Mechanical and Emotive, Failure States (Shocker, they're not perfect!)

All right, so I am in a good mood because my latest smashwords book ended up selling super well, which is something I didn’t really expect and I got a flood of energy. Figured I’d use it to do some good and put down some more writing lessons!

This is gonna be a shorter one than last time, but it’s also something that I promised to cover. So previously, I went over emotive writing and mechanical writing. I showed you their strengths, their benefits and how they can help you write better sex scenes and also just generally write better.

But there is a dark side to everything and sadly I’m not talking **** Stars and Sith but the far more boring and yet common ‘’this is harming your ability to write’’.

So today, I am gonna cover the failure states of both emotive and mechanical writing and how to recognise/avoid them.

Part One: Mechanical Writing

Mechanical writing is the skeleton of your story. It provides the bones, the framework that you build off. Emotive work gives the tendons, muscle and sinew but it would all be worthless without your mechanical stuff holding it together.

The main drawback of mechanical writing is that it tends towards boring. Without emotive stuff to spice it up, it’s dull and mundane. It’s descriptions on top of descriptions. If you have ever seen a story that was written well but didn’t have any sense of fun, excitement or spark? It was probably because the author let their mechanical writing **** out their emotive writing and ended up with a dry, boring and technically correct work.

Allow me to draw you an example of this form of failure state:

‘’The fire was hot. Davis knew not to let it touch him. He knew that he wouldn’t survive if it did. He had to get to the other end of the corridor, but he had no idea how. He spied a fire-proof cloak. If he wrapped himself in that and ran down the corridor, would it last for long enough?’’

Okay so here you can see the basic concept is good. Fire, danger, guy needs to get to the other side, has a solution but isn’t sure that it will work. In theory, these are all working parts to a dramatic scene.

But do you notice? There is no emotion to it. It just tells you what is happening. It informs but doesn’t feel. You understand the danger, but there is a disconnect.The story doesn’t grip you or make you care.

It’s technically well written in that there are no obvious errors. But you don’t give a shit what happens to him. You don’t care.Why should you?It does nothing to make you!

The above scene is an example of mechanical writing that has been allowed to push out emotive writing. It’s what happens when you get too into describing things bit don’t splash in emotions. Emotions are your latch, your key. They’re the way people engage with your work and if you don’t include them it’s the same as building a gate that doesn’t open. Pointless, futile and kind of silly!

Now, that’s one failure state. But it’s not the most common. I’d say the above is a high skill failure rate. That means that while it doesn’t work, it’s technically correct. You can see the writer was good at what they do. It’s not a failing in their ability, it’s a failing in their style.

By far the most common form of mechanical failure is over description· You’ll find this most often in fanfics, but professional works are also not immune to it. This is when people come back to the same points again and again and again because they’re important to the plot but the writer doesn’t trust the reader to notice or grasp them without having their hand held.

This is a skill issue and a trust issue. I know it can be hard and bluntly, some of your readers will be idiots. It’s the internet, that can’t be helped. Some people will just see what they want to see no matter how bleedingly obvious you make your plot. But most people are more intelligent than that! Your readers don’t need their hands held, and if you try to do it, it’s stifling and annoying! It shows a lack of respect for the people reading your work, it’s treating them like children. It’s acting like you have to point out every little detail or else it’ll be missed and you shouldn’t do that.

Not only does this kind of thing rob any mystery from your work, but it also creates situations where descriptions are massive and heavy! If you feel the need to mention anything important three or four times, then you’re gonna be circling back a lot. It’s frustrating to read. It’s boring to slog through. It lengthens your work but adds no value.

Of course, there is a different side to this. Sometimes, repetition is important! It adds gravity and weight and if you want to drive something in, then it’s usually the best way. So how do you tell when something is too far or when it’s just right? Well, sorry to say, but often it really is just best judgement.

Let me give you two examples. One done right and one done wrong. We’ll start with the one that’s done in a bad way.

‘’Sarah moaned; her body tingling. As Alex reached for her, his fingers drew a shuddering gasp from her throat. Her body shivered; her pussy was so wet now. Her clit ached. She yelped as he touched it, her body trembled. A low note of desperation tumbled from her lips.’’

Do you see the problems here? This is actually a fairly decent bit of erotica, but it had two things that it absolutely beats you over the head with. Can you see what they are?

Sarah is vocal! Now, that’s pretty good in a sex scene. It’s a way to show that she’s enjoying it. In theory, you should include something like that! But this snippet really hammers it in. Notice how almost every second sentence references some sound she makes? Even though it uses different words for them, it’s basically saying the same thing again and again. ‘’She yelped, she moaned, she made a sound.’’

