them all. Decide between them. There are many ways a thing might be said. Decide between them. There are many words on the shelf, close enough to hand that you could grab any one of them and just chuck it in there. Don't. Stop. Look at those words. Decide between them. And when you do put the words down on the page, there's still a decision to be made as to whether the sentence says what you want it to.

Good decision is conscious, considered, confident, conclusive*. To be those things, decision must be informed. Decision resolves. Decision is therefore ultimately about clarity -- clarity of purpose creating clarity of import.

So...

You're aiming to say three things here, that (1) a blade is swung by a barbarian as (2) his arm thrusts forward, (3) skewering a soldier's belly.

The word "riveted" has been grabbed off the shelf. Is this what you mean? Check the dictionary. No, it's not. How about "enameled"? No, that's clearly just the first that came to hand too. You figured, what the fuck, it was close enough -- but it's not. And "shod"? A blade is made of steel, not shod with it. Did you stop and think what you're trying to say? Did you mean that the sword comes out of the shield (huh?!) or out from behind it? Did you mean that the blade is sent to the hilt or that it's sent up to the hilt?

With "rivet," you should be deciding that you mean a sudden action as from a riveter's gun -- a shooting forward. With "enameled," you should be deciding that you mean "wrapped in." With "steel shod blade," you should be deciding you just mean "steel blade." You should be deciding that the sentence needs "behind" and "up":

A sweeping blade of flashing steel shot forward from behind the massive barbarian's hide-wrapped shield as his rippling right arm thrust forth, sending a steel blade up to the hilt into the soldier's vital organs.

2. Excision

There are many things you can say in a sentence, but you don't want to say them all. We do not give a fuck about many of the things you could say. We do not give a fuck about most of them. Redundancy is fat, and fat should be flensed. Adjectives and adverbs -- all modifying terms -- are to be met with the ruthless scalpel of a surgeon. Do they actually add information that is not carried in the verb or adjective already? Even if so, is it information we need? Even whole clauses are to be put to the sword if they repeat what has already been said. If clarity is a primary aim, so too is economy. Excise all that is extraneous.

So here, since the motion of the sword is the predicate of a clause, it doesn't have to be a quality of the subject too. "The moving blade moved" is redundancy, the verb rendering the adjective extraneous. We can eliminate "sweeping" then. We don't need to specify that it's his "right" arm either; the reader's imagination will default to that. And if the blade "shot forward" then we don't need to know that the arm holding it "thrust forth." This is one action, not two. The secondary action performed by that arm is to send the sword into the soldier's guts, so we can cut and stitch. Similarly we already know that the object in use is "a steel blade."

So this:

A [sweeping] blade of flashing steel shot [forward] from behind the massive barbarian's hide-wrapped shield as his rippling [right] arm [thrust forth], sending [a steel blade] up to the hilt into the soldier's vital organs.

Becomes:

A blade of flashing steel shot from behind the massive barbarian's hide-wrapped shield as his rippling arm sent it up to the hilt into the soldier's vital organs.

3. Precision

There are many ways a thing might be said. Vaguely is not good enough. Where a sentence of basic prose is purposed to communicate, a sentence of narrative is purposed to conjure. A sentence that only communicates what happened is not narrative; it is deposition. Your job is not just to convey the basic gist of a sequence of events to the reader, but to invoke that sequence of events vividly in their imagination from the cumulative import of every word and phrase. Vividness is cumulative, but so is vagueness, and vagueness is not good enough. Exchange generic terms for precise ones. Look for stopgap phrasings where there's an exact word for the meaning you're delineating clumsily. Look for stopgap combinations that don't work if you really consider the precise meaning. After clarity and economy comes accuracy.

So, here, "shot" is a generic term for sudden movement, including all manner of firing and dashing motions. The word you want is "thrust." Likewise "sent" is a generic term for getting something from A to B, where we could be using something specific to the immersion of a blade in a soldier's guts, like "buried." The term "hide-wrapped" is a stopgap phrasing for a meaning nailed by the term "leathered." Knowing this about the shield, we know what type of shield it is, can replace the generic "shield" with "targe." And "rippling arm" is rather inaccurate. An arm doesn't ripple; it's the muscles of an arm that ripple. So we take the sentence on another step:

A blade of flashing steel thrust from behind the massive barbarian's leathered targe as the rippling muscles of his arm buried it up to the hilt in the soldier's vital organs.

