Literary agent Janet Reid has posted a paragraph on her blog that she seems to think is illustrative of good descriptive writing. She’s moderating her comments, so while there are currently 10 comments from people who agree that this is a “perfect” and “beautiful” descriptive paragraph, my dissenting comment has failed to be displayed. And the fact is, I think this paragraph is a stinker.

So I’d like to have an un-moderated discussion of this paragraph.

Here is the paragraph in question:

In that first class, she wore the pearls and a tab collar peeped over her sweater, but she looked as if she would punch you if you didn’t behave. She walked with a cowgirl’s stride into the classroom, and from her bag withdrew her legal pad covered in notes, a thermos of coffee and a bag of Brach’s singly wrapped caramels, and then sat down. She undid the top of the thermos with a swift twist, poured a cup of coffee into the cup that was also the thermos top, and sipped at it as she gave us a big smile and looked around the room.

Hi, she said, sort of through the smile.

by Alexander Chee
Writing Life and Annie Dillard
Morning News October 16, 2009

And here’s what I think is wrong with it:

• “she looked as if she would punch you” — Isn’t this Telling instead of Showing? What does this really convey? She had a mean face, or she had a mean expression, or something about her body language? It’s too vague.
• “She walked with a cowgirl’s stride” — I have no idea how cowgirls walk, let alone stride, but the image this conjured in my mind was of a woman in a wide, bowlegged stance. And I can’t help think that’s not what the author intended.
• “from her bag withdrew her legal pad” — Dr Seuss might be proud of this phrase, but it’s too awkward and forced. I can’t believe the best verb for this action is withdrew.
• “…and then sat down.” — She takes three objects out of her bag while walking, sits, and starts pouring coffee. Why is there no desk in this paragraph? Does she not sit behind the desk? Or put her objects on the desk? Because I think the reader has to insert a desk to make this sequence physically believable.
• “She undid the top of the thermos with a swift twist” — That’s eleven words to say “She opened her thermos.” The word undid seems inappropriate; it should be unscrewed or spun. And the phrase swift twist (in addition to being difficult to say) feels like the writer is using too many words to make something unimportant seem dynamic. Which it isn’t.
• “sipped at it as she gave us a big smile” — I can’t picture this at all. Don’t people pucker their lips when they “sip”? In fact, have you ever seen someone smile while drinking? Wouldn’t the drink just dribble out the corners of your mouth?
• “Hi, she said, sort of through the smile” — It’s the word through that I don’t understand. It reads like a ventriloquist’s trick. Why use those last five words at all? It’s needlessly awkward.

Also, the main paragraph is three run-on sentences in a row, full of commas and ands. It reads like a first draft to me, before the writer came back to tighten things up and make the intent clear.

So those are my thoughts. I don’t get any clear imagery from this paragraph, nor do I get a clear feeling of the character. It seems overwritten, overly narrative. I think the author is getting in the way between the reader and the story.

What do you think?

Hooray! This week, Clone Wars decided to be a cartoon again (albeit a rather scary one). And not only was it not a WWII-era bloodfest, it actually featured genuinely heroic moments. Double hooray!

The “Legacy of Terror” set up: Jedi Luminara is captured by zombie aliens and Jedis Skywalker and Kenobi take a platoon of clones into the spooky caves to save her.

Heroic moments:

• Jedis Luminara and Mundi express their regret over the clones who have died in the campaign.
• As Jedi Ahsoka leaves the battlefield, she expresses her regret that the clones must remain and continue fighting.
• When the Jedi fall back from their first encounter with the zombies, the Jedi guard the doorway and make sure their troopers escape first.
• When the clone messengers are attacked, the Jedi go running to save them.

Other points of Excellence:

• The annoying sidekicks were sent away, putting Skywalker and Kenobi center stage, which is really the only relationship worth watching.
• The animators and director get full marks for creating a horror setting in the caves. Scenes are dark, illuminated only by the troopers’ helmet lamps, and when the zombies attack, they are creepy in a broken-puppet sort of way. I was frequently reminded of Aliens, and that is high praise.

And judging from the preview of the next episode, they will be continuing the horror theme with more alien zombie possession. Unfortunately, it will feature the sidekicks.

That’s all! I hope the aberrations of “Point Rain” and “Factory” were only that: aberrations.

Okay, I know that this tool isn’t exactly “new,” but bear with me.

Once upon a time, I would write a book as a Word file on my home computer, and then back-up that file to a USB drive that I carried around in my pocket. This served two functions: I had a back-up copy in case of a Windows-related natural disaster, and I could pop my USB into any computer at any time to carry on writing when I wasn’t home.

But it is time to move on!

For MERIDIAN (which is shaping up to be both very awesome and very different from my previous novels), I am drafting the book on Google Documents. This allows me to do all my work online, so I don’t need the USB drive as a roaming access draft. I can noodle with my book at any time, from anywhere with Internet access. And I can download or otherwise copy the manuscript to my hard drive as a back-up.

But wait, there’s more! No more sending chapters or full drafts to alpha and beta readers! I can simply grant my friends read-only access to the work-in-progress and let them look at it online.

The only significant downside thus far is that you can only edit your document’s appearance using CSS, so in order to make my paragraphs begin with an indented line, I needed to re-learn something I was happy to have forgotten. Luckily, there are tools available to give you the CSS code you want without doing much work, like CSSMate.

I will let you know if my Google Docs experiment is a help or a hindrance to my writing. But I can already tell you it has helped my document sharing immensely. (My wife likes the first chapter of MERIDIAN! Yay!)