BBC Series "The Last Kingdom" Ends With a Battle and a Bang

In 878 A.D. (C.E.) a battle took place in a field in what is now southern England, which determined the very existence of the country. How odd it is now, to consider that of the few thousand fighting men and women present that day, some gave their lives for what they thought was the small kingdom of Wessex - the last remaining stronghold of the Anglo-Saxon peoples, after years of Viking raids - but in the end, they gave their lives so that the United Kingdom would eventually come to be what it was centuries later . . . one of the world's greatest and most productive empires. How surprised they would have been to learn that their sacrifice was the foundation of so much more than what they could have imagined.  

The final battle, with the shield walls dividing enemies.

The Battle of Edington (aka the Battle of Ethandun) was arguably the most important battle in English history, and it is fitting that the first season of the magnificent The Last Kingdom from the BBC gave us this battle as its finale. For many reasons, the first season has been an impressive debut for what has become a standout series, and it has in a short time built a strong fan base who must have been, as I was, cheering a little inside as our hero rode off into the final sunset with a narration promising more adventures ahead. Given the enthusiasm of a growing fanbase, the BBC would be foolish not to be planning for a second season.

The series is based upon the Saxon series of nine (so far) books, from renowned historical novelist Bernard Cornwell. The story follows the adventures of Uhtred of Bebbanburg, the son of a Saxon Northumbrian ealdorman (the precursor of an earl). When the Danes (Vikings) invade and kill his family, he is taken as a child slave into the Danish household of Danish warlord Ragnar, where due to his intelligence, loyalty and charm, he is eventually raised as a son. But fate is not kind to Uhtred, and a warring clan of Danes kills off his adoptive family as well.  Uhtred is left without a country, rejected as a Saxon by Danes and a Viking by Saxons.  He has to fight his way into acceptance by those he must trust - including the future King Alfred "the Great" of Wessex and later of all England - in order to gain back respect and his birthright.  His story is told against the backdrop of the fierce wars of the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries of England against Danish invaders intent on making the British Isles part of a Scandinavian kingdom. This was a time when battle was eye-to-eye brutal, life was cheap and dearly won, and Pagan and Christian strove to coexist.

Lord Guthrum of the Danes is baptized.

The series was produced by the executive producer of Downton Abbey, Gareth Naeme, who obviously understands how to capture and hold an audience. Unlike some of the others in the current parade of Dark Ages and Medieval fantasy series, this one follows much more closely actual historical events and incorporates characters based firmly in historical reality (even Uhtred of Bebbanburg existed, and is a distant ancestor of Cornwell, although little is known of his actual history). As can be expected from the BBC, production values are held to a high standard. 

David Dawson's King Alfred battles for Wessex.

The eight-episode season was shot mostly in Hungary, with some additional work in Wales and Denmark. From the reconstructed villages and wooden/stone palaces of the Saxons, to the costuming (reportedly done with an intentional "modern edge"), to battle scenes, one is easily transported back in time to a place that actually existed, and a people who were caught between two worlds and facing an uncertain future. The film is saturated with warm, rich red tones which bring out firelit interiors, skin, and setting sun, and also green tones which exploit the wild, earthy feel of a time when life took place mostly outdoors. Camerawork is consistently expertly rendered, and interesting without being distracting.

Not enough can be said about the cast. Heading it up is the relatively unknown Alexander Dreymon, whose anonymity will come to a screeching halt with this project. The well-trained young actor has delivered a performance worthy of an epic - always competent, nuanced, and fascinating. He understands the value of accent, the glance of an eye, posture, and all the small moments that raise a performance from passing to mesmerizing. His Uhtred is multi-layered, enigmatic, superbly physical (check out the horseback stunts and the fight scenes - his martial arts training shows) and by turns quietly emotional and fiercely warrior-like, as he cries over a friend's betrayal or his dead child, then rushes into battle swinging a broadsword with an intimidating fury-birthed grimace. He is never less than 100% male, as a ninth century warrior had to be in order to survive.

Also excellent are David Dawson as King Alfred, Adrian Bower as the knight Leofric, Eliza Butterworth as Aelswith, Ian Hart as Father Beocca, Emily Cox as Brida, Harry MacEntire as Athelwold (a fan favorite, to be sure!), Charlie Murphy as Iseult, Rune Temte as Ubba, and many others.

