The Search for The Perfect Noun

Basically, you can reduce everything I have to say about nouns down to this quote:

"One pearl is better than a whole necklace of potatoes." 

-Etienne Decroux

If you're the TL;DR type, you can stop now. But if you're interested in mining language for better nouns, it's helpful to have a roadmap.

Learn nouns with Iron Maiden!

Nouns are the backbone of language. When you stop to think about it, every other part of speech serves the noun: verbs show nouns in motion, often colliding with each other. Adjectives refine nouns just as their adverb kin refine verbs. Prepositions demonstrate relationships between nouns and verbs, or nouns and other nouns, and pronouns are simply placeholders for the nouns themselves.

I'm no linguist, but it seems natural to me that the evolution of language began with the invention of the noun. The first Australopithecus (or whatever) to point to a tree and call it..."gug" (or whatever), laid the cornerstone of language.

As children, we learn language first by naming things; "mommy", "daddy", "ba-ba", etc. Everything else comes later. Even as adults, it's still possible to communicate entirely with nouns. If I point to my wife and say "remote", she'll hand me the Roku remote (okay, that's a lie. My wife would never willingly surrender the remote, but you see my point).

As a writer, nouns are the most important parts of our stories. Everything else comes second.

There are four types of nouns:

• Persons (David Bowie, Janet Reno, the saleswoman, the mechanic)
• Places (Scranton, McDonald's, home)
• Things (Coca-Cola, dog, tree)
• Ideas (Christianity, anger, priority)

Any of these types can fall into one of two categories:

• Common nouns: Generic nouns that refer to a type of thing, or group of things (city, clock, birds). Common nouns are written in lowercase letters.
• Proper nouns: Specific nouns that refer to one thing (Bill, Paris, Walmart). Proper nouns are capitalized.

There are also Compound nouns, which combine two or more words to achieve a more specific or refined meaning: bank teller, movie star, woodland ape.

Whether general or specific, all nouns (and all words, really), carry multiple layers of meaning. When considering a noun, you must consider its denotation and connotations.

Denotation is the dictionary-specified meaning of a word. For example a "house" may be defined as "a building for human habitation" However, there are many synonyms for "house", each with implied meanings, or Connotations. A "manor" for example, conjures up images of a massive house with columns out front, a long, tree-lined driveway, maybe even slaves in the yard. A "shack" is a "building for human habitation", but it sounds poorly constructed. A "cottage" seems like it should be located in the countryside.

These subtler meanings are the difference between the right noun and the wrong one. Not only do they conjure more specific imagery in your reader's mind, but they also carry information about the POV character who uses them. A character who says "I picked up the gun" has a different background than the character who says "I grabbed the AR-15". Make sure your noun's connotations are in line with your POV.

The best descriptions favor strong, specific nouns over unwieldy adjectives. Nouns can carry more information in less space, so a description that relies on nouns will ultimately tell you more. Takes this example:

Tom leaned on the small vertical piano, clutching a short, stubby cigarette.

Not terrible, but not terribly vivid either. Now try it this way:

Tom leaned on the spinet, clutching a Camel Wide.

We not only get a clearer picture of Tom, we also learn about whoever's eyes we are seeing him through. The POV character that gives this description knows a little about musical instruments, and is possibly a fellow smoker.

Specificity is part of what makes a strong noun, but you won't always be in a POV that lends itself to spinets and Camel Wides. Sometimes strength is just a matter of choosing a noun that's easy to digest. Style guides advise you to prefer the simple to the complex (say "spouse", not "domestic partner"), the familiar to the technical (say "Jeep", not "sport utility vehicle"), the definite to the vague (say "stove", not  "cooking device"). 

Stronger nouns make for cleaner prose. Vague nouns require more modifiers. The more modifiers you hang on your nouns, the harder it is to unpack a sentence's meaning.

Unadorned nouns are the stuff of good writing, but it's possible to rely on them too much. Corporate jargon is full of terms that pack too many nouns together. Can anyone tell me what a "Process Fitness Capability Change Manager" is? (No, seriously, what is that?) How about "Liquidation Schedule Delay Determination"?

It's rare to see language like this in fiction, but it's still useful to understand that too many nouns in a row makes your sentences opaque.

Furthermore, conceptual nouns (anything that isn't a person, place, or thing) should be used sparingly in fiction because they are impossible to visualize. A "product" isn't something I can see in my head. But I can see a "cereal box". Sometimes it's a game of inches; "an assessment" is more conceptual than "a test", though neither is particularly evocative.

Be wary of any noun ending in "tion". "I was part of a staff reduction" isn't half as clear as "I got fired". "Production" isn't as clear as "manufacturing".

While it's wise to avoid jargon in fiction, there are times when it serves a purpose. A lawyer will be predisposed to use words like "plaintiff", "habeus corpus", and "hereinbelows". A doctor will sound more authentic and authoritative if they say "DVT" (short for deep venous thrombosis) instead of "a blood clot in a large vein".

Sometimes, conceptual language can stand in for a large group of words, and there are times when that's the right call. Instead of saying "firing a bunch of people, combining departments, and breaking the manufacturing department into a separate company", it might be simpler to say "restructuring". It just depends what you're trying to achieve. Remember, writing is like coding. Think about the effect you're going for. If you're writing a conversation between a recently laid off husband and his wife, the longer example might be the way to go. If you're writing two investors discussing possible acquisitions, the shorter is probably the better.

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Sometimes the right noun comes easily, but most of the time it doesn't. Thankfully, sites like thesaurus.com make the job easier. Heck, most modern word processors have a thesaurus built in. If you don't care enough to right-click, or scan through a few search results, don't call yourself a writer. Writers care about words, and no words are more fundamental than nouns. Nouns are where good writing begins.

The Wily Pronoun

Few parts of speech are as wily and confusing as the humble pronoun. Its function seems so simple--to stand in for one or more nouns--and yet pronouns are the source of more mistakes than any other type of word. Even journeyman writers have trouble with these from time to time.

Why do we need pronouns? The answer is because they are transparent. When you read a pronoun, you don't even really see the word itself. Your brain subconsciously and immediately substitutes the thing for which the pronoun stands: its referent. Take the first sentence in this paragraph for example. Did you pause to think about who "we" was? Did you even notice the word "we" at all? I'm willing to bet you didn't. You probably just intuitively understood that I was speaking about myself, you the reader, and other writers like us. That's a lot of work for a little two-letter word! It slipped all that information into your brain without you even knowing it was there. Pretty cool if you ask me!

