Unintentionally Limited Superlatives

A superlative is an adjective or adverb which expresses that something is of the highest or a very high degree of a particular quality. Most superlatives use the suffix -est or are made through combination with the word most: examples include best, smartest, shortest, most clever, and most foolish.

Superlatives are usually limited by clarifying that the object being described is part of a narrower category. For example:

     Gabrielle was the smartest person Jun had met in his two years at the university.

     Jun is the most stubborn man at this school.

     This place has the best ice cream in town.

People almost always limit superlatives in this way to keep their expressions from being hyperbolic or ridiculous, or simply to be precise. However, I often see writers doing this unintentionally. For example:

     Prince Samuel paused, his breath catching in his throat. Across the ballroom stood the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in a sky-blue dress.

You see the problem, right? The author was trying to convey two things: first, that this woman was the most beautiful woman that Samuel had ever seen; and second, that she was wearing a blue dress. But by combining these two facts into one statement, the author inadvertently ended up sounding like a Flight of the Conchords song:

I see these sorts of unintentionally limited superlative statements with surprising frequency. The obvious problem with them is they tend to take a serious statement—one meant to convey a character’s awe or surprise—and turn it into something comical.

So how can you fix these sorts of sentences? Contrary to what many writers seem to think, a comma is not the best way to fix the problem:

     Prince Samuel paused, his breath catching in his throat. Across the ballroom stood the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, in a sky-blue dress.

Now it looks like you’re just saying the same thing, but with poor punctuation. The best way to fix unintentionally limited superlatives is to separate the extra description out into its own sentence:

    

     Prince Samuel paused, his breath catching in his throat. Across the ballroom stood the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her golden hair cascaded in curls over her shoulders, and she wore a sky-blue dress that sparkled with hidden gems.

Keep an eye out for this in your writing; if you want to hunt down any superlatives in your story, you can do searches for “most” and for “est ” (with a space at the end) to get it done quickly.

Metaphor and the Beginnings of Stories

Beginning a story can be a tricky thing. There’s a lot of information that you need to get across to your readers right away if they’re going to understand what’s going on: who the main character is, what their personality is like, where they are, what they’re doing, etc. And if you’re writing speculative fiction (fantasy, science fiction, horror, etc.) it gets even worse—you’ll probably have to introduce an entirely new world to your readers, complete with fantastic magic or technology, strange aliens or monstrous creatures, and imagined cultures with centuries or more of history.

That is a lot to get across to a reader, and deciding where to begin can be daunting. What can you show the readers that will be interesting and engaging without being so foreign as to be completely beyond understanding? What major elements of character and setting need to be given right away, and which need to be introduced slowly and subtly over time?

Sadly, I’m not here to answer all those questions for you. Maybe someday we’ll dive further into those topics, but this blog is for discussing errors that crop up in prose, not in plotting or content. So today I’d like to highlight a common prose mistake that many writers make in the beginning of their stories: the overuse of metaphors.

Most of you probably remember the simple definitions of simile and metaphor that you’ve been told since elementary school: a simile is describing one thing as being like something else, while a metaphor is describing a thing by saying it is something else even though you don’t literally mean it.

     Simile: The castle loomed over the town like an overprotective mother watching to make sure her children were playing safely.

     Metaphor: The train was a powerful, serpentine dragon winding through the hills, belching smoke from its great mouth.

Simple enough, right? Now I myself am not much of a metaphor man. I’ve heard a lot of talk about the poetic capabilities of metaphor and all that, but at the end of the day I tend to rely much more heavily on similes. If you’re a metaphor fan, then hey—more power to you. Just watch out to make sure you don’t pile up a lot of metaphors at the beginning of your story.

Why? Well, because at the beginning of your story, you haven’t been able to give all of that background we discussed earlier—all of the character, plot, personality, history, culture, setting, or explanation of various fantastical elements that your story might hold. And without all of that background, your readers won’t have any frame of reference to determine whether you are being metaphorical or literal.

For example, here’s the beginning of a story:

     Kalateia stood on the ridge surveying the dusty, bloody remnants of the battlefield. Corpses were strewn throughout the valley below, from mountain slope to mountain slope—her soldiers, the enemy’s soldiers, and hundreds of innocent civilians who’d had the misfortune to live in the valley where the two armies had met. Spider-like gravewagons crawled over the field, harvesting up bodies for use in future battles. The heavy corpses were difficult to gather, zombies clinging to the soil and to one another in a futile attempt to avoid the claws of the gravewagons.

