Do or do not. There is no try. More Zombie Words

Post author By Alexander Lane
Post date 14/03/2023
1 Comment on Do or do not. There is no try. More Zombie Words

I’ll try and begin to…ah, see how easy it is? This week’s zombies, neatly corralled in five words. The “tried to”/“began to” habit is another instance of distance words that push readers away from your story.

If you’re looking for an inspirational truism in the vein of “just write something, it doesn’t matter how good it is”, I am happy to disappoint.¹ If you’re here for tips on double-tapping zombie words, please take a seat. We dealt with “could” in the previous episode.

“Try” and “begin” have a place in conversational dialogue. People use them frequently, but in descriptive prose they do little more than bulk up the word count. You might feel that they make your writing more accurate, but there are better ways to achieve this goal.

The begin fallacy

It’s not unreasonable to argue that events have a beginning, middle and end. “Begin” becomes a problem when it’s used to show the start of an ongoing process, instead of describing each stage.

If it began to happen, it happened.

THIS IS BAD:

The zombies began to pour through the opening.

Tell your reader what happened.

THIS IS BETTER:

The zombies poured through the opening.

Show your reader how it began.

THIS IS BETTER STILL:

The first zombie broke through the fence. It splintered apart and the horde poured in.

Yep, it’s an example of the classic writers’ rule: show-don’t-tell.

“Begin” can also be used inaccurately, to describe processes that don’t have a beginning.

It’s got to begin somewhere

THIS IS BAD:

He began to swallow a mouthful of pie but then spat it out at the rank taste of the meat.

Where did it begin?

THIS IS BETTER:

He chewed a mouthful of pie and the rank meat taste flooded his mouth. He spat it out.

The problem here is that swallowing is usually a one-way action. By the time you swallow something, it’s too late to spit it out. You’ll be gagging, retching and vomiting to get that rank meat back up. Think about the action, imagine the experience and describe that.

Try harder

“Try” is a more complex case, where you can trip over it in at least two ways.

We rarely use “try” in conversation, unless we’re going to tell someone that we failed, to soften the disappointment.

In prose, “try” is a shortcut that short-changes your reader. They’re here for the failures your protagonist endures in their struggle, or on the road to their ultimate defeat. Even Sisyphus gets his rock to the top of the mountain.

If you tried, then you did something.

THIS IS BAD:

I tried to write another blog post about zombie words, but I couldn’t think of any more.

There is no try. There is only do.

THIS IS BETTER:

I knew that more zombie words lurked in my draft, waiting to gnaw on the interest of unsuspecting readers. The blinking cursor mocked my failure.

From a reader’s point of view, the best option here is to describe the failure. You could use the rule of three to describe repeated failures before I stumbled upon a Facebook post inspired me to look at “begin” and “try”.

The second failure mode for “try” is also when it’s inaccurate. That’s typically when someone tries to do something and they succeed, or a group is having mixed success.

If you tried, you failed

THIS IS BAD:

The zombies tried to grab at anything living.

Doing does not imply success

THIS IS BETTER:

The zombies grabbed at anything living.

In the second example, it’s not clear that the zombies grabbed everyone. There’s room to describe their attempts and failures, but the action is immediate.

When is it OK to use “try” and “begin”?

Beyond the conversational exception, some zombies are acceptable in a first draft. Maybe you’re on a writing sprint and you want to get a lot of story onto the page. Maybe you’re focused on dialogue or world-building, and the action is a skeleton that you’ll flesh out later.

Make a note (using comments in Word or Scrivener), or search your text when you revise your draft. Scrivener can search for regular expressions — zombies and other bad writing habits. It takes some patience to learn, but it’s extremely powerful.

This is a golden opportunity to turn zombies into heroes.

Endnote: My thanks to the writer of a Facebook comment which inspired this post. I should have noted your name and the post it was attached to.

Image: Yohann Libot/Unsplash

Tags Creative writing

One reply on “Do or do not. There is no try. More Zombie Words”

My new reading list is too long for every book I’d like to re-read, but one book of writing tips that I often come back to is How Not To Write A Novel.1

My dog-eared copy of How Not To Write A Novel

If you’re embarking on a Nanowrimo project, now is a good time to dig into a short book that could make a big difference to your writing.

How Not To Write A Novel

Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark don’t tell you how to be a good writer; they just want you not to be a bad writer. It’s an entirely selfish goal: they’re publishing professionals whose daily lives are clouded by manuscripts that aren’t ready to publish. Some of them are beyond editing, and agents remember those authors for all of the wrong reasons. No-one wants to be on that list.

If you’re very precious about your writing, you might think this a sacrilegious take on your right to witter on as your heart desires. I disagree. When I started out in creative writing, How Not To Write A Novel was the first writing guide to set a standard that I knew I could achieve.

It’s a simple promise: take note of these two hundred tips and your writing will not be shit. It still might not be good writing, but you can’t get to good without getting past not being shit. And it takes longer than you’d think to integrate that many tips into everyday writing practice. I’m living proof.

A practical writer’s guide

It’s also aggressively accessible. Seven sections cover plot, character, basic style, perspective and voice, setting (The World of the Bad Novel), sex, jokes and postmodernism (Special effects and novelty acts — do not try this at home), and getting published. Each part is broken into chapters that illustrate common writing mistakes through bite-sized examples and pithy advice.

The examples are entertainingly bad, drawn (we can be sure) from manuscripts the authors and their colleagues have endured. You’ll laugh at many of them, then cringe with them as you see your own mistakes. If you’re not amused, you probably need this book.

Despite the title, there’s a lot of positive guidance, from specific tips on style to general advice. The lessons begin on the first line of page one:

“As a writer you have only one job: to make the reader turn the page.”
from How Not To Write A Novel, page 1

And if you think that’s obvious, you haven’t read The Essex Serpent.

From vomit draft to final draft

There’s no guarantee that How Not To Write A Novel will turn your WIP from a fetid pool of word vomit into a best seller. It’s best read as a companion to didactic novelling guides like Save The Cat Writes A Novel, insightful memoirs like On Writing and the sublime Wonderbook. It’s half the size and a hundred times more enjoyable than Reading Like A Writer.

The original 2009 edition doesn’t delve into self-publishing, though much of the advice on pitching is applicable. I’d love to see a chapter updated to cover bad blurb, unfortunate book formatting and ham-fisted cover art. In fact, I’d love to see a book like this about marketing and promoting a self-published novel. I’ve found few guides which tell you how not to waste your time and money along this part of the journey, and there are many ways to do it.

Good luck to everyone who’s starting their Nanowrimo journey this year. If you’ve got a favourite writing guide to accompany your Nano, let me know in the comments below.

Looking for more writing tips? Try these posts:

Could? Do better. Destroy the king of the Zombie Words