Leaning too heavily on leaning
...and other writerly habits we didn't know we had.
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Last week I promised myself (and you) that I’d get back on track with the creative writing: nothing miraculous has happened since then, but I have managed to bash out 3000 words, so I suppose it worked.
Progress does feel good, however shambolic and rocky it is, but I find that it also reminds me of my limits and flaws as a writer (which is probably why I avoid it). When I interviewed Graham Norton on the podcast – which is a great episode, I think – he talked about realising, when redrafting his novels, that there were certain words and phrases he had over-used.
I forget things that have happened in the book, and it’s only when you’re going through drafts and you realise: wow, I have had so many people leaning on things, or so many half-smiles, or so many – you know. Oh god! How did this happen? How did I use that so many times? And then you have to go in and hack away… And it’s from book to book. In one book, nobody leans, and in the next book – Jesus, stop leaning everyone!
I don’t know about you, but I recognise this tendency in my own work. My characters don’t lean much (in fact, I should add more leaning), but left to their own devices, they are constantly pausing or falling silent for a moment. So many moments, so much pausing – if I let them go on like that, it would be tedious. They’re also smiling back and forth at each other like nobody’s business, and I find this difficult to navigate: we smile a lot in natural interaction with each other, and I want to reflect that, but it’s so repetitive.
There are synonyms for smiling, of course, but most of them make me cringe: you really have to go easy on the grinning in fiction, or your characters start to sound moronic. A smirk is pantomime-villain-ish and should be used with extreme caution. A beam is for children, or characters very occasionally experiencing very euphoric moments. And I don’t want people ‘twinkling’ at each other. It’s not that kind of story.
Google defines the verb ‘smile’ as follows: ‘form one's features into a pleased, kind, or amused expression, typically with the corners of the mouth turned up and the front teeth exposed’. Maybe I’ll adopt that: ‘Looking at him, she turned up the corners of her mouth and exposed her front teeth.’
You can come to know yourself and your weaknesses on the page, in the same way that you come to know yourself a bit better when you hear your voice recorded, or when you see a photo that shows you unguarded and unposed. Usually, for me at least, it’s an unpleasant experience. Day to day, I hold a very limited portrait of myself that I can just about live with. More information is unwelcome. Then again, this struggle with self-awareness is useful to funnel into characters, since it’s what makes us human and stupid and interesting.
When I record the podcast, I tune into what my guests are saying in a way that I wouldn’t if we were having the same conversation over dinner. I don’t mean that I wouldn’t pay attention at dinner – I just mean that, conscious that I’ll have to edit the audio later, when I interview someone I pay attention to their verbal rhythms and habits.
Everyone has filler words or sounds that they unconsciously pepper their speech with. Some interviewees fill their pauses with ‘ummm’, others with ‘like’, ‘sort of’, ‘you know’ or something more idiosyncratic – like my friend who sometimes trails off with ‘…and stuff and things.’ One of my guests had the habit of making a tutting, suction sound with their tongue against the roof of their mouth, which – as I realised with horror when I started making podcasts – is a tendency that I share. I don’t think it’s noticeable in conversation, but through headphones it’s horrific: a sudden, loud smack in the ear.
I edit out the vast majority of this stuff. Sometimes I even edit a single sentence in multiple places, because my guest has stopped several times to think, and filled those gaps with the same tic, over and over again. They don’t hear it. I wouldn’t hear it, if we were spending time together socially. If I emailed you with a load of repetitive vocabulary, you wouldn’t notice or care, but if I wrote that way in a novel it would be deafening. Editing is everything.
I’d love to hear about any tics you’ve noticed in your own writing. If you didn’t keep a close eye on your characters, would they start sighing self-indulgently in every other paragraph, or giggling manically at every comment? Do they lean much?
On Sunday I’m holding the fifth In Writing Creative Club for paid subscribers – I’ll be sending out a writing prompt and I would love you to write something in response and share it. The idea is to loosen us all up a bit and do something for no reason other than to stretch a creative muscle.
I’m going to need a bottomless supply of writing prompts if we keep this going, which I hope we will – so if you’d like to try your own hand at coming up with one, feel free to send me any ideas and if I use them, I’ll credit you.
If you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, I’d love you to share it online or forward it to someone else who might like it – thank you. Good luck with your writing this week!
I’m glad it’s not just me.
The main character in my first book can’t go more than two pages without a cigarette.
When My brother-in-law read my first book, his first comment about the main character was, ‘He drinks a lot of tea, doesn’t he?’ I had to admit he did.
Now, on rewriting that book, I also see that many things begin when he is in bed! Either in the middle of the night, or first thing in the morning. I know he is a ‘homebody’ but even so there is far too much bed and tea. All of that will have to change.
It is useful though, to see these habits and to receive the feedback as it allows me to keep that in mind for later books where hopefully his tea addiction and need for comfort will be less apparent.