So here’s the five-hundred-and-twenty-three-dollar question: are the corpses literal zombies or not? Are these “gravewagons” gathering up dead bodies that are simply trampled down into the blood-muddied soil and therefore seem to cling to the ground like strange zombies, or are those corpses literally undead and holding on to the ground and each other in an attempt to avoid being harvested? Without additional context, you can’t be absolutely certain, can you?

Even if you’re not writing speculative fiction, metaphors can be confusing at the beginning of a story. They can give your readers a moment where they’re knocked out of the story, where they stop to wonder, “wait, did I pick up a fantasy novel by mistake? What is this?” Sometimes it’s only a moment of confusion, sometimes it can be a few paragraphs or even several pages before they can be sure that you were being metaphorical. Either way, the last thing that you want to do during the first few pages of your story is introduce bumps into an already-steep learning curve. Beginnings are confusing enough—don’t add even more confusion!

You might think that your metaphor is clearly not meant to be taken literally, that there is no way someone could think you actually meant what you said. Something like:

     The bus moved through the field with surprising grace, a bulky cat carrying passengers to destinations unknown.

No one could take that literally, right?

Wrong.

There is almost no metaphor so outlandish that it will be clear to everyone that it’s not literal. So ease up on your metaphor usage until you’ve given your readers time to get some context.



P.S.
There won't be any new posts for Wednesday and Friday this week, as I'll be busy at the Superstars Writing Seminar! Regular updates will resume on the 9th.

Word Mix-Ups: "Looked Like" vs. "Appeared As"

“Appeared as” is not a synonym for “looked like.”

And there you have it. Have a nice day, folks!

I suppose I could elaborate a bit.

We all know how to use looked like—we do it every day. Here’s some examples:

     He looked like a construction worker.

     That cloud looks like a porcupine.

     My girlfriend’s uncle looked like an angry honey badger.

Pretty simple, right? Looked like is used to indicate that two objects have similar appearances. I’ve seen quite a few people try to use appeared as in the same way, but it just doesn’t work:

     He appeared as a construction worker.

In this sort of usage, appeared as seems to indicate that the person we’re discussing has the ability to alter their appearance at will and has chosen this form to appear to our characters. Like this:

     The angel appeared as a construction worker.

     God appeared to Moses as a burning bush.

The genie appeared as a bee. Because he literally changed his form and appeared out of nowhere.

Many an author has created unintentional hilarity through the misuse of appeared as. This can be particularly confusing if you’re writing speculative fiction of some sort—if your story is already full of magic or might-as-well-be-magic levels of technology, then your audience won’t always know just what you meant. For all they know, the dimension-hopping monster or planet-eating alien can actually appear as whatever they want.

    My girlfriend’s uncle appeared as an angry honey badger. He is a wizard, you see.

Now, there is a situation where looked like and appeared as can be interchanged a bit more freely. In all of the examples above, looked like was used to create similes—to imply visual similarity. But it can also be used to describe the literal nature of a person or object—to describe what something is. For example:

     The room was in shambles, furniture in pieces, window shattered, blood on the floor; it looked like a nasty fight happened there.

     The room was in shambles, furniture in pieces, window shattered, blood on the floor; it appeared as though a nasty fight happened there. (Appeared that would work even better, but I wanted to keep the as in the phrase.)

The distinction between visual simile and literal description of nature is important in these situations. Looked like can be used in either scenario, but appeared as cannot.

Dialog to Avoid: "As a ____, I . . ."

Here’s an irritating little phrase that we’ve all heard or read some variety of in a story: “As a _____, I . . .”

     “As a mortician, I can tell you that her description of the embalming process is accurate.”

     “As a psychologist, it is my expert opinion that this man is completely off his nutter.”

     “As your mother, I cannot allow you to meet with that girl anymore.”

     “As lord of these lands, it is my duty to care for the needs of the lesser beings under my rule.”

     “As someone who blogs about prose and grammar, I am constantly showered with praise and entirely deserved adoration.”

 

"And money. Don't forget all the money."

