The Lubricated Snoot

A blog or "snog" tracking the scent of writing and of a writer named Plotnik, author of Spunk & Bite: A Writer's Guide to Bold, Contemporary Style. 

"Imagine if dogs ever figured out how to put that spunkiness and bite of theirs into action verbs, or to root around for bon mots with those lubricated snoots. We dry-and-fleshy-nosed writers could be in big trouble."

                   ---Introduction, Spunk and Bite

April 2010
Plotnik signs with Viva for new book  

Are you describing praiseworthy things as---yawn---awesome, or as the more interesting supernal, larky, trill, soul-juddering, coruscatingly cool?  

To help writers rise above threadbare terms of praise, Plotnik is compiling terms for a book to be published in spring 2011 by the nimble, transformative Viva Editions of Berkeley, CA. 

The tentative title is Better than Great: 5,000 Alternatives to Great, Awesome, Amazing, and other Shopworn Terms of Acclamation. 

In addition to selected, intensified, and creative new terms in 15 categories of acclaim, the book offers extensive advice on fresh and persuasive praise. It's designed as an entertaining reference tool  for critics, journalists, bloggers, copywriters, and others. 

Plotnik started the project because he is weary of such stale, forceless modifiers as amazing, great, unbelievable,and incredible. It's a tedious business, grinding out thousands of good terms for expressing acclaim, that elevate something above the ordinary.  But when the book is published, Plotnik hopes users will find it, aureate, ascendant, and ecstasiating, to say the least. 
 


February 25, 2010
"How Long should It Be?"

Here we go again with "size matters."  A Georgia teacher of advanced high school English hit me up again (see July 7, 2008 post) for an answer to her students' question: "How long should a piece be?" It's a question almost as broad as "How good should a piece be?" But I obliged in a way that might help other inexperienced writers.  Here are some excerpts:

“How long should a piece of writing be?” students ask. A common response is “As long as it needs to be.” “Needs” covers a lot of ground, however, and always depends on what you mean by “it.”

Often a teacher or an editor sets the length limitations. Sometimes the form itself does, as with a sonnet (14 lines). Time can be a factor: A television script might have to run 30 minutes, minus commercials.

But if there are no set limits, writers still have to consider their purpose and the interests of an audience in determining the best length.  . . .  What will make a communication hit home? Which elements have to be there and which are going to be a distraction?

Limits are off only when 1) there is no intended audience other than yourself and 2) your purpose is mainly to put a jumble of thoughts into a tangible form. The result might be a riff or a rant as long as the Alaskan Iditarod---and just as forbidding. Or it might come out to about 140 characters,  just right for a Tweet should you decide to share it.

Just what counts, then, in judging the best length to both engage and satisfy an audience? Again, each form has its own key elements. 

In journalism, you have to lay out enough facts so that the news can be understood, or your opinion be persuasive---within the attention span of the average reader. In newspapers, that might mean 200-500 words for the average piece, and some 700-2,000 words in newsstand magazines. (A double-spaced page holds 250-300 words.)  

Poetry is mainly a form of “distillation,” where meaning is boiled down to the fewest telling words and images. Many literary journals call for poems no longer than about 40 lines, which is what fills one of their typical printed pages. Reflecting the tenor of the times, the editors suggest that if something can’t be distilled into 40 lines of poetry, then it hasn’t been worked on enough or te topic is unworkable. “Epic” poems, of course, are long verse narratives that might be book-length. They are pretty much out of fashion given the patience of today’s reader.

Short stories, too, are often limited by the journals that publish them.  While quick-take stories  (or “flash fiction”) run about 1,000 words, 2,500 is the average maximum for short stories as the form has come to be developed.  Experience has shown that 2,000-3,000-words constitute a workable length for developing characters and taking them through a meaningful episode.

With multiple characters to develop and more complex episodes, or a time-span of many years, one enters the terrain of the “long story,” about 5,000-10,000 words, or up to 40 manuscript pages.  Higher counts, say 15,000-30,000 words are usually classified as “novellas,” or small novels. (They are very hard to get published.)  Published novels tend to run from 80,000 words (e.g., romance novels) to 200,000 (e.g., big historical sagas).    

