By Elaine Viets

Did you ever mistake the word “acorn” for “eggcorn”?
Me, either. But apparently enough people mistakenly heard eggcorn instead of acorn, and that was enough to name a whole category of mistakes. Mistakes that can bedevil writers.

The Christian Science Monitor calls an eggcorn “a slip of the ear . . . the written expression of a plausible mishearing of a standard term. ‘For all intents and purposes,’ for example, is a set phrase—inherently redundant, perhaps, but it’s the idiom. It gets misheard though as ‘for all intensive purposes,’ and sometimes appears that way in print.”

Little eggcorns are mighty big traps for writers. There’s even a site devoted to eggcorns, called the Eggcorn Database (eggcorns.lascribe.net). You can while away many hours checking out eggcorns. At least, I did. I was surprised by the number of experienced writers who stumbled over eggcorns.

Here’s how Deadline Hollywood mangled when all is said and done:
“There is no deal in place but when all is set and done, something is expected to happen after the Academy Awards . . . ”

The Associated Press ran afoul of another phrase, but we should chalk it up to deadline pressure:
“‘Chock it up to just another amateur exhibition of a lack of administrative ability,’ said Georgia pollster Claibourne Darden.”

Even the great Ansel Adams made a mishmash of criticism in this letter: “‘Photography in the Fine Arts’ was a distressing mixmash.”

Some eggcorns make more sense than the correct word:

“Extreme Court” for “Supreme Court,”
“Close-a-phobia” for “claustrophobia,”
“Hearbuds” for “earbuds.”

I like the eggcorn “ostenspacious” instead of “ostentatious,” especially if it’s a big house.
“Skyscratcher” is more accurate than “skyscraper.”
Other eggcorns make writers look just plain dumb.
I wince when I read that someone who moved away from their country is an “ex-patriot.”
How about claiming someone “passed mustard” instead of “passed muster”?
“Physical policy” instead of “fiscal policy” is downright embarrassing.
Ditto for calling ambitious persons “real goal-getters” when they’re “real go-getters.”

How many books have you seen where someone has to “tow the line” instead of “toe the line”?
Here are a few more:

“cold slaw” for “cole slaw”
“old timer’s disease” for “Alzheimer’s Disease”
“chesterdraws” for “chest of drawers”
“wipe board” for “whiteboard”
“curve your enthusiasm” for “curb your enthusiasm”
“A doggie-dog world” sounds much nicer than “a dog-eat-dog world.”
Anyone who’s ever been wiped out at a poker game knows a “card shark” is more accurate than a “card sharp.”

There is one surprising eggcorn that almost everyone gets wrong. Calling an earthquake a “tremblor.” The correct word for an earthquake is . . .
TEMBLOR.
No R after that T.

A temblor is an earthquake.
There’s no such word as tremblor, according to Merriam-Webster. And a trembler is someone who shivers or shakes.
Some lesser dictionaries allow “tremblor” as an informal term for earthquake. But the big names, like Webster, remain unshaken.
Beware the eggcorn – a reminder that words should never be taken for granite.
Name your favorite eggcorns.
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Break out the champagne! I have a contract for two more Angela Richman mysteries. Pre-order Death Grip, Angela # 5 now.

https://tinyurl.com/y2zz9hb5

By John Gilstrap

FULL DISCLOSURE: The article that I originally planned to post today isn’t ready for prime time. It’s a nuanced look at writing in the white space–making what isn’t on the page resonate as clearly as what is. I’ll post it next time, I hope.

What follows is an edited version of one of my TKZ entries from 12 years ago(!). I called it:

Well Behaved Characters

Like all authors, I suppose, I teach a number of writing classes and attend my share of conferences, and one of the questions that always comes up goes something like this: “I hear authors talk about how there comes a point in every story when the characters take over and start writing the story for you. Does that happen to you?”

The short answer is no; and frankly, it sort of ticks me off. I’d love to cede the process of plot development to my characters. Hell, somewhere in the middle of the second act, where all the tedious stuff is being manipulated and I’ve got to keep the pacing going, I’d cede the process to a stranger in a grocery store if he could make it any less painful.

As it is, my characters just sit there and wait to be told what to do. Lazy bastards. Not an original thought from any of them. In fact, during those tough times when I’ve written myself into a corner and don’t know how to extricate myself, I believe I’ve seen them chuckling at my plight. If I didn’t need the characters to make the story work, I swear sometimes that I’d fire them all.

When I first wrote this post, I was staring down the throat of an approaching and I needed an ending. I mean, I already had an ending from the initial drafts, but I needed an ending. A kick-ass final sequence that would leave the reader exhausted and satisfied. The one I already had took care of the satisfaction part, but it didn’t have the roller coaster feel that I wanted.

