Science To Fiction: Prose Style

For some reason, when I decided to start this, the first title that came to mind was Cow Tipping 101.
Damn you Live at the Apollo!
"I'll drink with you until the cows come home. I'll drink with you 'till we bring the cows home, get the cows drink, and tip the cows over!" I love that quote.

...

Anyway...let's keep this train-wreck moving.

I've decided to make this deviation to explain many of the writing flaws I encounter, and, more specifically, how to solve them. The reason being that a lot of the prose I see on dA is riddled with such flaws and potholes that no-one seems to be able to correct. I'm not going to tell you how to improve beyond this, or tell you that this is the right way. I'm doing this because I think that it will help some people. Not everyone; fair enough, but some, maybe, if anyone can ever be bothered to read my deviations.
Why is it that the best literature is always side-lined?
Ugh…

I'm trying to turn literature into readable literature, people, or helping those who have improved but still have a way to go. Frankly, I'm just doing it because I'm sick of all the terrible stuff I see hogging the spotlight. If people are going to write stuff that goes on the front page, I want to at least make it good. So here we go, my opinion on what goes wrong with writing and how to fix it. Be warned, you will see terminology used here.

Lesson 1: Numbers to words</u>
I'm starting simple here, for people who like to work things slowly. These first two sections will be easy enough, and then I'll launch fully into the gritty of prose.
The Numbers to Words is possibly the smallest individual slip-up, but both the most common and one of the things that can throw a story off. When you write a number, you have the option to use the digit, e.g. A small, 5-man team. Or the word, e.g. A small five-man team. Phonologically there is no difference – to speak them you would not notice a change. When written, however, the difference is larger than we realise. When a writer puts a pen to paper and writes, they too don't know the difference – the story is already set in their head, there is no influence on them from whatever ends up on paper.

To our conscious mind, there is once again no obvious difference. The problem lies on a subconscious level, in the mind's drive for uniformity. Take the first example from above, if you have all text, A small _-man team. then add the digit, making it A small, 5-man team. I affects the mind, because it sees a digit surrounded by letters. It's different, and is singled out, and the subconscious part of the mind sticks on it, and can't work out why it's not in line with the rest. I'm not saying readers are stupid – the mental pathways in our subconscious aren't built to work out why, they just find the flaw.

The same goes for dialogue too. When someone is speaking, they say the word, not the number. They will pronounce '5' the same as 'five' but if you look, the actual physical representations would be spelt differently. If you say 'five' exactly as it is, you still get 'five'. But if you say '5' like it is written, you get 'Horizontal line, vertical line, reverse C.' That's where the issue lies. The brain doesn't see the two as the same subconsciously. While consciously we can tell the fact that it's almost exactly the same aside from the physical representation, our minds naturally see the difference.


Lesson 2: Tense Mixing</u>
Tense mixing…again, it's a simple enough problem, and really often just the writer's mistake.

Tense mixing often occurs during combat or fight scenes, when the writer is trying to make a fast-paced scene while showing the reader what's going on. Most stories are written naturally in the past tense, using words like 'had' 'took' and the like because it allows the writer to write plot points in, as opposed to having to write a story only living in the present. However, because the present tense tells things as they happen, it seems more immediate, thus the writer, perhaps consciously, perhaps not, starts to use them in his writing.
For example:
Example 1: The knight struggled with his sword, embedded as it was in the stone, as his foe closing in on him. A spark of inspiration struck him and he releases his grip on his sword…
Example 2: The knight struggled with his sword, embedded as it was in the stone, as his foe closed in on him. A spark of inspiration struck him and he released his grip on his sword…

The two examples are for the same moment in time, however one is mixed and the other is not. The first example has past tense words 'struggled' 'embedded' and 'struck'. It also contains words from the present tense, i.e. 'closing' and 'releases'. The second replaces those two words with 'closed' and 'released'. Read the two sentences out, see which one sounds right. The second will sound better every time. This section really doesn't have anything else to say about it.

Oh, as a final note for this section, I'm not saying that stories should never be written in first person. I have read some very good pieces of present-tense fiction, often script-fiction.


Lesson 3: OTS/POV</u>
This is positively the most massive problem I see in a piece of literature, specifically prose writing. First, I should elaborate on exactly what OTS/POV stands for. It actually is split into two things, POV stands for Point-Of-View, and it covers two topics. Firstly, POV covers the angle, 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person writing. Then, after that, it goes into depth of a character, thoughts and feelings and the like. OTS, on the other hand, is a sub-division of POV in 3rd person, and deals with focussing the style of writing. Therefore, in the interests of dealing with things in an organised manner, I will deal with category one of POV first, the angle of the story, in 1st, 2nd and 3rd person.