Wessex has finally won everything, while Uhtred has lost all.

Fans of the books will love the series, but may be a little put off by a few instances of straying from the novels' storyline. As a writer and a film fan, I have no issue with the changes: many are necessary in order to make a series play to a film audience without confusing them with too many characters and subplots; after all, film is a much different medium, and must have different requirements for the sake of clear storytelling.  Other changes added to the stories, such as the screenwriter's decision to flesh out Uhtred's love relationships, where in the books they are too often mere mentions. This change in particular makes the film more interesting to a wider audience, and Uhtred's character more multi-dimensional. It also, in this writer's opinion, raises the quality of the story. Like many a male, Cornwell tends to write from a testosterone-laden point of view. In much the same way that some female writers are unwilling to write a great battle scene, he shies away from love scenes or any scene of emotional romantic depth. The screenwriter has understood the value of fixing that, and brings a story accessible and interesting to everyone.

Hild the Nun takes no prisoners.

Which brings us to the battle scenes. These are some of the best you will ever see on television; each battle-cry to raise the shield wall gives the viewer goosebumps. The filmmakers employ stunts and special effects and camera work to increase tension and authenticity -which is expected - but they go further. In an era of television and film when rape and massacre are too often exploited for entertainment (this means you, Game of Thrones), this series neither shies away from tough scenes nor does it present them as purely entertainment. There is brutality, but not the glee of excessive butchery; there is rape, but not a script or camera that lingers over a woman's torture and humiliation for the sake of titillation. These filmmakers understand the difference between realism and exploitation, and it raises the production to a higher level than any other historical out there.

Uhtred and his Danish brother "Young Ragnar" loyal enemies.

Just about the only quarrel I had with the series, and one present also with the books, was resolved in the last episode: that of the treatment of various religions. In the books, Christianity is presented nearly always in a bad light - never as a force for good or the power of justice and peace, against poverty and blind brutality, but as a particularly malicious form of oppression. As an amateur historian of the era, it troubled me because it doesn't give a complete picture. I have always been fascinated in the question of why the new religion swept over a culture as quickly as it did (given that there was no mass communication). Through the years I

have read the suggestions of many historians - it encouraged the value of the individual life, and raised the value of life overall; it offered a way out of a pattern of personal vendetta and inter-clan wars; it raised the value of literacy and learning; it established the first social programs such as orphanages, schools, and soup kitchens; it improved ties to the Continent and the Roman Empire and the rest of Europe, which meant trade and improvement of quality of life. Cornwell has said in interviews that he holds a personal bias against Christianity given his upbringing, and while I can't fault him for that, I do think it's a shame that it kept him from writing more realistically about the gentle slipping away of the pagan world, and the gradual establishment of the Christian. Historians agree that for the vast part, it was a peaceful transition for England, and I for one think it would be a fascinating question for the novels to have explored more. 

But here, the screenwriters have rescued the story from one-dimensional Christian-bashing. In the final episodes, pagan Uhtred comes to reconcile the two philosophies in his own mind, Christian King Alfred comes to appreciate that his god may have a broader point of view than he originally thought, Father Beocca realizes that God works even through pagans, and - as happened in history - the leading warlord of the Danes, Guthrum, offers himself for baptism as part of a peace treaty. (In reality, Alfred stood as Guthum's godfather for baptism, and Guthrum took the Christian name Athelstan, after Alfred's deceased elder brother.)  In the last minutes of the final episode, we have nuns and priests taking up the spear and raising the battle-cry for Wessex and rushing headlong into the battle - a scene which, given the politics of the moment in time, I agree is highly imaginable. Even the religious would have understood that the saving of a way of life demanded every heart and weapon available, and that defending one's life and land was a justification for war when the invaders were at one's doorstep.

As I watched this series, I was often moved not only by the story of Uhtred and his companions, but by the story of England's birth, and the comparisons in my own mind to our political struggles today. Surely the people of Wessex were increasingly frightened as the Viking menace first tickled their shores, and then made its way inland to kill and conquer. Perhaps at first they - preoccupied with everyday survival at their little farms and trades - would have heard stories of the pillaging and murdering and thought of it as a far-off thing, of not much consequence. They would not have understood that it was growing bigger, that it was a force that did not share the values they had embraced with Christianity, and would spare no one until they were all dead or subjected. Even good King Alfred imagined the Danes as people who would be reasonable, could be negotiated with and then trusted to obey a peace agreement. But he was wrong, and it is to England's luck that he learned it in time enough to get serious about defending his people.

