If You Ain’t Got That Zing

[swan_tower]

There are a lot of TV shows I try and just sort of drift away from, because they aren’t doing enough to hold my attention. The latest in this series is Black Lightning, which surprised me, because there are a number of things I like about its characters and its story. But in the end, its dialogue doesn’t have much of a particular element for which I can find no better term than “zing.”

Thanks, brain. “Zing.” That’s a real helpful way of describing it. >_<

Zing is not the same thing as witty banter — though many shows have mistaken the one for the other, and fill their scripts with dialogue that’s absolutely leaden in its attempt to be light. You can have zing in a deadly serious conversation (as Game of Thrones has proved). It’s a cousin, I think, of Mark Twain’s comment about the difference between the right word and the almost-right word being the difference between lightning and a lightning bug: it’s the lightning lines, the ones that leap off the page or the screen, the ones that don’t just get you from Narrative Point A to Narrative Point B but make the journey between them memorable. You see it in The Lion in Winter, which along with Twelve Angry Men made me wonder if this is a quality especially possessed by older stage plays — I haven’t seen enough older stage plays to be sure. At its apex, it’s the feeling that no line has been wasted or allowed to do the bare minimum of work. Think of The Princess Bride, and how many lines from that movie are quotable. It isn’t just because the lines themselves are good; it’s because there’s almost no flab in the script, every word simultaneously developing character and furthering the plot while also being entertaining.

Zing gets my attention, in a TV show or a movie or a book. Without it, my attention wanders a bit; I scrape a general sense of the story out of the mass of words used to tell it, but don’t engage on a moment-to-moment level. With it, I lose track of the world around me because I don’t want to miss anything in the tale. Zing makes me decide, before I’m two scenes into the first episode of a show, that I’ll give the second one a shot. Zing is what makes me plow through thousands of pages of Neal Stephenson making an utter hash of his plot, because he can describe a room in above a tavern on the seventeenth-century London Bridge in such riveting terms that I wind up reading it out loud twice, once to my husband and once to my sister.

I think this is what some people, when teaching the craft of writing, describe as “voice.” I’ve been known to rant about how I find that term completely unhelpful . . . but, well, here I am talking about “zing,” because my alternative is to wave my hands around in the air and make inarticulate noises. That thing. Over there. Do you see?

These days I’m reaching for it more in my own work, especially in one of the things I’m noodling around with right now. A character is hiding in a palace full of baroque decorations and complaining about the discomfort. There’s something jabbing into my back. No. There’s a carving jabbing into my back. No. There’s a gilded carving grinding into my kidney. Better. There’s a gilded figure of the South Wind imprinting itself on my left kidney. Better still.

Doing that for every sentence is exhausting. I have no idea how Stephenson keeps it up, especially while writing books that could double as foundation stones. But I suspect that, like many things in writing, after you’ve pushed at it for a while some parts of it just settle in as habit. I hope so, anyway, because I’m going to keep trying.

Mirrored from Swan Tower.

Comments

[sovay]

There’s a gilded figure of the South Wind imprinting itself on my left kidney.

+1.

[moon_custafer]

which along with Twelve Angry Men made me wonder if this is a quality especially possessed by older stage plays — I haven’t seen enough older stage plays to be sure.

It’s a quality more likely to be found in plays that did well enough on stage to be turned into movies, certainly.

[lizvogel]

I like zing.

I am amused, because just yesterday agent Janet Reid listed reasons why she rejects books, #1 of which is what she calls "overwriting" -- and which I suspect you (and I) would call "zing". Not that prose can't be over-embellished, it certainly can, but the push for lean, stripped-down, flavorless writing that is so fashionable in some circles makes me want to curl up with my thesaurus and just cuddle it. ;-)

[swan_tower]

I figured you would approve of this effort. :-)

[swan_tower]

Point. But I wouldn't be surprised if plays in general tend to possess it -- I feel like they go less for the "naturalistic" approach to dialogue that some movies have. (Certainly there are plays that do, of course.)

[swan_tower]

Hmmm. On the one hand, it's undeniably true that styles which work for some readers don't work for others (and that's true no matter what the style in question is). On the other hand, based on what I've seen when teaching creative writing, the type of overwriting inexperienced authors are prone to usually isn't the Neal Stephenson type. It's usually more like this:

"I hate you!!!" he shouted angrily.

That isn't zing; that's hammering the point in a failed attempt to crank up the emotion.

[sovay]

I figured you would approve of this effort.

I do, and I think it's working.

[lizvogel]

Well, yes, and that's likely where the injunction against putting any "frills" into one's prose started. But like so much writing advice, it's gotten exaggerated and over-applied -- and then declared a matter of The Right Way rather than a matter of taste. So most of the examples I've run across would *start* with There’s a gilded figure of the South Wind imprinting itself on my left kidney, and pare it down over multiple iterations at least to There’s a carving jabbing into my back. And then insist that that was "better". And maybe to them, it is, but not to me.

[swan_tower]

So most of the examples I've run across would *start* with There’s a gilded figure of the South Wind imprinting itself on my left kidney, and pare it down over multiple iterations at least to There’s a carving jabbing into my back. And then insist that that was "better".

I'm curious where you're seeing this. I don't doubt at all that you are, but since it runs in the opposite direction from what I usually encounter (where most authors never even make it to the more elaborated version), it would be instructive to see what's going on with the ones for whom it gets stripped down.

[lizvogel]

And of course, now that I have a use for them, I can't find the posts I'm thinking of. ;-) The one I originally mentioned is here, but that's probably not the best example in isolation; for me, it was building on the context of a lot of other remarks in the same vein.

I was going to say there might be a genre division involved, but the person who first introduced me to the phrase "windowpane prose" was a fantasy writer, so it really is just a matter of personal taste.

If I come across some better examples, I'll try to remember to come back here and leave links.

[swan_tower]

Ah, I see. The type of thing you're talking about is still what I'd put in the same box as "I hate you!!!" he shouted angrily -- I see it all over the place in fanfic, where eyes get described as luminous violet orbs (and other body parts get described even more floridly). I'm not sure how to articulate the difference, though, other than "one does it well and one does it badly." I feel like there is a difference -- though well vs. badly certainly applies as well -- in much the same way that witty banter isn't the same thing as a zingy TV script, and you get lots of TV writers who are aiming for the wrong target.

[lizvogel]

Well, that's why I said that one wasn't the best example. Because I completely agree that there is a difference (though well vs. badly may cover it, for my mileage) -- but I think in their quest to avoid luminous violet orbs, many writers (or people giving writing advice, which is not necessarily the same thing) are throwing out anything of a colorful or descriptive nature, and stripping out any possibility of "zing" in the process.