Do you try to impress your readers with fancy-pants words? Do you use “arachnid” instead of “spider”? Or perhaps you’ll throw out a phrase like, “wandering eight-legged spinner” instead of “spider.”
It’s a lovely phrase, “wandering eight-legged spinner.” But most of the time, using the simple term will keep your reader focused on your story, rather than your pretty writing. Packing your writing with purple prose phrases and fancy-pants vocabulary is a sure road to rejection. So why not just use spider?
Yes, there are times when our writing should have an impressive slant. But it should never be so impressive that a reader gets lost in our words. For most of us, writing in the everyday world, that means we need to keep our words and sentences clear, simple, and focused. We need to think about readability.
That’s where readability
tools come into play. Once you
enable these gems in your writing tools options on a Word document, I’ll bet you’ll wonder how you ever managed without them. With one
click, you can see whether your text is highly readable—or not so much.
The basic statistics (like words per sentence) will give you a good idea of whether you’re over-writing. I tested a couple passages from a contemporary best-selling novel,
Angels and Demons, using paragraphs packed with dialogue to those heavy on description. The average count came to 14 words per sentence. Fourteen words per sentence seems like a good standard. I mean, if it’s good enough for Dan Brown, it should be good enough for the rest of us, right?
Next, I thought it would be fun to try an experiment, to compare my writing against a best-selling novelist’s writing. So I used passages of similar word counts (300-ish) from
Angels and Demons and my humble blog post here. Let’s see how I did, shall we?
The words per sentence came to 12.2 in the
Angels and Demons sample. And my blog post? 13.9. That’s in the Dan Brown ballpark, so I’m happy.
Next, I can see whether I’m overusing that pesky passive voice. Dan’s passage weighed in at 4%, and my lowly post came in at 0%, thank you very much.
Now it’s time to check out the
Flesch Reading Ease score. The higher the score, the better the readability. High scores (A long-ago editor of mine required scores in the 70’s) mean that your fancy words are few, that your sentences don’t run on, and that your text is broken into a couple paragraphs.
So, let’s take a look at Dan’s passage: 69.4 (Impressive). My blog post: 69.6 (So there.).
Finally, I checked the grade level. Brown’s novel sample comes in at 6.6, while my blog post sample comes in at 6.8. I think sixth grade is a good target for any adult market, and 6.8 is pretty close.
In fact, my numbers, overall, are pretty darn close to best-selling novelist’s Dan Brown. And now it’s your turn. Compare your writing against work in the field you’re trying to break into and see how your numbers stack up. With practice and an eye to readability, your writing will improve for your readers.
And then together, friends, we shall take over the writing world. Bwahahahaa!
~
Cathy C. Hall
In
Who's (...oops!) Whose Grammar Book Is This Anyway? All the Grammar you Need to Succeed in Life, C. Edward Good wrote a chapter entitled "Word War III: Active vs. Passive." Last week, I waged my own war against the passive voice. A client asked me to exorcise the passive voice from his manuscript.
If you've ever taken a writing course, you've heard that you need to always use the active voice, not passive voice. Is passive voice really so bad that we should strike it from
all our writing?
No, not all, but the passive voice is, well, weaker (in many instances) than the active voice. Active certainly brings the reader into the story. But, in my experience, a writer can get into caught up in a scene and write in passive voice until the characters are no longer actively participating. Sure, we can all be lulled into a rhythm of using the passive voice and its hard to snap out of it.
That's where I entered this passive-voice manuscript, knowing that some passive voice is acceptable, but too much can wear down the reader. I was only being asked to tweak the author's use of passive voice. So, I tried a approach you may want to try. On a second reading, I used the "Find" function of Microsoft Word and went to work.I spent several hours massaging a manuscript to use a more active voice.
I searched for the trigger words you might look for when rooting out the passive voice. Those words include:
- be
- was
- have
- had, and so forth...
After I found the words that screamed
PASSIVE VOICE, I read (and re-read) the sections. Then I started rewriting the sections. (Another common word in many passive sentences is "by." You may find that an easier word to search for.)
If you are wondering how much passive voice I cut, this may interest you. During a search of the manuscript, I found 1191 instances of "was" and after my second-pass edits, there were only 547 instances of the word.
Are you a passive voice or active voice writer? Or both? How do you find and edit your passive voice? Elizabeth King Humphrey is a writer and editor. She strives to be more active, but right now is feeling a bit passive.
I’m tired of people mucking up passive voice, so here it is, once and for all:
A passive sentence is one in which the subject receives the action instead of doing it.
Example: The boy was bitten by the dog.
Snooze fest, right? And easy to correct:
The dog bit the boy.
If you are writing a slightly different kind of story: The boy bit the dog.
Easy, right? Passive voice adds extraneous words and weakens a narrative. Do a quick search of your manuscript for the use of “by” (for PCs: CTRL+F to open the search dialogue box and then search for by with one space before it). Try to change your passive sentences to the active voice.
Passive voice makes sense in limited situations. Writing a mystery?
The man was murdered. -- technically a passive sentence, but notice the lack of "by". In a mystery, we wouldn't know who murdered the man.
Some folks tend to say any sentence with a linking verb (forms of be: is, was, were, etc.) is a passive sentence. Not so. I'll address the weakness of linking verbs in the future.
In a blog post, Curtis Brown literary agent Sarah LaPolla (pictured, via) recommended five “band-aid editing” tips for fixing a manuscript before sending it to an agent.
LaPolla first advised that authors avoid sentences that begin with a conjunction. Here is an excerpt from the post: “Sometimes standalone sentences that begin with ‘And’ can be used for emphasis. And that’s OK. Other sentences, however, can end up sounding like a mere continuation of the previous sentence, making them sound weaker in comparison.”
LaPolla’s other tips elaborate on how to steer clear of weak sentences, redundant points, and the passive voice. Can you think of other “band-aids” that would be helpful? (via Elizabeth S. Craig)
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
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I think excessive description and "fancy-pants words" are common problems with many beginning writers. I recently re-read a draft from years ago and part of it was so ridiculous--layered with description--that it was like reading poetry. Beautiful words, yes, but the story faded into the background. I think I was trying to impress my critique group with my prose!
I don't use the readability statistics as much as I should. I will have to try your Dan Brown trick! ;)
I love that--FANCY-PANTS WORDS--I'm going to start using that phrase. Maybe you should copyright it?? :) Interesting idea to compare yourself to a novelist. I agree with Ang; I might just try that myself.
As a freelance editor and writing instructor helping writers all over the world, I have seen some doozy fancy-pants writing. And I know that every one doesn't take my lowly advice. But now, I have some concrete tools to share with them!
Nice post. :)
Oh, I cringe at some of the fancy-pants writing in my past--and yes, it's the curse of the newbie (wanna-be literary) writer. We think we have to be so la-ti-da to be successful.
When all we really have to be is ourselves!
I often feel like my writing isn't "flowery" enough. Now I feel much better about it. Now, off to have fun with some of these readability tools!
This post was incredible, Cathy. You extended some mind-boggling advice that will probably prove to be--except in extenuating circumstances--priceless.
Okay, it's too taxing to write semi-high falutin'. I give up.
Great advice, Cathy.
It really is harder to be high-falutin'--glad you gave it up, Sioux. 'Cause in the words of Billy Joel, I like you just the way you are. :-)
Thanks for the great advice and helpful links, Cathy. I have a lot to learn about taking off my fancy pants words.
Cathy, I learn something every time I read your posts. This was very helpful. Thanks.