Common nonfiction lengths include the editorial essay of about 300-500 words; 1,000-3,000-word topical essays,  and book-length coverage of a complex topic (e.g., a biography, history of a war, or a year spent with a major league team).

Remember that a piece of writing doesn’t exist in isolation, but is always part of a larger context. . . . .

Within the general lengths mentioned, a hundred aesthetic factors make for variations. If a created character or suspenseful atmosphere is so compelling that readers can’t get enough, greater length might be justified. If the idea is to suggest deep meanings with few but powerfully symbolic actions, then, like the “minimalists,” you’ll be writing shorter pieces. 

The famous advice of writer Elmore Leonard still holds in any case: “I try to leave out the parts that people skip.” And in the age of Internet, when words from every source flood every screen and every mobile device, people are skipping more than ever, especially self-indulgent, off-message digressions of interest only to the author and his/her cronies.  (And I hope I’ve left out those parts here.)   ---

A. P., copyright ©2010

What a beautiful thing a library is. In occasional pieces for The Writer magazine, Plotnik finds himself reminding authors that the Web, for all its value, is no substitute for the library experience---which goes beyond the library's vastly superior organization, integrity, and depth of information and knowledge, its special collections, caring research assistance, and premium online databases. In the stacks of a library, in the palpable atmosphere of intellectual and creative endeavor, how can one not feel inspired to be part of it all? Does the Web inspire?  Think about it. 

Plotnik has been thinking about libraries recently having visited a gorgeously situated one. In this modern public library in Houghton, Upper Michigan, readers can sit by a fireplace overlooking, through picture windows, a scenic arm of Lake Superior called Portage Lake. The former mining town, in a now struggling area, has its values in order. With the help of some local donors, it built this well-run jewel on an industrial site in the heart of downtown. 

If you haven't been to a library recently, take an "avoidance" break from writing and see what's up there. It may not be all spunk and bite, but there's a good book to handle that end of  the writing game.  Worlds more await you among the stacks.    



July 9, 2009
Metaphor Madness

For fun and as a writer's exercise, Plotnik has been compiling some of the more striking metaphors encountered in his reading. He doesn't have a publication in mind---others are doing that. But you probably won't see his picks in their books. Here's a small sampling. More later, maybe. 

Chapters is one of Canada's big book chains, along  with Indigo. Its shop on Montreal's lively St. Catherine Street is a multi-storied behemoth spilling over with books in English and French.

For Plotnik the reader, all those books—and the hordes of store customers---offered hope that reading is alive and well somewhere on the continent, just as Canada's seemingly endless forests give hope for the world's oxygen supply.

As for Plotnik the writer, he was delighted to find copies of Spunk & Bite on the writing shelves, further pleased to discover that the book is now in its second big printing. Funny, having to go to Canada to find that out, but such is the writing/publishing business. Now if someone would just translate the title into French for Canada's francophone écrivains. What would it be called? Nerf et piquant? 

PS--Sorry about the "eh?" in the title. Don't mean to stereotype Canadians, as cool a cultural lot as they come. But if the "EH?" T-shirts being sold in the souvenir stores can be believed, Canadians are proud of their patented pint-sized intensifier.

Selected Earlier Posts


July 7, 2008
How Long is a Good Paragraph?

Last week an energetic high school teacher asked Plotnik to offer some advice to her advanced writing students. Apparently the kids were confused about the purpose of long paragraphs in creative works. Some believed that the longer they were, the more weighty and intellectual they would come off. So paragraphs running two or three pages were cropping up in their compositions. Here's part of what Plotnik advised. For more, see this good teacher's site. 

Looking at creative writing efforts, one sometimes comes across paragraphs that seem longer than the Golden Gate Bridge. Normally, a paragraph runs a few lines to about a third of a printed page, at least in contemporary works. But when developing writers bulk up some paragraphs to two or three pages, what are they doing? Going for a literary effect, or just imitating what they imagine is heavyweight prose?

 Marathon paragraphs make me think of certain inconsiderate people who run their mouths without pause for ten minutes straight. I want to reach for a giant cork. In (deft) writing, such paragraphs might create certain effects other than the gag-reflex; but almost always they risk either exhausting or turning off readers---especially in an age of hair's-breadth attention spans.

 So the writer must ask: What effect am I going for? Am achieving it? And is it worth risking the likelihood of it being viewed as dead weight, maybe as an affectation?

