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WARNING!! Adult situations will be discussed using graphic language. (image via wikimedia)
Sex can be awkward in real life, so it makes sense that writing sex scenes can be just as uncomfortable. If the wrong words are used in a sex scene, readers laugh. If a particular act seems unnatural, readers laugh. Writers usually don’t want readers laughing at their sex scenes, so authors have to be careful about how to approach an intense romantic moment.
The following excerpt from the book Men Like Air by Tom Connoly was selected by The Literary Review as a contender (but not the winner) for its 2016 Bad Sex in Fiction Award.
As an aspiring author, I’d like to examine what makes the following scene thought of as bad or awkward:
Often she cooked exotic meals and put chillies or spices in her mouth while preparing the food and s***ed him while the food cooked and then told him to f*** her while his manhood was burning rock-hard with fire.
First of all, sex during food preparation/consumption can be dangerous. I wouldn’t try it in real life, but in fiction, it provides opportunities, and the author leaves some unanswered questions here. For example, were the chillies and peppers in her mouth while she s***ed him?
This could be interesting, except once food is introduced to the mouth, teeth and saliva make it unappealing. Men are visual, and the image of food mashed up in an open mouth can overcome sexual desire. Because of this, the author should be clear about what is going on. Food preparation/consumption during sex sounds great in fiction (and looks fun in a movie), but in real life it can cause some issues.
Another problem in the sex scene excerpt sentence was the term “manhood.” It’s tough to describe the male body part without making a reader laugh. If I provided a list of common words/euphemisms for the male body part, a bunch of readers would laugh. And If you have to choose a euphemism, “manhood” is awkward. Nobody uses “manhood” in everyday conversation.
For example, when a rude driver cuts me off on the freeway, I don’t wave my fist and yell out “You manhood!”
“Manhood” is by nature an awkward word and probably shouldn’t be used in a sex scene, especially since the author was comfortable using “f*ck.” If an author is going to use a blunt word like “f*ck,” then the author shouldn’t mind using a blunt replacement for “manhood.”
There’s good news about manhood and related words. Sometimes a writer doesn’t even need a euphemism for the male body part. In the context of this sex scene excerpt, the male body part is implied . The author could write “He was burning rock hard with fire” and even the most naïve reader will know exactly what is rock hard. We don’t need the euphemism. We don’t need a picture. We get it.
Also, the woman partner doesn’t need to tell the guy what do when he’s rock hard. Most guys in that physical state can figure out what to do. Now if the female is engaging in dirty talk by telling the guy what do, then the author is leaving out crucial information. Dirty talk is an art and if she’s engaging in it or just giving instructions, the author needs to give information. A woman rarely just says to f*ck her and that’s it. At least from my experience, it doesn’t happen that way.
Since sex is a normal part of life, authors should be able to write about it without readers mocking the scene. By avoiding the mistakes in today’s excerpt, you too can possibly write a sex scene that your readers can enjoy with a straight face.
*****
A couple years ago, I put a sex scene in my ebook, but… sigh… it didn’t win any bad sex in fiction awards.
The good news is that James Patterson fans will never run out of books to read.
If there’s one thing the world doesn’t need more of, it’s new James Patterson books. Patterson, the prolific author with lots of help (meaning “lots of co-authors”), put out at least 15 new books in 2016, and that’s just the start. Now he has a new line of co-authored novellas called Bookshots.
Bookshots are short books, maybe 150 pages, and they’re cheap. Just like other Patterson books, it’s not clear how much of each book Patterson actually writes.
In a way, these Bookshots look a lot like Goosebumps, meaning these books are thin with cheesy covers. I have no problem with Goosebumps because my daughters used to read them, but Bookshots aren’t necessarily in the YA section. In fact, the Bookshots I’ve seen take up a bunch of space in the Fiction/Literature section of my local B&M Booksellers, meaning that James Patterson books are taking up more and more shelf space.
I have to give James Patterson credit; when he starts a project, he goes all-out. He isn’t content in glutting one genre. He’s determined to branch out into every direction he can. Pyramid schemers are probably kicking themselves for not thinking of this first.