Today we face a similar situation, as a force intent on the destruction of our way of life moves closer and grows larger, while still our leaders and a vast majority of our citizens play blithely along at their day-to-day pursuits, without understanding what is at stake and the choices we will have to make in a very near future. I wonder if we still - we peoples of the western world, who have built civilizations on a specific set of values and beliefs, whether we acknowledge that fact or not - possess the courage it will take to keep the right to decide our own path into the future. 

As Uhtred told us in every episode of The Last Kingdom, "Destiny is all."  In the Anglo-Saxon way of thinking, Destiny ("Wyrd") was a reality predetermined before one ever took a first breath. But they believed also that individual choices could affect destiny.  Let's hope that our destiny is as hopeful and kind to us, as was that of the brave Anglo-Saxon men and women who won their future with blood.

Do yourself a favor and watch The Last Kingdom in its entirety. You'll get a great history lesson, a glimpse into the past of a great people and land, and a rollicking good time.

###

Writer Bernard Cornwell with "Uhtred" Alexander Dreymon.

Bernard Cornwell's series can be found at Amazon.com, at bookstores, and elsewhere all over the web. The popular books are well-researched and well-written, and I highly recommend them.

The Last Kingdom is currently finishing up its run in the UK and Europe, but is finished with the first season's run in the US.  It can be purchased online as a DVD, or downloaded from Amazon or ITunes. If you are like me you will be watching each episode about four times.

Toward Better Writing Series, Part 2: Writing Passion and Sex

I'm currently having an interesting experience. I'm reading the second novel in a series by a writer of historical fiction. In this second book, she delves into an area that she stayed completely away from in the first: she has included two fairly explicit sex scenes. It's pretty entertaining to read the reader reviews on Amazon. A few are incensed by these scenes on moral grounds - one even claiming he skipped them, as is I suppose his prerogative. Others don't object to the sex per se, but to the explicit nature of the writing. Many readers are so caught up in talking about the sex scenes that they are missing the overall book - which has far bigger problematic issues than a few sex scenes!

In my work as a freelance editor, I often end up prompting inexperienced writers to rewrite love scenes - sexual or not. Experienced writers often complain to me that they are also uncomfortable writing them. Through the years, I have made a lot of observations and done a lot of thinking about these scenes, and I thought I would take the opportunity to share it here.

There have been entire books written about writing love scenes. Although some of those books are more useful than others, the best unfortunately focus on writing erotica, as a genre. But what about the writer who isn't writing in that genre, but wants to add a love scene or two, or a sex scene? There is precious little help out there. The common thread seems to be that many writers, whether experienced or no, fret about these scenes. The consequence is that they are often badly-written.  But I think these scenes, if done with the right attitude, can be approached with a sense of fun, and turn out to be a really good time for the writer. They can also turn out to be some of the best scenes in a book, for no matter how much or how little sex they contain, they can be enormously revealing when it comes to characterization, and can be made to be very emotional for the reader, very funny, or even hauntingly moving and unforgettable. The sensual can be a very good thing.

I have noticed some patterns that seem to recur amongst writers. It might be useful to talk about each.

• The writer who when confronted with writing something romantic falls back on cheesy Harlequinesque language, ending up with the kind of scene that doesn't feel sexy at all. This is far too common.

• The writer who wants to tell the story of an intense love story between healthy adults, but leaves out any element of sensuality (I didn't say sex, I said sensuality - which encompasses much more territory!). Even writers in the Christian genre need to learn to write romance well - and with the sensuality befitting adult characters. After all, every healthy adult engages in sensuality in some form. It's part of life! Unless you are writing for Disney, it's part of the lives of your characters.

• The writer who throws themselves heart and soul into writing that sex scene, and goes overboard. You end up feeling that you left the narrative of the novel entirely and took a side trip into anonymous porn for a few pages. Again, it feels smutty, forced, but not hot. It doesn't advance the story - the story has to pause while the reader gets through the boring but prurient sex scene. And again, too common.

• The writer who writes the beautiful sensual scene, laced with original imagery and metaphor, and then complains that he/she just can't write a good sex scene. But.. what IS a good love scene, then?

