Writing fashion changes, like the fashion in Easter Bonnets
by Anne R. Allen
Fashion. It sounds frivolous, but it has serious effects on us all.
Right now, women are getting beard-burn from kissing men who sport the fashionable romantic-hero three-day stubble. And mothers are stifling their disappointment when their golden-haired boys get the fashion-victim shaved-sides hairdo that makes them look like a cross between Kim Jong Un and the Last of the Mohicans.
And have pity on the people over 40 who are hunched over their computers trying to decipher text from the latest fashion in web design: a tiny, palest-gray font on a white background.
Alas, fashion favors the young.
Writing fashion is hard on us too. Fashion dictates a good deal of what gets published these days, and it’s constantly changing. Write like Thackery, Kipling, or Walter Scott and you’re unlikely to find a publisher or an audience. That’s because writing fashions have radically changed in the last two hundred years, even though the language itself has not.
The truth is that a great many of the “rules” that writers learn in workshops, critique groups, and classes are not actual rules of the English language. They may not even represent correct grammar. But they’re the “way we do things now.”
In other words: They’re what’s in fashion.
Why Follow Fashion?
If you read a lot of classics and not much contemporary fiction, you may not realize how many changes have transpired in fiction writing in the past few decades.
Writing has become leaner and less descriptive. Maybe we can blame Elmore Leonard, who wrote in his Ten Rules for Writing in 2007, “leave out the parts that readers tend to skip.”
This doesn’t mean that classic books are “wrong,” but it does mean that your writing will seem old-fashioned if you follow an older, more lush, descriptive style.
This can work FOR you if you’re writing epic fantasy (hello, George R.R. Martin) or historical fiction, but it won’t please readers who expect a contemporary style.
Submitting a manuscript that’s written in an older style is like showing up to a job interview wearing a bustle or doublet and hose. It can make an impact, but not always in a good way.
A brilliant story may be rejected because the style is unfashionable. Is that unfair? Probably. But business isn’t always fair. Alas, publishers only acquire stuff they think will sell, and an old-fashioned style doesn’t always jump off the shelves.
You’ll notice the difference in writing fashion if you read a bunch of contemporary novels and then pick up a classic.
I did this recently with a collection of Dorothy L. Sayers stories. Almost every line of dialogue had a tag that included a dreaded adverb.
“I’ll have a champagne cocktail, said Montague Egg urbanely.”
Obviously, adverbs were not as dreaded in the 1920s.
Dialogue Tags
Fashion in dialogue tags has changed in the past few decades. I had a crash course in this from my UK publisher. I was asked to change about 50% of the tags in my novel The Best Revenge.
Here are three ways a writer often identifies the speaker in dialogue.
1) “Never let them see you sweat,” Serena advised the visibly nervous lacrosse team.
2) “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” Serena removed her damp, aromatic socks while addressing the team.
3) “Team? I don’t know about any team,” I sweated as I blocked the door to the dungeon where Serena had incarcerated the lacrosse players.
#1 and #2 are both correct. But #3, not so much. (Not just because it’s not nice to lock lacrosse players in a dungeon. 🙂 ) But people can’t sweat words.
However, #2 is more fashionable in contemporary fiction. Writing fashion tells us to drop the dialogue tag altogether and identify the speaker by adding action. Yes, I know that can sometimes lead to reader confusion, so don’t do it so often it leaves readers scratching their heads.
Italics—for Emphasis or Inner Monologue?
The use of italics provides a similar dilemma. The fashion for use of italics is changing.
Traditionally, italics were only used for emphasis. But in a lot of contemporary fiction, italics indicate inner monologue. This is a convention that first appeared in “pulp” fiction, but it has become fashionable in YA fiction.
Both 1 and 2 below are correct.
1) Serena opened the door and showed me a tiny, windowless room. With sudden force, she shoved me inside and slammed the door shut. I’m going to die in this dungeon. There is no way out. That woman is out of her mind.
