I started a book several years ago with no real intention of ever doing something with it beyond enjoying the process of writing a book. As I get closer to the finish I find myself falling in love with my own work and feeling like it might be worth E-book publishing at least.
My question is this, my vocabulary sucks, I will very often have a word on the tip of my tounge and cannot get quite find it. I end up writing an entire paragraph where one word might have taken care of it with the intention of going back and cleaning it up later. I have a good reading vocabulary but a horrible writing vocabulary. My target audience would range from a high school grad to a college proffessor. Would the college proffessor be put off by the use of the simpler vocabulary? Would the high school grad be put off if I go back and clean it up using larger less used words?
My style is friendly and engaging and not overly wordy.
I don’t mean to sound snarky… but this sounds snarky…maybe you should rethink your target audience? My point is that if you are self-conscious about your style that is not a good thing. And it sounds like it effects your presentation if not your content. Write what feels best for the story you are telling? The right audience will find it or it won’t.
That makes good sense. The book has a stong agenda to it but could also stand alone as enjoyable reading. Reaching the wider based audience would lend itself better to my agenda.
FWIW, Hemingway built his whole career as a writer using short sentences and very simple language. At the opposite end of the scale was Tom Clancy. Which one would you prefer to emulate?
There is nothing inherently wrong with either style. You should strike a balance you’re comfortable with, depending on what you’re writing about.
Not snark, but solid advice. More than just college professors would be put off by your not using spell check.
For vocabulary, just check out some other publications on the subject. How are they pitched? That’s probably the level you want. Just don’t try to go higher than a level you feel completely comfortable at.
Your writing is probably fine. IMHO story and characters are more important than the writing style for most. You still need to edit and re-write though. You’ll need to turn a dispassionate eye on your own work, look at every sentence like an English teacher, could you improve it somehow? Those long paragraphs might be better than a single word if they engage the reader so don’t toss words on that basis, writers like Stephen King would only have short stories if they did that.
NB: Spell Check can be a great help, but there is no substitute for knowing how to spell yourself. This is the only way to avoid embarrassing errors like assent/ascent, combing/coaming, and gorilla/guerrilla.
If you’re not sure how to spell something, look it up! I now work in publishing, and I do this constantly.
I do use spell check and spend a lot of times looking things up as well. Yesterday I was confused about the use of the words affect and effect. When I looked it up I found out I was not alone.
It’s very easy to fall in love with your own work. It’s also very dangerous because you’ll blind yourself to things that are blatantly obvious to everyone else. Get some people to read it and give you feedback. Take what they say and use it for your second draft. Then go find an editor (a real editor).
Be prepared to find out that your cherished baby is just another brat with acne.
Simple language is not a problem in and of itself… it might even be a benefit. This is true even for college professors - very few people seek out overly complicated language for its own sake. (Especially for recreational reading.) However, if you’re writing a paragraph in place of a three-syllable word you can’t remember, that’s probably not good. More importantly, your writing style is as much a part of why we would read your book as the content on the page, so you need to be writing that paragraph for a purpose other than just filling in for the word you need.
Don’t worry about if the word is at a high enough level. Worry about if the word is the right word for what you want to say.
One test is whether you use lots of adverbs. Don’t say “she ran quickly” say “she sped” or “she hurtled.” English is fantastic (I just avoided great) in that it has five slightly different ways of saying anything, with five different shades of meaning. Use them. And the variant words might be quite simple.
Think about using your on-line thesaurus. Not because you’ll find the right word there, but because it will help you see the shades of meaning.
Yeah… I constantly have to edit things like “An analysis of the data was carried out.” I inevitably change this to “The data were analyzed,” or (better, I think) “We analyzed the data.”
I’d leave it as is. What you’re describing sounds like going back with a thesaurus to replace paragraphs or phrases. That never works out well.
The target audience you just now came up with is irrelevant if the book is already more/less done. You wrote this for yourself. Going back to change it for someone else after the fact will create more problems than it fixes.
Just trust the word flow and style you’ve used so far. Or ask a friend to proof it a bit to iron out any major issues.
It is hard to switch from technical writing mode to fiction writing mode. Sometimes you need passive to avoid implying that the inanimate experimental subject has will. Sometimes you do it avoid blame - 10 rats were sacrificed rather than we sacrificed 10 rats.
My writing coach notes that in technical writing you tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them it, and then summarize. In fiction if your first line in a paragraph says what is going to happen, there is no reason for the reader to read the second line.
[QUOTE=
My writing coach notes that in technical writing you tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them it, and then summarize. In fiction if your first line in a paragraph says what is going to happen, there is no reason for the reader to read the second line.[/QUOTE]
This is where I am right now, I grossly overstated by saying I was almost done. I have most all of the material I need written but now I have to tie it all together and find ways to lead in and out of it, giving reasons to go further.
Get into a workshop. You need to work through a lot of things here and you can’t do that with just SD. You need feedback and criticism which it sounds like you haven’t had a lot of yet.
I imagine that if you gave your manuscript to someone and expressed doubts about your vocabulary they would not be inclined to read it.
50% of writing is putting the words on paper. The other 99% is revising.
Save your first draft. After you revise, and you compare what you had with what you have, you’ll know it is all worth it.
If all you want to do is publish an e-book, you can forget all this. If you are interested in someone buying your e-book, it is worth it. E-books mostly don’t sell because e-books mostly are crap - first drafts.
A workshop is a good idea, but avoid ones where the goal of the members is for others to tell them how great their writing is. Having someone who knows what he or she is doing is very valuable, and that does not include an “author” who has sold 50 copies of an e-book. I’ve learned a lot from mine.
Agreed. Join a writing group (if at all possible, don’t pay money for the privilege!) Find people you can trust, and exchange work-in-progress with them. I am part of writing group, and I always joke, “If someone doesn’t go home in tears, we aren’t doing our job right.” (The fact, of course, is that no such thing ever happens.)
Seriously, the more eyes that pass over your work, the better the final result will be. Your readers will catch contradictions, repetitions, clumsy phrasing, dramatic errors (“Why did they say, ‘Please let us go?’ when he’s been saying ‘Get out of here’ all the time?”) and motivation errors (“He’s been such a nice boy up to now; why did he kill the parson with an axe?”)
A helpful group of readers can be your absolute best friends.
But…yeah…at times, it’s gonna hurt.
That too! Definitely! Congratulations, and good luck with it!
Thanks to all for the advice, I appreciate every single post. I think I will join a writers group. I have several friends who are professional writers but I would rather run it through a group first. I think I am at a stage where I could really use some critical eyes.