- Learn the balance between showing and telling
- Good writing reveals, boring writing explains
- Use senses to reveal, “telling” comes from the head.
- Experience/feel with the character instead of listing facts
- Don’t use abstract subjective terms to convey moments. Be more sensory/visual/tangible (SHOW)
- Adjectives tell, verbs show. Use precise verbs first. Turn your adjectives into verbs. Verbs contain the energy of the sentence. Make a long list of verbs! Verbs pump us up. Make more active.
- The Thesaurus is your friend!
- Write from the senses. Readers want to smell, touch, taste the world you’ve created. We read to escape, experience other realities
- Be the story as you’re writing it; be your character, experience their world vicariously.
- Do the writing first, do research after
- “I remember (sense)ing…” exercise in keeping you in touch with your senses. Makes you pay attention to mundane sensations. I remember tasting, hearing, smelling, etc. “Sense inventory.”
- Physical reactions to senses, involuntary sensory details, memories provoked, emotion from memories, and then action.
- Metaphors/similes make writing poetic. Easier to remember, connects on a deeper emotional level. “The cancer ate her like horse piss eats deep snow.”
- Observe the weather/sky and write it down. Generalities are boring. Take notes on observations so you remember them better later.
- The key to description is selectivity. In each sentence use at least one striking, provoking word.
- Don’t be nice all the time. Give them an image that’s hard to forget. The truth is in the detail.
- Choose the most powerful details during rewrites. Also notice where details need to be added or strengthened.
- Have a “commonplace” book—jot down phrases and words you read and like (look up “commonplace” website)
- Scenes/mini-scenes: enter one way, exit another way. Emotional transition during a scene. Important moment occurs within a scene. “Telling” is the transition/summary between scenes. Scene allows reader to experience the situation with the character.
No comments:
Post a Comment