Synonyms, the Thesaurus, and You

Every now and then, I see one of those lists going round, be it on Tumblr, shared on blogs, or whatever.  You know, those lists; the ones that go on for eight miles listing ten synonyms for dozens of common words.

I hate those lists.  In the wrong hands, they often do more harm than good.  And in the right hands, they’re just sort of useless.

There’s one going around I do rather like, because it points out the idiocy of these lists.  At the top, it says, ‘instead of whispered, consider…’ and lists off a whole bunch of words.  One of those words is ‘insinuated’.   And the very first response to that list? ‘Aye lil mama, let me insinuate in ya ear.’  Now, that sentence sounds utterly ridiculous, because whisper and insinuate do not mean the same thing.  Not even close.  But these lists are often rife thesaurus copypasta like this that upon closer inspection make very little sense.

Let’s take the word ‘got’ for a moment.  It’s a fairly flabby word, as words go.  But if you plug that into thesaurus.com^[1], you get the following synonyms:

access, accomplish, acquire, annex, attain, bag, bring, bring in, build up, buy into, buy off, buy out, capture, cash in on, chalk up, clean up, clear, come by, compass, cop, draw, earn, educe, effect, elicit, evoke, extort, extract, fetch, gain, get hands on, glean, grab, have, hustle, inherit, land, lock up, make, make a buy, make a killing, net, obtain, parlay, pick up, procure, pull, rack up, realize, reap, receive, score, secure, snag, snap up, snowball, succeed to, take, wangle, win

Man, that’s a lot of alternative ways to say ‘got.’ We’ll never have to use that flabby, empty word again!

But let’s think about that for a moment.  What about, “Tony got a phone call from the headmaster”?  You could always rephrase that so the headmaster is the subject, rather than Tony. “The headmaster phoned Tony.” We no longer have ‘got’ in that sentence. But we want Tony to be the subject of this sentence, so that the verb applies to him. “Tony captured a phone call from the headmaster”? No, that’s not right.  “Tony educed a phone call from the headmaster”? No, I know.  It’s definitely “Tony accomplished a phone call from the headmaster.”  He inherited the phone call.  He extorted it.  Locked it up?

None of those make any real sense.  ‘Receive’ is on that list, would actually work in this context, and sounds better than ‘got’. “Tony received a phone call from the headmaster.” But for one word that does work, there are literally dozens more that don’t.

I don’t recall who said it originally, but it’s a quote I’ve used before in another one of these things.  Never use a large word where a small word will suffice.  If you describe something large as ‘infinite,’ you no longer have a word to describe something which truly is infinite.  On a slightly smaller scale, imagine a character coming across a German shepherd, and describing the dog as enormous.  Well, what happens when she later comes across a bull mastiff, or a great Dane?  How do you convey a larger size?  You’ve already used enormous to describe the smaller dog, so now you have to think of something even bigger than enormous. Which is a shame, because that word might have better applied to the great Dane.

William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway once had a mild dirt-slinging contest^[2], as writers are sometimes wont.  After Faulkner insulted the size and scope of Hemingway’s vocabulary, Hemingway responded by asking if Faulkner thought “big emotions come from big words?”  To which the answer is no, of course they don’t.  Your Freshman English teacher might have told you that if you’re not making your reader reach for the dictionary, then your writing isn’t strong enough. Well, I don’t know about you, but if I have to keep reaching for the dictionary, I’m not going to be reading your story for much longer because I don’t like having to keep stopping to look things up just to understand what’s going on.  I’m going to get annoyed and find something else to read that doesn’t sound so pretentious.

But this isn’t to say that you shouldn’t ever use big words. If you know how to use a word correctly, and can insert it into the prose in a way that a reader should be able to reasonably infer the meaning from the context, then use the word.  But if you’re picking up the thesaurus just to keep from using ‘said’ all the time, you’re only going to wind up with the verbal equivalent of a clown car.  And no-one takes clown cars seriously.

1. http://thesaurus.com/browse/got?s=t
2. http://flavorwire.com/188138/the-30-harshest-author-on-author-insults-in-history/view-all

“Would Anybody Read This?”

