In Today’s Journal
* Chapter Two: The Problem with Faux Writing Instructors
Note: Breaking this chapter into three parts destroyed the flow, so Part 1 will run long at a little over 1700 words. But again, you have my permission to save it and/or print it to read at your leisure.
Chapter Two: The Problem with Faux Writing Instructors
If you’ve attended any presentations or “programs” at your writers’ organization or at writers’ conferences or in seminars, you’ve probably heard at least one faux writing instructor hold forth just as if he knows what he’s talking about.
And there are so many faux instructors out there that if you’ve been around your organization longer than a year, chances are good you’ve heard several of them speak.
I want to make one thing clear up front: Learning a bad technique from a faux writing instructor is not your fault.
After all, you go in innocently. You trust them, listen to them, and take much of what they say as gospel. And that’s fine. If you already knew what you were trying to learn, you wouldn’t be in their class or seminar in the first place.
That said, during my life, I’ve spent a great deal of time cleaning up after instructors like that. The purpose of this chapter is to teach you how to recognize a faux writing instructor up front and avoid him. And if you’ve already been subjected to their nonsensical instruction, this chapter will help you clean up some of that bad instruction yourself.
To clarify, when I say “faux instructors” I’m not talking about those who teach all the writing-delay tactics I simply don’t agree with, like outlining and character sketching and world building and rewriting and all of that. There are a lot of great instructors who choose to teach those things, and if that’s your bag, go for it with my blessing.
When I say “faux instructors” or “bad instructors,” I mean the ones who teach all sorts of surface stuff because they’re either unable (usually) or unwilling (occasionally) to go deeper than that.
In every case, their presentations are top-loaded with writing-related clichés (e.g., “Show, don’t tell”), and in most cases, they’re flat-out wrong. At best, they teach concepts and techniques they can’t explain and for which they can’t provide clear examples, so they never delve beneath the surface.
Frankly, a lot of what they teach on the surface is pure, unadulterated bull cookies. That, in turn, leads many writers to do things in their stories that confuse the reader. That, too, is author intrusion.
In this chapter, I’ll discuss three particular topics on which almost all faux instructors hold forth from time to time: “ing” words and the resulting inane distaste for past-progressive tense, state-of-being verbs, and passive voice.
“Ing” Words and Past-Progressive Tense
Some really bad writing instructors will tell you to “never use an ‘ing’ word.” They mean a “gerund,” a noun that’s formed by adding “ing” to the end of any action verb.
For example, and in deference to the major example I offer several paragraphs below, here I’ll talk about only three of those action verbs: when you add “ing,” “stand” becomes “standing,” “sit” becomes “sitting,” and “walk” becomes “walking.”
When faux instructors say “never use an ‘ing’ word,” they mean they don’t want you to use the newly formed noun as a noun. They don’t want you to use gerunds as subjects or as objects in sentences. For example,
- “Prolonged standing or walking can be good for your health, but sitting too much can do you harm.”
In that example, “standing” and “walking” form the compound subject of the first clause, and “sitting” is the subject of the second, subordinate clause. (That clause is rendered subordinate by the coordinating conjunction “but.”)
Generally, faux writing instructors are aware that adding “ing” to a verb creates a noun. But apparently many are not aware that if you insert “were” in front of the new gerund-noun, it converts back to verb-hood and becomes the past-progressive form of the verb itself.
So whereas “standing” and “walking” and “sitting” are gerunds (nouns), “were standing” and “were walking” and “were sitting” are verbs: the past-progressive forms of “stand,” “walk,” and “sit.”
Faux instructors won’t bother teaching you that. Maybe because they simply don’t know it, or maybe they do know it but believe it isn’t important. Also, it’s far easier to sound profound by simply offering a one-size-fits-all blanket rule. So they mutter, “Never use an ‘ing’ word.”
Of course, some faux writing instructors are aware that the past-progressive tense is formed by preceding an “ing” word with “were.” But they tend to ignore the fact that the past-progressive verb tense is necessary when you want to indicate to your readers that an action is ongoing.
To be fair, most high school and college English instructors won’t tell you that either. But then, they’re only teaching English, not creative writing.