Other more-talented authors could do what James Patterson is doing. If Stephen King chose to put out 20 books a year and create a pulp/novella category, he could put James Patterson out of business. JK Rowling could do this too. Thousands of amateur writers are trying to create their own fantasy worlds, and Rowling could make all of them best-selling authors by putting her name on their books. Even George RR Martin should hire some co-authors to finish his Game of Thrones series before HBO does.
These authors (and many more) have probably have thought about doing what James Patterson is doing, but only James Patterson has decided to actually go through with it.
I know that since I’m an aspiring author, I shouldn’t criticize another author, especially since my writing has its own flaws. I’m a polite guy, and I usually consider other people’s feelings before I get critical of them, especially other writers, but I’ve decided that if I’m going to criticize another writer, it should be James Patterson.
For one thing, James Patterson doesn’t care what I think. I don’t have to worry about hurting his feelings or his business because I’m nothing to him. Even if he did get annoyed with me, he could tell one of his co-authors to destroy me for him, and even that would take more effort than a guy like me is worth.
Maybe these Bookshots are a blessing in disguise. If I absolutely had to read another James Patterson book, I’d rather read a really short book than a long one. And if I absolutely had to spend money on a new James Patterson book, I’d rather spend $4.99 than $19.99. So maybe James Patterson really is looking out for his fans.
Sometimes I get become sad when I finish every book a great author has written, and I know there’s nothing left by that author for me to read. I’m not calling James Patterson great, but at least with Bookshots I know I’ll never run out of James Patterson books to read.
*****
Just like a Bookshot, my ebook is short and cheap.
Unlike most Bookshots, my ebook has only one author.
(image via wikipedia)
The Shining by Stephen King might not be a classic yet, but it probably will be. It was written in the 1970s, and people still read it today and it’s still relevent, so I’m guessing that people will still read it 50 years from now.
Even though The Shining is a great book, it has some bad writing in it. At least, by Stephen King’s standards, there are some bad sentences. In his book On Writing, Stephen King maligns the adverb with one of the all-time most famous quotes about writing: “I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs,…”
When the Modern Master of Horror equates a part of speech with eternal damnation, you have to take that seriously.
On the other hand, Stephen King uses a lot of adverbs in The Shining. What am I supposed to believe, Stephen King’s opinion of adverbs or The Shining?
The following bad sentences from The Shining are within a few pages of each other in “Chapter Ten- Hallorann”:
“This time they all laughed, even Danny, although he was not completely sure what the joke was,…”
The word completely wasn’t necessary.
“It (the main room) had cleared greatly during the half hour they’d spent in the kitchen.”
The word greatly wasn’t necessary.
“The nuns who had been sitting by the fire were gone, and the fire itself was down to a bed of comfortably glowing coals.”
The word comfortably does describe the degree of glowing, but it might not have been the best adverb to use, and I’m not passionate enough to come up with a better one.
A sentence doesn’t need an unnecessary adverb to be a bad sentence.
“Halloran commenced to tour them around the most immense kitchen Wendy had ever seen in her life.”
This is a sentence that my writing teachers would have red-marked. Of course Wendy had never seen a kitchen like that IN HER LIFE, my instructors would have said. When else would she have seen a kitchen like that? In her after-life? In her pre-life? When she was fetus?” In other words, the phrase “in her life” wasn’t necessary.
Also, the phrase “commenced to tour them around” is wordy. Replacing that with “toured them around” or “showed them around” would have been more direct and less clumsy.
And below is my favorite bad sentence in The Shining:
“He (Halloran) turned to the Torrances as she (Sally, a young maid) strolled away, backside twitching pertly.”
Haha! Stephen King actually wrote backside twitching pertly. To be fair, but this was written in the 1970’s. Maybe backsides twitched pertly back then. I’m not sure what backsides do nowadays because I don’t usually write about backsides. I think they sway a little bit.
If I ever used the phrase “backside twitching pertly” in my conversations at work, I’d get fired or sued. There are some things that polite folk should never mention in public, and one of those is “backsides twitching pertly.”
That’s okay. The Shining is still The Shining, and I’ll think it’s great no matter what.