So I shot one of the characters.

Don’t worry, it wasn’t a gratuitous thing. The shooting is organic to the plot, and it provides the twist I needed. It also wiped those sanctimonious smirks off their faces. Sometimes it helps to remind them of the power I have over their lives.

Seriously, though, when I found myself in this crisis-of-ending, I think I discovered what authors really mean when they talk about characters taking over. By shooting that character, I gave the other characters in the scene something to react to. Things started happening—things that I hadn’t planned for, which is really saying something for an author who is as outline obsessed as I was back then—and new twists occurred to me as I wrote. I got really into the scene. The characters’ reality became so much my own reality that all I had to do was observe and record what I saw in my imagination. It was one of those moments of high concentration that I think every writer adores. When I finished and went back and read the thirty pages I’d written, I loved it. I’d nailed it.

I submitted the manuscript a week early!

Back to this business of characters taking on lives of their own. I’ve decided that when I’m in the zone, writing fiction has a lot in common with method acting. As the creator of characters, I spend a lot of time in my characters’ head space. Every action they take is the result of some plot-related motivation, and over time I come to understand those motivations. As plot twists come along—triggered by the actions of other characters whose motivations I’ve come to understand even as the rest of the cast have not—the reaction becomes obvious.

It’s not about them telling me what to do; it’s about me drawing them clearly enough to know what they’d do on their own if they were real enough to walk among us.

I do love this job.

So, TKZers, are your characters lazy and wait for direction, or do they take over the story?

By PJ Parrish

A good Tuesday morning to you all out there. Hope you are well and sane. Hope you are getting some writing done. Me, I’ve managed to grow a couple tomatoes. So it was fun to see someone else’s creative juices are flowing nicely. I’m referring to today’s First Page Critique. Let’s give it a read together and then we’ll discuss. Thanks, writer, for submitting.

Carrie’s Secret

I thought I would never see Carrie Genesen again and then she gets admitted to this hospital, where I work. I thought I would never see Carrie Genesen again and then she gets admitted to this hospital, where I work. WHERE I WORK!!! I knew she might talk and that would be a problem, a big problem.

But I am systematic. I am in control. And I will deal with it.

When she was admitted to Danton, Carrie was considered both a flight risk and a suicide risk so that day she was taken directly to the locked ward on the first floor. I had just stepped into the lobby as she came through the front door. She was flanked by an ambulance attendant on one side and a woman from the admitting office on the other, each holding an arm. Her parents, Noah and Marlene Genesen, followed close behind her. Carrie was older surely, about fifteen now, and a little taller with longer hair, but it was her. There was no doubt. I watched as the group turned to my left and entered the locked ward. None of them noticed me then, but I stopped cold.

The situation was urgent. Critical. Carrie would soon be in therapy and she could reveal the truth any time in the course of treatment. I could not let her say anything. Louise Ponte would probably be her therapist. She works with most of the kids. How long could Carrie keep the secret bottled up inside her here? It will tear her apart, I’m sure. A good shrink like Ponte will pull it out of her. And if Carrie said what she knows, would that fucking bitch of a psychiatrist believe her? Yes. Would her parents believe it? Definitely. I cannot take the risk.

So I had to adjust quickly and as soon as I had the opportunity that first afternoon, I confronted Carrie. Change-of-shift had just started so most of the staff were meeting behind the closed door to the nursing office. I went right to her room.

There wasn’t much time. I stood in her doorway, blocking her exit. She was sitting on her bed and she looked up at me. Her big brown eyes were unfocused. She was holding her bandaged arm and dressed in a tight red tank top and extremely short cut-off jeans. I could not help looking at her naked legs for an instant. Then I looked up to her face.

___________________________

There’s some nice things going on here. As we often say here at TKZ, it’s always good to start with a nifty action scene. As James always says, do first and explain later. In other words, show something intriguing going on and then, later, tell us what it meant. Notice that I put two words in red there?

Show, don’t tell.

I love the fact this writer opened with something happening. A person (unnamed and no gender identified…more on that later) is confronted in the hospital where they work by an old “friend.” Or maybe a foe. But at the very least, this person from the past has a secret that our narrator does not wish to be known. Nice set up!

But I think the writer missed a chance to ramp up the tension factor by telling us too much when, with a little restructuring, it could be shown and thus have more dramatic impact.

Plus, we have here a problem with tense. It wavers between past and present, and the overall style is an odd hybrid of action and reminiscence.