Nine times out of ten, this phrase and its variations are unrealistic, unnecessary, or unintentionally arrogant. Unrealistic, because they tend to be a form of maid-and-butler dialog, where a character tells people information they should already know. Take that third example above—whoever the woman’s child is, they already know that she was their mother. She didn’t need to say it. It feels like breaking the fourth wall; the woman isn’t identifying herself as the other character’s mother for the purpose of speaking to her child, she’s doing it because the author needed to let the audience know that she was the other character’s mother (and even then, it was probably already obvious to the readers).

That brings us to the second problem—such phrases are generally unnecessary. You’ll almost never encounter a situation where a character needs to explain who they are or what qualifications they possess before they speak. Usually, if you’ve done your job right, you’ll have explained all that far more smoothly in some other situation.

So often, when this phrase pops up, it is because the author wanted to remind the readers who this character is or what their qualifications are. Maybe the character hasn’t been around for a while, or you simply haven’t mentioned their profession in some time. In those situations, find a smoother way to work a reminder in. Or, better yet, trust your readers to remember what you told them before. If they don’t, maybe you need to make the character’s profession or position a stronger part of their character so that your audience won’t forget who they are.

But what about situations where the people around a character genuinely don’t know who a character is? That would justify them beginning a sentence in this way, right? Well, yes . . . but . . . that brings us to the final problem with this phrase: unintentionally arrogant.

Writers tend to be a loquacious bunch—we usually have respectably large vocabularies and a great fondness for words. We tend to read a lot, sometimes far more than we actually speak to other people. Being insulated into a group that so loves wordplay and a well-spoken turn of phrase can skew our perspective on how people actually speak. It can also blind us to how we ourselves sometimes sound when we speak.

So, that said, here is a variety of ways to express the thought “As a ____, I . . .”:

     “Oh, I can answer that—I’m a nursing student at the U. I think she actually got the details of the procedure pretty close to perfect.”

     “Hon, I know you don’t like it, but it’s a father’s job to look out for his daughter. I don’t think you should go out with that boy again.”

     “Well, if you want an engineer’s opinion, I’m happy to give mine. That whole design is completely infeasible.”

     “As an artist, I am frequently misunderstood by those around me.”

Which of those sounds the most arrogant? Now, this could just be me, but I generally feel like “As a ____, I . . .” is pretty much the most puffed-up way of expressing one’s qualifications.

Of course it’s possible to use this phrase in a way that doesn’t sound arrogant. But in those cases, the lack of arrogance is generally conveyed through tone and body language. When you’re writing, you can’t rely on those tools. So you have the distinct possibility that people will supply their own emphasis and tone to words which make them think of these sorts of people:

     “Well, as a vegan, I don’t believe in hurting any creatures in any way, especially for my own mere comforts.”

     “As a Christian, I would never let my daughter behave in that manner. It’s just not right.”

Now, sometimes you’ll have a character who is rather puffed-up with their own importance, or who is very loquacious and maybe a little oblivious to how they sound. If that’s the case, then it might be worth busting out the “As a ____, I . . .” phrase. Most of the time, however, people just don’t speak that way—it’s redundant, odd, and often viewed as an indication of self-importance.

Perspective Errors: Parents' Names

 First-person perspective and third-person limited perspective are probably the two most commonly-used perspectives in fiction. First-person is narrated by a character in their own words, while third-person limited places the audience directly inside the mind of the perspective character. In both cases, the language of the prose and what the narrative focuses on should be filtered through that character, as we’ve discussed before. We’ve also discussed perspective in relation to the name placeholders that you use to refer to characters. Today, we’ll look at a specific name-related perspective problem that writers encounter again and again.

The problem is this: perspective characters often have parents. That’s a good thing—not every protagonist should be an orphan. 

"One would think that Fiction's entire collection of protagonists had been recruited solely from her orphan asylums. Which we know is not the case."

But parents create a rather unique problem when it comes to names and name placeholders. Take a look at this example:

     Teri crouched on the top of the tall brick wall, watching for danger. There was no movement on the grounds below or in the manor ahead, and the narrow street behind her was clear of people in her direction.

     From her left, she heard a soft whistle. “Johanna, Luis,” Alina called to Teri’s parents, “we’re all clear. Come on up.”

     Teri gave a thumbs-up to her parents, and they silently scuttled out of the shadows across the street and up the rough face of the wall. They crouched beside her; Johanna bore a long rope coiled over her shoulder, and Luis carried a bag of thieves’ tools on his back.

