So I’ve been sleeping on this question since (ironically) it’s really hard to put into words what makes commercial prose invisible and yet interesting. But hell, let’s give it a shot.

Usual disclaimers that this is my approach, not some universal writing law. YMMV.

https://twitter.com/fictionalben/status/1371872899267633155

So my first tip is: the character’s voice trumps all. This is especially true when you’re in a super close POV like first or very close limited third.

If the MC wouldn’t think or say it, then neither do I. This extends to the words I choose to use in narration/dialogue, the syntax I use, and even the similes and metaphors I throw in.

My aim is to make the reader *forget* they’re reading a book. I want them entirely focused on the story, not the words. So there’s no point waxing lyrical about poetry or the sea if my MC doesn’t give a crap about those things.

To do that would be to break the immersion and draw attention to ME, which is what I’m trying to avoid.

Example: knowing nothing about my books, can you figure out which of the below came from my fish book, and which came from my sci-fi?

Like a reef viper in the pit of her stomach.

Like an avatar whose host has phased out of VR.

When you dip into visual language, you’re asking the reader to conjure up images. If those images don’t make sense for the MC and the world then you’re kicking them out of the story.

So in an early draft, my sci-fi novel described a guy turning his brain into a Jackson Pollock painting (yes, I’m very classy). But that line is no longer in the novel because a beta came back and asked: would your MC even know who Pollock is 100+ years in the future?

Now, I could have made a case for keeping the line (art is timeless, Marie), but it raised the kind of questions I didn’t want my readers asking, so it had to go.

Being invisible means not keeping prose that actively derails your reader. When they stop to ask questions, make sure they’re asking the questions you *want* them to ask.

Also, since we’re talking about similes and metaphors – tip two is to use them sparingly. Now, I don’t mean limit yourself to x number for the whole book or anything arbitrary, just to really examine each and every one and ask: is it in character? Is it adding anything?

I find that doing this really helps me streamline the prose and stop it getting too bogged down with unnecessary details, which in turn, makes the writing easy to blaze through fast.

It also means that when I do turn to metaphors/similes, they tend to pack more punch. They allow me to slow the reader down a touch when I want something to really sink in.

This trick also extends to word choice on the whole. When you’re spare and invisible 99% of the time, the 1% where you show yourself can really make an impact.

Here is one of my favourite examples from my sci-fi novel, and the beta reaction to it:

It’s a tiny detail, but it stands out as deliberate because tiny details have space to shine when they’re surrounded by invisible prose. And the work in this example is knowing *which* word to change in order to communicate something meaningful about the MC.

Okay, this is getting long, so here’s my final tip: line edits are your friend.

I scrub my work obsessively for the big things: repetition of words, echoing in headwords and sentence structure, and varied sentence lengths.

These are all things that are important no matter what kind of prose you write, but when you write commercial prose, they can be even more important, because the spare, (deceptively) simple nature of commercial prose means there’s nowhere to hide.

Skimping on line edits can mean that even the most common of words start to stick out to the reader like a sore thumb. So I go really hard on this.

And just like with metaphors and similes, if you really scrub your work for these, then when you deliberately *choose* to repeat yourself, or utilise some form of interesting wordplay, it’ll stand out to the reader and draw their attention to what you want them to see.

Okay, that feels like enough nonsense from me for one day, but the last thing I’ll say is that sometimes, being commercial (in the prose sense) can feel like a bad thing because we rarely celebrate commercial prose the way we do with lyrical or literary prose.

In fact, every 3-5 chapters, I have an existential crisis about being *too* commercial, or *too* invisible, and so I’ll write in some elaborate metaphor because I think ‘that’s what real writers do’. Plot twist, IT NEVER WORKS.

These passages always get nixed by my betas because they actively work against my prose and jar them out of the story.

So yeah, this type of prose may look simple, but it actually takes a fair amount of work to stay invisible while still giving the reader everything they need to enjoy a story.

~Fin~