Pronouns also help vary the pace and rhythm of writing. Writing the same noun over and over becomes repetitive; it feels like being clubbed over the head with words:

Bob Dole won't raise taxes. Bob Dole doesn't believe in higher taxes. That's just not the kind of man Bob Dole is. (Not an actual quote)

That kind of writing is best left to the politicians. Actual human writers use pronouns. Trouble is, a lot of us use them wrong.

To make sure you're using the right pronouns, it's helpful to know the different types and what each is used for. The following overview is adapted from this article. Check it out for a great quick reference.

Personal Pronouns

When you think of pronouns, these are probably the kind you think of first. They stand in for proper and common nouns, and they come in three flavors.

First Person (I, me, we, us): 

For a fiction writer, these are mainly used in dialogue or first person narrative. The main tip to remember is not to overuse them. First person stories can quickly get clogged with "I" sentences: 

I sat down at the table. I picked up my spoon. I turned to Jared and asked him to pass the salt.

Keep in mind that in first person, the reader always knows who the speaker is. It isn't necessary to re-anchor them very often. 

Also, phrases like "I saw" add narrative distance, and the point of first person is maximum narrative intimacy. To keep your reader inside your POV character's mind, write "A lamp glowed on the table" instead of "I saw a lamp glowing on the table"

Second Person (you): 

In fiction, "you" is typically only seen in dialogue. Novels like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy have made successful use of a conversational style, but keep in mind that this is a risk. Any direct communication between a character and a reader necessarily breaks the fourth wall. It should only be done for a very good reason, because by definition it knocks the reader out of the story. Overused, it makes a writer look desperate to get his point across.

Third Person (he, she, it, they, them, etc.): 

Far and away the most common pronouns in fiction (even in first person), third person pronouns are actually the most difficult, because you're almost always going to need several at a time. Unless you're writing about a single character standing in a void (which sounds awfully boring), your story is going to be filled with people, places and things, and at most one of them will be referred to with something besides a third person pronoun. 

Jack picked up the gun. It was heavy in his hand.

Here, "it" and "his" are both third person pronouns, standing in for "the gun" and "Jack's" respectively. When you're dealing with one person and one object, things are pretty clear. But the more people and things you throw into the mix, the more slippery those pronouns get:

Before Tom met Jack, he was just an ordinary kid.

Here, "he" could refer to either Tom or Jack. Granted, this is a simple example, and I think it's pretty clear that "he" refers to Tom (because of an issue I'll discuss later), but you see how a reader might get confused. It would be much clearer to say "Tom was an ordinary kid before he met Jack."

The more people, places, and things you involve in a scene, the more nouns you're going to have to use to keep things clear. Occasionally, this can result in passages that repeat the same noun several times, and it can be conspicuous. The only way to avoid this is to keep as few balls in the air as possible. Simplify scenes when you can. If there are people and objects around that aren't directly involved with what's happening, don't mention them. And if a character is interacting with number of people or objects, try to write sequential actions, not simultaneous ones (more on the difference in this article).

No matter how careful you are, you're still bound to struggle with this once in a while. It's worth taking the time to figure out your pronouns, for your reader's sake. They won't thank you, they'll just understand.

I would be remiss if I didn't bring up the issue of gender. When referring to unspecified persons (or persons of a non-binary gender), it's somewhat frowned upon to prefer a single gendered pronoun. In nonfiction (for example, here on this site) the most accepted practice is to vary between masculine and feminine pronouns, and to write around them when possible. 

For my part, I tend to favor first and second person, but I try to oscillate back and forth between "he" and "she" when referring to "the writer" or "the reader". In some cases (especially in my older articles), I even use "they" as a non-gendered pronoun, but that practice is frowned upon by much of the writing community. 

Grammar geeks within the LGBT movement have made various attempts to come up with a non-gendered third person pronoun. Some even prefer to be referred to as "they". Even before LGBT issues were a household topic, writers have posited their own solutions for situations where gender is simply unspecified. None of these efforts have gained traction, and in everyday conversation, "they" seems to be the most commonly accepted solution. Personally, I'm a fan of "they", since it's already being used every day. But I acknowledge the reasoning against it: "they" is a plural pronoun, and shouldn't be used to refer to singular subjects.

This issue will probably be in debate for a long time, and I won't presume to solve the world's problems, even ones as minute as this. But I will say that if enough people just keep using "they" in this context, it will eventually become accepted usage. Take that, Grammar Nazis!

...moving on.

Relative Pronouns

A relative pronoun does exactly what it says; it relates a following clause to the rest of the sentence.

The gun that he used to kill President Lincoln has been found.

Relative pronouns basically force entire clauses to function as descriptors. In the above case, "he used to kill President Lincoln" functions as an adjective modifying "the gun". What you'll notice right away is the pronoun "that" simply isn't necessary to understand the sentence:

The gun he used to kill President Lincoln has been found.

This is true of many relative pronouns. Instead of "the man who killed Lincoln", just say "Lincoln's killer". Cutting relative pronouns is one of the main ways I tighten my writing when I edit.

One issue that many writers struggle with is the difference between "who" and "whom", both of which can be used as relative pronouns. I personally didn't master this until I was in my thirties. Luckily, it's actually pretty simple. Anywhere you could use "he", use "who". Anywhere you could use "him", use "whom".

The man who wrote to me. <=> He wrote to me. 

The man to whom I wrote <=> I wrote to him. 

"Who" is used to stand for the subject of a verb--the person or thing that does the action. "Whom" is used for the object of the verb--the person or thing being acted upon.

Another issue that trips some people up is the difference between "who's" and "whose". We'll talk a little more about this below, but basically all you need to know is that "who's" is a contraction for "who is", whereas "whose" is a possessive pronoun that can also be used as a relative pronoun:

The man whose arm was broken

Here, "whose" relates the idea of the broken arm to "the man".

Relative pronouns are clutter, more often than not. Make sure they're needed, or write around them.

Demonstrative Pronouns

Demonstrative pronouns are basically like pointing your finger.