 Here are a few of the effects that might be hoped for:

 —Stream of consciousness. The rambling, run-together reflections that stream through one's mind are sometimes represented by multi-page paragraphs, as in James Joyce's Ulysses. But no such stream can be endlessly revealing and compelling. The device must be used sparingly. 

 —Gravity. Sometimes the intensity of a situation—say, of torture----is so great that everything wants to be told in one great exhalation, as if any break would make it too painful for the narrator to continue. But if the degree of intensity isn't worthy of the form, it seems to beg for effect. A successful example can be found at the close of the novel Everything Is Illuminated, where author Jonathan Safran Foer compresses the narrative of a horrific death-camp experience into a five-page paragraph of chilling intensity.

 —Metaphor. The long paragraph itself might be a metaphor for something long, something flowing. If you can write flowing prose like Mark Twain, you, too, might pull off a 238-word paragraph describing the Mississippi River. (See the opening to Twain's Life on the Mississippi.)

 —Stylistic distinction. Nobel-Prize-winning author José Saramago is known for his multi-page paragraphs, which include dialogue and every other storytelling element. Those who have read the author's inventive works know that the payoff for this indulgence—and it is an arty indulgence—is likely to be worth the effort. And so they plow through Saramago's acres of gray type until lost in the story, forgetting about the paragraphing. It's a distinctive device, all right, the equivalent of aerial acrobatics. I would say to most authors, do not try it at home.

 A writer may want to challenge readers, but not test them. Long paragraphs test a reader's patience, like asking them to hold their breath under water. When a reader loses patience, art has no chance to challenge either intellect or imagination.

 
June 8, 2008

Goodbye SASE: The New Digital Rejection

Flush with the popularity of Spunk & Bite, Plotnik hates to confess that he receives the odd rejection form or letter. He admits, however, that like most career writers he could paper the proverbial wall with rejection slips over the years.

But now something is changing all that: Publishers are replacing the slip with an e-mail.

Not all publishers, not yet. But it's certainly happening with literary journals. Many of them either invite electronic submissions or encourage senders of paper manuscripts to provide an e-mail address (for response) in lieu of the fabled SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope).

Not that any author will shed tears over the SASE. Half the time one forgets to enclose it. Or it is misaddressed, or enclosed with outdated, insufficient postage. And one must first decide whether to ask for return of materials (and pay the freight) or for "response only."

Paper rejections often come on slips the size of one sheet of toilet tissue, with messages worthy of a toilet-paper lookalike. Something like, "We regret that such-and-such did not meet our needs at present, but wish you the best luck in placing it elsewhere."

Editors (Plotnik has been one) have no more love for SASE's or paper rejections than do authors. The envelopes bulk up the files and the mail. A paper slip hints at some palpable message, not the soulless rejection that compassionate but busy editors are forced to render.

Digital rejection, then, with no SASE required, addresses the problem. It is a fast, free, appropriately insubstantial medium. It can be deleted or printed out for wallpapering, albeit with no decorative letterhead. The publisher can file it for (usually negative) reference.

Yet, isn't there something sad, so sad, about impaling one's creative guts only to receive a form e-mail? An e-mail that looks like any other piece-of-crap mail in your in-box---like spam, like a bank message, like a lame joke?

It's like the whole exchange never happened.

May 21, 2008
Another neologizer heard from

In a Spunk & Bite chapter on inventing new words, Plotnik offered a challenge and exercise especially for writers: To name certain as-yet-unnamed subjects in the writer's world. For example, "a terse rejection note."  

Many writers, eager to put names to their pet woes, responded to a similar challenge Plotnik posed in one of his columns for The Writer.  But, prompted by an excerpt from the book, an author checked in this week with a list well worth reproducing here. His name is Steve Pridgeon, a member of the Professional Writers' Association of Canada. (Plotnik considers No. 10 an existential oxymoron worthy of Samuel Beckett.)

