[Archiving] Liberation from the List

[necessarian]

Originally posted: 7.6.'15

I always feel wary of lists when it comes to writing advice. It’s arguably not a great idea to use the same word over and over again, but I feel it’s unnecessarily prescriptive to present writers, especially beginners, with lists of synonyms for both speech and action. It’s sort of negative to say, “don’t do this, use some of these words instead.” A much better way of looking at writing is positively, starting from what you have and building upwards, so that’s what I’m going to talk about in this post.

Briefly—one of my personal peeves is “synonyms for said” lists. In my book, if your character says something, then say that they said it. Don’t avoid common words—common words are common for a reason, and most of them will fly by without people taking too much notice of them. This is good, this means it doesn’t interrupt the flow of a story. You know what people will notice? If you never use said, if all your characters enunciate and articulate and vociferate. Okay, those are extreme examples, but you get the point, right? Beyond “said,” common words and common turns of phrase—yes, even clichés—are part of a vernacular that people are used to, and they don’t detract from your story in any way, don’t make it “samey,” don’t make it boring.
 

 

Now, I’m going to focus on lists about action and reaction, specifically lists of ways to show a character expressing a certain emotion.
 

 

I think that at the heart of the matter, when you’re writing something character-driven you need to know your characters well, and how they react to different things. The best way to do that is not to look at a list of, for example, ways that people can express surprise, and work backwards to apply as many different expressions of surprise to your character as possible. Instead, a good starting point is to think about how your character reacts to neighbour emotions. Some characters might have different neighbour emotions to others—for example, a more timid character might have similar reactions to surprise as they do to fear, and for a more adventurous character it might be surprise and excitement that are neighbours.
 

 

The neighbour emotion concept is a good way to create consistency within a character. I know exactly how worrying it is to place a character in a situation you’re not familiar with making them experience and having to work out how they react—write what they know. This is something I’ve been doing for years, and after a while it comes as second nature. It may not be the technique for you, but if you’re stuck, it won’t hurt to try it.
 

 

I know it seems obvious to say “don’t just pick off a list, actually think about characterisation,” but it’s so easy to get caught up in lists, and to view characterisation as a checklist of ways to make your writing to seem different to everybody else’s. Your writing doesn’t need to include creative and unusual character responses to situations. Lots of people react in similar ways to similar things. It’s okay if two of your characters both jump when they’re surprised, or rub the back of their head when they’re confused, or blush when they’re embarrassed. Lots of people do those things.
 

 

In general, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the more synonyms you use, the better your writing is. It’s even easier not to think about what sort of reaction you want to give your character and instead to consult a handy chart of ways that people express an emotion. Writing isn’t easy. Make it even harder for yourself by not settling for an idea from someone else’s list. Your writing doesn’t need to use a great variety of reactions to make it good—what will make your writing good is the way it effectively communicates what you want it to, in the way you want it to.