posted
had, have, has....I've recently heard it suggested that these words can be overused and make a story seem boring. I have a theory that I wanted to share. Anyone may fel free to comment.
I think that the problem with "had" is that it inevitably leads to a situation in which something is told instead of shown. something that happened in the time before the current action is recapped, so it could not possibly be shown.
We know that too much telling and not enough showing can slow down a plot, but (I think) most of us know that there are times when telling is the answer, when thigns just are and it's too boring to go through it all. Or perhaps the author wants to remind the reader of something that happened earlier in the story.
I bring this up because I think part of learning to write is learning what the problem is. Very often, problems are flagged and you know that there's something wrong but you can't p[ut your finger on it. (Often, netierh can the flagger.) I think the showing versus telling thing is the underlying problem with "had" and I was curious if anyone else had a thought or cared to comment.
quote:I think that the problem with "had" is that it inevitably leads to a situation in which something is told instead of shown. something that happened in the time before the current action is recapped, so it could not possibly be shown.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. You can take just about any scene and by merely changing the tense you can put "hads" in all over the place. That doesn't mean a scene which was "showing" is now a scene which is "telling."
Posts: 1517 | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
Ok, let me try this again. It does not always change something from showing to telling. I suppose you can show an entire scene that "had happened" but that's not usually what happens. Usually it's something like this:
Martha watched helplessly as her husband walked out the door without looking back. It had not even been a serious fight. Martha did not understand what had gone wrong.
You see that we are being told what happened in the past, before this scene where her husband is walking out the door? That's not to say that this is bad, but it is an example of telling.
posted
I agree. A lot of teachers say that you can't use certain forms of "to be" in your writing. You just aren't allowed. Besides the obvious problem of "to be" being a helping verb, sometimes that is just the type of sentence that a writer wants to use. I think it is the same thing with "had." It is used more often than it should be but just using it doesn't necessarily make it bad (I have a feeling I'm going to say the same thing about passive voice when I get over to that thread).
posted
One of the things "had" is used for is in a transition--to let the reader know the story is moving into a flashback.
The story will be going along in simple past ("was" and so on) and in order for the reader to know that the scene has changed to a previous time, an author will often start using "had" (and so on). After the story is firmly into the flashback scene, the author may ease back into simple past, or not--depending on how long the flashback is.
Of course, if the author eases into simple past for a long flashback, the trick is then to figure out how to do the next transition--letting the reader know that the flashback is over. Sometimes, the author can get away with using present tense for a sentence or two before easing again into simple past, but you have to be careful with that.
The whole process is rather tricky, but when it works, it is very effective. (And the main way you know it works is if an involved reader or a casual reader doesn't notice.)
posted
I've never specifically noticed an over use of "had" or "to be" variants. I suppose, like anything, when they are misused they stand out like sore-thumbs. Usually though, these are more or less invisible words, like "said" and "the".
However, that, is another story. I've found it can be eliminated about 90% (or more) of the time.
i.e. I like the way that you did your hair yesterday. I like the way you did your hair yesterday.
Haven't you noticed that the weather is beginning to change. Haven't you noticed the weather is beginning to change.
That is removed from the sentence in each example, and it doesn't have any impact on the tone or meaning. The only change is in the number of words.
<O.K. enough ranting >
[This message has been edited by Robyn_Hood (edited September 29, 2004).]
posted
I had an English professor in college who had exactly two criterion for an A paper: the elimination of the word "that" from the entire paper and the elimination fo the word "it" from the entire papre. For my final research paper I had to point out to him that one of my "it"s was in a direct quote before he would give me the points back for it. I found it to be a strange pet peeve, but apparently a not-so uncommon one. Posts: 3567 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
Articles can be eliminated without changing meaning. This doesn't mean that it is better to remove them, merely that it is an option.
A long flashback may well use "had" a lot, to be grammatically correct. And while the content may be "showing" (in that rather mysterious parlance), it will probably feel like "telling", in the rather non-mysterious sense of having continual reminders that this already happened and is simply being remembered or related.
In this sense, "simply changing the tense" changes something from "showing" to "telling" pretty effectively. Part of this is because changing the tense forces the reader to think about tense, which reminds us to remember that we are, in point of fact, simply being told what is happening rather than being shown what is happening. If we want to put this is quasi-scientific terms, it is clear that the additional mental (or "neural") resources needed to understand and adapt to a change in tense must impinge on our "imaginative" centers, much the same way that visual processing reduces the amount of the brain devoted to obtaining information from touch and hearing. Thus, the flashback is not imagined quite as vividly, sometimes appearing slightly blurred or in sepia tones rather than in crisp full color. If the imaginative centers of the brain are too badly overloaded by the tense change, a recognizable image may not form at all, and thus the reader will only have the words on the page to "tell" what is happening.
Okay, seriously, this does kinda happen.
I think that KDW has a good point is that a long flashback shouldn't be in "correct" tense. A true flashback occurs in the present of the character having the flashback. There are several tricks to borrow. A flashback can be treated as a sort of waking dream sequence. Or it can be interleaved with the present, either in the form of events happening to the character or in the form of the character's internal consciousness that this is memory rather than reality. You can do a full flashback, with the character being shaken out of it at the end by something from the present (like someone else saying, "Hey, are you okay?"). Or you can bring out the events of the flashback in dialogue (this has the advantage of being able to show the flashback from the POV of another character).
Sometimes, a trick as simple as having an event in past perfect trigger a series of events related in simple past tense is enough. So you basically have paragraphs in the flashback start with a past perfect sentance, but most of the sentances are "had-nots"
posted
Christine - I hope that professer spent as much energy on content, exposition, and argument on that paper as he did searching the thing for all the "it"s in it. Things like that bug me as a waste of energy on less-important things.
Posts: 66 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
While I've never heard of the elimination of certain words as being the criterion for an "A", I did hear about an English professor who would give a failing grade on any paper that used the wrong "its/it's".
Posts: 1473 | Registered: Jul 2004
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