*****
I read The Shining when I was in junior high school decades ago. Back then, I’d get in trouble for saying the word “crap.”
Looking back, it ticks me off so much that I wrote this ebook, Crap Is NOT a Bad Word!
If the author doesn’t stop the scene right here, too many things can go horribly wrong. (Image via wikimedia)
Sex in literature is the opposite of sex in real life. Most people would rather have bad/mediocre sex in their personal lives than none at all, but in most fiction, sex just makes things worse. Sometimes the sex in fiction is so bad that it can win an award.
A couple weeks ago, The Literary Review gave out its Bad Sex in Fiction Award (poorly-written sex scene in an otherwise good book) to The Day Before Happiness by Erri De Luca. I’d never heard of this book (I’m sure the author has never heard of my books either), but I have to admit that the sex scene stands out:
‘My prick was a plank stuck to her stomach. With a swerve of her hips, she turned me over and I was on top of her. She opened her legs, pulled up her dress and, holding my hips over her, pushed my prick against her opening. I was her plaything, which she moved around. Our sexes were ready, poised in expectation, barely touching each other: ballet dancers hovering en pointe.’
I don’t want to get too technical, but this author makes a couple basic mistakes. First of all, never use the word prick to describe a male body part. Prick implies small, and no guy would use that word when describing himself in a sex scene. Shlong is better because shlong has the word long in it, and every guy likes to think of himself as big.
Plus, calling the male/female body parts sexes is kind of awkward. Maybe sexes is better than prick and whatever word you use for the female counterpart, but it’s still kind of awkward. I’d say it makes the scene feel kind of stiff, but that could be taken the wrong way.
Stiff. Haha. It’s difficult to write a sex scene, but it’s also hard to critique one too.
Hard. Haha.
According to The Literary Review article, winners seem to not attend the award ceremony. That sounds like sour grapes to me. If I won a bad sex in fiction award , I’d attend. I mean, it depends on where the ceremony was held and whether my expenses were paid or not, but I’d feel no shame in winning an award for writing a bad sex scene, especially if the flight, meals, and lodging are paid for.
The problem with writing a bad sex scene in an otherwise good novel is that nobody cares about the “otherwise good novel.” All of that effort put into the “otherwise good novel” has been wasted because of a bad sex scene. That’s how real life is too. If a guy goes on a date, and the date leads to a romantic encounter, all the guy will remember is the romantic encounter. The other details disappear from our memories. Where did we eat? What movie did we see? What beachfront property did we take our romantic stroll down? Once the sex happens, all that previous stuff fades from our memories, even if the sex wasn’t that great.
I almost feel bad for The Day Before Happiness. Maybe it was actually a good book. Now we’ll never know, all because the book has a bad sex scene in it. At least it won an award.
*****
I wrote a sex scene in my ebook, but the Literary Review didn’t notice it. Sigh. I might have attended the ceremony.
This might not be the best, but it’s at least best-selling.
With the year 2016 coming to an end, the bombardment of “Best of…” lists has begun. It’s the go-to of lazy writing. When in doubt about a possible topic in December, desperate writers can just do a “Best of…” list. These are easy to write, but there are too many out there to actually read them all.
To spare you the effort, here is a group of “Best of…” lists already compiled for 2016. Now that you have the chance to read the lists you’re interested in, you can ignore the rest of the lists that you are certain to run across.
Don’t get me wrong. I know that judging something as “the best” is subjective. When it comes to stuff like “Best Books of the Year,” nobody can truly judge that because everybody’s opinions are different. Plus, nobody has read every book that has come out this year. But that doesn’t stop some of us from coming up with our own lists or from reading them either.
Also, using the word everything in the title “The Best of Everything” is hyperbolic on my part. Of course, I can’t cover the best of “everything.” I can cover the best of a lot of stuff, but the phrase “The Best of A Lot of Stuff” doesn’t sound dramatic enough to use as a title. Readers can usually forgive hyperbole in a title if it’s explained in the article.