The first of these is something I have seen a lot of as an editor. I have always been a bit baffled by it. Let me give you an example. Imagine that you are happily reading along, the story is good, the prose is slick and sophisticated, and then comes the moment when the hero and heroine confess their attraction to one another . . . and you read this:

He pulled her close as they danced and she put her arms around his neck. She knew she was being forward but she couldn't help herself. She lowered her eyes, batting them shyly, and bit her lower lip. She could feel his hot breath on her cheek as his lips brushed her ear. She didn't understand why her heart was beating so hard, as if it would beat out of her chest. She tried to say something but her voice stuck in her throat. 

His arms were around her waist and he pulled her closer so that he could feel her body up against his. His head was spinning as he smelled her perfumed hair. It was intoxicating. He didn't know why he was behaving this way, since he was usually totally in control. "I want you," he whispered. 

I can't go on. You get the idea. Are you turned on by this?  I'm not. I feel like I'm intruding on a moment in an adolescent infatuation. What's wrong with it, technically?  Why does it fail to move us, fail to sound.. well, adult?  Why does passion escape us?  This is the type of writing that makes so many of us despise the formula "romance" genre: it's full of stereotypes that seem to cheapen human experience. So why do people write like this?

When I see a scene like this, I am 99% sure of one thing about the writer: this is a person a little bit afraid of writing passion. (They may or may not be unable to express it in their personal lives to a lover, but that is beside the point here.) This is a person who shies away - on some subconscious level - from fully imagining a scene of passion between two adults and then expressing that scene through writing. A fellow editor voiced it very well once, "The writer is falling back on sugary clichés because they are afraid to write real passion." The clichés become a sort of cop-out, a crutch. He also made another point that I think is very often valid: "This writer has read too many bad romances."  Sometimes what we have seen (read) a lot of, is what first comes to mind when we are stuck for words.

There are a few big technical issues with this type of writing. And remember - its biggest failing is that the writer wants to convey romance, heat, high emotion, but the lack of quality in the writing from a technical sense negates those goals. So the writer, then, has failed to meet his or her goal in writing the scene, and has therefore failed the reader too.  Note also that the scene written in this way makes the characters sound immature. Because adult characters are suddenly relating to one another as teens would, the reader is as alienated from the characters' real emotions as the characters themselves appear to be.

First, consider the clichés (these being defined as words or phrases that have been used the same way a million times in other books):

pulled her close
couldn't help herself/himself
batted her eyes
shyly
bit her lip
hot breath
lips brushed
didn't know why / didn't understand why
heart beating so hard that....
voice stuck in throat (or any other take on "speechless")
head spinning
intoxicating perfume
God help us, how many times do we have to read "I want you" in a love scene?
And if you can't make them have sex, have them dancing.

I may have missed a few. As you might guess, without these clichés to fall back on as a crutch, the writer would not have a scene!  If you want to avoid this situation in your own writing, do the following:

• Make a list of common clichés in romantic scenes - be they words, phrases or situations. As you read other books, make note of any you catch. Call this the "Never Write" list! Then never use them! (Well, only use one or two. Except batting eyelashes. For the love of God don't say that. Ever.)
• Akin to the first rule, strive for originality. A good scene is a scene that conveys a common situation in a way that makes the reader look at it in a new way. Notice new things about this love between your characters. How are they different from other people and other loves? What is unique about the way they think? The way they speak? The way they move? What do they fear, what motivates them? Each of these and more can be worked into your love scene to make it new and fresh - something the reader has not experienced before. What makes a love scene shine is the new and unique - a new touch, a new word, a new emotion. Find these and weave them into the scene. 
• If you find yourself still struggling, dig deep and ask yourself what you are afraid of. Writing a love scene makes a writer very vulnerable. In effect, the writer is revealing to a world of strangers (and worse, one's family!) what he/she thinks about sex and intimacy and romance. But you are a writer now: claim your right to express yourself, decide that you are an adult and have a duty to readers and a duty to the integrity of your own creative voice, and just write it. Worry about your mother later; or explain to her that the stories come from imagination, and you would never actually do that stuff yourself.

