In my debut novel, The Scare, I’ve been accused by
Kirkus Review of overwriting: “…a tedious torrent of overwriting…” is how they
put it to be precise. I agree with them and am darned proud of their review!
The Scare is overwritten for sure. But what overwriting! It’s a jolly good yarn
with great characters readers love and a story that draws you in. And that’s
all that matters. My goal as a writer is to entertain my readers and if I succeed it doesn’t matter how many words I used to do it. When I’m absorbed in a
book I can’t put down I ain’t counting words or thinking about whether it’s
overwritten! But okay, since I’m talking about overwriting let’s talk about it.
I overwrite. I admit it and I admit that I love it. Come to think of it Stephen
King overwrites and he’s doing just fine. So I’m in great company. Another guy
who was big on overwriting--and who was around decades before King--is Robert
Ervin Howard, aka Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian. That’s
right, Conan the Barbarian wasn’t created by some facile, overpaid Hollywood
screenwriter fresh out of an Ivy League school, he was created in 1932 by a
full grown Texan. In Howard’s day, not only was overwriting not frowned upon,
it was King, just like Conan became! The 30s was the age of pulp fiction, no,
not that movie by that director, but wonderful stories that could be found in
the inexpensive fiction magazines that flourished from 1896 through the 1950s.
The term pulp derived from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines
were printed. Pulps were most often priced at ten cents per magazine and were
the successor to the penny dreadfuls, dime novels and short fiction magazines
of the 19th century. Many respected writers wrote for the pulps
before they became respected, some of them, like Howard, became respected pulp
writers. And yet Howard overwrote. In fact, he beautifully overwrote. And you
know what? It’s great stuff. There’s not a thing wrong with it. Not back when
it was written and not now. Howard’s stuff was so great it’s never been out of
print. It’s been adapted into comic books, made into movies, copied endlessly.
Some of today’s best writers have even written their own original Conan novels:
Robert Jordan, Steve Perry, and L. Sprague de Camp to name a few. Conan the
Barbarian is his own industry today. Not a bad achievement for a character
created by a man in 1932 who was an inveterate overwriter. In “Queen of the
Black Coast” one of Howard’s greatest stories, his overwriting shone brightly:
As
they moved out over the glassy blue deep, Belit came to the poop.
Her
eyes were burning like those of a she-panther in the dark as she
tore
off her ornaments, her sandals and her silken girdle and cast
them
at his feet. Rising on tiptoe, arms stretched upward, a quivering
line
of naked
white, she cried to the desperate horde:
"Wolves of the
blue
sea, behold ye now the dance--the mating-dance of Belit, whose
fathers
were kings of Askalon!"
And
she danced, like the spin of a desert whirlwind, like the leaping
of
a quenchless flame, like the urge of
creation and the urge of
death.
Her white feet spurned the bloodstained deck and dying men
forgot
death as they gazed frozen at her. Then, as the white stars
glimmered
through the blue velvet dusk, making her whirling body a
blur
of ivory fire, with a wild cry she threw herself at Conan's feet,
and
the blind flood of the Cimmerian's desire swept all else away as
he
crushed her panting form against the black plates of his corseleted
breast.
There is no denying that Howard’s overwriting was a
pure art form, and although my own overwriting may be nowhere near as good, to
be accused of it is a thing to be proud of and shouted from the highest
rooftops. Or from the humble keys of my laptop. And so I proudly shout it.
Buy Robert Shaw's books on Amazon: http://amzn.to/Tlf0F7
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