DANNY-ISMS

In my high school drama class, the teacher used to watch our scenes and monologues and comment on what she called our "-isms," which were our subconscious behaviors that we were completely unaware that we were doing while on stage. These actions, tics, quirks, and nervous behaviors identified us as individuals and interfered with our total transformation into whatever character we were trying to portray. To emphasize the point, she attached our first name to the "-ism." Consquently, my subconscious behaviors became "Dannyisms."

In writing, we also have our "-isms." These would be expressions, themes, patterns, fall back beats and character actions that identify our style. Recently, I marked up a manuscript for a writer friend of mine and noted how often her characters swallowed. During scenes of dialogue, the character were always swallowing. In that novel, that was her "-ism." I'm not picking on that writer; we all have our "-isms" and we do not realize we are doing them. In a 200-plus page manuscript, it's hard to keep track of every last little action we give our characters, especially in the heat of composition. That's what peer readers are for.

In reading the second draft of School Spirit, I noticed many of my Dannyisms. Namely, that people were always "exhaling." "He looked at her and exhaled." "I exhaled to release my tension." "She exhaled in relief." People were also always having "lights go on" when they realized something. "A light went on in his head." "The light went on in her head and then he realized what happened." And a variation: "A light came up in her eyes and then she knew." Or the like. It's okay to put these in a rough draft to keep the story moving. But eventually, we must go back and fix them. As a result, during a quick polish, after the second draft of SS, I tried to locate and surgically alter most or all of my "-isms."

The point here is that during at least one draft, it's important that we search for our "-isms," and kill them. Well, not all of them. There's nothing inherently wrong with swallowing, exhaling, or having lights go on. We don't need to kill them all. But if they appear as a noticeable pattern in an entire manuscript, we must hope that some compassionate reader will point them out (with an eye to helping us improve our novel) and then we must have the courage to make a pass through the book and exhange some of them with new, fresher, and more original actions and behaviors for our characters.

That care and attention to detail will not only improve our overall writing skill and make our novel better, but cannot help but increase our chances of getting an agent or finding our onto the shelves of the local Barnes and Noble.

At least that's the plan.