Tom grabbed the gun. "Give me that!"

Here, we know "that" refers to the gun. In situations where we know what object is being referred to, demonstrative pronouns work as a shorthand. Use "this" or "these" to refer to things that are close by. Use "that" or "those" to refer to things that are at a distance.

"That" is one of those overused words that trip writers up, perhaps because it can also be used as an adjective ("Give me that gun!"), adverb ("I wouldn't go that far"), and a conjunction ("she said that she was hungry"). "That" is a complicated issue, best left for another article. For now, just know the pronoun use is one of the acceptable ones.

Indefinite Pronouns

Indefinite pronouns refer to something unspecified. Did you catch that? In that first sentence, "something" is an indefinite pronoun. You probably use these pronouns all the time: "There's something in your teeth.", "Somebody is coming.", "Is anybody there?" "Is everybody coming?". Indefinite pronouns are nice and transparent, and are unlikely to cause you much trouble. Pronouns are mainly an issue when it's hard to figure out what is being referred to, But indefinite pronouns aren't really referring to anything specific, so you'll never be searching a previous sentence for their referents. Just make sure not to use too many of them, or your writing will seem vague.

Reflexive Pronouns

A reflexive pronoun refers back to the subject of the sentence, indicating that the subject of the verb is also the object.

He shot himself.

Remember, this is all reflexive pronouns do. If you aren't referring back to the subject of a sentence, don't use one. Some people misuse the reflexive pronoun "myself" in sentences like "My mom came to pick up Tom and myself". Because "mom" is the subject, "myself" is incorrect here. For a great look at misuses of "myself", check out this article.

Interrogative Pronouns

A pronoun is interrogative if it's used to ask a question.

"Who are you?"

"Whose candy is this?"

Interrogative pronouns are unlikely to trip you up much. Just make sure your verbs are in the right mood and tense, and you'll be fine.

Possessive Pronouns

Just like possessive nouns, possessive pronouns show ownership or belonging. The main difference, and the thing that trips some people up, is that possessive pronouns never take apostrophes.

I'll be the first to admit it: it took me years to master the difference between "its" and "it's". I got so frustrated with my inability to differentiate that I actually considered getting it tattooed on my wrist. "It's" is a contraction of "is is". "Its" is a possessive pronoun.

As mentioned above, "whose" and "who's" is a similar issue. Just remember; if a pronoun has an apostrophe, it's a contraction.

There is also the issue of possessive pronouns used before a noun:

Give me my socks.

Here, technically, "my" is an adjective! As confusing as that may sound, I'd be willing to bet you've never worried too much about pronouns in this sense. If you know who a thing belongs to, you know which word to use.

***

Despite all the different varieties and uses of pronouns, the problems they cause all tend to fall into one category: vagueness.

In a recent editing project, I came across this passage:

Feedback from friends is valuable if your friends are writers. But they can be tricky to get feedback from.

To whom does "they" refer? Friends? Writers? Oddly enough, the first time I read this sentence, I actually had a split second where I thought "they" referred to "feedback". Obviously, "they" would be the wrong pronoun in that case, but it alerted me to an interesting fact.

When I read a pronoun in one sentence, I tend to assume that it refers to the subject of a previous sentence. In the above example, "feedback" is the subject of the first sentence, so when I saw a pronoun, that's where my mind went first.

I might be crazy. But still, I stand by what I told the writer: if you have a sentence where both subject and object are present, and then a following sentence with a pronoun, it's natural to assume the pronoun refers to the subject. This was the rephrasing I recommended:

Friends are a great source of feedback, especially if your friends are writers. But they can be tricky to get feedback from.

To me, that's much clearer. That passage went through a few more revisions before we both thought it was perfect, but I made a note of this one because I had never thought about it before.

Remember this example from above?

Before Tom met Jack, he was just an ordinary kid.

I might not change this sentence if it appeared in one of my stories. Because "Tom" is the subject of the verb "met", I assume that the next pronoun ("he") refers to him. But I may be the exception in this matter, and the revision I suggested above is definitely clearer:

Tom was an ordinary kid before he met Jack.

Another issue with pronouns is that they grow more vague the more distance you put between them and their referents. Even a single sentence can be too much.

The mountain towered over the treetops. A fierce wind whipped the leaves. Its snowy peak reflected the sunlight.

Obviously, neither the wind nor the leaves could have a snowy peak, so you know that "its" refers to the mountain. But the fact that several nouns appeared between "the mountain" and "its" made it momentarily confusing, didn't it?

Granted, the confusion isn't likely to last more than a second, if that long. Any reader can figure out what a pronoun refers to if they give it some thought. But passages like these are speed bumps; they may not knock the reader out of the story, but they certainly impede her progress. In this case, swapping the second two sentences is an easy solution, but it won't always be that clear. Just try to keep pronouns close to their referents, and keep as few pronouns in play as possible. If there's even a ghost of a chance a pronoun could refer to more than one thing, try to rephrase.

***

Pronouns seem simple and innocuous until you realize just how many you use, and just how many ways you use them. Misused, they can rob your writing of clarity and frustrate your readers. But they're a necessary part of prose. They provide transparency, which keeps readers focused on the story, not the words. Use them well, and keep your readers reading.

Can You "Just Write"?

When I first decided to seriously pursue writing, I didn't think much about what I needed to do to prepare for a career as a writer. I just decided to do it, sat down, and started.

Why is that?

Can you imagine starting any other career that way? You wouldn't say "I'm gonna be a fireman!" and start running into burning buildings. You wouldn't say "I'm gonna be a stockbroker!" and start...actually, I don't even know what you would start doing. Go to a stock exchange and start shouting?

Anyway, I find it odd that writing is a career that people think they can just do. I mean, in a sense it's true; there's no national writing organization whose dispensation you need, no training you must complete. There are organizations and schools you can go to, but nobody is going to make you. If you want to be a writer, nobody is going to stop you.

But just because you can jump in head first, doesn't mean you should. Most writers agree that writing well is hard. No matter how good a communicator you are, there's a lot to learn when it comes to crafting fiction.

