In Today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* A New Short Story
* A Writer on Challenges
* Throw-Away Words and Author Intrusion
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
“The minute you start talking about what you’re going to do if you lose, you have lost.” George Shultz
A New Short Story
“An Elegant Gesture” went live yesterday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. Go check it out. It’s free.
If you enjoy the story, please click Like. Comments are welcome too. Both help with my Substack algorithms. Then tell Everyone else. Gracias.
A Writer on Challenges
A writer friend emailed me this:
When I read Dean’s post I felt he didn’t really want to win the challenge, though it was his second try. Everyone can fail, it seems.
I also like the word count challenge. In my Excel sheet I set a 1,000 or 2,000 goal for every day. I have the freewrite alpha. I write more than before, so….
My challenge now is to finish 31 short stories. I’ve finished 15 so far. And each time it gets easier to start. A lot to learn, to write and have fun.
I’m not afraid that I won’t finish, just maybe later than I wanted. No probs; that’s the fail forward setting.
Sounds like he’s on the right track, eh? 🙂
Throw-Away Words and Author Intrusion
I came across this while answering a question from another writer. This is reposted from May 2024.
Chief among the throw-away words, those you should use as seldom as possible (or never), are these urgency stamps:
- abruptly
- immediately
- instantly
- instantaneously
- quickly (when it isn’t necessary, e.g. “he quickly glanced at his watch”—the word “glanced” already implies “quick”)
- suddenly
and I am sure there are others. Feel free to share those in a comment.
These words are meant to impress a sense of urgency on the reader. Ironically, they do the opposite. If the reader has to spend time reading “instantly” before he gets to read what actually happened, the ensuing action was delayed that long.
The delay might be only a split second, but it’s still a delay. Don’t interrupt the reading of the story.
These words are also an author intrusion on the story.
Consider, no character would ever say “He immediately came at me.” The character would say “He came at me.” The author adds “immediately” because s/he isn’t sure the writer will “get it.”
Instead, trust your characters and just write what happened. The reader will infer that it happened “instantly” or “Immediately” etc. from the context.
As an aside, notice that all of those words are also adverbs.
I do not ascribe to the notion that you should “never” use adverbs (except in dialogue tags, e.g. “he said forlornly”). All words are meant to be used in context.
However, I DO recommend you use as few adverbs as possible and only when there’s no other way to cast the sentence and get the thought across.
Timestamps are also deserving of a look:
- an instant
- a second
- a minute
- an hour
- a specific number of seconds, minutes, or hours
These are all indicative of a specific period of time, and their mention will force the reader to consider that specific passage of time.
Even writing the seemingly vague “a few minutes/hours/days” will force the reader to do math. And that will pull him from the story for a brief time. Don’t do it.
Words and phrases that are more vague are preferable:
- moment/short moment/long moment (This is an indeterminate amount of time that does not interrupt the reader. “Moment” can indicate a second or several seconds or a minute or several minutes.)
- a few days/weeks/months later (This indicates a passage of time without forcing the reader to do the math.)
Writing something like “He looked at each one in turn” will also force the reader to take the time to “look at each one in turn” and interrupt the story.
This too is an author intrusion. Instead, try “He glanced up” or “He looked at them.” Same effect, no delay.
Lazy (too vague) words and phrases also should be used as little as possible. Those listed here are thorns in my side personally:
- it
- there
- there was
- they
In my own fiction, I ususally correct these on the fly (yes, still in the creative subconscious).
For one example, in one scene of my current novel, a character is far out in the country and looking for water in order to refill a canteen. He’s just discovered a stone and concrete stock tank with a low trough circling it. I initially wrote the following two sentences:
- The low trough circling the stock tank was filled with water, but it was more moss and algae than anything else. He stepped up onto it and peered over the wall of the tank.
Most readers would probably understand without a hitch. But not all of them would. Some would wonder what the “it” in the second sentence referred to. Did he have a box with him? A ladder?
So on the fly, I corrected those two sentences to read
- The low trough circling the stock tank was filled with water, but it was more moss and algae than anything else. He stepped up onto the edge of the trough and peered over the wall of the tank.
Now there’s no doubt, no room for ambiguity.
Remember, what happens in the scene is ALWAYS up to the character. But how it goes on the page is up to the writer.
If you can’t correct on the fly or if you’re one who is prone to doing an “editing pass,” you might consider using Word’s ‘Find’ feature to look for those urgency stamps, timestamps, and lazy words.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week: Dogs Pretty much anything Mardy Grothe posts can inform your creative subconscious.
The Numbers
The Journal………………….. 980
Mentorship Words…………….. 460
Total Nonfiction…………………. 1440
Writing of Blackwell Ops 53: Jack Striker | The Next Level
Day 1…… 2035 words. To date………… 2035
Day 2…… 2217 words. To date………… 4252
Day 3…… 3751 words. To date………… 8003
Day 4…… 2218 words. To date………… 10221
Day 5…… 2181 words. To date………… 12402
Day 6…… 1673 words. To date………… 14075
Day 7…… 1972 words. To date………… 16047
Day 8…… 2081 words. To date………… 18128
Fiction for December……………………… 18128
Fiction for 2025…………………………… 772775
Nonfiction for December.………………… 15940
Nonfiction for 2025………………..……… 281070
2025 consumable words………………… 1046276
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 18
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 36
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 122
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 310
Short story collections……………………. 29