So in order to save you a lot of time over the next couple weeks when all the “Best of…” lists come out, here is…
THE BEST OF EVERYTHING-2016
The Best Books of 2016- Publishers Weekly
The Best-Selling New Releases of 2016- Amazon
The Best Television Shows of 2016- Variety
The Best Songs of 2016- Rolling Stone Readers Poll
Best Albums of 2016- Billboard
The Best Movies of 2016- NY Times Critics
The Best New YouTube Channels of 2016- Indie Wire
The Best (Most Popular) YouTube Videos of 2016- Buzzfeed
The Best Cars of 2016- Car and Driver
The Best New Tech of 2016- Popular Science
The Best Video Games of 2016- The Guardian
The Best (or Most Googled) Memes of 2016- Time
The Best Fast Food Restaurants of 2016- MSN
The Best (Most Addictive) Websites of 2016-Livewire
The Best (Most Amazing) Scientific Discoveries of 2016- Listverse
The Best (Most Notable) New Words in the Oxford Dictionary- The Telegraph
By the time you’ve read through all of these 2016 “Best of…” lists, you might not be an expert in everything, but you’ll have a layperson’s knowledge about everything. You’ll have just enough knowledge to be dangerous. Even better, you’ll be ready for the Predictions for 2017 lists that will be coming out next.
*****
Just so you know, here is The Best Ebook That I Published in 2016.
(image via wikimedia)
Maybe a rant shouldn’t start with a positive comment, but Amazon Prime is a great name for a service. Everybody should want to be a member of something Prime. Amazon Prime is even a better name than Kindle Unlimited. I mean, Unlimited is a pretty cool word, but in this case “unlimited” is limited to the Kindle, and that’s not truly Unlimited. If I’m part of Amazon Prime, that means I’m Prime on everything on Amazon, not just the kindle.
Everybody who has Amazon Prime wants deals. We get deals on sales, deals on shipping, and we get limited music and video streaming for free. If you use all of the services, Amazon Prime can be worth the money.
If you’re a member of Amazon Prime, you even get a small selection of ebooks to read for free on the Kindle. The only problem is that Amazon’s book selection for Amazon Prime is limited. For one thing, only ebooks are available for free on Amazon Prime. I have no problem with that. It wouldn’t make financial sense to send out actual books for free. That would cost Amazon a lot of money.
Right now, one of the ebooks available is Guns by Stephen King. Are you serious? Out of all the books that Stephen King has written, THAT’S the free ebook? If I remember correctly, Guns was only 99 cents when it came out. Plus, it’s the one book by Stephen King that I really don’t want to read. I’m not a gun advocate, but I don’t like to read what celebrities (or famous authors) have to say about political issues. They don’t care what I think, so I don’t want to listen to them either. If Amazon wants to give us free Stephen King, give us some of the old stuff that’s available cheap anyway. Different Seasons would be awesome for free. The Shining would be pretty cool too.
I understand why Amazon doesn’t want to put its best stuff on Prime, and I wouldn’t expect them to. But every year I think about discontinuing my Amazon Prime. I take advantage of shipping, and videos, and music, but all of those services get offered by other venues now. Amazon is still convenient, but their competition is getting better too.
What I’d like to see are more books by popular authors. If Amazon offered maybe one ebook each from popular authors, I’d read that one book, and maybe be willing to pay for the next one by the same authors. Then again, books take a long time to read. If Amazon gave away too many books, then a reader like me could find a way to never pay for another book again. But I’m paying for Prime, so Amazon would still be getting my money.
I understand that Amazon Prime has to be careful about its free book selection because it can’t compete too much with Kindle Unlimited. If too many books are offered for free on Prime, then Unlimited users might get ticked off and drop that service. I understand that, but still…
How’s that for an argument? “But still…” rarely works, but I keep going back to it.
As far as problems go, limited free book selection on Amazon Prime isn’t the most worrisome. I don’t lose any sleep over it. Amazon prides itself, however, on getting things right for its customers, so it would be nice when I click on Amazon Prime to see a better selection of best-sellers and award-winners and other kinds of books that are in demand.
Even though this is a rant, I’m not trying to insult Amazon. I like Amazon. I’m merely offering a humble suggestion how to improve a service that I already kind of like. I just want Amazon Prime to live up to its name.
*****
I also don’t want to criticize Amazon too much because it’s the only place where you can find my ebook .