     “Good job, you two,” Johanna whispered. “If you see anyone headed our way, signal us in the usual way.”

     “If we’re not back in twenty minutes, head back to the hideout,” Luis added. “We’ll catch up to you there.”

     Teri nodded. “Be careful on the skylight, dad.”

     Luis ruffled her hair with a smile and climbed down into the manor gardens.

     “I love you, my little girl,” Johanna whispered, giving Teri a quick hug.

     “I love you too, mom,” Teri whispered back as Johanna followed after Luis.

Do you see the problem? This passage is written in third-person limited perspective, and we’re inside Teri’s head. Now, Teri calls her parents “mom” and “dad” when she speaks. It is therefore logical to assume that she thinks of them that way, too—most children do. Most people do, for that matter. No matter how old we get, most of us think of our parents as “mom” and “dad.”  But in the passage above, Teri’s parents are referred to by name in the prose, even though we’re in Teri’s head.

Now, this is a very common difficulty, especially if your protagonist’s parents are prominent characters in the story. It can be very awkward and clunky to refer to them as “so-and-so’s mother” over and over again in the prose. For example:

     Teri handed her mother the bag. Her mother began to dig through it, frowning. “I want the two of you to stay here until I get back,” she said.

     Teri and Alina glanced at one another. “But you’ll need spotters,” Alina said. “It’s too dangerous for you to go alone.”

     Teri’s mother shook her head. “No. The two of you aren’t ready for this kind of job. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

     Teri placed her hand over her mother’s where she was holding the bag open. “Mom, please. Let us help.”

     Her mother sighed and hung her head for a moment. “Not this time, little girl,” she said. When she looked up, Teri was shocked to see that there were tears in her eyes. She’d never seen her mother cry.

That gets a little awkward, doesn’t it? Besides “her mother” being a bit of a long name placeholder, we're forced to repeat it more than we would her name (to avoid confusion between all of the instances of she and her that get thrown around with three female characters in the scene). We’re also forced to repeat Teri’s name a little more than looks good (otherwise, we’d create situations where the her in her mother would seem to be referring to Alina and not Teri—hence we say “Teri’s mother” in the third paragraph instead of “her mother.).

This problem is kind of a Catch-22. There tend to be problems whichever way you go.

Referring to the parents as “her mother” and “her father” thoughout the prose will be more true to life. But the larger the parents’ parts are, the more difficult this will make the writing.

Choosing to refer to the perspective’s characters by their names in the prose is an acceptable option, even if it is technically a small perspective error. Plenty of authors have done this in the past—for instance, if you read the first chapter of The Eye of the World (the first book of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series), you will see that Robert Jordan chose this method of dealing with the problem. Even though the perspective is third-person limited from Rand’s viewpoint, Rand’s father is referred to by name (Tam) in the prose. Most people don’t even notice anything unusual about it—and those who do notice the perspective error will quickly get used to it.

The problem with this approach is that it can create a subtle, unconscious distance between the perspective character and their parent. In the case of Rand and Tam, for instance (minor spoilers ahead), I was completely unsurprised when it was revealed that Tam was not Rand’s biological father. Rand was completely shocked by the revelation, but for years I could not figure out why it didn’t surprise me. Eventually, I pinpointed this as the reason—it is not uncommon for children or grown adults to refer to their adopted parents or step-parents by name, for a variety of reasons. The fact that the prose referred to Rand’s father by his first name even though we were in Rand’s head caused me to unconsciously label their relationship as an adoptive one rather than a biological one.

(This is in no way meant to disparage the relationships between children and their adoptive parents, of course. It is simply an observation of common patterns of speech and the situations in which they tend to appear.)

Now, is that a minor problem? Yes, probably. However, it is a problem that you ought to consider when approaching the problem of how to refer to your perspective character’s parents in the prose. 

Next time, we’ll discuss a few tips and possible alternate solutions to this problem.

Accents and Dialog: To Use, or Not To Use?

Accents and dialects—as in a manner of pronunciation peculiar to a particular person or group of people—can be difficult to convey in written prose. Usually, writers deliberately misspell words to reflect how they are actually pronounced with a certain accent. For example:

     “Oh, Huck, I bust out a-cryin’ en grab her up in my arms, en say, ‘Oh, de po’ little thing! De Lord God Amighty fogive po’ ole Jim, kaze he never gwyne to fogive hisself as long’s he live!’ Oh, she was plumb deef en dumb, Huck, plumb deef en dumb — en I’d ben atreat’n her so!” –Jim, from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.

