Two-time/streaks

Why use one word when two will do?

I live in a country where 'too much sport is never enough' to quote a couple of comedic sports commentators. And it's true. On a Saturday, you can turn the teev on and watch cricket, tennis, golf, motor sport or basketball, all televised at the same time.

What burns my wick, however, is the ongoing trend of superfluous words. A champion isn't a 'dual' winner or has won a particular event 'twice', he/she is a 'two-time winner/loser'. Call me a pedant or nitpicker, but that smacks of laziness.

Worse is the cliched 'losing/winning streak'. It doesn't sound bad, but when attached with 'two/three/four game', it descends into the realm of ridiculous. Since when has two games been considered a 'streak'? I love my sport, but I get a case of lock-jaw when a team's progress is described as a 'streak' whether they win or lose, or how many. Ten games lost. Yeah, when they win, you can describe that as having 'broken their ten game losing streak'. Two games is two games, not a streak.

We live in a world where the media are constantly vying for our attention, but the concept of 'spicing' up news/sport programs with the liberal salting of cliches and 'excitement' is denigrating the achievements of the people involved.

'If it bleeds, it leads' is the current catch-cry of various media groups. It sucks. Pure and simple. Gone are the days of journalists simply reporting the news; we live in an era of purple prose reporters who have to squeeze as much out of a story as possible. It's one of the reasons I gave up journalism. I couldn't do my job without throwing in various inflammatory phrases to catch people's attention. My job, as I saw it, was to report the news, not to create it. I presented the facts, not start a bloody riot with a slanting of what I saw.

The same can be said of novel writing. One school says to overstate what's happening; make your characters and situation larger than life (the rule: people will believe a big lie over a small one). The other school is to be spare in your writing and let your readers imagination fill in the gaps (the rule: a person's imagination has more creativity than your words, prompt them and they will do the rest).

During the times of Dickens, Austen, and others, descriptive passages were long and drawn out, using up as much space as possible to set the scene. Today, we use descriptive passages sparingly. Different times, different capacities for patience. In each era, it was the accepted style, neither is right or wrong. What has changed is our attitude and how much time we have for reading.

A few years ago, I read page after page of how an atomic bomb worked in a particular book. Pissed me off with it's technical descriptions and I skipped the last bit, bored: but it was in that last bit that described why the bomb didn't go off and I was left thinking 'huh?' Why didn't the author simplify the description? I really didn't give a rat's bladder about the whys and wherefores, I just wanted the story to move on and because of that one long, drawn out passage, the rest of the book was spoiled for me. I don't think I've read any more of that particular author because I was fed up with the constant technical descriptions. (I'm sure my no longer purchasing the books wouldn't worry such a well-known and wealthy author, but still...)

It does not pay to be too wordy. Finding the balance, of course, is the trick. One every writer should aspire to learn.