When you tie things together like this, it loses its power. It becomes annoying to read. I am not saying that you need to only say it once, but unless you’re intentionally repeating for effect, break up your repetitions!

The second problem is similar. It’s the same issue but with a different thing. Do you notice? She trembled, she shivered, the poor girl seems to be having a seizure! Again, repetition of this sort of thing is good. It drives in how excited she is, how ****, how wanting.

But because this example is exactly as subtle as a hammer to the face, it loses power and becomes annoying.

Now let me give you an example of a good form of repetition.

‘’Sarah’s pussy was wet. She knew it was. She could feel it; the arousal beaded her inner thighs like dew. Her hand pulled at her short skirt, but she had no hope of covering it. The people in the class began to turn their heads. Someone whistled, her face turned red. She wanted to be somewhere, anywhere else. Her clit throbbed with a traitorous heat; her skin tingled under so many pairs of eyes.’’

Do you notice that this version does the same thing? Basically, the entire paragraph is hammering in ‘’She has no panties, people can see her pussy!’’ But why is it different from the first one?

Well, it’s because it cloaks itself better. It’s more subtle. Do you notice how the first example relied on key words? ‘’Trembled, shivered, moaned, gasped, etc’’. Basically, it was a chain of words that meant mostly the same thing interspersed with light description.

The second version starts the same way. It tells you bluntly she has no panties, but after that it trails off into the effects of that. Instead of saying the same thing over and over, it implies it by showing you how the world reacts to it. It’s still basically the same thing. ‘’Sarah has no panties’’ but rather than telling you again and again it just shows you and shows you how it makes her feel.

Next, I wanna talk a little bit about the failure modes of Emotive Writing, so let’s get started with that!

Part Two: Emotive Writing

Now, by far the biggest and most common failure mode I have seen for emotive work is not being emotive. More specifically, it’s when it’s actually just mechanical writing in disguise. Now this makes sense. Mechanical writing is easier to write. It comes more naturally. Often, emotive stuff is hard and good emotive stuff takes effort and time and often revision too! Doing basic ass emotive structure that is actually just mechanical writing in a mask is a solution to that.

But it’s a bad one. Let me show you an example of what I mean, and I know for a fact that you have all seen this one. Anyone who has read fanfiction has. And you’ve probably written it too. I know that I have.

‘’Alex was angry, he turned towards Sarah and shouted.

“What did you do?!”

‘’She looked afraid and asked him to step back with a scared voice. But he was too furious to care.’’

Do you see what I mean yet? You’ll often see this in fanfic, even good fanfic. It’s when you don’t actually describe how your characters are feeling. You just tag them and that’s it.

Alex was angry. That’s all we’re told. We don’t feel how angry he is, we don’t see it. We don’t get any emotive understanding of what it’s like or how scared Sarah is or anything like that. We just…get told that he’s angry and she’s scared.

You see what I mean? This is mechanical writing in a wig! Emotive stuff should make us feel! It should ground us in the scene, show us the characters. Instead, we’re just dryly told what they - and by extension we - should be feeling.

Let me do the scene again but this with proper emotive work.

‘Alex was angry. No, he was beyond angry. He was absolutely furious. He twisted, a snarl on his face that made her recoil.

“What do you do?!” he demanded. “What have you caused? Tell me how to fix it!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Sarah shrank away, looking for somewhere to go. “This isn’t like you! You have to control yourself!”

‘’He took a deep breath, visibly trying to calm himself as emotion raged across her face. Sarah’s heart fell. He was between her and the exit.’’

Spot the difference?We start the same way. We tag Alex as ‘’angry’’ but instead of just leaving it like that, we delve into what it means. We further heighten the tension via his words, making them dramatic and sharp to drive in his fury, and then we counterpoint with Sarah’s reaction.

Note that at no point do we actually say that she is scared. We don’t have to. Her actions and her words say it for us. We don’t even need a scared tag for her because her character informs us of it itself.

In general, you should avoid basic tags that are just ‘’he was angry’’, ‘’she was sad’’, ‘’they were horny’’, etc if you can. They don’t actually describe, they inform us dryly and without emotion. Now sometimes, you’ll need to use them. If, for example, you’re a commissioned writer and you’re working to a word limit. Using ‘’he was happy’’ may not be the most skilled thing to do, but it gets the job done if you don’t have space for a proper description.

But it should never be your primary way of showing emotions.

