place holder
I listened to poet and author Frances Leviston talking on Radio 4's Front Row about her short story 'Broderie Anglaise'. It was nominated for the BBC National Short Story Award.
She mentioned that she used the term broderie anglaise (the name for a needlework technique) as a 'place holder', a term she dropped into a sentence as she was writing so as not to stop the flow of words, fully intending to return and replace it with a different, more considered one. But, as it turned out, when she returned she realised she'd got it exactly right first time, so much so that she used it as the name for her story.
My ears pricked up when I heard this. I've used place holders many times in my writing, doing exactly what Frances did, just dropping a similar, an associated, an 'almost the right word' word into a sentence when I can't think of the perfect one and don't want to pause or I'll grind to a halt. Usually, as I read back through what I've written the right word will occur to me and I'll replace the place holder, but not always. Sometimes I keep it. The name Keen in the John Mann stories is just such a word. I hadn't intended to keep it but as I kept writing about her and using that word for her name she just 'became' Keen in my head and I couldn't change it. I have been asked why I called her by that name (more usually but not always a boy's name) and I just cryptically replied 'because.'
I like it when I hear that other writers, and especially ones that have been nominated for awards, use the same techniques that I use when I didn't even realise that it was a legitimate technique.
She mentioned that she used the term broderie anglaise (the name for a needlework technique) as a 'place holder', a term she dropped into a sentence as she was writing so as not to stop the flow of words, fully intending to return and replace it with a different, more considered one. But, as it turned out, when she returned she realised she'd got it exactly right first time, so much so that she used it as the name for her story.
My ears pricked up when I heard this. I've used place holders many times in my writing, doing exactly what Frances did, just dropping a similar, an associated, an 'almost the right word' word into a sentence when I can't think of the perfect one and don't want to pause or I'll grind to a halt. Usually, as I read back through what I've written the right word will occur to me and I'll replace the place holder, but not always. Sometimes I keep it. The name Keen in the John Mann stories is just such a word. I hadn't intended to keep it but as I kept writing about her and using that word for her name she just 'became' Keen in my head and I couldn't change it. I have been asked why I called her by that name (more usually but not always a boy's name) and I just cryptically replied 'because.'
I like it when I hear that other writers, and especially ones that have been nominated for awards, use the same techniques that I use when I didn't even realise that it was a legitimate technique.
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