Moonrat, over at Editorial Ass, has a post about editing an author who is tooooo attached to AAA writing (adverbs, adjectives, and alliteration). Note this is an author who is sold and has a story so wonderful that Moonrat would rather lose hair editing out the overwriting than to have passed on the project.

I tell you this for two reasons:

1) so writers with a book to sell can take heart that they can write a great story that needs a little bit of editing and still attract an editor/agent (despite the current advice of many experienced writers and agents in this squeaky tight and everchanging market); and

2), so writers looking for a publisher can consider the moving target that is the definition of overwritten.

Lots of people complain that the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling is overwritten. And they are loooong books. Heavy, fat, thick — whatever adjectives that warn off many readers. Not that you’d know it by the numbers who read all seven of the Harry Potter books. So, why, in the face of the obvious evidence that readers loved Rowling’s wordiness, would anyone contend that the books are overwritten? Shouldn’t the reader be the final arbiter? If they read and love the book(s) in such numbers, can it possibly be badly or inexpertly written?

Yes. And no. Novels have two important components: story and writing technique (also called style and voice). Story is the characters and the action (what happens). Technique is how the writer gets that story on paper (and then this happened…and then this…and then…the end). Story is the interesting part, and technique is how the writer conveys the interesting parts (or, sometimes, the boring parts…which everyone considers bad writing and bad storytelling).

Story always wins, because story is what we who love to read novels crave. If the technique involves a few too many -ly words? So what. We can deal. If the characters growl, buzz, or twitter — well, maybe not twitter anymore, because that’s confusing — it’s all good. As long as the story is the one we want to read (which is why non-teen-girl-hearted readers missed the appeal of the Twilight series, and focused on the somewhat technically simplistic writing). And as long as the technique doesn’t get in the way of the story (there are lots of ways for this to happen, most of which do not involve too many -ly words or sighing, spitting characters. The top three in my opinion (just so you writers can be sleepless tonight, and you readers can be grateful for what editors saved you from reading):

1. lack of tension: After her purse got snatched by the thug, Anna could not go grocery shopping, so she went to sleep early instead. Yawn. I’d go to sleep after a sentence like that one.

2. confusion: Anna didn’t like the thug because she wore jeans that were too tight. Who wore the tight jeans? Anna? The thug?

3. skipping the good stuff: see #1 above. Wouldn’t you rather read about the purse snatching? Know that Anna’s last ten dollars — to be spent on rice and beans and milk to feed her until her million dollar advance arrived in a month — is gone and now she is going to starve if she doesn’t find a way to get some groceries, pronto?

These are the storytelling skills no writer can do without. Absolutely, totally, unsurprisingly.

Kelly