Writing fiction is like coding. Your manuscript is your coding environment--a blank text file, or the HTML template of a blog like this one. And the mind of the reader is like a web browser; it reads and interprets the code. Whatever you do in your manuscript has an effect in the mind of the reader. Sometimes it's the one you want. Sometimes it doesn't matter if it looks exactly the same to everyone, so long as it's close enough. And sometimes, if your code is faulty, the browser simply can't understand it.

You wouldn't say "I'm gonna be a web designer!" and start writing websites without learning HTML. You might do what I did and get set up with a platform like Blogger or Tumblr, but you wouldn't go tinkering with the site's template unless you at least knew HTML and CSS. Hell, this website's template still intimidates me a little, and I've learned a lot in the last year.

The point is that writing, for whatever reason, seems to be one of the few careers that people think they can jump into without learning anything new. What is it about fiction that makes us feel like we can start messing around without learning the language first?

My best guess is that we think we already know the language because we speak in our native tongue every day. But it's important to realize that everyday speech is a completely different language.

A language is more than words and their dictionary meanings. Ask any linguist. A language is a complex system of rule-based information exchange. Language can exist in any of the five senses, and often it exists in more than one at a time. English is a language we hear and see, but when we talk to each other we also receive signals with our other senses. When someone smelly comes up and talks to us, it colors our perception of their words. If we still have the taste of our partner's lips on our tongue, it changes the way we hear their words. If someone says something while caressing your inner thigh, you're liable to interpret it differently than if they said it while punching your face.

In everyday speech, we have the entire lexicon of human body language supplementing what we hear (or see, if you're using ASL). A speaker's posture and gestures give subtlety and nuance to their words. Depending on the speaker's face, the same sentence might sound true, sarcastic, dishonest, or exaggerated.

In writing, however, words are all we have. There are a handful of tricks like italics to add emphasis, and punctuation to organize things, but we don't have anything as intuitive as body language to help transfer meaning.

Therefore, when we write, we must choose our words much more carefully than we do when speaking--and not just because we have fewer channels open. When we speak to each other, the words themselves are ephemeral. We rarely recall the exact words we say, or that were said to us, we recall their meaning. Not even that, we recall our own interpretation of their meaning, whether or not that was their intended meaning. All but the most profound words disappear like smoke in the wind once they're spoken.

One of my all time favorite quotes about writing actually comes from the 1982 Jim Henson masterpiece The Dark Crystal. When the main character is asked what writing is, he gives the best definition I've ever heard: "Words that stay."

Writing stays. Writing is permanent (or at least semi-permanent). A writer must make sure she wants her words to stay. She must make sure they deserve to stay. Which is not to say they must be some James Joyce-esque outpouring of the eternal human soul, but they must create the correct effect in the mind of the reader, or they don't deserve to stay. (Like this quote? Click here to tweet it!)

Many of us write every day, even if it's just a grocery list, or our name at the bottom of a receipt. We fill out forms, write emails, and post sticky notes. It's writing, but it's still a different language than fiction, because the information they transfer seldom requires much imagination. Fiction invites the reader to imagine things which don't exist, and may never exist. There's room for interpretation, but if you want to write fiction, you have to know the code.

Maybe you think you can "just write". Maybe you think your editor will just "fix it". I did, when I started out. But I was constantly frustrated by people misunderstanding or not understanding my stories. Eventually I had to accept that the burden of clarity was on me. So I learned the code.

Think you can make it as a writer without learning grammar and storycraft? Let's have an argument in the comments! Gimme your best shot!

How to Handle Description

Description--how much to use, where to put it, and how to write it--is one of the most troubling issues for writers. Not enough description and you've got mannequins talking in a white room. Too much, and you've got a boring list of facts that's sure to knock readers right out of your story.

The common wisdom is that good writers supply just enough description to kick-start the reader's imagination, and the reader fills in the rest. A further refinement of that maxim says that writers should only report the details that aren't obvious. The reader will fill in the obvious things.

But how do you know which is which? And how do you know when to stop, and when to keep going? This is when I use a little trick I like to call The Inverse Coco Chanel Principle.

Fashion icon Coco Chanel said that when you're accessorizing your outfit, you should "Put everything on, then take one thing off." This means once you have your outfit on, put on earrings, bracelets, necklace, watch, brooch, rings, scarf, headband, etc, etc, then, once it's all on, take one item off, and the outfit is complete.

When describing something in fiction--be it a character, setting, or prop--I take the inverse approach. I pull up a blank document, and write every detail I can think of. I describe it as exhaustively as I can, holding nothing back. Then I begin deleting things until I am left with only those details I cannot bear to part with.

If you can get it down to a single detail, great, but I find that's often not practical; and not generous enough to the reader. But I try to get it to three or less at any cost. Thus, The Inverse Coco Chanel Principle can be stated:

Put everything on, then take all but one (or two) thing(s) off.

And the thing is, this process can still result in a nice, long paragraph, because there are multiple orders of magnitude at play.

Say I'm describing a coffee shop, and the two details I choose to point out are the mural on the wall, and the guy working the register. Each of those things may be a single detail of the location, but they are in themselves detailed things. So for each of them, I can choose one or two details. Each detail can be described in any variety of ways; with a metaphor, or with information from any of the five senses (the more senses you involve, the better, but that's another post).

So if each second-order detail gets a sentence, you still get a generous paragraph of description, organized in such a way that you aren't just listing boring facts about a place, but giving concrete images that spark the reader's imagination.

It's tough to do this right, and it takes time, but the results are always worth it. The trick is to make sure you have the right amount for the situation.

You have to keep in mind that descriptions are observations, and observations belong to somebody. Assuming you're not writing from an omniscient point of view, then any description must belong to the POV character. If your POV character is experiencing an extreme emotional state (like, say Captain Picard in the Cardassian interrogation room), the setting does not deserve a full two-level description, because people under duress seldom pause to consider what the furniture is made of.

However, if the POV character is relatively calm, and the location is important, you should go into more detail. The first time you visit a location you plan on returning to at least once, give a full two-level description of the place. The concrete, sensory details you supply the first time can be used as anchor points every time you return to that setting. The next time your character goes back there, simply fire off one of the details from earlier, and the reader will quickly re-sketch the scene in their minds.