     “Sorry to do anythin’ as may cause an interruption to such wery pleasant proceedin’s, as the king said wen he dissolved the parliament.”

–Sam Weller, from Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers.

     “Could ye manage ta go ten minutes without perforating yer aorta? Just once?!?” –Durkon, from Rich Burlew’s The Order of the Stick.

Accents and dialects in print can range from heavy alterations to nearly every word (as in the case of Jim above) to minor alterations to just a few words (as in the case of Durkon).

On the one hand, accents are a prominent part of cultural identity and daily life. We would be remiss not to include them in our writing from time to time. Many characters just don’t come across as strongly without their accent. Characters from certain cultures or ethnicities can seem unrealistic, or even offensive, without the proper accent.

On the other hand, deliberately misspelling words to convey an accent can quickly render a passage of text difficult if not impossible to read. Many readers will find such passages irritating; and if there’s enough of them, those readers might just walk away from the story.

Here’s a few tips for incorporating accents and dialects into your writing:

Know the purpose of the accent: Why is this accent part of your story? Is it conveying important information about the character? Is it adding to the realism of the narrative? Or did you just feel like writing an accent? Accents aren't a gimmick to attract readers; they're actually more likely to drive readers away. Try to make sure that the benefits of the accent outweigh the potential negative reader response.

Try to keep words recognizable: In our examples above, many of the altered words are still immediately recognizable. De, fogive, hisself, anythin’, ye, yer—especially in context, none of these are difficult to interpret. Other words, such as kaze and gwyne, have gone so far afield from their actual spellings that they force the reader to pause and sound them out. It forces them, temporarily, out of the story.

Don’t count on people reading the passages out loud: Unless you’re writing a script, you’re not writing something that is intended to be read aloud. Your defense of the accent might be that “it’s perfectly understandable if you read it out loud.” But just remember—many people will be reading your work in situations where they cannot read it out loud. Many others simply won’t want to. Still others will attempt to read it out loud but will be unfamiliar enough with the accent that they still won’t understand it.

Focus on unusual words, diction, or idioms: Accents and dialects often come with unusual words or phrases, such as Jim’s “she was plumb deef.” If you take out the misspellings, you can still get a bit of an idea of his speech simply from his use of the word plumb. “She was plumb deaf.” If you use the word haver (to babble or ramble foolishly), many readers will understand that your character is Scottish. Since the Russian language doesn’t have the articles a or the, many Russians have trouble learning to use those words in English. This can result in sentences such as, “We must find bag and then quickly return to car.” There are all useful methods of conveying accent and dialect without actually having to phonetically misspell words.

Make sure you know the accent: If you get an accent wrong, then many people will notice and be bothered by it. For example:

Now, I applaud Walter Koenig and Anton Yelchin as actors. But every time that I have to listen to Ensign Chekov speak, I get irritated. Why? “Nuclear wessels.” “Wictor wictor two.” The problem with these phrases is that they don’t represent a Russian accent—in fact, they represent the exact opposite of a Russian accent. Russians don’t have trouble with the sound “V”; their language is packed full of Vs. However, their language does not have a “W” sound. Consequently, they often say “V” instead of “W”: "I'm on my vay," for instance. The makers of Star Trek got the accent backwards, making Chekov sound like he has a speech impediment. (Just on the Ws and Vs, though. The rest is pretty good, especially as portrayed by Yelchin.)

Why is this such a problem? Because I usually love Russian characters simply because they are Russian. Because of Chekov’s mixed-up accent, however, he irritates me. I am thrown out of the story by a character who should have been pulling me in. There are enormous amounts of people out there who understand any given accent or dialect you might choose. Find one of them and ask them to help you out with your character’s speech.

P.S.

A personal pet peeve: I mentioned above how many Russians omit a and the when speaking in English. They do not omit the words my, your, his, her, our, or other possessive articles. They have those words in Russian, and they know how to use them. It’s really just a and the.

Perspective Errors: Name Placeholders

We’ve previously discussed how to use synonyms to avoid frequent repetition of a single word and the needfor description to remain true to the mindset of the perspective character. Today, we’ll discuss a point at which these two topics intersect.