2) Serena opened the door and showed me a tiny, windowless room. With sudden force, she shoved me inside and slammed the door shut. I was going to die in this dungeon. There was no way out. That woman was out of her mind.
Here we’re looking at writing fashion in flux. You can choose the more fashionable “I’m going to die here. There is no way out” or “There was no way out,” depending on your audience.
But reserving italics for emphasis is still correct. Here’s what The Chicago Manual of Style had to say about it: “you have several options, among which is the option to use regular text for thought, reserving italics for emphasis.” (That would be example #2.)
Eliminating “That” “Just” “Then” and Other “Unnecessary Words”
This one used to drive my English professor mother batty. Writing fashion tells us to eliminate the word “that” whenever possible.
1) “We never told the team that it’s not wise to visit Aunt Serena after sunset.”
Vs.
2) “We never told the team it’s not wise to visit Aunt Serena after sunset.”
These are both right. Fashion would say #2 is better without the “that”. But my old-school mom would say #1 has more clarity.
1) “I’ll just be a minute,” Serena said.
Vs.
2) “I’ll be a minute,” Serena said.
Is the word “just” needed? Writing fashion would say no. But a lot of readers would find “just” changes the meaning from “I’ll be ready asap” to “this will take a little time.”
1) “I found myself staring into Serena’s eyes, then realized they were flashing red.”
Vs.
2) “I found myself staring into Serena’s eyes and realized they were flashing red.”
Writing fashion says #2 is better. But #1 shows a subtle difference. It shows the passage of time: looking first, then seeing red a moment later. See what I did there? That’s why I prefer #1.
Hating on Adverbs and Adjectives
1) Serena waved happily at a bald man who had curly purple hair growing out of his enormous ears.
2) Serena waved at a man who had hair growing out of his ears.
Sorry, fashionable adverb and adjective killers. Those sentences are not identical. Adverbs and adjectives show tone and add information the reader needs, even though they’re unfashionable. So you have my permission to use them. ???? Discretely, of course. But don’t become a fashion victim here.
It does make sense to do a search for “ly” words when you’re editing. You’ll probably find some adverbs you don’t need. But they’re not the enemy, unless you’re, like, super trendy.
Short, Uncomplicated Prose.
I have little elves in a plug-in for my WordPress blog here who tell me the “readability” score for each post. I get dinged for sentences and paragraphs that are too long, words of more than two syllables, passive voice, and a lack of “transition words” like “but” and “however.”. (For more on the SEO elves, see my post on Yoast SEO Secrets)
This is because Google has decreed that prose aimed at an 8th grade reading level or lower is more likely to make it to that all important SERP (Search Engine Results Page.)
Grade level is judged according to the Flesch-Kincaid reading scale.
So what does this mean for fiction writers? After all, you’re not writing novels to please the Google elves.
But it does mean that writing at an 8th Grade level or below is in fashion.
It’s up to you whether to follow the fashion, of course. But if your readers also spend a lot of time online, they’re going to be annoyed by long sentences, a lack of white space, and those twenty-dollar words
This has been a writing fashion trend since Strunk and White came out with The Elements of Style a hundred years ago. As they said, “Do not be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy, ready and able.” They’d tell you to say “hide” and “clarify” instead of “obfuscate” or “elucidate.”
But that’s not always so much fun.
Point of View
There was a time when all novels were told from an omniscient or storyteller’s point of view. (O Best Beloved 🙂 )
Now, a third person point of view is considered standard in most genres, and most novels don’t have more than a handful of point-of-view characters.
Omniscient POV gives a historical or epic feel, so it’s still used in high fantasy. And some contemporary literary fiction has multiple POV characters—some using first and some using third.
These days, a first person POV is fashionable in YA and MG fiction. It’s also pretty de rigueur in chick lit.
Then there’s “deep” third person point of view, which is basically a first person point of view with different pronouns. “Deep” is very trendy right now.