The same goes for a character. If you're introducing a character in the midst of a tense or emotional scene, don't pause and talk about their clothes for ten sentences. Just give us a quick one-level description (or none at all), and make sure the details are congruent with the emotion of the scene. If you introduce a battered mother in a scene where the eight-year old POV character walks in on his deadbeat dad slapping her around, don't talk about her freshly-laundered dress, or her shiny shoes. Show us the messy hair and mascara-streaked cheeks (sorry for the dark example, but it's the best I could think of).

If you're introducing a character in the midst of a relatively calm moment, and if they're going to be a regular in the book, go ahead and give them a two-level description; perhaps one to three details about their face, and one to three details about their clothes.

In each case, the easiest way to arrive at the right details is to brainstorm every detail you can think of, then only supply the ones you cannot part with. Those will be the strongest ones, and they will be the keys that unlock your reader's imagination.

Description is a tricky business, and it has close ties with setting, character development, and point of view. The Inverse Coco Chanel Principle is an effective way to make sure that your description is precisely proportioned to the needs of the scene, and easy to refer back to when you need to re-anchor your reader.

Rules for Writing Numbers

Let's face it, most of us didn't become writers because we're good with numbers. A lot of us are the same people who got straight A's in Literature classes, but struggled to pass Trigonometry. We're writers! We're good with words.

But in many contexts, numbers are words. If you write long enough, you'll have to deal with them eventually. When you do, you might find out--like I did--that you aren't sure how to handle them.

Like many rules, the main thing is to be consistent. Whatever you choose to do about writing numbers, make sure you stick to it.

The most widely accepted stance on writing numbers is that in non-technical writing, you should spell out the numerals. 1 becomes one. 43 becomes forty-three.

But what about 328,747?

When I first went looking for a rule on this subject, I read that you're supposed to write out any number under a hundred. But I found that didn't quite capture it, after all, I'd rather write "a million" than 1,000,000. So there shouldn't be some arbitrary point where you stop spelling out numbers and start writing numerals.

The rule I settled on is that I always write out any number that can be expressed in three words or fewer. 600 becomes six hundred. 47 becomes forty-seven.

That right there is enough to cover most situations, but there are a host of specific types of numbers that have their own rules; time, date, etc. And how do you punctuate numbers? Here is the best, most comprehensive list of number-related rules I can come up with.

• Write out all numbers that can be expressed in three words or fewer.
• Nine
• Twenty-three
• Eight hundred thousand
• Hyphenate compound numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine, even when they are part of a larger number.
• Thirty-six
• Three hundred ninety-five (I wouldn't write this number out in fiction, but this example demonstrates the next rule
• DO NOT hyphenate orders of magnitude like hundred, thousand, or million.
• WRONG: Two-hundred fifty-two
• RIGHT: Two hundred fifty-two
• Using numerals and words combined is acceptable for orders of magnitude one million and higher.
• 34 million
• 5.7 billion
• However, if the number can be easily expressed without numerals, do so.
• Five billion
• Six trillion
• Hyphenate written-out fractions.
• Two-thirds
• Three-fifths
• Write out ordinal numbers, and hyphenate any between twenty-one and ninety-nine.
• First thing's first.
• For the thousandth time!
• Thirty-third place.
• Always use commas when writing numerals.
• 1,584,282
• 2,483
• But don't use commas when writing out large numbers.
• WRONG: Six thousand, forty-five
• RIGHT: Six thousand forty five
• Always use a zero before a decimal when using numerals. It helps readers catch the decimal point.
• WRONG: Voter turnout was only .5 percent.
• RIGHT: Voter turnout was only 0.5 percent.
• NEVER begin a sentence with a numeral.
• WRONG: 5,400 people were there.
• RIGHT: Five thousand four hundred people were there.
• RIGHT: Fifty-four hundred people were there. (Informal, but preferred, as it condenses the number to three words.)
• Currency
• Write out any amount that can be expressed in three words or fewer.
• Seven dollars
• Twenty thousand dollars
• Add a comma between dollars and cents (or between other currencies and their coinage):
• Nine dollars, twenty-two cents
• Five pounds, three pence
• ...unless you're writing it informally
• A dollar fifty
• Six and a quarter
• Do not add the name of the currency when using numerals, use the associated symbol.
• WRONG: $1,284 dollars
• RIGHT $1,284
• Time
• Write out times that are easily expressed in one word, unless you're being formal.
• Noon
• Midnight
• Nine
• Six in the morning
• Use numerals for all other times.
• 7:30 PM
• 1:25 AM
• It is acceptable to drop the :00 for the top of the hour (9 PM), but I don't do it because a) I usually just write out the number and skip the AM/PM, and b) I like the consistent look of having the colon in every time I write.
• Pick a spelling for AM and PM, and stick with it.
• AM and PM is the most preferred.
• A.M. and P.M. 
• a.m. and p.m. 
• and am and pm 
• are all acceptable
• Put a space between numerals and the AM/PM designation.
• WRONG: 7:30PM
• RIGHT: 7:30 PM
• Date
• Use numerals for dates when you're stating them formally.  Commas are required in this format.
• June 30, 2015
• The 30th of June, 2015
• Use words when stating them informally.
• The twentieth is a Friday.
• He was born March eleventh, right before me.
• Spell out decades.
• The sixties
• The late eighties
• Use numerals for centuries
• The 1900s
• The 2000s
• DO NOT use apostrophes to pluralize decades or centuries
• WRONG: The 80's
• WRONG: The early 1900's
• RIGHT: The '80s [Do use an apostrophe to stand in for omitted numbers, as I explain in my article on apostrophes]
• RIGHT: The early 1900s

Any awkward situations I missed? Any rules you disagree with? Drop me a comment!

Apostrophe Dos and Don'ts

One of my greatest fears is that one day the plural apostrophe ("Take off your hat's and coat's.") will become accepted standard usage. The error is so widespread on the internet and in the real world that I fear the sheer volume of uncorrected uses will eventually lead to a change in official position, as it did for the new definition of the word literally: "Used for emphasis or to express strong feeling while not being literally true" (Google). Language is fluid and occasionally arbitrary, and the rules seek to reflect genuine usage, so the plural apostrophe may have its day. If it does, we will no longer be able to tell plurals and possessives apart--which is why we invented apostrophes--and I will probably take my own life.

I bet Zappa has an opinion on this subject. And he's
probably right. I mean, look at that mustache.