Sigh! Not this again!
The novels To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain just got banned from a public school library again a couple weeks ago. I won’t name the school district which banned the books because I don’t want to pile on. To be fair, the books got unbanned a few days later.
It has to be embarrassing to be the school district that still bans To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It’s not like these books are gathering dust anywhere. Everybody knows about the content of these novels, and they’re still cherished American classics.
Even so, this won’t be the last time these novels get banned. I’m not sure when Huck Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird are going to get banned by another school district, but it’s probably going to happen soon.
It was offensive language (the N-word) that got these books taken off the library shelves. I understand, no school wants to get bad publicity for giving students books with N-words in it. In today’s environment, if the wrong person writes or says the N-word, that person gets fired.
It’s tough to be in the crossfire between sensitivity and mockery today. If you’re seen as insensitive and ignore the complaint about N-words in books, you could get fired (or even worse, be forced to attend seminars about sensitivity), but if you respond to the complaint then you can get mocked for being stupid enough to ban To Kill a Mockingbird. Most people need a paycheck, so they choose to get laughed at rather than get fired.
Sometimes a lack of common sense causes problems where none should exist. In this case, the temporary ban was caused by a policy that said one complaint about a book was enough to warrant removal and an investigation. Maybe this policy is needed for some of today’s YA fiction, but every librarian should know about To Kill a Mockingbird or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Any librarian should greet a complaint about one of these books with an eye roll and an insincere, “We’ll look into it.”
A possible solution would be to publish a version of these classic novels without the N-word. In the case of To Kill a Mockingbird, you’d have to clear it with the estate (and the estate probably wouldn’t agree), but Huckleberry Finn is public domain, so we can do what we want and Mark Twain (and any of his money-grubbing relatives) can’t do a thing about it.
All a publisher has to do is replace the N-word with the phrase “heckuva guy,” and the sensitive reader would no longer be offended. Nobody gets offended by somebody who’s a “heckuva guy.” And even though using “heckuva guy” instead of the N-word changes the meaning of the novels a little bit, it might be worth it if more readers become more comfortable with these classics.
If publishers do this, school libraries all over the United States could have sanitized copies of To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to entertain and enlighten even the most sensitive of readers and their parents.
I’m not a fan of banning books, but if you do, at least pick something original. Here are a few books that I think should get banned. I’m not saying these books absolutely should get banned. I just mean that sometimes on a slow news day you might want to ban a few books just to get the juices flowing, so if you do, here are a few books that haven’t been banned before (or at least haven’t made the news for getting banned).
*****
Despite lots of profanity, my ebook has never been banned from a school library.
Every celebrity seems to want to write a children’s book. I don’t get the fascination celebrities have with children’s books. Then again, I’m not a celebrity. But now FOX News host Bill O’Reilly (with some unknown coauthor named James Patterson) has written a children’s book called Give Please A Chance.
I don’t like it when celebrities get book deals, and it’s even worse when they write children’s books, but those are different issues, and celebrity children’s books are going to happen no matter what I say, so I don’t lose any sleep over it.
And I have nothing against Bill O’Reilly. I watch his show about as much as I watch any other cable news show when I’m in the mood for politics. I don’t mind how he argues with his guests, no matter who they are. I’d rather watch a confrontational political interview than a softball interview. But whenever I think of Bill O’Reilly (and I don’t think of him very often. He probably doesn’t think about me much either), I think of his famous meltdown .
And he’s just published a children’s books about manners.
The title itself is rant-worthy. Give Please a Chance is a play on words from John Lennon’s song, “Give Peace a Chance.” As a former child in a military household, I was taught that the idea of giving peace a chance just for the sake of peace was dangerous. Peace was what happened after you destroyed your enemies (or what happened if your enemies knew they’d be destroyed if they messed with you).
You couldn’t just wish for peace, I was taught. For peace to work out, everybody had to want peace, and when it comes to world politics, there’s always some violent schmuck who wants to mess things up. Pretending that the violent schmucks are just misunderstood scoundrels who deep down have good intentions almost always leads to one-sided violence (and little peace).