So should you follow writing fashion?
If you’re a new writer trying to break into traditional publishing, yes, being fashionable is more likely to land you an agent and a contract.
For everybody else—I say it’s up to you how trendy you think your readers are. Because in the end, it comes down to what writing fashion makes your readers most comfortable.
***
by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen) April 04, 2021
What about you, scriveners? What are some of the other writing fashions that have changed in the past few decades? Do you notice when a book doesn’t follow the current fashion? Does it stop you when you’re reading? Which writing fashion trend do think you’ll never follow? What are some writing fashion trends that have changed how you write?
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Anne—Thanks for an excellent and illuminating—and annoying—post. 😉
Want to point out there’s a difference between fashion and style. Style is not fashion and style is not a fad that’s here today, gone tomorrow. Real style is enduring, unique, recognizable, desirable and, most of all, authentic. For a writer, style is writing like yourself. On purpose.
Consider Elmore Leonard and Ernest Hemingway, Tom Wolfe, Jackie Collins, Janet Evanovich, Robert B. Parker, and Raymond Chandler: each one has developed an immediately recognizable style.
Finding your own style isn’t quick. It’s the by-product of lots and lots of hours in front of the keyboard, a result of finding and developing our confidence—and our inner artist.
Ruth–Thanks for the reminder. Absolutely! there’s a world of difference between fashion and style. You wrote about this beautifully in your post on writing style: https://annerallen.com/2015/09/style-that-doesnt-go-out-of-fashion/ I highly recommend people revisit that great post.
Fashion is fleeting. Style is forever.
Is what people call “voice” an author’s style?
I think “style” is broader than voice. Voice is how your personality comes through your word choices and tone.
Great post, Anne, and so helpful, as always. As a reader and editor of bestseller-type, mostly contemporary fiction, I love close third-person point of view (deep POV) and find omniscient POV outdated, irritating, and distracting. I also prefer cut-to-the-chase, lean, concrete writing, unless it’s historical fiction, where I enjoy more details (but still not ornate, complex writing).
And thanks for the deal – I just bought your book! Looking forward to reading it! 🙂
Jodie–Thanks for buying the book. I hope it doesn’t come across as old-fashioned. 🙂
The other problem with omniscient storytelling is it’s so hard to do well. The omniscient voice needs to be almost a separate character. Otherwise it’s just confusing head-hopping. One thing about the current trends in writing–they’re all about clarity and ease of reading. Most readers are grateful.
Very special thoughts here, Anne. Just phrasing so much of what we think of as rules instead as fashion makes it much more approachable.
I taught some adventure tales to kids this year and sometimes the older version really confuses with the enormous blocks of text at a time. Breaking it up is more than a bit helpful. And don’t get me started on the long speeches and whether you use quotation marks from one paragraph to the next!
As for voice, I’ve become somewhat infatuated with the black sheep second person since writing a novella in that PoV. Dangerous, absolutely, but there’s a lot going on in there. Just like third can be either sympathetic or omniscient, second can be a clone of first person or a kind of accusatory style (“And isn’t that just like you”, etc.).
Will–Second person is hard to sustain through a whole novel. So is first person plural (although I think And then We Came to the End uses that brilliantly.) But using an unusual pov voice in a novella instead sounds like a good choice. Long enough to tell your story but not so long that it gets annoying. Your book sounds intriguing.
I agree 100% that the change in fashion to shorter paragraphs is a boon to us all. Now when I open a page of solid text, I find myself resisting and either skimming or skipping it altogether.
Aww, another super duper cool post on how to write a novel, LOVE IT!
I’m hopefully fashionable, though I have 4 POVs, first person, commercial/contemporary general fiction. Is that a problem?
Also, is it okay to use italics for both emphasis AND inner monologue in the same book/chapters?