So in class, even if you raise your hand and ask a faux writing instructor about the past-progressive tense, he won’t explain it. Instead he’ll usually wag a hand, grin, and say something like “Just use past tense, okay?” or “Skip it altogether and use present tense.” And he’ll often follow that with something like, “Why confuse the issue?”
Why? Because I don’t want a knowledgeable reader to think I’m a moron, that’s why.
But don’t get ahead of yourself. Even if the reader doesn’t know a gerund or the past-progressive tense from a bag full of flappy-winged ducks, he knows something doesn’t sound or feel quite right.
So as a result of their lackluster teaching or their ignorance of the past-progressive verb tense, bad writing instructors do more harm to your work as a fiction writer than they can begin to imagine. And they don’t care. If they cared, they wouldn’t be standing in front of a class holding forth on something they know nothing about.
These are usually the same writing instructors who, after muttering the timeless “Show, don’t tell,” will say something stupid like this seemingly timeless disclaimer: “I can’t explain it, but I know it when I see it.”
If your writing instructor ever says that about any topic, that’s a great clue that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. If he knew his topic, he could explain it and provide examples that you could question and with which you could then agree (or not).
That utterance is also your cue to leave. If the so-called instructor won’t refund your money, I suggest you consider the cost of the class the price of a valuable lesson: Never trust a guy just because he has the chutzpah to teach a class on a topic he doesn’t know.
To say it plainly, your writing will suffer if you follow that blanket rule to “never use an ‘ing’ word.”
To address the least costly problem to your writing first—writing narrative in present tense—I personally recommend not writing narrative in present tense. For millennia, past tense has been the natural voice of narrative and of storytelling. Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Besides, as I said toward the end of Chapter One, present tense sounds like stage direction, mostly because that’s its primary use.
To address a slightly more costly problem, using a gerund as a subject to begin a sentence or as the object later in the sentence is fine. Sometimes, though rarely, doing so is even necessary. Relax and write the sentence however it flows out. You can always correct it or adjust it during cycling.
The major problem with obeying the mantra to “never use an ‘ing’ word” is that the faux instructor leaves the impression that he means all “ing” words, even when they’re coupled with “were” to form the past-progressive tense.
As I wrote earlier, the past-progressive tense is appropriate and even necessary to convey a sense of ongoing action to your readers. In those cases, simply defaulting to using past tense causes the action in the scene to start or end abruptly and unnaturally.
A Major Example
- “As the sheriff came into the saloon, several men stood at the bar and others sat at tables. Still others walked up or down the stairs.”
This kind of lifeless writing is the direct result of heeding the advice of a faux writing instructor.
This example is from a manuscript I copyedited long ago. I’ve used it as an example ever since. The writer himself told me he’d followed the advice of his writing instructor. Instead of using the past-progressive tense and those banned “ing” words, the author wrote the sentence in past tense.
As I told that copyediting client all those years ago, “Okay, I can see the scene. Seriously though, do the men in the saloon actually stand, sit, or walk as the sheriff comes in? Of course they don’t. They were doing those things before the sheriff came in, don’t you imagine? And at least most of them continued doing those thing after he came in.”
Let’s create a sense of ongoing action:
- “As the sheriff came into the saloon, several men were standing at the bar and others were sitting at tables. Still others were walking up or down the stairs.”
See? The men “were standing, sitting, or walking” even before the sheriff came in. His pushing the batwing doors open didn’t cue the action. The action was ongoing. In this example, the past-progressive verb tense enables the reader to see that.
And yes, I also advised the writer to fill in a little description of the interior of the saloon so I, as the reader, could step through the batwings and see, hear, and smell the setting and the scene right along with the sheriff. (For more on stuff like that, I encourage you to look up Writing Better Fiction.)
Even though I said nothing in the second example about the men talking, you can probably even hear the quiet murmur of conversation and laughter and maybe even a guy ordering a drink. You might even see the bartender wiping the bar or cleaning mugs.
All because we changed the verb tense from past to past-progressive.
Back tomorrow with the much shorter Part 2. Talk with you again then.