Because We Are Writers

 

We are writers. Somewhere within us, is the need to communicate our thoughts in some lasting way. To articulate some feeling, the vision within, in the most potent manner. The process can be vital, latent, uncomfortable, and exhilarating all at the same time; experiences richly allegorized in Hemingway's story, The Old Man And The Sea. 

 

The tale follows an old fisherman, Santiago, as he tries to prove his skill and restore his reputation. For 84 days he has gone out to sea and come back with nothing, not even a guppy. This is a scene familiar to most writers at least once – a period of low production that puts your abilities in question.

Alone, Santiago leaves the safety of familiar water in hope of catching a marlin. He endures hours upon hours of sweat and discomfort before he feels a tug on the line. In the same way, writers may spend hours researching, brainstorming, rewriting, trying to hook into the big one. We want it to be bodacious, the catch of a lifetime. 

 

Then, just as the old man pours his strength out to bring the huge fish to the surface, we too work diligently to bring our catch up from the murky deep. On the surface, it's a beauty. The whole glistening thing looks wonderful as we lash the rough draft to our skiff.

Like Santiago, we see our destination far off and wonder if we can really bring it in. On the way, the tides change, our sails sag, and just as Santiago's fish is eaten away by sharks, we are harried by the voracious jaws of editing. They gnash here and there and gouge away chunks. And as Santiago beat at the sharks, we defend our prize viciously, trying to salvage every bit possible.

By the time we reach shore, our beautiful trophy has been ravaged. Sometimes, there's nothing left but a hard beginning, a floppy ending and a bony carcass in between. We're relieved that we've managed to bring some of it in. And we have proof that we aren't ‟salao, which is the worst form of unlucky”. We are encouraged by our friends and reassured of our ability. But for a while, we rest and dream about writing something new...something different.

And we will...because we are writers.

Predicting Success

It may be a pie-in-the-sky dream but if there was a checklist that I could use to launch my book to the lofty status of best seller, I'd want that checklist posthaste.

Well, we've sent a man to the moon, we've broken the sound barrier and now we may have found the black box of such soaring literary icons as Charles Dickens, Daniel Defoe and Hemingway.

The Department of Computer Science at Stoney Brook University in New York has found a way to predict the success of novels based on writing style. The method they used is called Statistical Stylometry and their findings were accurate about 84% of the time, which seems way better than a wing and a prayer.

Goal: To see if the success of a novel could be predicted based on elements of writing style and to identify what those elements were.

Parameters:

• 800 books selected from the genres of Adventure, Mystery, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Love Stories, Sci-fi, Short Stories and Poetry.
• selected on the basis of 2 conditions
  • they had already been published
  • they were written by previously unseen authors

First they differentiated between successful books and highly successful books. They then measured for style elements that were common for each.

What they found:

There are elements that are typical to successful literature both within genres as well as across genres.

Less successful books were found to use:

• cliches & common settings
• more verbs and adverbs and verbs that describe emotions or actions
• words that convey feelings
• words that are considered negative or extreme
• foreign words
• simple sentence structure (which, ironically, should give them higher readability)

Highly successful books were found to use:

• complex and/or inverted sentence structure
• more nouns and adjectives, a characteristic which calls to journalistic writing
• fewer verbs and adverbs and those related to thinking

The study then applied the same algorithms to some highly successful prize winning and national award winning books as well as movie scripts and the results were consistent.

So it appears that success doesn't always depend on “readability”.

I guess if I want to elevate my game, I not only have to draw my reader in, I've got to use effective nouns and unique locations, avoid adverbs, passive voice and cliches, and quit worrying so much about how many connectives I use.

Connectives:

in, and, but, which, since, that, what, whenever, where

Thinking Verbs:

remembered, recognized

Action/Emotional Verbs:

cried, cheered, shout, glare, jump

Cliches –

• Negative words:
  • heavy, hard, prison, never

• Extreme words:
  • never, absolutely, sacred, breathless, perfectly

• Love related:
  • desires, affairs

• Locations:
  • room, beach, avenue, door, boat, bay