We all know what the different modes of view are, so I hardly need to go over them. The problem lies in drawing the reader into the story, and once again it's a problem of the subconscious.
Take a look at both 1st person and 3rd person; both viewpoints do not directly involve the reader, using a character separate from the reader to make the story run. 2nd person does not. It directly involves the reader, taking them out of their everyday life and thrusting them into a position within a story.

The conflict here lies in empathy and sympathy and the human mind's reaction to it. In 1st and 3rd person texts, when a reader is shown a character feeling emotion, they read about how he reacts and, depending on their relation and thoughts of the character's ideals, they will sympathise or empathise with him. The human mind does so subconsciously, and choosing to do otherwise is an active decision the conscious mind makes. A reader naturally sympathises with a character in a position as if they were real, provided that the character has been fleshed out well enough, of course.

2nd Person poses a unique problem for the writer and an obstacle for the reader – selected emotions. If you write a reader insert fiction, as the story dictates you must write emotions for the reader, or the character becomes faceless and emotionless. However, unlike 1st and 3rd person, writing emotions for a reader is imposing a personality on them, one which will only match up with a single person in the entire world…and they may not speak the same language. The human mind naturally dislikes taking orders, and its subconscious pathways are configured to show that. When a reader insert piece is written, you tell the reader what they should be thinking. It's an order, and the human mind dislikes it – it creates a void in the mind of the reader, because the mind refuses to admit this emotional state. The reader, if they persevere with reading, must force aside this natural pathway we all have, and that makes their mind dislike the story subconsciously, which will lower their conscious opinion.

Therein lies the problem of POV writing. 2nd person fiction does not naturally work because it requires the fixation of an artificial personality over the real personality of the reader, and the mind rejects it. You may want to note, however, that 'Choose Your Own Adventure' fiction, and this is because when presented with a choice, the reader can choose to react in a certain way, not just having their decision forced upon them. If anyone reading this has ever been part of a Role-playing Game, then it's similar to one of those.

Now, the second topic within POV is emotional conduct, and it links closely with sub-division one, because without correct emotional conduct, you can't get a reader to empathise with a character without an extensive effort on their part. This is a small, but vital section that is involved in every part of OTS/POV, because it's what really makes a story. When you write a story, we have to see characters with emotions and thoughts and feelings, and not merely have emotionless robots acting out a scene. Imagine watching a documentary on life in the wild, without the running commentary. You'd see lots of animals running around, shots of them up close, maybe looking around, but you wouldn't have an idea of what's going on. You'd see what was happening, but you would be disconnected from it all, merely standing by and looking. As soon as you add the commentary, you get an insight into the thoughts and feelings (though perhaps incorrect) of those animals as they go about their business.

Now, this is the issue in some pieces of fiction. Take a look at the two examples below:
The aged man walked into his study and put down his books, walking over to the nightstand and pouring himself a glass of wine.
And:
The aged man shuffled into his study and dropped the books unceremoniously on the table, pausing for a moment to allow the pain in his back to pass. You're getting older, Nephis, you can't keep doing these all-nighters. The old man turned the thought over in his mind, knowing how right it was. The pain receding for the moment, he shuffled across the carpet to his engraved nightstand, pouring himself a glass of wine. It was vintage, forty years waiting now, just like his many family heirlooms.

The differences are extreme, yes, but it's clear. In the first example, we get a clear description of what he did and in what order. In the second example we are shown a lot more of his thoughts and feelings and personal problems. There is the mention of his back pain, something you might not see otherwise, it being stative. The italicised section is his thoughts, something you can't see for yourself, and that only he knows of. We take note of the engraved nightstand, and 'his' family heirlooms. They are details that the man is noticing, while someone else with a different outlook would see things different. This is simple enough, really.