This, and questions like this, get asked just about every day.  I’ve had people actually PM me on various sites, asking me if they should write a story, or if it would be a good idea.  I recently saw a forum post asking if “you would be okay with” the OP writing their idea.

These things baffle me, but there’s also a level on which I can understand why people ask these questions.  At the same time, my knee-jerk reaction is always to ask why they’re asking in the first place.  People like validation, yes.  And these questions are essentially seeking validation.  There’s nothing harmful in them, but that’s also why I always have such a weird reaction to seeing them.  Because almost always, the thing they’re waffling on writing is so utterly harmless that there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be written in the first place.

So lately, when I see these questions come up, that’s why I ask.  Why are you asking for the validation of perfect strangers who would never have even likely known your story existed?  If you have an idea for a story that you really want to write, why shouldn’t you write it?  Asking “would anybody read this?” on a public space where nobody was likely to have read it anyway is going to get you a lot of validation, sure.  A lot of people saying, “Sure, I’d read that.”  But when it comes down to it, no they won’t.  The idea sounds interesting, but the chances of these random people who straw-polled actually then hunting down the thing you wrore is next to nothing.  

Lately, I’ve begun to feel like these questions are less about the outside validation, as much as letting the internet make your decisions for you.  Because if there’s a project you really want to do, and you’re really passionate about, nobody’s going to stop you.  Because there’s one thing all of these posts and PMs seem to have in common: a half-formed idea that’s barely there.  

I have a story about a girl who finds out she’s a dragon. Would anybody read this?

That’s what the majority of these posts look like.  There’s a neat idea there, but not much else.  “Would anybody read this” starts to come off almost as code at that point.  “Is this idea worth putting effort into building upon?” seems to be what’s actually being said in this case.

Would anybody read a story about a girl who finds out she’s a dragon?  Yes.  Of course.  There’s an audience for pretty much everything.  Look on Amazon at all of the barely-edited, MSPaint covered books listed there.  Many of them will have at least one review, or at least a “customers also bought” list.  That list tells you that the book has been purchased at least once, so somebody was interested in it enough to spend money on it.  

But is it going to be a good story if the author wasn’t all that into it to begin with?  Probably not.  People might be into the idea, but if the author wasn’t into it enough to develop it all the way through, and wrote it just because they thought there was an audience for it, it’s likely to fall very flat.

So think about why you’re asking this question the next time you go to make that forum post.  Are you trying to figure out if the idea is worth putting effort into?  Are you trying to figure out if there’s an audience out there for your idea?  Looking for motivation?  Unless writing a certain subject or topic is your job, none of these should matter.  If you really want to write your story, write it.  If you’re doubting that you should, the passion probably isn’t there.  And that’s fine.  Shelf it, and find something you are passionate about.  Maybe at some point down the road, you’ll come back to your dragon girl idea and find the spark it needs to get it written without outside validation.

What’s in a Name?

So, you’ve got your brand new character.  They’re going to go through the most awesome plot ever.  The setting is perfect.  But what do you call this character?

There’s an odd tendency, especially in young writers, to have a unique name for their character.  They want this character to stand out amongst the rest, and be memorable, and the easiest way to do that is through their name, right?  Well, maybe, but also no.  Names have power, and somethimes they have the power to do things you don’t intend.  Like throw a reader right out of the story.  I’m looking at you, Enoby Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way.  That’s a memorable, unique name all right, but nobody appreciates it for being memorable and unique.  It’s memorable for being the single best satirisation of the phenomenon I’m talking about, though.  And in that regard, it wins the gold medal.  But this character received nothing but hate and disdain from the fandom at the time.

In fact, the only character named Dementia, where the name was actually entirely appropriate, was What Addams’ nanny in Addams Family Values.

The best way to have a memorable character isn’t through a memorable name, but through building the character.  I’ve seen criticism around the WattPad dungeons, accusing characters of having “bland” and “suburban” names.  And… what’s wrong with that?

