Lurking in the prose

Look at your last book and count the number of times you used is, are, was, and were. Thoughts? Lessons learned?

by Dietrich

Overusing auxiliary verbs weakens the prose, waters the action and makes the story less engaging. The question got me thinking about whether I was guilty of this, so I took a look at the opening for Dirty Little War. It’s a small part of the first chapter (just 564 words), but let’s check it for culprits.

Huck was getting a sinking feeling about the whole set-up, no place for the Marquis of Queensbury rules here, that’s for sure. No fancy dancing around a roped ring, just a good punch-up, two men going toe to toe till one went down. Taped hands and thirty seconds between rounds, the fight over when one fighter went down and stayed down past an eight count.

This city where pro fights had been banned along with the booze, where every man loved his sport as “much as his drink. The sport living on in secret alleys and out behind boxcars like this, waiting for its comeback on this one-time swampland connecting to the city’s rail lines, out of sight of the Exchange. The foul stench coming from the stockyards, stinging the eyes, the livestock pens holding hundreds of hogs.

Not a corner man or ring doctor — no corner and no ring, not even a spit bucket — and not a man in this crowd caring about the size or reach of either opponent, just a crowd fueled by booze, come to bet on the bare-knuckling. One or two of them giving the occasional look over at the man holding the bet money. The man with a smile on his face, and the bulge of a pistol under the coat.

Huck stepped to the line and showed his hands, Nails Morton pitting him against a rawboned Neanderthal now stepping to the line, giving Huck a hard look, a front tooth missing.

“I seen a hundred of you, and . . .” Grinding his hands together and growling.

Nails clapped Huck on the back like they were pals, saying, “You want some good advice, take the fall.” Smiling over at his gangster pals, two of them working the crowd, taking the bets, both with satchels holding the wagers slung over their shoulders, both with pistols shoved in their belts. Both scratching on notepads, taking bets on the rounds, giving odds on the prediction.

“Thanks just the same,” Huck said, smelling booze on the guy facing him.

“Maybe I ain’t being plain enough.” Nails smiled, leaning in again, his jacket falling open enough for Huck to see the butt of the pistol.

“I get you fine,” Huck said. “You say it nice and promise me more than the five, undo your coat and show me you ain’t asking.”

“You do catch on.” Nails kept the smile.

Huck looked at the circle of men on the tear, some still placing bets, and this two-bit crook acting like that Rothstein, the gangster who put in the fix and got the Sox to throw the World Series a year back, eight players in on it, all taking payoffs, losing to the Reds and causing a scandal that got them banned for life for their troubles.

“It’s more than advice,” Nails said. “A show of friendship if you will.”

“We friends now?”

“Could be.”

“Well, friend, like I told you, I don’t dive.”

“Then here’s my final number. Around here we call it a cut . . .” Looking eye to eye, Nails said, “A good show and it’s ten points of what we pull in. This crowd, I’m guessing you make ten easy, could be more. How’s that sound?”

“Sounds like you’re not hearing the no part.”

“Then, you could be looking at a different kind of cut.” The smile was gone now.

I used “was” twice and “were” only once. So, no overuse there. But, there are a couple of instances where “ain’t” was used, although I can get away with the improper contraction in dialog, pointing to the speaker’s low socio status.

 

In the back of my mind, I’m generally aware of grammar slip-ups like subject-verb agreement, overuse of passive construction, dangling modifiers and so on, but, I tend to toss the rule book out the window, especially when I’m writing dialog. That’s when I dip into the modal verbs and idiomatic phrases like “Going toe to toe” and adverbial phrases like “looking eye to eye.” And I often use fragments to give my writing that clipped tone, although at times I go the other way and use run-on sentences and comma splits if it suits the flow. I must drive my poor copy editor bonkers.

In the end, I believe creative writing stems from a deeper place than where the knowledge of grammar rules lies. And I look up to the greats like Cormac McCarthy, Elmore Leonard, Jack Kerouac and Toni Morrison, who all broke the rules and pushed the boundaries of language.