In other words, when it comes to the phrase “Give peace a chance,” I’m a little biased. That’s why I don’t like the title Give Please a Chance.
I’m sure the content of the book isn’t that great either. I don’t know this for sure because I haven’t read the book, but that won’t stop me from having an opinion about it. I don’t like the title, and I don’t like the idea of Bill O’Reilly writing a children’s book, so everything else about it probably isn’t good either. But I’m pretty sure (without even reading it) that Give Please a Chance is a message book.
Even when I was a kid, I didn’t like message books. If you’re going to put a message in a children’s book, make it subtle. And if it’s not subtle, then make it so cool that nobody will care if it’s not subtle. Oh, The Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss isn’t the most subtle of message books, but the rhymes and the pictures are so awesome that nobody cares. That’s why Oh, the Places You’ll Go is still a best-seller. 50 years from now, we’ll see (or maybe somebody else will see) if Give Please a Chance is still selling.
I’m not sure who O’Reilly’s coauthor James Patterson is. In all my years as a writer for Dysfunctional Literacy, I’ve never heard of James… cough… Patterson. I’ve never written about James… cough… Patterson. I’ve never told jokes about James Patterson. I don’t like it when no-name coauthors get credit for writing a best seller just because they attached their names to a celebrity author. Maybe James Patterson should write his own books.
In case you haven’t figured it out, there’s no way that I’m giving Give Please a Chance a chance. And I’m a polite guy too.
*****
Since I’m a polite guy, I’m probably more qualified than Bill O’Reilly to write a a book about manners and etiquette.
Nobody knew that a raunchy college sex comedy could take place in a University Library.(image via wikimedia)
Students weren’t supposed to sleep in the University Library, but it happened a lot anyway. If somebody on the library staff noticed us in a deep slumber or heard us snoring too loudly, they would wake us up, but if we looked like we were just dozing off while making a good effort to study, they’d leave us alone.
I was studying/sleeping at a square table in an open study room area in the University Library on a weeknight because my roommate Kirk had called from a frat party and told me he was coming back, which meant he was bringing a drunk girl into the room to spend the night with. It was probably about 11:00 that night, which meant I’d be getting sleepy soon and I’d have to find an isolated location to doze off for a while. There were a bunch of out-of-the-way spots where I could sleep for a few hours without being disturbed (I’ll get to that another time), but I was still trying to concentrate on reading and taking notes when I noticed an unfamiliar girl seat herself in the chair next to me and lean toward me.
“You don’t remember me?” she said.
She looked familiar, but she had startled me, and I couldn’t fit the mental pieces. Her hair was flat and went only down to her ears. I wasn’t wild about women with short hair, and she had a couple features that I didn’t find attractive, but I have a couple features women don’t find attractive too, so I don’t want to seem judgmental.
To make things worse, I wasn’t in the mood for a conversation, and the study room was still crowded and quiet, which meant that nobody else would appreciate our small talk either. I didn’t want to get dirty looks from other students trying to study.
The girl pulled her hair up from her forehead. “I usually have a spike.” She dropped her hair. “The elevator?” She laughed at my bad memory. “Your roommate slept with my roommate and never called her back.”
“That was you?” I said.
“I’m going incognito tonight.”
I would have said I liked her without her hair spiked, but the spike made her features more appealing, so I said:
“It worked.”
Normally, I’d kick myself for saying something rude and stupid, but it was late, and I was tired, and I didn’t feel like putting the effort into talking to a strange female whom I wasn’t interested in. If she’d been cute (I know, I know, I didn’t have room to talk), maybe things would have been different.
“I just wanted to tell you that my roommate isn’t really like that. She doesn’t sleep around. And she doesn’t call guys assholes in public.”
I hadn’t given much thought to the elevator rage incident since it had happened. Then I remembered what this girl looked like with her spiked hair.
“You look like the type,” I said.
“To sleep around?”
“No, to call a guy an asshole in public. When you have your hair spiked, you look like you’d be kind of aggressive.”
“I’m not, but I’m glad people think that.” She paused. “People know me because of my hair. People know Kirk because he sleeps around.” She paused again. “People know you because you’re Kirk’s roommate.”