I mentioned in this post that it is a common and useful practice to refer to a character by a short descriptor in order to avoid repeating their name too often. If you wrote a scene where a detective was interviewing a butcher named Mr. Giacomo, for instance, you might alternately refer to Mr. Giacomo as “the butcher,” “the witness,” or even simply “the man”:

     “What did the assailant look like?” Detective Mullens asked.

     “Well, he was short,” Mr. Giacomo replied. He held out his hand at about the height of his shoulder. “Maybe this tall. He was dressed in black.” The man shrugged. “That was all I could make out.”

However, a problem can arise when referring to characters by these sort of placeholders.

     Piotr did his best not to cry as his mother pulled him into the closet and shut the door behind them. She sat on the floor and pulled him into her lap, stroking his hair.

     “Shhh, you need to be quiet now,” his mother whispered. “We have to stay hidden, all right?”

     Piotr nodded and bit his lip, throwing his arms around his mother’s neck. He was still sniffling, but he held in the tears.

     There was a crash in the room outside. Piotr almost cried out, but his mother hugged him tight against her. He could feel that the woman was holding her breath, and so he did the same, trying to be absolutely silent. They sat in silence, trembling, as the men ransacked the bedroom outside.

The problem in this passage is a small but pervasively common one—it’s the point where Piotr’s mother is referred to as “the woman.”

In this post, we discussed the need for description to match the perspective of the character. In the example above, Piotr is our perspective character. How many children do you know that would ever refer to their mother as “the woman”? While his mother is, of course, a woman, for him to think of her by that term feels very distant and cold. It feels out of character.

"I love my mother, but the woman wouldn't let me have ice cream for dessert."
See how off that feels? This kid is either a brat or not being written well.

It wasn’t a problem for Detective Mullens to think of Mr. Giacomo as “the man” because the two of them barely knew each other—their relationship is not at all close or caring.  But Piotr and his mother are too close for that.

This problem sometimes arises in the works of authors for whom English is a second language. In many other languages, referring to someone as “man” or “woman” is normal and carries no connotation of emotional distance. In English, however, it does; so watch out for this.

If you use a name placeholder, make sure that it is a word that fits the relationship between the character and the perspective character.

Minding Your "ings," Part Three

We’ve previously discussed proper use of present participles (a form of verb that ends in “ing”) in this post and this post. It may be helpful to have read those two articles before you read this one.

In those posts, we went over the need for an “ing” verb to have a subject in the sentence that performs it—usually, present participles are used to indicate that one subject is performing two or more actions simultaneously. For example:

     Humming to herself, Jalila began to paint.

In this sentence, Jalila is performing both actions—humming and painting. Most sentences that use this type of “ing” verb are formatted along these lines, with a single subject. However, it is possible to have multiple subjects in a single sentence performing simultaneous actions:

     Her back was still as straight as a rod, her fingernails digging into the steering wheel and leaving imprints in the faux leather.

This sentence follows the rules from our previous posts—every verb has an appropriate subject performing it (“Her back” for “was” and “her fingernails” for “digging” and “leaving”) and the actions are simultaneous. It’s not a bad sentence by any means, but it could still be a little bit better.

A sentence with this sort of format—subject #1 performs an action while subject #2 performs a simultaneous action with an “ing” verb—carries with it a certain implication. That implication is that subject #2 (and subjects #3, #4, and so on, if there are any more) are somehow part of subject #1. Think of it as a wiki page with several subpages—the subpages are part of the topic introduced by the primary page, adding pertinent information to it. That’s why they’re attached to it. Similarly, subjects #2 and #3 are part of the same sentence as subject #1 because they add more detailed information to the topic introduced by the primary subject. Otherwise, they should just have their own sentence.

In our example sentence, “her back” is subject #1. Subject #2 is “her fingernails.” Although these are both part of the same whole, the whole itself is never mentioned in the sentence. “Her fingernails” are not a part of “her back”—not if she’s human, at least!  Subject #2 isn’t adding detail to the action of subject #1, it is adding separate information. The sentence could be fixed in two different ways:

     Tia sat with her back as straight as a rod, her fingernails digging into the steering wheel and leaving imprints in the faux leather.

Or . . .

     Her back was still as straight as a rod. Her fingernails dug into the steering wheel, leaving imprints in the faux leather.