The second situation I listed on writing romantic scenes, is closely related to the first. Some people have a moral conviction that they don't want to get too sexy with their love scenes. That is their right, as a writer and as a thinking human being. However, the problems develop when these writers shy away from normal human interaction, and fall back on the cheesy clichés. Again, ask what you are afraid of, if you are this type of writer.  Are you concerned about the reaction of your spouse, friends, or your church community? Then use a pseudonym and choose whom you reveal your writing accomplishment to. Or better, just explain to people rude enough to comment on love scenes that you don't necessarily have the same beliefs your characters do and you don't always make choices your characters would make. They are just that - characters, not you. It's fiction! Sometimes you have to explain that difference to people - unfortunately all writers do. The rule, however, stands: don't fall back on silly-sounding clichés because you are afraid of adult emotion. To do so cheats your characters, your readers, and yourself.

Writers in this second category also run into another issue: that of making the decision to include no sex/romance/sensuality whatsoever.  Again, I want to emphasize that no matter how silly it may seem to some, this is a valid moral decision that the writer can make. However, the problem becomes that your book will appeal to a narrower market - some readers, specifically those sharing your moral sensibilities, will appreciate it. But as many a Christian writer discovers, they are a small part of the market. Many will assume that your reluctance to address sensuality between adults stems from immaturity or unfounded fear. Whether they are right or wrong is beside the point; the reality is that the notion will exist, and you will have to accept it. It will affect the quality of your book, your income, and worst - the honesty of your story. It may also influence the opinions of prospective publishers.

So are you forced to write scenes of intimacy in order to sell? I don't think so. In fact, I notice many well-written books that clip right along, are a great read, and contain no sex. However, they do feature characters that can handle adult emotions. A book that avoids intimate emotion feels fake. It's hard to write an honest book without honest emotion. But writing without sensuality or sex - if it's honest - can be done. I recommend a book here that is one of the best out there - a decades-old classic. The writer tells the story of romance between a devout man and a prostitute, and does it very well - well enough to land the book in the Christian fiction genre. Check out Francine Rivers' Redeeming Love. It is so well done, in fact, that I - a person who does not enjoy Christian fiction specifically because I find the flatness and dishonesty offensive and boring - love this novel. Make sure you don't make your characters all behave like twelve-year-olds because you must avoid intimacy. Even celibate adults relate to romantic interests as adults. They even, gasp!, feel physical attraction.

At the other end of the spectrum is our third situation: that of a writer who overdoes the sex scene. How does this happen?  Let me first say that I have no problem with explicit sex in writing - those who have read Gentlemen's Game, or my novella Quandary, know this. Sometimes it is necessary to the quality of a book to get very detailed and explicit when describing the sexual experiences of the characters, because it has to do with the characters' journey and development. In Gentlemen's Game, this was the case. We needed to see into the heads of the characters and peer into their bedrooms, in order to grasp the story and fully understand their conflicts, fears, and motivations.

I mentioned that I am reading the second novel in an historical fiction series, and that the explicit sex in it seems to be a problem for some readers. When I initially read the reader comments, I laughed. Many of them seemed to be people who didn't like any sex in any book nohow noway for any reason. I was a little surprised, since novels dealing with medieval or Renaissance-era subjects often get steamy. I think I muttered under my breath once, after reading a particularly upset reader comment, "You need to get out more!" Or have some sex. Last night I read the second of these "alarming" scenes, and I have to admit - many of them have a point. Not because the sex is too explicit - with that they are mistaken. But because the scenes are not well done. Specifically, they:

