Dirty tics and sordid styles, bucketfuls of granola...

Musicians for a long time have used words to describe aspects of music. ‘That was a really sweet solo’ and ‘mellow tone’, or less appreciatively, ‘a curdled ensemble’ and ‘buttery melody line’. Many of these relate to food, though not exclusively.

When thinking about the issue of tics and style, I think a good middle ground is these words. After all - it may just be me - in my mind, a tic is a small feature, which with its repetition becomes an irregularity, i.e. something unwanted. How would this turn into style? Something we all want. It also makes me think of a small, parasitic creature hanging off my writing, sucking the blood from it, a tick. Yeuch!

Here’s a story for you. Let’s go off at a tangent for a minute - we’ll come back, don’t worry.

I love granola. Love it. At the minute, it’s my go-to food for breakfast. I like it with milk, any type from regular cows’ to almond (soya’s a no-no). But it’s great, and I mean great with full fat Greek yogurt. And my kids love it too. That’s why there’s stuff all over the kitchen counter and happy littlies munching away.

Yesterday I reached into the cupboard for the granola and felt that it was an exceptionally plump bag. This seemed unreasonable. Why would the manufacturers give me, a lowly writer, a bag so full it had more of the properties of a sandbag? (You know, the ones used to weigh down road signs in the wind.) I soon found out. There was something wrong with the contents. Nothing so egregious it would mean I had to haul the whole thing back down to the shop. Nothing that threatened my life. Nothing that would seriously interrupt the flow of my day. It was just an anomaly, which I’m working into this post, so it must have had some merit, right? Rightish.

I poured out a helping, ready to add my yogurt. But I stopped and inspected what was in my bowl. It was a different kind to what I normally have. This had flakes of coconut and little itty bitty pieces of mango or pineapple in its midst. And its midst was mostly fluff. I reached for the bag. With its bloated, corpulent form, it had none of the bumps I associated with my granola experience. The bag also told me I was eating granola with raisins, which I manifestly was not. So, I deduced in my mind’s eye that the run had gone wrong at the factory, but in some minor hiccup sort of way. It wasn’t the sort of problem the operator couldn’t side-line off to me. I got granola, didn't I? The wrong sort, but the fellow redressed my injury by giving me extra - a big, plump bag of what I didn’t really want.

So why do I mention this?

Well, let’s contrast what I wanted with what I got. My normal granola has large clumps with the raisins distributed evenly throughout. Sometimes the ratio of raisins to granola is off whack. There aren’t enough succulent morsels of sweetness for the grind of the granola, or it’s the other way around, with too much sweetness, and it overpowers the subtlety of the grains. But when it’s right, it’s fabulous. And it’s fabulous most of the time.

At the end of the bag - you know where this is going, right? - there are the sweepings. The bits that got knocked off the large clumps. They’re unattached and unwanted by their gang, and hence, by extension, unwanted by me.

In my estimation I had a bag full of breakfast shrapnel. Hmmmnn.

Diversion over. Back to the point now.

So the tics in writing, they’re a bit like the raisins and the granola. Say I repeat a word or a phrase or a piece of punctuation. For the reader, these can be interpreted in the same way as the raisins in the breakfast cereal are for me. Get the balance right with the rest of the other words and phrases, the right ratio, and all is well. Make them too concentrated and the mix is overpowered. And the size of the fruit is important too. If you remember in my previous posting, I used ‘perhaps’ to demonstrate a tic. Let’s say, instead, I used the word ‘exemplary’. Now that’s an unusual and juicy word. It’s more like a piece of date. Get the wrong mix of those in your cereal and your breakfast’s ruined. Use the word too many times, or just twice in the same chapter, act or novel and it spoils the reading affair by drawing the reader’s attention away from the world you’ve helped them to build in their heads.

However, context and art is everything. Let’s upend the whole thing.

There is a tipping point where the tic becomes the norm. Imagine I take my beloved granola and raisins and turn it into raisins with granola. The emphasis is now on the raisins, with the granola being the sidekick. Whoever eats it may not even want it for breakfast but it might be a nice sweet delicacy at a party. You only have to listen to Dr John Cooper Clarke’s Evidently Chickentown to see the logic.

I’m running out of power now, so will have to sign off.

I think next time we’ll contemplate some well known writers and look at their tics operating as style. So if you like Lee Child and Bill Bryson, the next post might well be worth a look. And who doesn’t like these authors? If you don’t like them, then read the next post anyway to see whether what I say has any bearing on your dislike.

Have a blast. Andy.