In the first fixed example, we make the character the primary subject of the sentence instead of her back. Since “her fingernails” are a part of the character, the sentence flows properly. In the second fixed example, we simply take all the information about “her fingernails” and make it a sentence on its own, removing the implication that it is somehow an added detail to the first portion.

Here’s another common use of this format:

     They hurried to prepare the apartment, Jalila shoving discarded clothing and junk out of sight and Naima vacuuming the matted carpet. 

In this case, the primary subject is “They.” Since Jalila and Naima are both part of “They,” the sentence flows correctly. Now, that’s not to say that this is the best format to use in this case—but if you do use it, make sure that it follows the proper logic. “A whole performs an action, with individual parts of the whole performing specific actions x and y.”

Perspective Errors: Matching Description and Viewpoint

One of the most important aspects of writing is getting out of your own head and into the heads of your perspective characters. Some characters might be quite a lot like you, but many of them will view the world much differently—and it’s important that you keep your perspective (or the perspective of other characters) from bleeding into the heads of your protagonists, especially when you’re describing the world around them.

In this post, we discussed one way that such perspective bleed can happen—when an author is an expert on a certain topic, it can pop up in their writing even when it shouldn’t. For instance, I’m pretty well-trained in English grammar and editing. If I were writing from the point of view of a well-educated librarian, I might have her note that the text on a sign misused a present-continuous participle and left a modifier dangling. However, if I were writing from the perspective of a largely-illiterate street thug walking past the same sign, describing the sentence using those detailed terms would be completely out of place.

This problem—describing things in ways your perspective character wouldn’t—is probably most common when a perspective character is of a different nationality, race, or gender from the author. For instance, here is the single most common and jarring example that I have come across (and I have come across versions of it many, many times):

     Diana frowned at Detective Mullens. “My husband didn’t keep secrets from me, detective. If he had been involved in something illegal, he would have told me.”

     Detective Mullens raised his hands in a placating manner. “I’m not trying to cast aspersions on your husband, ma’am. I just have to follow every lead and possibility I come across. Do you recognize these ledgers?”

     The detective handed her a three-ring binder. She did recognize it—it held their family finances. It usually sat on a shelf in her and her husband’s bedroom. She hadn’t even realized it was missing. “Where did you find this?” she asked.

     Before the detective could answer, the front door opened and Diana’s twenty-three year old daughter Stefanie walked in. She’d clearly been jogging—her bronze skin was glistening with sweat, her body firm and lean but still curvy. Her dark hair was pulled up in a simple ponytail, though a few strands had fallen loose to dangle in front of her vivid brown eyes and her full, red lips. Her ample breasts were outlined clearly through the tight sports bra she wore, moving up and down as her heavy breathing slowed to normal. She bent down almost sensuously to brush some dirt from her tight red leggings, and Diana frowned when she noticed that Detective Mullens was watching appreciatively.

     Diana cleared her throat, and Stefanie looked up in surprise. “Oh, hi,” she said. “I didn’t see you there. What’s going on?”

Now, I sincerely hope that you all can see the problem in this passage. We’re in Diana’s head—that’s clear from the fact that we’ve been given her thoughts and no one else’s. Therefore, everything we see should come through the filter of Diana’s mind. Everything should be described as she would describe it—and if that is how she would describe her own daughter, there’s something seriously wrong with this family.

These particular scenes usually happen for one of two reasons. First, the (probably male) author is describing the daughter as he, the author, pictures her without any regard to viewpoint. This is poor writing—if your viewpoint doesn’t allow you to describe something in the way you’d like, either change your viewpoint to one compatible with your description or change your description to one compatible with the viewpoint.

The second possibility is that the author wants to convey how Detective Mullens sees Stefanie, because he’s the actual protagonist and we’ve only temporarily leapt to Diana’s perspective. If that’s the case, then why are we in Diana’s perspective? Very few stories are well served by multiple viewpoints—you might as well keep the point of view with Detective Mullens.

(By the way, this particular problem—sexualizing a character while in the viewpoint of a character who wouldn’t sexualize them—is much more common from male authors than female writers. But female writers are definitely not immune to this error, so be on guard!)

These two people should not describe things in the same way. Don't describe what he sees in a way she would describe it, or vice versa.

Always remember that description should match the perspective of the character—don’t let your personal viewpoint or the view of a non-viewpoint character influence description, unless you want to make some unfortunate implications about the perspective character!

For more on this topic, check out this post.