In Today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* A New Short Story
* On Clarity in Fiction
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
“There is always some kid who may be seeing me for the first time. I owe him my best.” Joe DiMaggio
Hmm… There is always some reader who might be seeing your work for the first time. You owe him your best, yes?
A New Short Story
“Johnny Baby” went live yesterday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. Go check it out. It’s free.
If you enjoy it, please click Like. Comments are welcome too. Both help with my Substack algorithms. Then tell Everyone else. Gracias.
On Clarity in Fiction
Note: This is an update of a post I published not quite a year ago, but many haven’t seen it. It speaks to the Quote of the Day. It might be some next-level stuff for you.
I might’ve also titled this segment “Giving the Reader Every Chance to See What You Want Him to See.”
In a Blackwell Ops novel I wrote about a year ago, the scene below was the immediate prelude to a hit. Here’s what my POV character encountered (and what I first recorded) when he opened an office door:
The office smelled of dusty old roses.
Randall P. Figg—his mostly bald head bowed on a scrawny neck between pointy shoulders in a white button-down shirt, his suitcoat draped over the back of his chair, and his face hovering above his desk as he studied a wide sheet of light blue-and-white lined paper, the yellowed fingernail at the tip of a gnarled finger moving over it—didn’t even look up.
Convoluted, isn’t it? Maybe less than easy to understand? If nothing else, the construction interrupts the pacing and flow of the story. The reader has to slow down in order to process all the information.
The basic sentence is “Randal P. Figg didn’t even look up.”
The rest is written grammatically correctly, with the lengthy interruption set off with em dashes. But as I said, the construction is convoluted.
The reader is required to step back from the immediate scene and read the description, which the POV character took-in in less than a second.
Also, remember my earlier post about The Rule of Three?
Readers will absorb and remember three items in a list. In a list of four items, the reader will most often mentally skip over the third item. So if you want to hide something in plain sight, make it the third item in a list of four.
There are four parallel items in the interruption in the excerpt. But I (the presenter) don’t want the reader to miss or skip over any of those.
So to untangle the convoluted construction and to bring the whole passage back into line with the Rule of Three, during cycling, on the fly, I recast the passage like this:
The office smelled of dusty old roses.
Randall P. Figg.
His mostly bald head was bowed on a scrawny neck between pointy shoulders in a white button-down shirt. His suitcoat was draped over the back of his chair. His face hovered above his desk as he studied a wide sheet of light blue-and-white lined paper. The yellowed fingernail at the tip of his gnarled index finger moved over the page.
He didn’t even look up.
Note that the third paragraph still contains four sentences.
I could have started a new paragraph with “His face,” transitioning between the “top” and “bottom” of what the POV character saw and making each of those two paragraphs two sentences long instead of leaving one 4-sentence paragraph in place (again, Rule of Three).
Instead I left the paragraph intact so the reader would receive it as a single, unbroken observation.
Just so you know, although I’m consciously explaining that decision, I made the change while in the creative subconscious and “cycling on the fly” (see below).
Now let’s get down into the weeds:
The first sentence of the passage is set apart in its own paragraph to emphasize it. That scent was the first sensory input the POV character encountered in that office. It probably washed over him as he opened the door.
That paragraph and the next (a sentence fragment, also set in its own paragraph for emphasis), form the POV character’s first stark realization: He is in the right place and he has recognized his target.
As an aside, does the POV character also equate “dusty old roses” with “Randall P. Figg”? Who knows. That’s strictly up to the reader’s perception, and it doesn’t matter.
If the reader does make the connection, it’s a literary easter egg. If he doesn’t, no loss. (Note: As I repost this, I have no idea of that connection myself.)
The first sentence in the third paragraph is a simple sentence (head was bowed). Three prepositional phrases, all descriptive, complete the POV character’s initial perception:
- on a scrawny neck
- between pointy shoulders
- in a white button-down shirt
The second sentence in the third paragraph is also a simple sentence and a slightly ‘drab’ one, providing a brief rest for the reader after all the information he absorbed from the first sentence.
The third sentence in the third paragraph is complex, an independent clause followed by a dependent (subordinate clause). This breaks up the possibly boring rhythm (for some readers) of the simple sentences.
Then the fourth and fifth sentences (the fifth is also set off in its own paragraph) are simple sentences, completing a subliminal pattern: 2 simple sentences, 1 complex sentence, 2 simple sentences.
In the meantime, in that 64-word third paragraph, the reader gets a ton of visual input:
- a mostly bald, bowed head
- a scrawny neck
- pointy shoulders
- a white shirt
- a suitcoat draped over the back of a desk chair
- a hovering face
- his desk (though only in the abstract)
- a wide sheet of light blue-and-white lined paper
- a yellowed fingernail
- the tip of a gnarled index finger
- moving left to right
- He didn’t look up
Note: As another aside, the yellowed fingernail, the tip of a gnarled index finger, and moving left to right are minuscule details to force the reader to focus down in the scene.
As I did with the first two sentences of the passage, I set off the final sentence in its own paragraph for a particular reason: to add emphasis (and drama, or what some call ‘a dramatic beat’).
From there, the POV character could easily have ended the scene with, “I shot him in the top of the head” or some such thing, but he didn’t.
Instead, in the paragraph after “He didn’t even look up,” the target himself spoke:
“Yes, Randy, what is it?” He tapped the sheet with the back of his left hand. “These confounded figures won’t audit themselves, you know.”
That was followed by another observation by the POV character:
He reminded me of Ebeneezer Scrooge hovering over his accounts.
And the scene continued for another 206 words.
*A note on cycling on the fly
I’ve written into the dark since I started writing fiction in earnest back in 2014. Writing into the dark doesn’t come from experience or practice; it comes from trusting yourself.
But as you write into the dark and practice putting new words on the page and trusting your characters, you might well learn to make adjustments on the fly while remaining in the creative subconscious.
Just a reminder
For anyone who doesn’t know yet, you can get the full, raw, archives of TNDJ for 2021 through 2024 by emailing me at harveystanbrough@gmail.com. I’ll send them to you free in fully searchable PDF format.
Of Interest
Top Five Dumbest Business Practices in Traditional Publishing This is a prelude to Dean updating his Killing the Sacred Cows of Indie Publishing. Yay!
Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week: Secrets
The Numbers
The Journal………………….. 1310
Mentorship Words…………….. 0
Total Nonfiction…………………. 1310
Writing of
Day 1…… XXXX words. To date………… XXXXX
Fiction for February………………………. XXXX
Fiction for 2026…………………………… XXXX
Nonfiction for February.…………………. 13790
Nonfiction for 2026………………..……… 33380
2026 consumable words………………… 33380
2026 Novels to Date……………………… 0
2026 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2026 Short Stories to Date……………… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 123
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 310
Short story collections……………………. 29