• are smutty. Instead of falling back on the kind of cheesy clichés found in childish romance novels, the writer fell back on emotionless, cold clichés found in bad porn. If her intent was to convey sexiness and high emotion (and it was), she failed. In fact, she failed so much that later in the book, when the heroine recalls the sexual experience and talks about her emotions surrounding it, I said to myself, "Huh?" because nothing about that scene suggested any such emotion. The emotion was lost, swallowed up by overly-pornographic language. I would suggest that the writer was in a bit over her head, and if she had been skilled enough to combine explicit detail with original imagery and presentation of the heroine's state of mind, the average reader would have been more accepting of the scene as a whole. 
• deviate from the tone of the rest of the novel. The book is written in a sort of old-timey tone, to evoke an historical era. The reader is jolted away from this, and thrown into a very pornographic tone, and then back out again. The scene does not flow linguistically with the rest of the book. Again, I think the writer subconsciously fell back upon what she herself has read in bad erotica/porn, rather than to search for a unique presentation that would have made the scene original, steamy, and meaningful. 
• To add to this deviation from tone, the scenes deviate from the established structure of the previous novel of the series, in which sex scenes were treated very lightly or more often avoided altogether. This made these two scenes feel as if the writer made a conscious decision, "I will write a really explicit sex scene, by God!" and forced it.  Because they feel forced, the reader is further taken aback, and taken off-guard. The first of the two explicit scenes in this second book is a scene between husband and wife, in a marriage of several years - a happy marriage. There is nothing in the story to indicate that this particular sexual encounter is different than others have been: thus, there was no real justification to suddenly writing this one as explicit. It probably didn't need to be done, speaking as an editor. The second is more important: it is a menage-a-trois; as distasteful as that may be to some readers, I feel it is justified in terms of the story. We need to be inside the heads of the protagonists. However, the behaviors of all three, during the course of the scene, are out-of-character, with no clear justification. Combined with the coldness of the porny language, the reader is left confused by the whole scene. I think - again, speaking as an editor - the scene needs to be there and making it explicit is a good idea. But it is explicit in the wrong way. More honest emotion, more originality, would have gone a long way toward creating a scene more in keeping with the writer's intentions (as they become clear later in the book).  

In order for an explicit scene to work, then:

 -  Explicit language is fine - describing specific anatomy, actions, etc.. But keep away from porn-born clichés - try to use description in a new, original way.
 -  Stay away from using dialogue that you hear too much in porn. Try to think about how real people speak - and how your characters would be speaking - if the situation were happening before your eyes.  If you can weave original dialogue, imagery, and thought, into the scene, along with the explicit nature of the writing, it will all come alive. Think about how real sex is - it's messy, occasionally humorous, sometimes embarrassing or clumsy. Adding those elements will make the scene real.
 - Finally, make sure there is a reason for the scene. As is true with any scene in any novel - the scene must have a reason for being. Just wanting to include a sex scene is not a reason: the sex scene must advance the story, show something new about the character, and/or show the evolution of the character, in order to be there. That is the golden rule of good quality writing. If there is a reason why it is there, and it sings - if it does not read as cheap porn or a cheap romance novel - your most discerning readers will forgive a lot, even a menage-a-trois.

Our final situation is one that I have occasionally run into, when writers I very much admire tell me they would like to learn to write sex like I do. I am astounded. I often have the same reaction: Why? I have read beautiful sex scenes that brought tears to my eyes, which left echoes of their music long after the read was over. It was not because they were steamy, but because they told of the depth of emotion that sex can evoke in the human heart, and did it in an original way - not with explicit words or even explicit images so much as with metaphor and original thought in describing the soul of the sex act. In my mind - as an editor and as a reader - this type of writer never fails because they give the reader the gift of seeing human experience - and thus their own lives - in a new light. This is the goal of every exceptionally-written scene, and the real talent of every exceptional writer. 

Toward Better Writing Series. Part One: Writing a Great Sentence

This is the dog that ran up the hill. :)

I find that one of the greatest joys in my professional life - other than the satisfaction one feels upon finishing a great piece of writing - is teaching beginning writers to write truly well. Many people of average training and talent can write a book - if they have the perseverance. But not many learn to write above the average - to make the prose sing, to move the reader, to use language in innovative and inspiring ways in order to create greatest impact to the reader's mind and heart. Because I believe that the joy of writing lies in learning to do that, I am committed to teaching the craft of writing to the best of my ability.

The work of editing allows me to do that task almost on a daily basis, and for that I feel very lucky. From the time I was a child, I found a thrill in the music of language - a well-turned phrase always gave me chills; when I was very young, the desire to be able to create such phrases myself was so overwhelming that it was nearly painful. A seventh-grade teacher saw my potential, and assured me that it was my calling. I still remember her with affection. I often think of her when I find a new writer with potential and I am moved to push them hard to turn out the best book that they are capable of writing.

The most popular of my blog posts seem to be the ones where I share writing tips - much to my surprise. I would think anything else would be more interesting to people, but apparently not! So . . . I thought it might be useful to present some very common situations I find as an editor when working with a beginning novelist or non-fiction writer. I hope that some of you find them useful, whether you are an experienced writer or just starting out. If you see yourself in some of these situations, and take some of these to heart in order to do better, you will be doing your readers, editors and publishers a big favor. Each situation requires some explanation, and so I am going to be presenting a series of blog posts. This first tackles sentence structure - one of the most important skills a writer can master!