1. A terse rejection note
Forget-me-note

2. A great idea you forgot to write down
Paradigm Lost

3. The joy and pain of seeing a friend¹s work published before your own
It should have been glee

4. An inept muse
Illspring

5. The agent who won¹t communicate, loses your manuscript, and bills you anyway
An agent

6. A draft of a poem that you loved yesterday, but hate today
Fallen stanza

7. The almost-right word
A côté mot

8. An activity performed as an excuse to avoid writing
Draft-dodging

9. A merciless editor
Pendragon

10. A news event that renders your completed manuscript out-of-date
Reality malfunction

11. A passage you know you should cut from a piece of writing, but can¹t
Reprieved sentence

12. The act of turning your book face-out on bookstore shelves
Shelf-promotion

May 9, 2008

You gotta love Britannica

Many of you who bloggeth have received—and perhaps taken advantage of—Encyclopedia Britannica's offer of free, full access to its online site, with free links from your blog to EB articles---a nice lagniappe for your blog readers.

For example, if The Lubricated Snoot mentions something about surrealism, you can be linked right here to EB's 411 on the topic. With EB's further options, you'll likely learn something more than what you were looking for. Is that so surreal? 

All EB asks of bloggers is that they have a legit blog and post to it fairly regularly. Obviously, it can even be a "snog," with posts as much as a month apart. If you're interested in taking part, click here and improvise on the form.

It's a win-win marketing strategy. As EB admits, the company hopes to introduce more Web users to its resources, maybe sell subscriptions down the line. After all, this venerable well of knowledge now has to compete with Wikipedia and the Web in general. In EB's mind, it's no contest when it comes to the care and authority that goes into each entry---or the universe of quality information to be drawn upon. Although Plotnik himself uses the big Wiki for fast takes on recent topics, EB is in his blood as a source you can quote without fear of saboteurs or smart-ass wikipods potchkying with each entry.

EB links have been added to some topics in earlier entries, below. Future posts will add 'em when it's the cool thing to do. 

4/18/2008

Tips for Teen Writers

 As you can see from the post following this one, Plotnik doesn't usually go around giving writing tips to teenagers (EB link). What if he should inadvertently disrespect them? Some of those big teens an be fracturing when it comes to payback.

 Recently, however, a writer for the Web site education.com, asked Plotnik to offer such tips to the site's viewers—mostly parents who want to point their teens in good directions.

 Because the writer—a sunny young pro named Cheri Lucas—stoked Plotnik's ego, the author of Spunk and Bite retreated to the Bat Cave to grind out some fresh ideas. Below are the headings for his resulting advice. For the advice itself—brief admonitions that could benefit many writers---click here.

—Think outside the dragon
—Lose the "awesome"
—Chill the potty mouth
—Be a language geek
—Love your library
—Be ya own loopy self, yo

1/07/08

Bloggers who love Spunk & Bite too much

What should writers be doing with their time?

a) writing great works

b) blogging about their great work

c) blogging about how great Spunk & Bite is

 11/15/07
Killing dead air

As much as it pains him, Plotnik tends to pause a moment in interviews to come up with the bon mots, which sometimes leaves a little more "dead air" than is ideal for radio or podcasts. What can he do? He's talking about expression and can't toss off just anything.  

But recently, interviewer Brenda Power of Choice Literacy---a heavyweight Web site among high school reading and writing teachers---applied a technique she has used to tighten taped interviews: she edits out the dead air.

The result makes for a snappy pace, though sometimes the volume of two sentences wedged together varies in a curious way. Still, Plotnik was delighted with the result, which made him sound like the fluent performer he would like to be---like Power herself, smart and polished.  

 Some 10,000 literacy people subscribe to this site. And you can hear the interview at Choice Literacy / Plotnik.  

 10/27/07

A wet kiss to all

Plotnik just learned that "snog" rears its snoot as a word in British slang---what utterance doesn't? Although the slang term can be nuanced, its general meaning seems to be tongue-kissing, as in this passage from Will Self's short story collection, Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys: 

Bill has been snogging--and the adolescent term is quite appropriate here---in a way he remembers from youth. . . . the palpings of lip-on-lip, tongue-on-lip, and tongue-on-tongue . . . .

Well---blog, snog, shmog; who cares if a little tongue gets in the mix? Plotnik had a harder lesson in British slang with the title of one of his earlier books, Honk If You're A Writer (republished as The Elements of Authorship.) "Honk" as in "honk your horn" turned out to mean "to vomit" in British street parlance. The idea of vomiting if you're a writer, however, was not entirely anithetical to the book's view that writers must purge certain myths before they can move on.