Let Tom Swift Inform Your Writing

ByPhyllis Zimbler Miller

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson

Ever heard of Tom Swifties?

Maybe you’re too young to be familiar with the classic Tom Swift adventures for boys. Or maybe you’re a girl who never read a Tom Swift book nor cares to.

Tom Swifties are one-line jokes lampooning the style of Victor Appleton, the author of the original Tom Swift books. People started making jokes about his overuse of adverbs and the unnecessary taglines he wrote into his dialogue. Like the Polish jokes, they were so much fun that that a whole series of them became available for pun aficionados. The author of these classics, of course, laughed all the way to the bank. But that’s a lesson for one of my marketing seminars, not this article on writing.

Tom Swifties were then. This is now. I haven’t dared to go to the new books in the series but I assume that this outdated writing has been eliminated from them.

You’ll want to minimize tags and adverbs in your writing, too!

An example from one of the Swift books will suffice to let you know what to watch for. (Thank you to Roy Peter Clark for the example.)

“‘Look!’ suddenly exclaimed Ned. ‘There’s the agent now!…I’m going to speak to him!’ impulsively declared Ned.'”

Even authors who swear that adverbs are always very, very good things to use and are reluctant to give up their clever taglines can see how, well . . . .awful this is. In fact, I have to reassure people the quotation is real! Some of the writing that comes to the desks of agents and editors looks almost as bad. Here’s how you can make sure yours doesn’t:

1. Use taglines only when one is necessary for the reader to know who is speaking.

2. Almost always choose “he said” or “she said” over anything too cute, exuberant or wordy like “declared” and “exclaimed.”

3. Cut the “ly” words ruthlessly, not only in dialogue tags but everywhere.

You will find specific techniques for strengthening your writing in the process of eliminating adverbs in The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. This book will also give you some computer tricks for making these edits easy. Until then, take Nike’s advice and “Just do it!”

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, award-winning author of The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won’t and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. The former is the winner of USA Book News “Best Professional Book” award and the Book Publicists of Southern California’s coveted Irwin Award. The Frugal Editor is both a USA Book News winner and a Reader Views Literary Award winner and won the New Generation Marketing Award. Learn more at www.HowToDoItFrugally.com. Learn more about editing at www.thefrugaleditor.blogspot.com. The Frugal Editor is available at www.budurl.com/TheFrugalEditor and as a Kindle book at www.budurl.com/FrugalEditorKindle

4 Comments

  1. Well said Carolyn.
    It endorses my own sentiments on my Hubpage – ‘400 Alternative Words For Said’.

    I wholeheartedly encourage writers to NOT use alternative words. ‘Said’ is effectively invisible – but even so, it should ONLY be used to clarify who is speaking if it is REALLY needed – best left out entirely if possible.

  2. Anthony, so nice to have you come by. Thank you. And yes, often we can get by with no tages. It’s a good idea to let a couple people read dialogue over to be sure they can easily follow who’s talking. And there are other ways to help delineate dialogue–other than tags. I love Tom Chiarella’s book. It’s a good one for even advanced writers.

    Best,
    C.

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