The editor is back this week!

Last week we talked a little about passive writing.  Today I want to expand on that with intruders, or intruder words.

Intruders do exactly what they imply -- they intrude on the reader.  This can also be classified as author intrusion, in some respects, though I tend to group that separately.

Let's start out with some intruder examples:

"He wondered what color her hair would be if she freed it from that floppy hat."

"He handed her the dress, and he knew she didn't like it by the way her face scrunched."

"He saw the dog run down the street, chasing the calico cat."

Other than they are a bit simplistic, these are perfectly correct sentences -- grammatically   Not so much when it comes to fiction writing.  All of them intrude on the author.

There's a whole bunch more than this, but the following words are common typical intruders:
knew
thought
wondered
felt
saw
pondered

Any word that resembles any in that list is most likely an intruder.  They weaken writing and turn it passive.

So how to fix?  Well, the reason these intrude is because nine times out of ten they occur when we are in the narrating characters point of view.  If the character knows, then we don't need to be told he knows.  Simply stating it in a descriptive manner makes the writing more effective.  So let's look at fixing those three sentences:

"He wondered what color her hair would be if she freed it from that floppy hat."

Assuming we are in his point of view, this is written more actively by just stating the question:

"What color would her hair be if she freed it from that floppy hat?"  

If we are in his point of view, that becomes an internal thought that most likely would be italicized as well.

Next!

"He knew she didn't like the dress by the way her face scrunched."

This is a little more difficult to fix, but can be achieved by adding just a little more detail and dropping the 'he knew'.  The detail specifies the way her face scrunched.

"He handed her the dress, and her face scrunched like she'd eaten a rotten egg."

Last!

"He saw the dog run down the street, chasing the calico cat."

Again, we're in his point of view and we are seeing what he is seeing.  We don't need to be told he sees something... just show us what we're seeing.  Case in point:

"The dog ran down down the street, chasing the calico cat."

In Sum:

By omitting intruders writing becomes more active and often more engaging.  In some cases it can become more descriptive as well, which further improves story-telling.

See you next week!





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~Claire
www.claireashgrove.com
www.toristclaire.com

Labels: Editing Tip , Finish the Story , Intruder Words , Passive Writing , Writer Wednesday