Apostrophes confuse a lot of people. I'm one of them. The title of this page is a peculiar and confusing case in itself: most writers have an urge to put an apostrophe in the plural of "do" in order to avoid confusion, but the word "don't" already has an apostrophe in it. So should we write it do's and don't's? Or dos and don'ts? Or should we be inconsistent with apostrophe use, and write it do's and don'ts? Thankfully, the wise and oracular Grammar Girl has already weighed in on this subject. She's the final authority for me, and it's her recommended usage you see at the top of this page. When I read it, I can't help but think of an early text-based computer operating system, but hey, sometimes you just have to pick a rule and go with it.

In the spirit of keeping written English sane and sensible, I present the best list of apostrophe rules I could come up with. Keep in mind that some of these rules are not universally agreed upon. In fact, I'm not even consistent with which style guide I follow. I follow the rule that makes the most sense to me logically, and I respectfully submit them for your perusal.

Do

• Use apostrophes in contractions: Can't, won't, I'll. This is the reason we invented apostrophes: to stand in for omitted letters. Be careful though, not to overuse ugly, non-standard contractions in order to capture the rhythm of speech; "This's Bill." (which sounds identical to "This is Bill."), or "Bill'll get you fixed up." Phrases like this may make sense in speech, but they're horrid to look at on the page.
• Use apostrophes for omitted numbers as well: the '60s. Notice, however, that the apostrophe is not placed between the 0 and the s. The apostrophe stands in for the 1 and the 9, but putting it between the 0 and the s make the word possessive, which is not what you want,
• Use an apostrophe and and s for possessive nouns: Sally's car, the company's building, the constable's billy club. The other reason we invented apostrophes.
• If two people own something jointly, only the last one needs and apostrophe: "Bill and Joan's house is for sale."
• If each person has their own thing, both take apostrophes: "Bill's and Joan's cars are brand new." [While correct, I find this phrasing awkward. I would probably rephrase to simply say "Bill and Joan have new cars" or "Their cars are new."]
• If you substitute a pronoun for one person, it needs to be possessive: "My and Joan's son is going to Stanford" [Again, correct, but awkward, I'd prefer "Our son is going to Stanford."]
• Use an apostrophe and an s for possessive singular nouns, even if the word itself ends with an s: Marcus's favorite bar, Kansas's new statute. [William Strunk Jr. is with me on this one. Grammar Girl is not, although she does point out that it's simply a matter of which style guide you refer to. This is one of the few cases where I deviate from Grammar Girl, and here's why: using the extra s gives you an easy way to distinguish between nouns that happen to end in s, and plural nouns, as in the next rule.]
• Use an apostrophe without an s to indicate possession for plural nouns ending in s: My parents' house, the Jones' pool party, Ladies' night at the dance club.
• Use an apostrophe and an s to indicate possession for plural nouns that do not end in s: The children's table, the geese's habitat.
• Some phrases are tricky: For example, "For goodness' sake" takes an apostrophe. But think about it. In this case "goodness" is used like a possessive noun. Whose sake? Goodness' sake. Another sticky spot is the American holiday Veterans Day. The official, government mandated spelling does not have an apostrophe, even though it is a day to celebrate all veterans' sacrifice (notice the apostrophe following the plural s). If in doubt, check the official spelling.
• Use apostrophes to pluralize single letters: This only happens when you are referring to the letter itself: "This word has too many e's." "Dot the i's and cross the t's." This rule is especially important when writing about a's, i's and u's, because it helps avoid confusion with actual words.
• Use apostrophes to pluralize numbers: 1's and 2's. This is essentially the same rule as above, and feel free to use it when referring to the actual numerals. But in my writing I always write out any number, plural or singular, that can be written in four words or fewer. So I would write "ones and twos" instead of 1's and 2's. [For more on this, check out my article on numbers]
• Use apostrophes for quotes within quotes. "I heard him say 'Sherry got a nose job' over at the bar." This goes for scare quotes (sarcastic quote marks) within dialogue as well: "Yeah, I was upstairs 'doing my homework.' " [Technically, for quotes within quotes you're supposed to use a single quotation mark (according to Grammar Girl), which apparently is a thing, and is distinct from an apostrophe. But I've used dozens of keyboards in my life and I've never seen a single quotation mark on any of them--just a plain ol' apostrophe (that little mark under the tilde on the top left of your keyboard is not a single quote, it's a grave accent, and I have no idea what its for). Personally I don't use smart quotes in my writing, so there's no distinction between open quotes and end quotes, and the apostrophe is just a little straight line. So visually there's no difference. For a more detailed look at quotes within quotes, check out this article on Grammar Book.]
• Use apostrophes to form the past tense and participle of verbed acronyms: Occasionally, it is acceptable to form a verb out of an acronym, and if you need to use the past tense or participle form of such a verb, The Chicago Manual of Style recommends an apostrophe: "He's OD'ing!" (participle) "He OD'd" (past tense). This is especially helpful when writing jargon: "Have you MAC'd that widget?" One common abuse of this rule is to say someone "OK'd" something, but I personally find "OK" to be an abomination in fiction. The word is "okay", and "okayed" looks just fine to me. I'm not above writing "OK" when I'm texting my wife; after all brevity is the soul of the text message. But in fiction, I take a few more pains to use words correctly, and "okay" will always look better. And it's not like anyone is charging you by the letter, so there's no reason to omit the "ay".
• Use apostrophes in the official transliterations of foreign language: Apostrophes are often used to aid pronunciation in official anglicized versions of foreign words. The best example I know is "l'chaim", a Hebrew word for toasting and celebrating. In these cases, there is always an official position for the apostrophe, so it can be thought of more like a letter. "60's" is a punctuation error. "lchaim" is a spelling error.

