THE ICE PICK

Beyond Style : Mastering the Finer Points of Writing, by Gary Provost. Cincinnati : Writer’s Digest Books. ISBN 0-89879-314-9. $14.95.

If you are writing, but not selling yet, or selling, but not as often as you’d like, this book may be the one you need to help you become a professional writer. Aimed more at the amateur writer than the beginner, this book addresses the "fancier" aspects of writing: identification, metaphor, pacing, plot tension, proportion, slant, subtlety, symbolism, theme, etc.

After a "brief refresher course on style," Provost discusses pacing and the fact that most readers nowadays want a fast-paced book. From your opening words, Provost says, you must keep your story moving with lots of "things happening," rather than the acres of description that bog down most beginning writers. Among other techniques, he shows how the careful use of transitions can help you control story pace. But the most important thing, he says, is to "leave out the boring stuff."

Readers also demand a unified story that doesn’t wander all over. But unity, Provost explains, also means that your story should sound as if it were all written at one sitting. If too much time elapses or there is an interruption (like a vacation) while writing your first draft, your frame of mind, your writing style, and your tone may change, leading to an unevenness in your story that is disturbing to your reader.

I found something of value in every chapter. For example, in his chapter on originality he says you must avoid stereotypes, not only with characters. Not all beaches are sunny. Some are rainy, and "often the shore is littered with seaweed or that other disgusting stuff that looks like knots of dead snakes."

Although the book can be read profitably by a beginner, Provost assumes that you have done a lot of writing and have a serious commitment to your craft, that you understand the basics of grammar and have done a great deal of reading.

"If you’re frustrated with your writing, if you’re growing pessimistic, if you are sometimes visited with despair," perhaps you need to move beyond the basics of using active verbs and avoiding clichés, and master the "invisible issues" of credibility, imagery, originality, tension, and unity.

The index is too brief and is annoyingly incomplete. But overall, it’s a great book, and I recommend it highly.

{Published in GPIC, the Oklahoma Science Fiction Writers Newsletter, Sept. 1999. Reprinted in SF & Fantasy Workshop Newsletter, Dec. 2001.}