4. Concision

There are many words on the shelf that you could use to say precisely what you mean. But there are some words you can use to say even more than precisely what you mean here. And if the additional import is one you're trying to convey elsewhere, you can pot those two balls with one shot. The word or phrase you use to describe an action can capture qualities of the object performing it, and vice versa. If you can say two things with one word, do so. Even if there's no rebound import, if you can use two words in place of three, do so.** "But isn't this just economy?" I hear you say. Yes, this is economy returned with a vengeance. Where economy is about rigour, this is about vigour.

So, the word "flashing" is here being used to conjure the reflection of light off the blade, but it is also loaded with an import of motion, sudden and swift. So we can kill two birds with one stone, let "flash" be the verb. It lacks the precision of "thrust," but it binds object and action into object-in-action. The phrase "blade of steel" can also now become simply "steel blade."

A steel blade flashed from behind the massive barbarian's leathered targe as the rippling muscles of his arm buried it up to the hilt in the soldier's vital organs.

5. Incision

When you put the words down on the page, does the sentence say what you want it to? The question is, what do you want it to say? The better question is, what do you want it to do? Do you want it to, for example, encapsulate the import of the action, as it happens, how it happens? To cut to the very quick of the event, to conjure it not just as a superficial description of how this did that and such-and-such happened, but to slice it open and drop the reader right in it? Then you need to carve into the nature of reality itself.

How does a sudden attack that puts a sword in your belly play from the inside? If you'd seen the blade properly would it be in your belly? Didn't you see it properly a little too late, when it was up to the hilt? Shift that "blade" and we shift the awareness of it.

Steel flashed from behind the massive barbarian's leathered targe as the rippling muscles of his arm buried his blade up to the hilt in the soldier's vital organs.

Did his arm skewer you with his sword or did he do it, him, the fucking cunt? Did your arm skewer him with your sword or did you do it, you, because you're a fucking god among men? Let muscles of his arm do what they actually did -- ripple -- and let the barbarian take the glory/guilt that's his:

Steel flashed from behind the massive barbarian's leathered targe, as the muscles of his arm rippled and he buried his blade up to the hilt in the soldier's vital organs.

Is his mass mere flabby corpulence, or is it the rippling-muscled brawny bulk of a warrior? Attach "massive" to the muscle rather than the barbarian and we lose the direct specification of his size but gain a more precise, albeit indirect, specification that conjures the larger picture from the telling detail:

Steel flashed from behind the barbarian's leathered targe, the massive muscles of his arm rippling as he buried his blade up to the hilt in the soldier's vital organs.

Apply concision. Apply all previous principles. These aren't stages you move on from, go through one by one. There's no moving on until the sentence is good. So, apply concision. What are "massive muscles" but brawn?

Steel flashed from behind the barbarian's leathered targe, the brawn of his arm rippling as he buried his blade up to the hilt in the soldier's vital organs.

Did you bury your blade in his vital organs, or did you sink it in his guts? How do you think of innards as a barbarian? How do you think of sticking the fucker? Isn't there just a little more of your satisfaction reflected in a sssssank!

Steel flashed from behind the barbarian's leathered targe, the brawn of his arm rippling as he sank his blade up to the hilt in the soldier's guts.

6. Decision

There are many ways to structure the words in a sentence. There are all the commas and conjunctions you could ever want on the shelf, close enough to hand that you could just grab them and chuck them onto the page, as and when it seems you could maybe do with one. Put them down and look at the sentence. Just because it's grammatically correct doesn't mean it's good. Remember, where a sentence of basic prose is purposed to communicate, a sentence of narrative is purposed to conjure. The logic of structuring a sentence of narrative goes beyond grammar. It is a matter of dynamics, of focus turning and twisting this way and that, slick as a swordsman's parry, feint and thrust. The structure of your sentence is its dynamics. The dynamics of your sentence is its drive. The drive of your sentence is the impetus of narrative, drawing the reader in, whirling them through your slingshot syntax, hurtling them onward, sentence to sentence to sentence. There are many ways to structure the words in a sentence. Decide between them.