I try to drop dialogue tags where okay and otherwise do the said-asked-action thingie. No other old-fashioned hashtags. No opining and exclaiming. And if your old-fashioned mum or teacher told you otherwise, ask them if they’re published authors or not. 😉
Thanks so much for this great post and Happy Easter Anne and Ruth and everyone!
Katja–According to the Chicago Manual of Style, you should pick one use of italics. Using both will confuse the reader.
I’d be careful with 4 first-person POVs. They would need very different voices to avoid confusion. Generally authors with multiple POVs will have one 1st person and the others 3rd.
Oh thanks so much for this advice!! I didn’t know that I could do 1 POV in 1st person and the others in 3rd. I’m not sure how I can get into everyone’s head if I use 3rd person, though. Will it feel as ‘close’?
Yes, I’m aware of the different voices and am trying to make sure they are all different. It’s female protagonist & male antagonist who tell one story; and male protagonist & female antagonist who tell another story. The two stories overlap and come together later on.
I know, it sounds complicated. And I admit I haven’t set the bar particularly low, yikes. But I might pull it off, who knows.
OK, will choose one italic or the other, thanks!
Katja–The beauty of “deep 3rd person” is that it’s just as close as first person. If you have written something in 1st person, it’s easy to change pronouns and you’re there. That’s the trick for writing “deep”.
This really hit home for me because the “rules” I followed in the beginning -ten years ago -at the time seemed pretty stupid, i.e. no adverbs and adjectives, etc. I used to spend hours going through my finished novels, taking out all that stuff and in the end, I didn’t like the book any longer. It lacked “feeling”, if you will. It’s using them sparingly and at the right time and not overdoing anything that makes up your “style”, that I believe makes a book readable – for me at least. Thank you for this post, Anne.
Patricia–That’s an interesting experiment. I think a lot of books would have the same result if you removed all the modifiers. They’d end up sounding dry and, well, stupid. 🙂 As Ruth told us in her post on style vs. fashion, great writers have a style that goes way beyond fashion.
Excellent subject and post, Anne. Being a high school product of the seventies, I remember two fashion camps. You were either Lees or Levis. That was it. And we took pride in their condition. For the life of me, I don’t get why some well-to-do woman would take a hundred and fifty dollar pair of designer jeans and cut horizontal slashes in the thighs.
Oh well. What was the topic? Right, fashion trends in current writing. I see a lot of blog-style script showing up. One word sentences. Three sentence paragraphs. Half the page being white space. Death sentences for adverbs and adjectives. And dialogue tags or lack of them – with tags replaced by beats.
Many scribes consider Elmore Leonard as the dialogue master, and it’s hard to argue with that conclusion. I just grabbed La Brava and gave it a quick open to pages 120 and 121. Not a single adverb or adjective and lots of white space. I counted nine “said(s)” and not one attempt to qualify it. It’s so easy to follow who is saying what on the pages. BTW, I have a sticky note by my computer to jump start me when I slip in dialogue writing. “It says WWED?” (What Would Elmore Do?)
Happy Easter, everyone!
Garry–I first saw the one word sentences and powerful use of white space in…fashion magazines. In the ads. James Patterson, who is THE master of white space, began as an advertising copywriter. I’ll bet some of the “bloggish” style you’re talking about predates social media and comes from copywriters via Patterson.
WWED–Good advice for all of us!
A very helpful post! The “that” thing drives me nuts – I like to include “thats” for clarity. My latest publisher, when editing my book, took out every single instance. That wasn’t the hill I chose to die on, but I just wanted to exclaim, “It’s already correct this way!” Then again, I’ve never been fashionable!
Irvin–I’m with you (and my mom) on the elimination of “that”. Much of the time it creates a murky sentence for no reason.
The problem is how people interpret these. I attended one of Dave Farland’s class and he said “Use sparingly.” I had to ask what that meant. If left my own devices, sparingly would have meant maybe one in a book. He meant every three pages.