Most characters’ names should fit their setting, because most people’s names fit their settings.  Popular names are popular for a reason.  Also, there’s a simple truth that a lot of young writers seem to either forget or ignore: kids are fucking mean.  If you show up to the first day of school with a name that isn’t Bobby or Sally or Sue, you’re going to get teased and bullied.  And teachers aren’t going to know how to pronounce your name.  Later in life, your boss isn’t going to know how to pronounce your name.  Throughout your entire life, your peers aren’t going to know how to pronounce your name.

And if it’s a character in your book, the reader isn’t going to know how to pronounce it.  Remember in Goblet of Fire, when Viktor Krum stumbled awkwardly over Hermione’s name, and she had to phonetically pronounce it for him?  That was a direct result of the American audience having no previous contact with that name, and having no idea what to do with it.  And then the movies started coming out, and the day was saved, because Christ on a bike, I got through three books having no idea what that character was supposed to be called and it was the most obnoxious thing ever.  If you’re a fan of Game of Thrones, and you decide to pick up the audiobooks for A Song of Ice And Fire, you’re going to find that a good half of the names in the book are pronounced differently between the two versions.  I spent money on audiobooks I can’t listen to, because if I hear “P-tire Baelish” one more time, I am going to choke somebody.  On the other side of that, there are people who did the audiobook first, and find the television show to be nails on a chalkboard for the same reason.

There’s a reason immigrants from certain areas tend to give their kids Western names when the time comes.  It’s the same reason names cycle in and out of popularity.  Parents generally don’t want to see their kids stand out in ways that could make them targets for bullying at school, or give them a name that could hold them back as an adult.  There are quite a few countries where certain names are straight out forbidden for babies (Germany has a pretty outstanding banned baby name list), and some where parents are given a list to choose from, and cannot deviate from that list (babies in Iceland can only have traditional, gender-specific Icelandic names).

Names like Gertrude and Wilford were popular once, but now are names for old people.  But if you look at popular names in America, going back decades, you’re going to see a pattern: a lot of Biblical names.  Matthew, Michael, Luke.  And some traditionally Anglo names, like William, Henry, Nathan.  For girls, it’s much of the same.  Emily, Mary, Elizabeth.  Names that will never go out of style as long as English is a language.  Others flit in and out of style.  In 70 years, names like Jaiden and Zoe will likely be old people’s names, while Gertrude and Wilford might be on top 20 lists.

So, how do you pick your name?  The easiest way is to look at top 20 lists for the year your character was born, and then scroll down to about the middle of the list.  Parents pick names that are popular, but the top half of the list is going to be dominated by Michaels and Emilys.  But maybe Michael or Emily is what you need.  Because sometimes, it’s not what you want, but what the character’s parents want.  This idea was skimmed over briefly in another post, but if the character’s parents are in the picture, they should be characters too.  Fully-formed, fleshed out characters.  The amount of times I’ve seen the cardboard cutout parent with no personality name their kid something no self-respecting cardboard cutout parent would ever dream of is absurd.  

And all of this applies to the surname as well.  For instance, the black population in the US has different common surnames, at different rates, than the white population.  And white Americans in South Dakota are going to have different common surnames than white Americans in Manhattan, because more Scandinavians went west, while more Italians and Irish stayed on the East Coast.  That suburban name is going to make sense for Becky Roberts, living in Pasadena, California.  Meanwhile, you’re more likely to find Becky Olstad in Fargo, North Dakota.

Names have power, and they can tell you a lot about the character’s history, more than about the character themselves.  They can tell you any combination of race, religion, location, and age, and then some.  Something made up names simply can’t do.

Discord server for word wars, plotting advice, etc

I’ve set up a Discord server with several channels.  Come stop by for word wars, plotting help, or to just say hi.

https://discord.gg/WFg6XrN

Word wars will be running continuously throughout the month of November.  Otherwise, they’ll just be pretty spontaneous, as people feel like hosting them.

What is Teen/Young Adult fiction?

Another one from the Wattpad dungeons. A common topic of discussion over there is teen fiction/YA, and occasionally NA. Which is not surprising, given Wattpad’s average userbase. But there’s always a constant thread of confusion amongst these categories – which is what they are; not genres.