Great, I thought, I needed a roommate to make me relevant. This was nothing new. I’d always blended in. Even back in high school, there had been people who didn’t know who I was. I was rarely invited to any social gatherings in high school. I wasn’t hated or anything. My peers simply forgot I was there. The good part was that I could crash any of those social gatherings and nobody would mind. If I even got noticed, the reaction was just, “Oh yeah, there’s Jimmy.” That hadn’t changed in college.
“I’m Jimmy,” I said, not really wanting to be addressed as Kirk’s roommate.
“Brenda,” she said.
“Kirk’s not so bad,” I said, wondering why I felt compelled to defend him.
“He treats women like shit,” she said.
“He just likes sleeping with them,” I said, looking around to see if anybody had overheard her profanity. “Otherwise, he’s very polite.”
Brenda snorted.
“It’s true,” I said. “He holds the door open for women. He’s respectful to his mother. He’s respectful to my mother. And he’s protective of his younger sister. “
She curled her lips, so I continued.
“He didn’t use any foul language when your roommate was calling him names.”
She huffed.
“He never expects the woman to provide her own birth control. And he always uses brand new condoms.”
“I almost want to sleep with him now,” Brenda said. I could tell she was being sarcastic. Some people can’t detect sarcasm, but I’ve always been able to recognize it. A lot of people take sarcasm literally, and that can cause problems, but the worst people are the sarcastic ones who don’t recognize sarcasm in other people. I knew Brenda was sarcastic, but I couldn’t tell if she would recognize my own sarcasm (because I have a monotone voice which makes everything sound literal), so I went silent and started reading again.
After a moment, Brenda said, “Your roommate slept with my roommate.”
I nodded and kept staring at my book.
“That makes us almost… something,” she said. “Not quite family.”
I thought it made us nothing, but again, I kept quiet.
“I can feel us bonding already,” she said.
I don’t remember what we said next, but the entire conversation was awkward. Even though we used our quiet voices, I knew other people were eavesdropping and that always makes me self-conscious because I don’t want to be judged by what I say to an almost stranger. Maybe I shouldn’t be bothered by stuff like that, but I am (not as much now as I was back then). We didn’t even talk about anything very interesting after that, just typical stuff like our classes and dorm life.
At some point, Brenda went back to her table and left me alone. She didn’t fall asleep on my shoulder, and we didn’t wake up naked in my dorm room or anything crazy like that. It was just a boring conversation in a boring place between a boring guy and a girl who had to spike her hair to not seem boring.
But something was about to happen to me that was not boring at all. And for the sake of this story, I’d better get to that soon.
*****
To be continued in University Library: Ted Tinkle’s Girlfriend.
To read University Library from the beginning, click here!
*****
If you don’t like being in awkward conversations (but you enjoy reading about them), you’ll probably like my ebook.
Readers of classic literature can’t believe that a beloved novel like Jane Eyre has bad sentences in it, but it’s true. To give author Charlotte Bronte some credit, she wrote a lot complex sentences that were actually easy to follow, and that was a rare skill in 19th century authors. Mixed in with her concise sentences, though, are a few exceptions. And when a Charlotte Bronte sentence goes bad, it goes into full disaster mode.
Just to be clear, a bad sentence is a sentence that would get students into trouble for writing it today. I’m not talking punctuation rules. I’m talking style rules and word choices that would upset the average English teacher or writing instructor. Students are taught to follow a strict set of grammar and style rules, and they get punished when they deviate from those rules. Therefore, it has to be frustrating to read a classic which breaks the same rules students are taught to follow. For example:
“Silence!” ejaculated a voice; (Chapter 5)
I could stop there. Maybe I should stop there. After all, ejaculated is a problem word. Maybe ejaculated was an okay word in the 1800s, but if I had written the word ejaculated when I was in school, I would have been sent to the office, no matter what the context was. I could have held a copy of Jane Eyre and pointed out that I was simply trying a famous author’s writing style, but it wouldn’t have mattered. I would have been given a failing grade. I would have been sent to the office. I would have gotten my mouth washed out with soap.