Don't

• Don't use apostrophes to indicate plurals. I have actually rejected prospective editing clients based solely on this rule. I figure if they don't know this, there is probably a lot more they don't know, and I don't charge enough to teach them.
• WRONG: "We're going to look at a few house's today."
• RIGHT: "We're going to look at a few houses today."
• Don't use apostrophes for emphasis. I'm not sure where this error came from, but I'm guessing it's an over-extension of scare quotes. However it came to be, we need to take it out back and shoot it.
• WRONG: Who is that 'radiant' young woman?
• RIGHT: Who is that radiant young woman?
• Don't use apostrophes to pluralize acronyms. This is another gray area, and the correct usage depends on what style manual you prefer. In some manuals, the apostrophe is considered correct because it stands in for missing letters, just as it does in contractions; CD's is short for compact discs, and the apostrophe denotes those missing letters. I, however, prefer to skip the apostrophe in this case, because you can't put one in for every chunk of missing letters, and the rule of capitalizing acronyms makes it easy to distinguish between CDs (compact discs), and CDS (credit default swap), so the apostrophe does not serve the same purpose it does for single letters.
• WRONG: CD's, DVD's. 
• RIGHT: CDs, DVDs
• Don't use apostrophes to pluralize decades or centuries. Interestingly, Blogger's built-in spell check seems to disagree with this rule and the previous one. I'm getting a squiggly red underline as I type the correct words. This, if anything should indicate that these rules are not set in stone. That said, The Chicago Manual of Style backs me up on this one. The important thing is to pick whichever rule makes the most sense for the type of writing you're doing and be consistent.
• WRONG: 1960's, the early 1900's
• RIGHT: 1960s, the early 1900s
• [As I stated above, you should use an apostrophe to stand in for the missing numbers when you abbreviate decades, but it should not go between the 0 and the s. '60s is correct, although as I point out in my article on numbers, I prefer to write decades out: Sixties.]
• Don't use apostrophes in possessive pronouns. Pronouns have their own form to indicate possession; we write his, hers, and theirs instead of him's, her's, and they's (using words like that to capture dialect might be okay in moderation, but overuse will make you look stupid).
• The difference between its and it's is a confusing case for many. I myself struggled with it for years, and I still slip up on occasion. The possessive form of the pronoun it contains the same letters as the contraction for "it is", but remember, possessive pronouns never take apostrophes. Contractions always do.
• Lets and let's is another tough one for most people, including myself. Lets is a present-progressive verb: "He lets me sit up front." It indicates an ongoing state of allowance. Let's is a contraction of "let us": "Let's go to the store." Remember, contractions always take apostrophes. And present-tense verbs don't need them!

Maybe Sometimes

• Use apostrophes to capture dialect sparingly. "I's talkin' to him, but he ain't listen." Using this device too much makes your writing hard to read, and I generally frown upon phonetic spelling of dialect, but sometimes it works. If you're writing period fiction, it may even be necessary, as apostrophes were much more common before spelling was as standardized as it is today. Just be sure not to overdo it, or readers will have to work so hard to understand what you're saying they won't have any attention left for your story.

Any other odd apostrophe situations I didn't cover? Any rules you disagree with? Let me know in the comments below!

The Ten Commanments of Fiction Writing, Part Ten

As a student of the art of fiction, there are several axioms and pieces of advice that I come across again and again; "show, don't tell", "write what you know", "don't trick the reader", etc. These aren't items from a single book, they're everywhere. Some of them surely originate with specific authors, but as ideas they've taken on a life of their own, becoming more than something one person said.

In this series, I will try to gather all those admonitions, encouragements, and adages into a single, definitive list; the Ten Commandments of Fiction Writing. Hopefully this will be as fun and educational for you as it is for me.

-----

Commandment Ten: Thou shalt write what thou knowest, and know all thou mayest.

I think I might have gotten the "Olde English" wrong in the title. Wanna fight about it?

ANYWAY...

This last commandment is one you're sick of hearing: write what you know. It means you should share your experiences in your stories. It means you should create characters you understand. It also means that if you're a middle-class white guy like me, you don't try to write from the point of view of a poor black single mother during the civil rights movement. Wittgenstein put it best; "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent."

But there's another side to this old adage, and it's this: as a writer, it is your business to learn and experience everything you possibly can.

Direct experience is best. Every experience available to the human mind has its own secrets. People don't always talk about all the emotional subtleties, and as a writer you can make the experience more real for your readers by exposing them. But sometimes direct experience isn't a wise option. You shouldn't try heroin so you can write about being a junkie. You shouldn't murder someone so you can capture the mind of a killer more accurately.

In those cases, the best resource we have is other stories. Books, movies, and quality TV shows have a lot to share, and they have one additional advantage that direct experience doesn't: they're already structured into stories. Art imitates life, but it is not equal to life. Life is messy. Stories, in order to be comprehensible, should be much more orderly. So it behooves the writer to experience as many stories as he or she can.

But as long as you're living, you might as well try to have some life experiences too. They don't necessarily have to be the big, earth-shaking ones. Every day doesn't need to be a passion play. But the world is subtle and complex, despite its humdrum appearance. There is poetry all around you; from regional dialects, to the unique flavor of a particular coffee, to the unexpected struggles of your fellow humans.

If you've taken my advice about taking notes, you know what I'm talking about. Writers should be keen observers of everything around them, particularly human nature. Watch the people who come through your life. Listen to the way they talk. Study their body language. See the face they present to the world, and try to guess what's behind it.

Never turn down an opportunity to learn about something. Be curious about the things you don't see in your everyday life; from the secret pain of a depressed person, to the daily routine of your local garbage man.

Even the most menial things like the floors you walk on contain hundreds of things you never think about. You never know what might spark an idea. Open yourself to the physical world around you. Pay close attention to all five of your senses, and always be on the lookout for details that aren't obvious. 

I remember the exact moment I started doing this myself. I was in a subway station in LA. Other than the years I spent there, I've never lived anywhere with a subway system. I had been on the NY subway when I was younger, but my senses weren't as keen then. This particular day in LA, I happened to notice the rush of air that proceeds the arrival of a train. You can feel it even before you hear the squeal of the train's brakes. This detail isn't particularly life-changing, but it gave me pause. It makes perfect sense why it happens; the air is being displaced by the train just as water is displaced when you slip into the bathtub. But I had never heard anyone mention it before. And its exactly those kind of details that make a setting real.

Details like that exist for all the five senses, and they cover the entire spectrum of human interaction. If you tune in to them, they will begin to populate your writing even without deliberate effort. The mere act of observing them plants them in your subconscious, and they begin to naturally emerge in your work.