The first paragraph, for instance, is refracted through the narrator’s thoughts rather than pure action, and thus feels more like a memory. “I thought I would never see Carrie Genesen again and then she gets admitted to this hospital, where I work.”  And with the capitalization and punctuation of the next line — WHERE I WORK!!! — it’s almost as if the writer subconsciously understood the first line was weak and she or he had to add caps and three exclamation marks to hit us over the head with the narrator’s intensity of emotion.

Might it not have been more effective to go right with action? I don’t know if Carrie, as she is being brought in, is fighting or half-comatose. So I am guessing here when I offer this suggested approach. I give it not as an attempt to rewrite this person’s style but to make a point about how, as an alternative, narration can be reshaped into a pure action scene.

The girl was screaming and kicking, her long dark hair flying around her face. The ambulance attendant had a hard grip on her right arm and a nurse jumped up from the desk to grab the girl’s right arm.  I was standing by the admitting desk, and as they lurched past, the girl’s head shot up.

Her wild brown eyes locked on mine. It was only for a second, but in that moment, I saw her.  

Carrie…

The only person in the world who knew what I had done.

Carrie’s head swung back and she gave me a questioning look that darkened into a glare. Then, with the wheeze of the ward’s door, she was gone.

Seconds later, a man and woman hurried in, not giving me a glance. Carrie’s parents. They didn’t recognize me, thank God.

My heart had stopped but now it was pounding. I took three deep breaths.

I am systematic. I am in control. And  damn it, I will deal with this.

See the difference? Get the action moving first and then start explaining things. And when you do go into the character’s thoughts, make it powerful, pithy and put it in italics.

Because this is a mixture of direct action scene and remembered narration, there are other problems. The narrator, upon merely seeing Carrie come into the hospital, cannot possibly know — yet — that she is suicidal and a flight risk. She cannot know either that a certain doctor Louise Ponte will be assigned to her case.  But these issues are easily resolved by continuing the action forward logically. For instance, the narrator, who apparently works at this facility, can immediately begin inquiries, maybe talk to the EMT when he comes back out? He could relate that she tried to kill herself.  Show us, via action and dialogue, don’t tell us.

Suggestion: Use the first scene — maybe the whole first chapter — to flesh out your great set-up. Play up the narrator’s shock and the fear of what this might bring (why is Carrie here? What happened? Will she tell someone our terrible secret?) You’ve done a good job of creating a sense of peril, so why rush it? Build your tension! Then you move on, logically, to the narrator going to Carrie’s room and confronting her.  That is probably worth a chapter all by itself. A third chapter could be a meeting with Dr. Ponte, wherein you can add some more background on why Carrie is there and why the narrator hates Ponte so much. Layers…it’s all about creating layers.

One problem many writers have is trying to figure out where to begin a chapter. This writer picked a great moment. But an equally vexing problem is figuring out where to END a scene or chapter. This is something this writer needs to work on. End one scene (in the lobby of hospital) and transition to the next scene (Carrie’s room).

Each scene and/or chapter needs to have its own beginning, middle and end. And you must DECIDE what the dramatic point of each individual scene is.  For this story, the point of the first scene is to introduce the protagonist via their shock at seeing someone who harbors a bad secret. This opening scene must also have an ending that then connects (via a smooth transition) to the next scene.

A small thing but important: Don’t bother to introduce character names until it is important. We don’t need to clutter up this great action moment with Carrie’s parents’ names.

Ditto the shrink.  Don’t give us Dr. Ponte’s name until she becomes an actual character in the action rather than in the narrator’s thoughts. Show us Dr. Ponte’s entrance, don’t tell us. I could see a great scene later, maybe chapter 3 or 4, where the narrator reads Carrie’s chart and finds out Dr. Ponte has been assigned to the case. Then maybe she goes and talks to the doctor? Show us, don’t tell us that Ponte is, ahem, a “fucking bitch.”  Remember the great movie One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest? We didn’t “meet” Nurse Ratched through Randall McMurphy’s thoughts. We met her on the ward, in all her terrible glory, interacting with the patients. Action is showing.

That’s my main points. I’d like to do a line edit to bring things into sharper focus.

I thought I would never see Carrie Genesen again and then she gets admitted to this hospital, where I work. WHERE I WORK!!! I knew she might talk and that would be a problem, a big problem.

But I am systematic. I am in control. And I will deal with it. This submission came to me with a couple graphs in italics, so that’s how I left it. But I see no need for it.