The other offense is using the word ejaculated as a substitute for said. I’m not a purist who thinks “said” should never be replaced, but I think ejaculated is pushing the envelope a little bit, especially in today’s over-sensitive culture.
And to present a balanced look at the sentences in Jane Eyre, here is the complete ejaculated sentence:
“Silence!” ejaculated a voice; not that of Miss Miller, but one of the upper teachers, a little and dark personage, smartly dressed, but of somewhat morose aspect, who installed herself at the top of one table, while a more buxom lady presided at the other.
If you’re a student, try writing a similar sentence and see what happens to you.
As mentioned earlier, most of Bronte’s sentences are clear, even the long and complex sentences, but every once in a while, a sentence veers out of control.
Each picture told a story; mysterious often to my undeveloped understanding and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting: as interesting as the tales Bessie sometimes narrated on winter evenings, when she chanced to be in good humour; and when having brought her ironing table to the nursery hearth, she allowed us to sit about it and while she got up Mrs. Reed’s lace frills , and crimped her nightcap borders, fed our eager attention with passages of love and adventure taken from old fairy tales and older ballads ; or (as at a later period I discovered) from the pages of Pamela, and Henry, Earl of Moreland. (Chapter 1)
If the sentence had stopped after “…profoundly interesting,” I wouldn’t have gotten lost. But between the tales that Bessie narrated and Mrs. Reed’s lace frills and ironing tables and nightcap borders and the pages of Pamela , and Henry, Earl of Moreland, I got lost, profoundly lost. And once I figured everything out, I didn’t think it had been worth the effort. The sentence would have been better off if it had just stopped at the colon.
Long sentences can get red-marked, but sometimes even short sentences can be tricky.
Mr. Rochester, it seems, by the surgeon’s orders, went to bed early that night, nor did he rise soon next morning. (Chapter 13 )
When I was a kid, tense consistency was a big deal. If you wrote a story in past tense, you stayed in past tense. There was to be no tense deviation within that story (unless you were writing a present-tense story with a flashback or vice-versa). Here, Bronte has written a single sentence that violates the rules of tense consistency. If I had written this sentence, my instructor would have suggested a change:
Mr. Rochester, it SEEMED, by the surgeon’s orders, went to bed early that night, nor did he rise soon next morning.
Maybe these criticisms seem picky and lame, but writing instructors have red-marked student papers for far less. Teachers need to make sure students can write effectively, so I have no problem with red-marked papers, but students should also be aware that nobody’s writing is perfect or above criticism. Every piece of writing can be criticized, even classic novels.
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The title Jane Eyre has always caused a problem for potential readers because nobody knows ahead of time who Jane Eyre was or why a book was written about her. All a reader knows is that the main character is probably going to be Jane Eyre. That’s usually how it works with book titles that are solely character names. At least with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the reader knew there were going to be adventures.
Charlotte Bronte later wrote a novel with an even worse title, Shirley. Because Shirley has no last name in the title, most readers have no idea who Shirley is until they read the book. The title of Shirley is so bad that the movie Airplane even made fun of it.
Bronte left an unfinished novel named Emma, but readers can find Jane Austen’s Emma if they feel they must read a novel about somebody named Emma. Reader’s who get confused at book titles that are character names might prefer Bronte’s novel The Professor because the reader knows that the novel is probably about a professor. Even though that title is better, the book itself probably has some bad sentences in it.
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Here are even more Bad Sentences in Classic Literature!
Bad Sentences in Classic Literature: Moby Dick
Bad Sentences in Classic Literature: The Great Gatsby
Bad Sentences in Classic Literature: The Scarlet Letter
Bad Sentences in Classic Literature: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Bad Sentences in Classic Literature: Great Expectations
Bad Sentences in Classic Literature: Pride and Prejudice
Bad Sentences in Classic Literature: Catch-22 Bad Sentences in Classic Literature: The Great Gatsby
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After more than ten years of blogging, I’ve finally written a novel.
A grammar-obsessed English teacher falls in ‘luuuvvv’ but discovers how chaotic and dangerous ‘luuuvvv’ can really be.
The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy is now available on Amazon and from the trunk of my car at various local bookstores… until parking lot security kicks me out. Buy it now while supplies last!
