whenever i’m writing in good omens ‘verse and can’t find the voice this is what i do: pick up the book, open to random page, read 5 pages. put a smarmy and very sarcastic british accent on the voice in my head, the sort of voice you laugh at until you’re gasping but also want to hit a little bit. make paragraphs shorter. no, i mean shorter. less is more. don’t describe anything unless you absolutely must. if you have a long paragraph, it should be mostly one run-on sentence with no less than three jokes in the middle. everybody says what they mean but in a plausible deniability type way. they’re really not that vague though, and the places where they’re really un-vague they’re so upfront its uncomfortable. have one character doing something extraordinary while the other one seems not to notice. when in doubt, change the scene. start or end scenes in the middle of the action so things keep zipping along. finally: you can use your fucking adverbs. go hog wild. adverb adverbfully all over the page. in fact, no dialogue tags unless there’s an adverb, in which case, fine. congratulations, you have gooded an omen.
arcticflakes
