Sometimes the best writing advice comes from actual writing that is not meant to give advice. As the saying goes, ‘read as a writer’, so did I. With that in mind, I started reading Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, and I couldn’t be more amazed at the architecture that no one notices unless they paid close attention. Then I highlighted the text and recorded my notes in a Word document, and now I’m about to share these with you; some writing tools that I unearthed from Good Omens.
Exaggeration for the Sake of Humor
Two of them lurked in the ruined graveyard. Two shadowy figures, one hunched and squat, the other lean and menacing, both of them Olympic-grade lurkers. If Bruce Springsteen had ever recorded “Born to Lurk,” these two would have been on the album cover. They had been lurking in the fog for an hour now, but they had been pacing themselves and could lurk for the rest of the night if necessary, with still enough sullen menace left for a final burst of lurking around dawn.
Finally, after another twenty minutes, one of them said: “Bugger this for a lark. He should of been here hours ago.”
page 6
“Lurker” is not a word that you’d find in the English dictionary, which means Gaiman and Pratchett had created a new word which is funny, yet simple to understand. This word, if you notice, is the first hint for a joke coming, and now is the moment where a reader’s smile starts to stretch.
And then, the authors expand and elaborate on this word in another 60 words, including 4 ‘lurks’, which must turn the reader’s smile into a laugh. They could have just stopped and moved on to what the characters said, but they paused and elaborated on their appearance with exaggeration and sarcasm.
The funny mention of Bruce Springsteen’s hypothetical song Born to Lurk and his album cover would be even funnier if you actually knew the singer enough to recognize his actual album Born to Run where the album cover was of Bruce himself holding a guitar. I’m not sure why the authors used this specific album for the analogy, but after this, I can’t help but see a sense of lurking in the singer’s leaning body, and perhaps they saw that, too.
In short, the authors used humor and exaggeration in their character description by pausing and elaborating through analogies and word repetition.
Description Before Action
“And he wears sunglasses,” sneered Hastur, “even when he dunt need to.” He raised his voice. “All hail Satan,” he said.
page 7
In this sentence, there is speech, then ‘he raised his voice’, and then another speech, and now it’s supposed to be confusing to the readers which speech the character raised his voice at; the one before or the one after. But when the second speech was hailing Satan, then it gets easy to infer that he raised his voice for the next speech, not the one before it.
Hence, the writing tool I inferred from this is that the description of the speech can precede it.
Omitting Unnecessary Action
Hastur reached down behind a tombstone.
“This is,” he said.
Crowley stared at the basket.
“Oh,” he said. “No.”
pages 8-9
The authors skipped an action that the reader can assume. They didn’t say that he picked a basket from behind the tombstone. Staring at the basket tells us that he has taken a basket.
I believe this is a very smart decision the authors have made, keeping in mind that the reader enjoys drawing conclusions instead of being told every little detail.
Dialogue Tags in Thoughts
“Right,” said Ligur. It’d be a funny old world, he reflected, if demons went round trusting one another.
page 10
‘[H]e reflected’ here acts as a dialogue tag in the middle of dialogue, but instead of dialogue, it tags thought. The only difference between dialogue tags and this thought tag is the lack of quotation marks, but all the other rules apply. Since it comes in the middle of a thought, it is separated by commas.
The writing tool in this is that you can deal with thought the same as dialogue, sans quotation marks.
These are four writing tools I could get from just a few pages of Good Omens for Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Finding writing tools requires no prior study or editorial guidance. Just go with your guts and mark the places that grab your attention. Stop at the sentences that play at your emotions the most and ask why. Try to dissect the author’s writing for valuable tools that you can adopt in your own writing. I wonder how much value you’d uncover in bestsellers in your genre.
Have you ever read a book as a writer and found noteworthy writing tools? Share your experience in the comments, or tell us what you think of the writing tools I listed above.
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