I had someone recently remark in confusion that they had thought all of my books are YA. I categorised A History of Magic as New Adult entirely because of the focus on Carly’s college experiences. Lay of Runes might have some younger characters, but that series sits firmly in fantasy.

So what makes one story with young characters fall into YA/NA, while another story with characters the same age is completely excluded from it?

Appeal.

First, it’s important to note the difference between a genre and a marketing category. Teen, YA, and NA are marketing categories. The latter of which is fairly new. There are other categories, but these three are the ones that get talked about the most on Wattpad. And ultimately, it seems like the majority of what you find on Wattpad will fit into one of these three categories.

A category defines how the book is marketed. If the publisher feels like a book will have a wider appeal to teenage girls, than to any other demographic, it’s likely to wind up in Teen or YA. Books that are likely to appeal to boys around high school age or older are likely to wind up in Adult. Every now and then, you get something with crossover appeal, like Harry Potter. There wasn’t a single demographic that didn’t devour those books, but that’s incredibly rare.

What Teen, YA, and NA aren’t defined by are the ages of the characters involved. And that seems to be the biggest misconception around not just Wattpad, but everywhere. And it seems to stem from the mistaken belief that they’re genres. Genres are typically defined by what the book contains. Dragons and fairies? It’s fantasy. Ghosts and haunted houses? Horror.

But the book has teenagers in it, so it must be Teen or YA, right?

Wrong. If books were defined as these categories simply by the ages of the characters, books like A Clockwork Orange, Rage, and The Body would be classified as Teen or YA. And I don’t know anybody who’s going to encourage kids to read these books in school. Violence, rape, school shootings. Totally what teachers are going to be putting on reading lists, right?

A lot of kids do read these books in school (or did. Rage is pretty difficult to find these days, for obvious reasons), but they aren’t, and never were marketed toward younger readers. And that’s what defines Teen/YA/NA as categories. Not what’s inside, but who the intended audience is. If you wrote your book to be read by teens, then placing it in one of these categories would be the correct thing to do. But if you aren’t sure, then these categories should only be used if absolutely nothing else fits. If you’ve got dragons or aliens in your story, then focus on fantasy or sci-fi. Those are the genres, and you should market to people who like to read that, regardless of their age.

So what is needed in a YA novel?

A teen/YA book needn’t have anything, other than a protagonist which is relatable to a teen audience, which goes back to appeal. A 15 year old and a 30 year old may share a problem, but it will affect both characters differently. If the issue is money and the threat of an eviction, the 30 year old will likely have options available to them that the 15 year old doesn’t. The 15 year old may be able to solve the problem, or help solve the problem, but the methods for doing so will be different. There’s a school obligation, where the 30 year old can work double shifts or take on a second job. The maturity levels between the characters are going to be different, which would affect how each character reacts and handles the situation.

There’s also a social aspect that would change for each character. If it came down to losing the house and having to live in a car or couch surf for a few weeks, the sympathy from peers is likely to be different. The 30 year old’s peers would likely respond with more empathy, while the 15 year old might be subjected to bullying at school once it gets out that they’re living in a car. Finding a safe place to park overnight might not be a huge deal for the adult, but with the 15 year old, you have to find a safe place to park that will also be close enough to get the kid to school on time. If an adult is sleeping rough, well, who cares? They’re an adult. But there’s the risk of having the 15 year old be taken away by Child Services if they find out what’s going on. If the adult keeps being late to work, they might lose the job, which is a problem. If the teen keeps being late for school, there could be actual legal repercussions, depending on where they live.

This is part of why a lot of books and media with teen protagonists tends to ring false to people: the problem presented to the 15 year old is handled as if it were being presented to a 30 year old. But all a teen/YA book needs for the problem presented to be handled in a way that would be relatable for the teen reader.

Character Development – Likeable characters vs sympathetic characters (20 questions you should ask yourself about every character you create)

Here’s one that comes from the Wattpad forums (or “Groups,” but whatever.  It’s a forum).  How to make your character likeable.  And this seems like something that a lot of beginning writers get hung up on.  Nobody’s going to like your story unless your character is likeable, right?  Well, not necessarily.