Being open to the world around you is one of the most important habits a writer can develop. If we're to write what we know without writing exclusively about ourselves, we'd better know everything we can. (Like this quote? Click here to tweet it!)

The Ten Commandments of Fiction Writing, Part Nine

As a student of the art of fiction, there are several axioms and pieces of advice that I come across again and again; "show, don't tell", "write what you know", "don't trick the reader", etc. These aren't items from a single book, they're everywhere. Some of them surely originate with specific authors, but as ideas they've taken on a life of their own, becoming more than something one person said.

In this series, I will try to gather all those admonitions, encouragements, and adages into a single, definitive list; the Ten Commandments of Fiction Writing. Hopefully this will be as fun and educational for you as it is for me.

-----

Commandment Nine: Thou shalt edit thyself, and allow thyself to be edited

This one shouldn't come as a surprise coming from me. But I firmly believe that all writing deserves to be subjected to brutal, merciless editing.

And not just polishing as you re-read. No. I mean tough editing from someone who knows grammar, punctuation, and the principles of fiction. Someone who won't pull any punches. Someone who will tell you flat out that your story sucks, if that is, in fact, the case.

I've met writers and editors that believe that editing should be done with a light touch, in order to preserve the writer's voice. But I don't agree.

For one thing, if a writer's voice is so fragile that it can be undone by suggesting some more sentence variety, or asking them to avoid over-abundant alliteration, then that writer needs to accept that their voice may not be fully developed yet. If you're afraid an editor will strip your voice out of your work, you must not trust your voice. If it's there at all, it will survive even the harshest edits.

The deeper issue is that too often (arguably most of the time) authors use this amorphous, ineffable thing we call "Voice" as an excuse to avoid editing. Once you invoke the divine mystery of Voice, all meaningful analysis comes to a screeching halt. (Like this quote? Click here to tweet it!) After all, Voice is nearly synonymous with a writer's taste in words, and as the old maxim says, "in matters of taste, there can be no disputes." (If I encounter this argument an editor, it usually signifies to me that the writer is in the First Stage of competence, and will not benefit from my participation)

Appealing to voice is the same logical fallacy that occurs when someone invokes the divine to avoid being proven wrong. It's a cop-out. I'm a believer myself, but if you ever catch me saying "because God says so" when you're critiquing my opinions, you have my permission to slap me. Gimme a good rap on the beak, set me straight.

When a good editor critiques a piece of writing, they should be prepared to defend each note with logic (I'd say the same for any time anyone tells another person to change in any way). Every change the editor suggests requires a reason, and I will be the first to admit that if their only reasoning is personal preference, you should feel free to disregard that particular note. That's not to say you should dismiss it out of hand, though. If you respect the editor at all, you should at least consider their opinion, because it's likely based on experience. And if you still disagree, no good editor will insist you take their suggestion anyway.

The thing to remember is that editing is a mostly thankless job. Editors don't get royalties. You don't see famous editors walking red carpets. Nobody gets rich editing books. In the majority of situations, editors don't even get credit. Pick a novel off your bookshelf, and scan the front matter for the editor's name. Unless the author thanks them in a dedication, I'm betting it's not there.

Editors exist to serve writers. Unless the editor is an idiot, every decision they make has the same goal: to make the book easier to read. Any editor who tries to take over another person's story is an idiot, because they're not going to get credit for it. And remember what I say about the path of least resistance. Readers, by and large, only read books that are easy to read.

One final point: writers must learn to self-edit, at least to some extent. You can't just vomit all over your computer screen and expect some superhero to swoop in and make it a bestseller. If you put that much of the burden on your editor, you don't really deserve the credit, do you?

Expecting your editor to just fix everything is the same as a musician who can't sing expecting the recording engineer to just autotune all the wrong notes. The end result feels fake. Cognitive dissonance is built into the final product, and the audience can sense that something is off, even if they can't quite say what. Some of them won't care, but do you really want to bank your whole career and reputation on people not caring that your work is shoddy?

Writing is a creative endeavor, to be sure, but the writers who attain sales and recognition do so by working hard. You can't expect to dance around like a woodland nymph, surviving on inspirational Pinterest quotes, and then suddenly have Peter Pan the literary agent sweep you off your feet and carry you to the land of success.

You better work, bitch.

The Ten Commandments of Fiction Writing, Part Eight

As a student of the art of fiction, there are several axioms and pieces of advice that I come across again and again; "show, don't tell", "write what you know", "don't trick the reader", etc. These aren't items from a single book, they're everywhere. Some of them surely originate with specific authors, but as ideas they've taken on a life of their own, becoming more than something one person said.

In this series, I will try to gather all those admonitions, encouragements, and adages into a single, definitive list; the Ten Commandments of Fiction Writing. Hopefully this will be as fun and educational for you as it is for me.

-----

Commandment Eight: Thou shalt not meddle with point of view

I've talked a lot about point of view. I've talked about how to edit for point of view. It's pretty obvious that I'm opinionated on the subject, and I've taken the time to express those opinions. So this is going to be a short post.

I've also talked a lot about the fictive dream. The fictive dream is the joy of reading fiction, and anything that meddles with it threatens that joy. And POV is the portal through which we enter the fictive dream (like this quote? Click here to tweet it!).

POV is a delicate thing. In the hands of a master, it can produce startling effects. In the hands of a careless amateur, it can make a story totally opaque.

When you supply too much information, you clog the portal with facts, and the fictive dream disappears. When you shift unexpectedly from one POV to another, you close one portal, and force the reader to search for the new one. When you use a first person narrator to tell a story whose scope goes beyond that character's experiences, you build the portal too narrow. When you use an omniscient narrator to show and tell everything, you build the portal too wide, and the reader is unable to focus.

If you have doubts about your ability to wield POV, err on the side of caution. Don't try to pull any tricks just for the sake of being tricky (as I've said before in this series).

And most importantly, think about what you can and cannot know, given a certain point of view. If your detective story is written in first person, your detective can't know what the murderer is doing while he's walking the beat. If you're writing in an intimate third person, you can't see what's going on behind walls or across vast distances. If your narrator is retelling stories from her past, remember that she is going to have a different perspective on those events than she did at the time.

In short, don't fiddle. POV is a tool, not a toy. Pick the right tool for the job, and don't mess around with it, or you'll hurt yourself.