When she was admitted to Danton, This lapses into past tense and sounds like the narrator is remembering this. It disrupts the tension. Carrie was considered both a flight risk and a suicide risk The narrator has no way to know this. And “flight risk” is a legal term meaning a person is thought likely to leave the country before a trial or bail hearing. so that day she was taken directly to the locked ward on the first floor. I had just stepped into the lobby as she came through the front door. Again, the past tense construction “I had just” sounds like she’s recounting something that happened a while ago. She was flanked by an ambulance attendant on one side and a woman from the admitting office on the other, each holding an arm. Her parents, Noah and Marlene Genesen, followed close behind her. Carrie was older surely, about fifteen now, and a little taller with longer hair, but it was her. There was no doubt. I watched as the group turned to my left and entered the locked ward. None of them noticed me then, but I stopped cold.

The situation was urgent. Critical. This is a classic example of the writer TELLING us what the character feels rather than letting the emotions emerge through SHOWING the urgency. Carrie would soon be in therapy and she could reveal the truth any time in the course of treatment. I could not let her say anything. Louise Ponte would probably be her therapist. She works with most of the kids. How long could Carrie keep the secret bottled up inside her here? It will tear her apart, I’m sure. A good shrink like Ponte will pull it out of her. And if Carrie said what she knows, would that fucking bitch of a psychiatrist believe her? Yes. Would her parents believe it? Definitely. I cannot Again, we are shifting between past and present tense. Doesn’t work. take the risk.

So I had to adjust quickly and as soon as I had the opportunity that first afternoon, This is so confusing. Are we in the present day or is this character relating something that happened in the past? This construction suggests the latter. Which is not where we want to be opening a story. I confronted Carrie. Again, you’re telling us; show us. Change-of-shift had just started so most of the staff were meeting behind the closed door to the nursing office. I went right to her room.

There wasn’t much time. I stood in her doorway, blocking her exit. She is on suicide watch. Her door would be locked. She was sitting on her bed and she looked up at me. Her big brown eyes were unfocused. She was holding her bandaged arm and dressed in a tight red tank top and extremely short cut-off jeans. I could not help looking at her naked legs for an instant. Then I looked up to her face. She already looked at her face, her unfocused brown eyes specifically.

Okay, this is important. Whenever you describe something, be it a room as a character enters, or seeing a person, always start with what is first-impression logical and move on to other details from there. What you would logically see — IN ORDER OF YOUR SENSES PROCESSING THINGS?

Carrie was slumped on her bed. Her lank hair covered her face, and she was rubbing her bandaged wrist. For the first time, I noticed what she was wearing — a tight red tank top and short cut-off jeans. I was staring at her long legs when Carrie looked up. 

See the difference in the order of the description? It has to be logical. And use it to up the tension. Also: Never let a chance go by in your description to make it specific and thus salient to character. You said she was “sitting on the bed.” Is she slumped? Curled in a fetal ball? Sprawled? Each suggests something specific about character and mood. And the bandage on her arm. What kind of bandage and where it is? A wrist gauze suggests a slit wrist and is a way for the narrator to get this knowledge of a suicide attempt via showing instead of telling. 

One last thing. We don’t known a thing about the narrator and presumptive protagonist of this story. When working in first person, it’s hard to get in names and such. (Forget description in the early going!).  But it becomes annoying, the longer your scene goes on, for the reader not to have a clue who they are listening to.  We don’t even know the sex of our narrator.  Such “busy work” can be dropped easily in dialogue, maybe as the narrator stands there in shock at seeing Carrie, someone calls out, “Dr. Rogers, are you okay? Jane? Jane, did you hear me?”  A simple “trick” like this would give us A.) the protag’s sex B.) name  C.) profession.

Okay, that’s about it.  Again, I want to give kudos to the writer for picking a good dramatic moment to drop us into the story. I really like the set-up, a teenager from the protag’s past harbors a bad secret that terrifies the protag enough to make them spring into action.

But, dear writer, you need to slow down a tad and give more thought to the structure of each individual scene and/or chapter and to hone in on the dramatic point of each. Good luck and thanks for letting us share your work.

It has happened to me. It almost certainly has happened to you.

You are writing your latest masterpiece. You’re speeding right along. Your brain is spitting the words into your fingers and your fingers are tapping them onto the screen or onto the paper or whatever is working for you and then all of the lights on your creative dashboard go on signalling that your alternator has given up the ghost.  Your metaphorical foot is mashing the pedal to the metal  but your entire creative vehicle is losing power and coasting to a stop. What do you do?

The answer is easy. You quit writing. You get up from wherever you do your writing and decide to channel your energies elsewhere for the rest of your life.  You grow a garden, clean your house, buy and manage properties, or engage in a different task. Let someone else bang their head against their wall in the slim hope that their stories will show up somewhere and sometime. Thanks! I’m done.

