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Dawn Turner's avatar

Vagueness is why I'm very careful in using "few", "several", "couple", and "handful". In a writing group I belonged to years ago, I asked what those words meant to people. The variety of answers was staggering.

"Couple" wasn't just TWO to some people, it could mean three or four. How they arrive at that for a "couple" is beyond me, but there you go. LOL

I asked the question of the group because I had been reading a book where the author kept using "several" for weeks/hours, and I ended up realizing late in the book that she actually meant TWO when she used "several". Totally threw me as "several" to me is 5 or more, so every place she'd written "several hours" or "several weeks", I was seeing 5 or more hour or well over a month. Threw off the entire timeline of the book for me. I almost threw the book across the room at that point, and I told her about it. LOL

(As an aside, "few" is 3 or 4 in my vocab.)

Most of the people who responded to my question had the same understanding of "couple", "few", and "several" as I do, but there were serious variations among those who didn't. "Handful" was all over the map, regardless of context.

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Tiffanie Gray's avatar

So a couple of questions:

1. If you are writing to a themed anthology (Yes, I know, you are just supposed to write the story, but I like to torture myself), can you be more vague, because the story is with other stories on the same theme? And you expect the reader to fill in some blanks due to them already knowing what the theme was about, since they picked up the book/anthology?

a. For example: You are writing for an anthology that is all about one artist's music - now, you aren't to quote any lyrics or anything, just inspired by the song. But, every story in the anthology is about that artist's songs. So, could you leave out some world building, or be more vague, because it's backboned by the song?

2. If the character(s) you are following are vague (ie not very observant), when I cycle back through, is it better to add a few things that clarify it for the reader? (ie first reader says, "I don't get it...") (Yes, I know, no author intrusion, but you also say that it's the author's job to make things clearer for the reader.)

3. Oh! I forgot and then I remembered. Even if a story is themed like the above, should you then assume it has to stand completely on its own, and you have to add all the details even if it seems to be beating your readers over the head, because of repetition?

Anyway, I'm not talking about writing for myself. I'm specifically talking about writing to anthology (Or someone else's world (I have one of those I've been invited to, also).)

Lastly, I too have a BUNCH of those minor writing sins, which need to be fixed, I guess (he/she/it, too much was-ing, etc.) And repeating words, even if I don't mean to (sometimes you repeat for emphasis.) So, this was a good post reminder of that!

I'm still debating the Nov challenge, guess I have to decide today...

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