I have a cardinal rule as an editor, as I edit as well as in advising the author: Our goal is to enhance, enrich, and make enjoyable the reader's experience of your work. Any small error that hinders that is a problem that needs to be eliminated, in order that a smooth and enjoyable reading experience can be created and maintained. I often say to a writer:  "Hmmmm. I had a little reader hiccup there." I mean that something made me stop, hesitate, go back in order to re-read and better understand. In short, it interrupted the flow and thus my reading experience. These are the issues I target, and this why the little things are so very important in editing for a better book.

The following, then, are the most common things I run into again and again both with new writers, and writers experienced enough to know better but haven't properly self-edited before it got to me.

Run-on sentences.  This is terribly common as a problem in an unedited manuscript. Fortunately, it's an easy habit to break after only a little work with a writer. Cleaning this up can improve the quality of a manuscript tenfold!

In my mind, a run-on sentence is any sentence in which:

• too much is going on - more than one or two actions at once, defined by more than one or two subjects. A big hint that this is happening is too many prepositions. 
• there are so many personal pronouns (he, she, him, her) that the reader is confused as to whom is being discussed.
• the sentence is so long that by the time the reader reaches the end, the point of the sentence is lost, causing the reader to go back and read it again to try to put some meaning together.

Some writers tend to write run-on after run-on, and I'm never sure why that happens. I assume that it is because either subconsciously the writer feels that a shorter sentence doesn't feel intelligent enough, or the writer doesn't understand the basic rhythm of good writing (we'll discuss that in the next section).  It's probably both.  Added to this, I think that part of gaining experience as a writer - and thus improving - is learning to "hear" your writing as the reader does. As the writer, you know what you mean, and put it down on paper. But will the reader know what you mean?  Learning to understand the enormous difference between the two, and learning to anticipate issues with reader comprehension of your prose, goes a long way toward making a better writer. Only experience (and maybe the aid of a good editor) can help you learn this.

I want to give some concrete examples of run-on sentences.

The spotted dog that was the same one from the village that the man who lives in the green house bought from the blacksmith the day before ran up the hill before he came back from the other village.



Because I hadn't read the book yet, I asked her when she wanted to have it back before I walked in the coffee shop where my brother worked and he was going to give me some coffee before I went home again.


Inside the castle where the guards were standing behind the door before they kept the people out was a wagon that had more guards but they were inside where they had tarps on top of it.

Now, I know what you are thinking: she's exaggerating. But no, I read things like this pretty much daily! The thing is, these aren't written by incompetent people, not always by inexperienced writers. Rather, they are written by writers who are either writing so fast, caught up in the creative experience, that they just want to get it down on paper, or by people who just don't yet have the experience to know how to arrange a sentence to be clearer. In the first instance, the writer should have given the draft a read-through and correction before it ever gets to me.  (If I know they are experienced, I may tell them to take it back and clean up the draft and we will try it again!)

In both cases, the reader instinctively stops, goes back and reads it again, whispers "Huh?", and finally skips and and continues, annoyed.  Several of these experiences, and the reader simply puts the book down. You can imagine that paragraph after paragraph of this issue can give the editor a serious headache, and Heaven help the poor readers who purchase such an unedited version from Amazon!

I recommend to all writers - no matter how experienced - that for the final draft of the manuscript, they read aloud to themselves. One is much more likely to find these sentences in one's own work when reading aloud: as your tongue actually trips over the awkwardness of such sentences, you are more apt to be startled into recognizing that there is a problem. So what do you do about it, when your sentences look like this?

• Break it up into more sentences.  Keep one - at most two - things going on at once.
• If pronouns are confusing, use names instead of pronouns (don't be wary of overdoing this: if it helps clarity, always err on the side of using names in place of pronouns). 
• Watch the prepositions that lead into prepositional phrases: words like "at", "for", "to", "with". If you have more than just a few prepositional phrases, you need to break it up. Every time you change prepositions, the reader's mind has to shift perception. If the reader is shifting several times in one sentence, he or she will become very confused. 
• See if using a well-placed comma or two might clean up the confusion. However, if you use more than three commas to separate phrases (with the exception of a list of items where you need several commas), you probably need to break it all up. 

