Wake Up Your Writing
Since I'm having a hard time moving out of wake up mode this morning, I thought I'd chat with you a bit about waking up your writing.
How do you know if your writing needs a wake up call?
If you yawn reading the first chapter, that might be a clue.
Are your sentences repetitious constructions?
Do you use tired verbs? Mousy nouns?
Clues two, three, and four.
I'm not advocating making your work sound as if you've strolled through the dictionary or thesaurus. I am suggesting that you paint as vivid a picture of your story as possible without diving into purple prose.
You'll clear up a lot of these things as you work through each draft. After you've read your work for all the other stuff you do during editing, read it again for your word choices. Your eyes may pop wide open.
And your story might pop to life.
How do you know if your writing needs a wake up call?
If you yawn reading the first chapter, that might be a clue.
Are your sentences repetitious constructions?
Do you use tired verbs? Mousy nouns?
Clues two, three, and four.
I'm not advocating making your work sound as if you've strolled through the dictionary or thesaurus. I am suggesting that you paint as vivid a picture of your story as possible without diving into purple prose.
You'll clear up a lot of these things as you work through each draft. After you've read your work for all the other stuff you do during editing, read it again for your word choices. Your eyes may pop wide open.
And your story might pop to life.
Comments
You are right, we need to walk that line between vivid construction and purple prose in order to engage the reader. They must have clues to bring their mental imagery into play.
Individual style comes into play. Voice of the author, voice of the character. The character of the piece.
In general with this post, I'm speaking to those writers who will say something like 'She went to the store.' for every sentence.
Maybe I'll use this as a jumping off point for my writing topic next Monday.
You mean, like that?
Yeah, sorta.
Awareness is great, but we also have to be prepared to kill our darlings. ;) Not everyone can do that.
Lynnette Labelle
http://lynnettelabelle.blogspot.com
Coincidentally, we're talking about voice at my blog - author Neil Plakcy was my guest today, and I'm following up tomorrow.
The trouble with 'voice' is that you can't really teach it. Because, as you point out, there's that danger of sounding like a thesaurus, or worse, like another author.