Okay, so the first failure state of emotive writing is when you give too little information. The second one is when you give too much. I am talking, of course, about purple prose. Most of us have heard of it but for those who haven’t or those who need a refresher, let me lay it out for you.

Purple prose is when your description overgrows everything else.Think of it like a garden. Your writing is neat, ordered and composed of multiple different structures. Descriptions, emotions, prose and framework. Purple prose is when the prose grows to envelope everything else like a patch of weeds overgrowing a garden. In a limited quantity, prose is vital to your work. Too much and it drowns out everything else.

The most common way to get purple prose - though not the only one - is to go too far with emotive writing.

Let me give an example.

‘’The crown was kingly, wrought in an age long lost. The fine nobility of the golden material spoke of ancient kings who had imbued it with their wisdom and knowledge. It shone with a brilliant light; delicate strands of silver and copper circling the brow. Five gems were set in the centre. A ruby which burned and flickered like fire, an emerald that flashed and danced with lightning, a sapphire that sparkled with frost, a topaz that shone like the sun and a fifth gem which no mortal could name. Its kin was beyond mortal kind. Drawn forth from the realm of demons where only darkness could be found.

‘’The crown’s body was splattered with dry spots which was all that remained of the oceans of blood in which it had once bathed. The rust which adorned it could almost but not quite conceal the true nature of the symbol. A thousand men had reached for this crown only to be cut down and their angry, screaming ghosts haunted it still. The crown was unnaturally cold to the touch, frozen by the vengeance which it had unleashed so long ago. Though sleeping, it possessed a great and terrible power that-”

And blagh, blagh, blagh. It’s word vomit. Purple prose is word vomit. It’s when you want someone to feel something so much that you just spit out words, words, words, words and try to **** them to feel the way you want. In the example I gave - and most examples of purple prose honestly - the desired emotion was ‘’oh my god, this crown is so fucking cool.’’ but really, it’s trying so hard that it either makes you hate it or makes you cringe at just how much effort the author is going into in order to pretty up a lump of shaped metal.

Now technically, both mechanical writing and emotive writing can end in purple prose. But I think emotive writing does it more often, and since the point of purple prose is to **** a feeling or emotion, I consider it a failure state of emotive writing. It’s what happens when you go all in on emotive stuff and forget to balance it with mechanical writing.

Purple prose is bad for a few reasons. Firstly, it slows or even stops your narrative. The story, the characters, the fun plots? All slammed on hold so you can **** your readers to appreciate how cool this thing is. If you do it a lot, it gets frustrating fast. It’s one of the main things that can bloat up a work.

If you really wanna describe something and make it sound cool, I promise you that you can do a lot more with a lot less words. Let’s go back to the crown and I’ll show you how I’d get the same point across in a much more fun way.

‘’Sarah crept forward, the room was lined with treasure but her eyes could settle on only one thing. It had an odd kind of gravity to it she couldn’t ignore. It was a crown. Splattered with rust and age. Maybe once it had looked magnificent, but now? It was obviously a relic.

‘’Yet it commanded her attention. She couldn’t look away. She was drawn to it and part of her wondered if she even had a choice in the matter. She felt like her own body was rebelling against her, that if she told it to stop, she’d be ignored. The crown was ancient, dusty, but somehow still intact. There were five gems set near the base, each one worth a small fortune. She touched the first and blazed to life! An inner light danced and Sarah recoiled.

‘’Was it magic?! Here?After so long? And why was the crown cold to the touch? She couldn’t understand!

‘’Slowly, nervously, her fingers brushed the metal again. It felt cold, but at the same time warm. Almost boiling. Phantom pain danced along her arm, and she could taste old blood in her mouth. Memories of a thousand battles won and lost flooded her mind. Nightmares and victories and defeats sang through her blood!

‘’She tore herself away, gasping, shaking. It wasn’t just a crown. It was THE crown.

‘’The very first crown.’’

So you can see how the second description does things better. It’s also pretty long but by involving a character, we make it so it isn’t a static description. It’s a living, active one. We learn about the crown as Sarah does. We see her reaction to it, it helps to inform her character. Instead of just dryly being told that the crown is cool and old and powerful we’re shown it. Not only does it get the same points across, but we get a bitchin’ scene out of it!

Anyway, that’s about it for this chapter. I could go further, but I am honestly super tired and it seems that when I said this would be a short entry, I lied. Bah. I hope you find this useful and enjoyable! As always, if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

I feel like we’ve covered emotive and mechanical writing pretty well with these last three entries, so next time we’ll focus on something else. I am not quite sure what yet, though so if you have any ideas or things you’d want me to cover, feel free to let me know!

Anyway, later all!