 Actually, that’s not what you do. 

What I just wrote is an example of a little writing trick which I picked up and modified from the novel Cujo by Stephen King. There is a noteworthy vignette that occurs in the final quarter of that book and which involves Cujo,  a large and otherwise sweet St. Bernard dog who contracts rabies, and one of the story’s primary characters. King works the scene for all that it is worth. He rachets up the suspense to eleven and then inserts a bunch of short sentences that resolve the scene and the novel quickly and happily. He follows that with a single sentence which yanks the rug out from under the reader, stating that what he said happened did not happen at all. The story rolls horrifically on from there. The reader intuitively knows all along that King is wolfing, since there are sixty or seventy more pages to go when he supposedly ends the book, but it is a surprise followed by a surprise and sets the reader up for more.

I call this “the Cujo method” and I have been using it frequently while slowly writing a genre-straddling love story with the working title of The Lake Effect. I have not just been swerving out of my creative lane while doing this. Rather, I have drifted across four eastbound lanes, gone over the rumble strip and the highway shoulder, careened through a guard rail, and dropped off of an overpass posterior over teakettle before ultimately landing on a northbound train which will crash unless I can answer an unanswerable riddle (that’s a reference to another King novel).

It was not always thus.  I wrote the first three and final six chapters of The Lake Effect months ago, and they’re not bad at all. I surprised myself. The middle of the book, however —  no surprise here — has been a stiff-legged march through several quicksand mires. I have managed to pull myself out each time by utilizing the Cujo method.

Here is an example of what I have been doing. One of the pivotal events of The Lake Effect involves a U.S. Army paratrooper who during World War II is involved in the Allied invasion of northern France on June 6, 1945. He jumps without incident but finds when he lands that he has drifted somewhat off-course. He finds himself in a graveyard where he gets the first few hints that he is not where he is supposed to be. His landing also attracts some unwanted attention. The local authorities come looking for him as a result. The owner of a farm adjoining the graveyard is a widow who is still dealing with the unexpected death of her husband. She happens to find the paratrooper before he finds her. They each think that the other is someone else. The authorities, meanwhile, come ever closer. 

I wasn’t sure what was going to happen next. I already knew what was going to happen after several more pages, but I had to jump fence or two to get there. I couldn’t think of a good way to do it. So I utilized the Cujo method and wrote: 

She yanked her grandfather’s rifle off of the wall and shot the soldier dead even as he pleaded for his life. The End. 

He pulled his Colt .45 pistol out and grimaced as he shot her while her back was turned. He stood over her body and waited for his pursuers to enter the farmhouse, determined to take as many of them as he could before he followed them into hell. The End.

She hid him from the troops in a second, unfinished root cellar that her husband had dug but not completed by the time of his death. Afterward,  the two of them surrendered to the passion that had been tugging at them, resulting in a tender moment which became another and then another and  yet another. They lived on the farm for the rest of their lives, in conjugal if not lawfully wedded bliss. The End. 

That of course is not ultimately what happened. What did happen is that I got the concrete out from between my ears and was able to move forward. I  of course removed the whimsy once it had served its purpose and I got rolling again. The preceding three paragraphs will never see the light of day (whoops…wait a minute…). The best part is that while I was typing these alternative premature endings I thought of a plausible way to keep things going that wouldn’t make a reader, agent or editor go “Hmmm.” It took a bit of work to get that just right but at least I had a “that” to get right, which was more than I had when I stepped in the story quicksand.  I think it may have had more to do with the act of continuing to slog forward. Erle Stanley Gardner, who was one of the twentieth century’s most popular and most prolific authors, would work the keys on his manual typewriter under his fingers bled, bandage them up, and go for more. That, I think, is how the job ultimately is done. For whatever reason, my method works for me. Maybe it will for you. Something will. You just need to find it. Good luck!

For anyone interested…I listened to the following while writing this: 

Hey Ya — Surfer Blood

American Specialties (full album) — Parquet Courts

Heartbreaker — Dionne Warwick

Stayin’ Alive — Bee Gees

Mr. Dyingly Sad — The Critters

Cry to Me — Solomon Burke

Blood and Roses — The Smithereens

Hold On — Alabama Shakes

The Lost Septet (Live) (full album) — Miles Davis

Backsliding Fearlessly — Mott the Hoople

Under Pressure — Queen, David Bowie

Money Talks — AC/DC

Enjoy. Thanks for being here and for letting me be a part of your day.

Media, whether working of not, is courtesy of giphy.com