So, here, the swift flashing of steel requires a swift phrasing. So we switch the full descriptor for a punchier pronoun, let the brute hulk of the barbarian fall back to his moment of triumph:

Steel flashed from behind his leathered targe, the brawn of his arm rippling as the barbarian sank his blade up to the hilt in the soldier's guts.

If that steel is being whipped out from behind the shield, suddenly being made visible, we can let the structure of the sentence reflect that, present the "from" adverbial first, then spring the flashing steel upon the reader as suddenly as it's sprung on the soldier:

From behind his leathered targe, steel flashed, the brawn of his arm rippling as the barbarian sank his blade in the soldier's gut up to the hilt.

When does the brawn of his arm ripple? Simultaneous with the sinking of the blade, but after the flash of steel? Or vice versa? Is it all happening at once -- steel flashing as brawn ripples as the blade sinks into guts? Or is what we're going for here the sequence in which they register, the shift of those moments... quick, quick, and suddenly all too final.

From behind his leathered targe, steel flashed, the brawn of his arm rippled, and the barbarian sank his blade in the soldier's guts up to the hilt.

If we're applying the same logic of perception to the rippling of brawn as to the flashing of steel though, let's apply the same syntax. We're not losing the precision of an arm, if you think about what brawn is actually involved here. We're gaining the precision of an arm, a shoulder, a whole body putting its bulk behind that blow:

From behind his leathered targe, steel flashed, brawn rippled, and the barbarian sank his blade in the soldier's guts up to the hilt.

But in that final action, is it awkward that the "up to the hilt" is dislocated from "sank his blade"? Would a reversal of phrasing, "sank his blade up to the hilt in the soldier's guts," be better? Or maybe that dislocation is exactly what we want -- two stages for the blade's motion, "in" and "up to the hilt." Let's apply incision here, and carve ourselves a new clause entirely, bring back a verb from the cutting room floor to give the barbarian a syntax that springs out steel and brawn on the soldier too fast for him to deal with, skewers the poor fucker in the belly, and then drives his death home to him with relish:

From behind his leathered targe, steel flashed, brawn rippled, and the barbarian sank his blade in the soldier's guts, thrust it up to the hilt.

That's how you write a sentence. It's not a great sentence, just passable, but then really, if you asked me to get to a good sentence from that line, I'd suck my teeth, shake my head and say, "You don't want to be starting from here, mate." But it's a functional sentence of narrative, wrangled out of shite by the application of basic principles to the words and their structurings -- those principles of decision, excision, precision, concision, incision... which are all, you'll note, derived from the Latin word for cut. Words are, as I've said before, the only substance. Style is not a patina, a decorative finish; it is a process, the process described above, performed with the scalpel of one's savvy upon that substance.

Which is why, of course, the end result is 25 words versus the 34 of the original.

Because style is not a fucking patina.

***


* Excellent decision is instinctive, intuitive, instant, a skill learned to automation, but to master the skill to excellence you need to go through competence. If you think you have mastery as an innate facility, I am not innarested in your condition.

** Unless there's a damn good reason not to, like not demoting an object to mere modifier, or simply because it would foul the rhythm. Note that I haven't changed "rippling muscles of his arm" to "rippling arm muscles." The rhythm of the former is smooth, a slicker combo of syncopated punches finishing on an uppercut -- DUMdum DUHruhruhruh DUM -- while that of the latter is awkward -- DUDdum DUM DUHruh -- not helped by the shared "m" at the end of "arm" and start of "muscles."

Cities of Flesh

From a couple of years back, a series of cityscapes constructed as collages of gay pornography. You may well have seen these before, if you've been following this blog for a while; I figured I'd collate them into a single post while I'm transferring links from the sidebar to the menu.


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