The “write lean” gets a really bad rap because people interpret as leaving all the description out–and then we end up with white rooms and the characterization ends up flat. More likely, it probably means to pick three details, move on into something in the story happening, then maybe circle back around for three more details in a page or so.
With dialogue tags, sometimes simple is best. You can end up with a lot of fake action to avoid tags or just have “he said” and be done with it.
Linda–You make some excellent points as usual. “Sparingly” is a subjective word. So is “lean.” We want our prose muscular, not anorexic.
And I so much agree about the “fake action” instead of dialogue tags. I saw a great blogpost a few weeks ago that parodied the “action for every line of dialogue” and took it to the point of absurdity. I tried to find it for this post, but unfortunately I didn’t bookmark.
Great talking points, thanks Anne. My books were among the first to appear on mobile phones in Japan, called ‘chunking’ then. meanng sold in segments. To avoid confronting readers with a screen of solid text, I write one or two-sentence paragraphs and 2,000 word chapters, I love sharing MC’s thoughts in italics which I first noticed in William Shatner’s Star Trek novels. It also helps to use current terminology – helo instead of chopper, old-school instead of old-fashioned.for example. As I write contemporry romances with a touch of suspense, biggest update is giving hero and heroine equal agency in solving the big issue, and ensuring clearcut consent before any touchy stuff happens. The learning never stops.
Valerie–Fascinating! Writing for phones probably established a lot of the conventions of contemporary prose. You must have learned a lot writing for them. It’s hilarious you learned writing tricks from actor. William. Shatner. 🙂 (known for his epic pauses)
You’re right that we need to keep learning!
Well, I doubt anyone has ever looked at me and said, “There goes a trendy dude,” so I suppose I’ll just keep ding what I do, trends be damned!
CS–I’m glad to hear you’re not likely to start sporting a Kim Jong Un hairdo or a romantic (not) three-day stubble.
Excellent as always, Anne.
I love deep point of view, in first or third, as a reader and a writer. For me, it lets me get to know the characters on a more personal level. I also love white space and staccato sentences.
Hope you had a nice Easter!
Sue–Deep 3rd person can often be the most immersive. Even 1st person can take you out of the story with asides or personal observations. (Although those can be fun.) Big chunks of prose are daunting to me now the way they weren’t a couple of decades ago.
Great post. In the end, we each need to make our own decisions based on the work. I’m militant about removing unnecessary “that” and “just” references, because I was raised in a journalism family where concision was king. But I’m using omniscient in my ensemble cast-general fiction work, even though some of the authors in my writers’ group are appalled. Alas. I am sticking with it…
S. M. Interesting choices. Make sure you’re actually writing with an omniscient voice (which is a kind of character with its own personality and opinions) rather than amateurish head-hopping. True omniscient has a classic storyteller vibe that can be very compelling.
Agreed! I have tried to the utmost to deliver a consistent voice, and have avoided head-hopping like the plague. I love much of today’s deep third-person POV, but I refuse to believe it’s the only option other than first-person.
Yes. Italics for telepathy. It looks like I’m fashionable without knowing it.
Ned–It’s been in fashion for hardboiled mysteries and action adventure for some time. But it’s only recently made its way into mainstream fiction.
I’m a reader not a writer, but one thing really bugs me. The overuse of the qualifier ‘very’. There is one author who does this very many times (!) and I find it teeth gnashingly irritating. Lol
Gillyflower–You agree with Mark Twain, who famously told writers to “substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” I agree with you too. Your author had a “very” bad editor.
Thank you for your excellent post, Anne.
Fashion! It comes and goes. In the 1960s, I think it was, an English writer of children’s books, Enid Blyton, was removed from libraries because one of the things against her was that her writing was too simplistic and that children would not improve their vocabulary by reading her. What they did not thing about was that her stories were so good that they gave children a love of reading, one that I have retained until this very day.
Now we are told to write for people as if they are children with a limited vocabulary. And understanding, too. When I run my work through Grammarly, it keeps telling me of sentences that are difficult to understand. That is if they have more than about five words!
