The Pretty Writing Trap

I don’t know about you guys, but for the longest time my goal was to make my writing sing. I searched for the perfect metaphor, traded similes until the right one rang clear and when I closed my eyes I tried to picture my descriptions perfectly so it would resound on the page.

And technically, I wasn’t doing anything wrong. Those are all things that are important to master while writing.

 

That’s all good and well, and I was pretty happy with the result. That is, until one of my crit partners came to me and told me my pretty writing was getting in the way of my protagonist’s voice.

Whoa. I read that comment at least half a dozen times. Then I raced back to my WIP and was instantly mortified. My partner was totally right. In my quest to beautify my writing, I neglected the voice. This was especially tragic since my WIP was in first person. *cringe*

So I rewrote the first part of the sample for the umpteenth time with a focus on my MC’s voice. I stopped panicking. This was a feasible fix. It’d take a lot of rewriting, but it wasn’t a death sentence. Plus the new version was a million times better.

But it got me thinking. Somewhere deep down inside I knew writing pretty wasn’t the goal, yet somewhere along the line I’d forgotten. True writing is what we should aim for. True to you and, most importantly, true to your character.

My MC was a seventeen-year-old guy and I was using phrases like “phantom rain” and “limp and delicate as a newborn.” It wasn’t until after I became aware of my tendency towards pretty writing that it occurred to me no sane seventeen-year-old boy is going to say that. Geesh.

So. When reviewing your work, here are two questions to ask yourselves: Am I writing pretty? Is this something my MC would say or something I like because it’s a nice image?

Remember the old adage kill your darlings? Yeah. That applies to now. Like that beautiful simile that you spent hours on—was that YOU or your character?

Think about it.

Edit: I know I kind of mentioned this, but I'd like to clarify--please don't worry about this or any other editing issue while writing your first draft, just get it down. This is something to consider while editing. That is all. :)

Have you fallen into the writing pretty trap? What other things do you try to look out for when editing?