And because it’s late, I’m going to bring up the same examples that I brought up in the thread: Draco Malfoy and Severus Snape.  Draco was an odious little brat, but that didn’t stop people from falling in love with him.  Snape was an abusive ass, and look at his legions of Snapewives.  Neither of these characters can be considered likeable by the traditional mindset.  Yet, they’re both incredibly popular.  Even Dolores Umbridge has fans, and nobody liked her.

But you don’t have to like a person to sympathise with them.  Some of my favourite characters are wholly unlikeable dickheads.  If I knew these people in reality, they would be everything I hate about a person.  I was watching Tremors with a friend the other day, and we both expressed our undying love for Burt Gummer.  If I knew this man in real life, I would do everything in my power to avoid him.  But as a character?  He’s an absolute riot.  He’s a paranoid anarchist gun-nut living as off-grid as possible.  He shoots giant worms with an elephant gun and blows them up with pipe bombs.  There’s a reason he wound up carrying the entire franchise, despite only being a side character in the first movie.

So, obviously the trick to enjoyable characters isn’t necessarily to make them likeable.  In fact, the most likeable characters tend to be the most bland and uninteresting.  You spend so much time making sure the character can’t possibly upset or offend anybody that they have no character at all.  No outstanding skills, no obvious flaws.  They’re not loud, but they’re not completely shy.  Just perfectly middle ground in every way.  So how do you dig yourself out of the trap of the white bread and mayonnaise character?  You ask yourself questions.  The first thing I do when I get a new character idea is I interview them.  Some of the answers come naturally as part of the initial idea.  Others, I really have to think about.

But these aren’t the questions you get on most of those “character development” sheets.  We don’t care about eye colour, or height, or their favourite food.  Those questions don’t tell you anything about how the character actually sees the world.  They tell you how you see the character.  If you really want to get to know this being you’ve created in your head, you should ask these questions (or questions like these), adjusting as necessary to suit the character’s age:

1. Were their parents strict, or did they let the character come and go, and do as they pleased?
2. Was the character raised with both parents, or just one (or away from their parents entirely)?
3. What is their relationship like with their extended family, if the extended family is in the picture? (If the extended family is not in the picture, why?)
4. What size high school did they attend?
5. How diverse is their social group?
6. Are there any childhood fears they never got over? / Are there any adult fears they’ve developed.
7. How did the character’s parents pick their name?
8. What were their parents’ political and religious leanings like when the character lived at home?
9. Did the parents grow up in the same place the character did?
10. What were the parents’ attitudes toward grades and extra-curricular activities?
11. How open were the parents regarding their own relationship, and subjects like sex?
12. How open were the parents regarding finances?
13. Did the parents do all of the cooking, or was the character expected to help?
14. What were the parents’ attitudes on the character’s appearance in high school?
15. What were the parents’ attitudes toward the character’s friends in high school?
16. How did the character’s parents resolve conflicts? (eg, Did they discuss, or did they shout?)
17. How did the parents react if something expensive or difficult to replace was accidentally broken?
18. How did the parents react when the character was injured?
19. What were the parents’ attitudes toward beer and pot when the character was in high school?
20. At what age was the character allowed to start going out with friends, without telling the parents every last detail of where they were going and what they were planning on doing?

Now, these questions may seem random, because most of them are about the parents.  But your parents’ attitudes and behaviour toward you strongly inform and impact the sort of person you grow up to become.  So rather than trying to come up with things that a character might do or say, take a step backwards and think about why the character might do or say that.  Of course, these questions won’t fit every character.  If they don’t, substitute details as necessary.  Obviously, a character from a high fantasy novel isn’t going to find many of these questions relevant until you change a few things.  A modern character who grew up in the foster care system might have ten different answers for each question.  And if that’s the case, consider them.  How confused and isolated does your character feel as a result?  And some of these questions can be very culturally loaded, or completely irrelevant depending on when and where your character lives.

But if you’re stuck and don’t know what to do with Boring Nobody McGee, ask yourself these questions, and see where the answers take you.  You might find some character quirks hiding beneath all the filler fluff the other character development sheets left you with.  And don’t stop at 20.  Keep asking yourself more questions, until the answers come as naturally as if you were answering them for yourself.