What are we doing to the reading public? Are we making their vocabularies limited? And their reading ability if it’s no higher than a nine-year-old? How will they be able to understand the great writers who have gone before and learn from them? They have so much to teach us about life.
I admit I’ve been following the ‘rules’ because I want to be read, but I do use adverbs and adjectives when I consider them necessary, and occasionally with adverbs there is a much better way of putting it by using a stronger verb.
V.M. I worry about the dumbing down of English, too. But your example of Enid Blyton offers a compelling argument. I know so many Brits who first got hooked on reading by Blyton’s books. I had no idea she was removed from libraries for using kid-friendly language! But English is a sprawling Frankenstein of a language, and maybe “dumbing down” could be a good thing in the long run. One of the results of colonialism is people all over the world have needed to learn English as a second language. Maybe a simplified, more uniform version of English is needed. Still, we would miss the richness and subtlety that comes from a complex language.
I agree with this observation. If one reads the
classics, ten dollar words, as we call them, are part of the vocabulary. Try reading anything by an author before 1900 and you have to have a dictionary next to you. Not just because the words are outdated but because they are SAT words. I am saddened that we are no longer “allowed” to use such words. Will the SAT be dumbed down?
Lori–The SATs have already been dumbed down https://nbcnews.to/3srsunz and many universities are dropping them altogether. As somebody who had perfect 800 scores on both my verbal and English comp SATs, that makes me a little sad. But on the other hand, I came from a position of extreme privilege, with two Ivy League professors with PhDs for parents, so I know they’re unfair in assessing student potential.
This is timely advice as I have been spending an hour a week for some months now with a Zoom writing group. More than half are poets, many of which are published. Imagery and description is appealing but often has a literary bent. All well and good and I am drawn to consider adding more to my WIP.
But as I spend time reading a thriller by an Irish writer (set in Maine), I am struck by how many words are obscure. I don’t prefer to read checking a dictionary or thesaurus. At least, however, he is in fashion with most of what you are describing here–dumping “that,” dropping or revising tags, etc.
Yes, it’s all about the reader. A great piece. Be yourself–not someone else.
John–Critique groups that include poets can be a hazard for novelists. I belong to a group that is prose-only for exactly that reason. Poets can help novelists with better word choices of course, but they often urge prose writers to include more description than readers will tolerate.
Interesting that an Irish author is writing about Maine. As someone who grew up in Maine, I worry that a kind of “cultural appropriation” can be going on when non-Mainers write about my home state. Maine does have its verbal quirks. Because it has a very stable population, Mainers tend to hold onto an older vocabular–which originally came from the English Midlands. When I was growing up, “morning” was “forenoon” and dinner was “supper.” (Dinner is what you have after church on Sundays.) If your Irish writer picked up on real Maine language, then it would be worth looking up a few words to learn authentic stuff about the setting. But if he was just showing off a large vocabulary, that’s not reader-friendly writing.
I’m hopefully fashionable, though I have 4 POVs, first person, commercial/contemporary general fiction. Is that a problem?
Nicole–You may be fine, but I see two problems here. Multiple first person POVs can work, but you need to make very sure the voices are distinct for each character. Readers tend to get confused with more than one first person POV character.
The other is your category. “General” or “Mainstream” fiction doesn’t really exist as a category anymore, alas. I wrote about this last year in my lament at the death of Mainstream fiction. If you can find another category–like Women’s Fiction or Family Saga you’ll get much more traction. https://annerallen.com/2019/08/decline-mainstream-fiction/
I find the ‘unnecessary words’ very necessary in many cases. Your examples are great for illustrating the subtle difference. If that makes me old fashioned, so be it.
The second example, “I’ll just be a minute,” illustrates how people actually speak. To me that’s a plus.
Jaq-I’m glad you agree. I feel it’s much more important to write authentic dialogue than to follow arbitrary “rules”.