I’m sick of “bougainvillea”
In the past few days, I’ve read around thirty short story manuscripts, and I’ve noticed a horrible overuse of the term bougainvillea. It’s come up in at least four of the stories I read, and I can’t help wondering why. It could be that I just got a weird bunch of manuscripts, but I’m thinking not. Instead, I think it’s writers trying to be original, and poet-y, but instead of thinking it’s a nice detail, seeing that word makes me want to rip my hair out in frustration. I’m sick of it.
But I’m also wondering if (when?) I’ve been guilty of such things. I recently used a simile in my novel (two, actually), and ever since I’ve been wondering if I added it solely for the language; I usually prefer to write prose that’s as clean and unadorned as possible. But still, I’m sure I’ve done a few things. And that doesn’t even touch the idea of verbal ticks (my recent one has been the word even).
So what annoys you when critiquing manuscripts? What trends have you spotted? And what language sins have you committed?
I see a lot of cicadas and whorls in the poetry manuscripts I read. Poets do choose to add certain words simply for the sake of the language, and that’s as it should be. However, in our editorial meetings we still criticize poems that sound too poet-y. In a way, that’s a good thing because it makes me more aware of times when I use language that I think is brilliant and original but find out later that it’s not. For instance, I write a lot about the desert, so bougainvilleas and cicadas would be natural images to include. It’s good to know that those words are overused because it forces me to think of stronger, more original language.
wthell? i didn’t even know what a bougainvillea was until i googled it for a better perspective on this post…
i’m terribly guilt of the “the [object] all [adjective]” convention.. even when i try to remove it from an ms, i talk myself into leaving it for some reason.
I also had to Google it once I started seeing it in mss, and now it’s EVERYWHERE. Maybe it’s a fiction writer rite of passage or something…
I’ve seen my fair share of real and fictionalized bougainvillea.
I’ve also read a lot of:
Cacophony.
Gossamer.
Pleiades.
Words I wish I saw in manuscripts: glom, grok, turgid, and cane cholla cactus.
I feel like a new botany major looking up all these plant images (weirdly my bougainvillea search led me through banana plants which are way cooler than I ever realized). I think I must be guilty of almost every language sin, except the bougainvillea one because I didn’t know much about them. Anyway, do you think maybe you have to sin a little to learn to be a better writer? Transgression! such a lovely frequently, possibly overly used word in my performance analysis classes. Seriously though, I think it’s important to play, to try the fads before you commit them to the hell of overdone tripe. I think you have to be willing to think -maybe I can make that work- before you admit that the adults were right and stripes and prints really don’t go together (and sometimes you just seriously need more sleep says the girl who occasionally needs help dressing herself) Daring or just dumb? Playful or lacking in originality? I’ve used glom somewhere- recently although I don’t recall where. Grok is over used in scifi circles and is a turnoff to me now. Turgid sounds like a romance novel thing, but as a romance reader I must say I’m disappointed in how rarely it’s actually used. Cane cholla cactus strikes me as one of those things to play with and the pictures of them are encouraging too, hmmm.
Yeah, I don’t think anyone becomes a writer without going through a lot of these phases, so maybe they’re a necessary step on the path toward improvement. I suppose if you’re reading published novels, you won’t see the term all the time, and so I can see how that would result in people thinking it’s original. It’s amazing how many cliches I find in some of my old (and not-so-old) writing, and I’m sure I haven’t banished them all yet.
As DJV can attest, when I was on the WS staff, I saw a lot of “turgid prose.”
[...] system – I’m keeping this short, so I can wake up early and read manuscripts detailing bougainvillea. Maybe I’ll get to read about bougainvillea jutting from a hillside, punctuating something or [...]