Now I will move swiftly on to OTS; it stands for Over-The-Shoulder, and is a division of 3rd person into a specific viewpoint. OTS is the art of following a character with emotional conduct and correct POV while maintaining the omniscience of the narrator. I will use my example from emotional conduct as an example for the OTS section:
The aged man walked into his study and put down his books, walking over to the nightstand and pouring himself a glass of wine.
And:
The aged man shuffled into his study and dropped the books unceremoniously on the table, pausing for a moment to allow the pain in his back to pass. You're getting older, Nephis, you can't keep doing these all-nighters. The old man turned the thought over in his mind, knowing how right it was. The pain receding for the moment, he shuffled across the carpet to his engraved nightstand, pouring himself a glass of wine. It was vintage, forty years waiting now, just like his many family heirlooms.
He was oblivious, of course, to the man making his way silently through the castle to the very same room.

Now, the first example is also a good description of a non-OTS 3rd person narrative. It is as if we are watching the man from the corner of the room, knowing what he does but not knowing why and how he thinks. As the second example stands, this is the introduction of OTS. Unlike in emotional conduct I have added a line, to show how OTS works. As you can see we still know what the man is thinking and his personal by-thoughts of things in the room, but it's not possible for him to know of the man elsewhere in the castle, therefore we are still the narrator, as opposed to being entirely the POV of the old man.

The problem with OTS is all about how a writer is trying to portray someone. If you write with complete omniscience, with no narrator interaction with the characters, you come across as bland and boring, once again bringing into play this documentary-style writing.


Lesson 4: Names </u>
Names are…once again, one of the more minor aspects, but like all the others, the more frequently the mistake is made, the worse it becomes, and that is exactly what this lesson is about: frequency.
The flaw here lies in either too frequent use of the name, or not enough of it. The former is mostly pointless, while the latter can be forgiven in cases where an identity wants to be preserved.
The issue is specifically with it being used constantly – it becomes repetitive. While I have mentioned before that using things that we know is good, using them too much causes stagnation of the word, which is why we have personal pronouns. All you need to do is have a name at some point if you want the character to be known, and then use their name every so often so we are reminded and become familiar with the character, instead of growing bored of them.

The circumstance where this is false is during group conversations, where more than two of the members are known to the reader. Here, you need to use the name to qualify who is speaking each time to avoid confusion, though personal pronouns or 'titles' such as 'one of the onlookers' 'a peasant' or 'the Spaniard' (I simply took the ones that came to mind). On that note, the more of these 'titles' a person has, the easier it is for a reader to know who is speaking simply by their name. If a person is also out of their culture (i.e. a German in a British society) you can also add their nationality or race to that mix, to use the example of a German in Britain, aside from the generic 'him' 'he' her' the German (who I will dub a female) would also have access to the following titles:
'The German' 'The European' and other titles can be added for various personal traits, perhaps wounds, perhaps other traits: 'the raven-haired' (or other hair-type) 'the tired girl/woman' 'the dark-skinned lady'.

Simply put, the more titles you have, the easier it is to write for a person, but even within a society of their own, there are other qualifiers for them once we know their names. Jobs, age (roughly) and emotions are also valid.


Lesson 5: Overplaying & Underwriting</u>
This was a problem I must admit that I have faced in the past before, and the former of the two is something I still (occasionally) do even today. Unfortunately there is also no real solution to it.

This lesson, hopefully a short one, will cover how much detail should really be going into a story. Now, we all know that a good story requires that we know what we're dealing with, without packing it with so much detail that the narrative grinds to a halt, and finding said line is the truly difficult part.

I regard putting too little detail as a pet hate of mine, because it's meant to be a story – we're meant to be drawn into it, to see things as the characters see them. If we only get this two-dimensional picture of what's going on, it feels like the story is lacking in visual description. Don't say a wall is made of stone, say the wall is made of cracked, aging stone, ivy worming into each crack and crevice. If you find yourself wanting to lack visual description, for example having the characters in a dark environment, describe the shadows as being cloaking and grim, curtains cutting off their sight.

The same goes for sound – don't simply have a constant drum-beat, have a deep, booming drum, the characters shaking with each crash.

Now I must swiftly turn to the other side of the coin, such a long, consuming topic that it takes me hundreds of stringy syllables and yet more paragraphs to even describe the introductory lines, which will in turn describe themselves and a few words that drag out into the next…-thump-

See what that is? Overplaying is when the description becomes so overblown that it bogs down the narrative – when you describe something extremely well for the purposes of the story, that is called minutiae, which is a form of writing which can connote hesitation, or recollection, or a number of other things. However, if this mass of descriptive term actively slows down the plot, or is put there because you are trying to describe every inch of it to the reader, then you're going wrong. Again, I will provide examples:
The dresser was made of ebony Oakwood, two feet and six inches from the carved monster-foot bases to the polished and waxed top with a reflection shining sunlight off it. Around the ring were faces drawn into the wood by the original sculptor, four-inch high carvings depicting all the seven sins, greed, gluttony, lust, pride, wrath, envy and sloth. The mirror was one foot and eleven inches in height, the tip coming down in a shallow arc to join with the wide edges and the border was of sixteen thorny roses, the tip of the last entwined within the petals of the one after it.