Let's tackle the above sentences. 

The spotted dog that was the same one from the village that the man who lives in the green house bought from the blacksmith the day before ran up the hill before he came back from the other village.

Lordy. Are you confused reading that? I am!  Most of the readers will be as well! (The ones who aren't need to cut back on the recreational imagination-enhancing drugs.) Let's look at the sentence's problems. 

• Too many actions at the same time. Look at all the prepositions: "from the village", "in the green house", "from the blacksmith", "before" (twice!), "up the hill", "from the other village". By the end, the reader has no idea who is doing what!
• Too many subjects. Again, related to too much going on. Too many subjects means too much action! The reader is getting dizzy!
• Grammar problem. (Yep - a common one. Do you see it?)

I am going to suggest that we establish "spotted dog" as the real subject of the sentence. So . . .what is the dog actually doing?  He is running up the hill, and this he apparently does before he comes from another village. That much we can work into one sentence. Let's do this:

The spotted dog ran up the hill before he came back from the other village. (Period, end of sentence!) He was the same dog who came from the blacksmith, and whom the man who lives in the greenhouse bought.

This is the suggestion I am giving the writer, and at this point I'm feeling pretty confident about the way in which we are untangling the mess. But then the writer pipes up and exclaims, "But WAIT! The blacksmith is the one that came back from the other village, not the dog!" Okay. But from the original sentence, the reader has no way of knowing which is being referred to - the blacksmith or the dog! A problem with personal pronouns.  So let's rearrange, in order to get to the meaning that the writer intended:

The spotted dog, which the man who lives in the green house bought from the blacksmith, ran up the hill. (This addresses the original grammatical issue - which is that the writer used "that" where "which" was more proper. We will discuss these in detail in a later post in this series. Cleaning up that detail already adds clarity to the sentence.)  The dog did this before the blacksmith came back from the other village. 

Here, we have broken into two sentences.  I believe we have successfully covered all the information that the writer needed to convey, and solved both the grammar issue and the pronoun confusion (for added clarity, I chose to begin the second sentence with "The dog" rather than "He" - both are correct, but if I had used "He" the reader may have been confused, since the previous sentence contained three he's: the dog, the man in the green house, and the blacksmith).

I am going to clean up the second and third problem sentences in the following ways. See if you can see what I did, and reason out why.

Because I hadn't read the book yet, I asked her when she wanted to have it back before I walked in the coffee shop where my brother worked and he was going to give me some coffee before I went home again.

Inside the castle where the guards were standing behind the door before they kept the people out was a wagon that had more guards but they were inside where they had tarps on top of it. 

Because I hadn't read the book yet, I asked her when she wanted to have it back. Then, I walked into the coffee shop where my brother was working. He had promised to give me some coffee before I went home again.  (This isn't so difficult: there are really two completely different actions here. One involves the speaker asking about the book. The other involves the speaker, the brother and the coffee shop. Two story actions, broken up logically.)

This last sentence is a bad one. I would first ask the writer: "What 'door'? Do you mean the gate of the castle?" I would need some clarification on this to make sure I was recommending a change that would preserve the writer's intent. I would also ask: "At the end of the sentence, what does "they" and "it" refer back to? Guards? Tarps?" Problem with pronouns being confusing here! Some more information would help this situation and also add a little description, and perhaps interest. After getting some clarification from the writer, I might suggest something like this:

Inside the castle, the guards were standing behind the door of the gatehouse (doing what?), listening silently, their heads cocked. They had been charged to keep out any people who might approach unexpectedly. In the center of the inner courtyard a wagon sat, wherein more guards were hidden, a tarp pulled over their heads.   (Here, we have increased the tension for the reader, clarified what is going on by adding some description, and cleared up the pronoun confusion. Three sentences work, where there was only one long confusing one to begin with.)

In the next blog, I will be talking about creating rhythm and pace within sentences and paragraphs, and why it is important to creating great prose. 

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I have been approached by a few people about creating a sort of online university for writing instruction. I am flattered, and the idea does sound inviting. My vision is that I would help the "student" work on his or her own short piece of prose, improving skill. Several types of writing would be offered, as well as various skill levels. If you think you would be interested in such an offering, I would like to hear your comments. Write me at lichencraig at yahoo dot com, and put Writing School in the email header. Thanks!