This a ridiculously exaggerated description of an ornate dresser, that has not only been overdone but has also been described from the 'god viewpoint' with no relation to any character.

When he stepped into the room, Ramir blinked in surprise, light glaring into his eyes from a piece of furniture against the wall opposite, and he found his eyes drawn to it. His nose curled at the man's arrogance – the dresser was ornate and a thing of…sentimental beauty, but surely he should know that such an open display of the seven sins, carved as they were around the rim of the table, was enough to have him executed for heresy?

Now, as you can see, I do a lot less descriptive work in this section, however there is more narrative, and we still get enough of a description of the dresser to add it to the room (I didn't elaborate on the room in this because it would involve more work than was necessary to describe this flaw). We are told it's a dresser, the light implying a lamp or mirror, that it's ornate and thus carved, that it looks generally nice. We are also told about the sins carved it, but because they aren't playing a vital plot point in being carvings it's not necessary to define them further. We are also shown a viewpoint from the character Ramir.


Lesson 7: Fight Formula</u>
Fight formula is a chapter that can be summed up in the following way:
Action-reaction-consequence-counteraction.

That four-step sequence is the best way to describe fight formula. FF is the formula that should be used whenever you fight a scene of any kind. If I may iterate:
Ramir lashed out with his club, painfully aware of his strength seeping away through his wounds, his opponent, even in such bulky armour, sidestepped the clumsy swing, striking the weaker warrior with the pommel of his greatsword. Ramir cried out in pain and his legs gave out, the stone floor scraping yet more skin from his knees. Towering above him, the knight raised the ancient blade to deliver the killing blow.

This is the example of the end of a fight, and the formula is evident here.
Action: Ramir attacking with his club.
Reaction: The knight dodges.
Consequence: Namir misses.
Counteraction: The knight attacks Ramir with the pommel of his sword.
Reaction: Namir falls to the floor.
Consequence: Namir is now effectively prone.
Counteraction: The knight raises his blade to attack.

The counteraction stage is synonymous with the action stage, but only after the combat scene has begun. In short, when a fight scene begins, the formula is:
Action-reaction-consequence-counteraction.
Once the combat scene is in progress, the first 'action' phase is ignored, and once the counteraction phase has been played, you return to stage 2, skipping the 'action' stage, instead counting the 'counteraction' stage as if it was the 'action' stage.


Lesson 8: Fluidity
Alright, this is a very simple thing all about making a story flow well, and I'm going to discuss a very, very bland subject that has probably been taught to you in English class at some point: sentence type.
Simple, compound and complex sentences. Sentences of varying lengths which I'm sure you've been told are made to make a story flow together, so I'm going to highlight how each should be used, and I apologise for this last section being woefully…bland.

Simple sentences, they're short. They're sweet. They provide emphasis. That's what they should be used for; a short sentence makes the mind stop for a moment at the end of it, because it's like overshooting – it goes back to check again. You use this to make the mind revolve around a key point, i.e.
So that was how it worked. This sentence doesn't work on its own, but say that the worker is an alchemist or doctor, and has spent their life trying to understand 'life' and how it works. Put that into context as they just discover it, and imagine the force behind it.

Compound sentences are slightly longer, with two verbs and two subjects, while complex sentences have a main clause and a supporting clause, but honestly, I don't need to go into the details of it. All you need to know about compound and complex sentences is that they're almost invariably longer than a simple sentence, and they are used to make a story flow. A long sentence does this precisely because it has less finishing points. Micro pauses, in this case, commas and semicolons allow the mind a brief moment to absorb the information previously written, but does not make it stop – it's like an incremental writing, you add to it in quick succession, updating it with new stuff and keeping the old.
A story should consist primarily of compound and complex sentences to make it flow, including during combat scenes, while simple sentences are reserved for key points, and emphasis.


This has been a very…very…extremely long tutorial on the key flaws in writing. I don't really have much more to say, so I hope it helps.