How DO you write? – Part 1
Every writer
has a unique style of writing. The way a writer constructs a story is an
individual thing, but how do you write?
Do you focus
more on the dialogue and less of the description? Do you put more into the
characters than you do the story? Do you fill your pages will beautiful
description and not much else? These are all examples of what writers do,
without ever maintaining a balance.
How you
write is important. It’s the difference between the reader becoming fully
immersed in the story and enjoying every page, to throwing it aside because
it’s so terrible. It comes back to that word ‘balance’ again. The best stories
always have a good balance of dialogue, narrative and description.
But what
makes some writing so amazing? The way a writer constructs his or her
descriptions is what makes stories stand out. How you write is all about
choosing the correct words to convey the story, in the right way that brings
the scene to life and makes it easier for the reader to visualise and
understand.
Description
shouldn’t ‘tell’ the readers, it should ‘show’ them. It should be visual, but
should also be rhythmic and have a sense of alliteration. It should appeal to
the reader’s senses, so that on an emotional level, certain words will invoke
certain associations, memories or emotions. The idea is to seduce and lure the
reader into your fictional world with your carefully chosen words, so much so
they almost get wrapped up in it.
Sensory
description can be powerful, emotional and visual. New writers wrongly assume
that description isn’t an essential requirement for their masterpiece, but
that’s like trying to make tomato soup without the tomatoes. Perhaps some
writers find it hard to do, while others just don’t bother. There are some
writers that insist that their books are perfectly fine without all that
descriptive stuff. But the quality of description is what makes writing work,
and this might be why so many self-published novels are so unreadable, awful
and not worthy of being written in the first place. Sometimes they force the
description and it’s dull and flat or they forget the description altogether.
If there is little effective description, then you’re not telling your story.
Of course,
writers can be the complete opposite and write too much description. Readers
don’t want to see large chunks of description; it will put them off and it will
kill the pace. This practice is seen in a lot of books over the last 100 years,
where it was common for the author to describe a scene for pages and pages.
It’s better to break down descriptions into more sizable sections so that it
keeps things moving and keeps the reader interested.
How do you
write? should be a question every author should ask themselves. The reader
needs to know where and when the story takes place, whose story it is, what the
characters look like, what is around them and what they’re doing at any given
moment. Without this information, the reader won’t have a clue what’s going on,
nor want to be a part of it.
Description
is only hard for authors because they don’t know how to write – they don’t know
how to construct descriptive passages that are stimulating, visual or poetic,
but that’s what writing is about – describing things, in your own stylistic
way. When you describe something, it’s description. This is why so many rely so
heavily on ‘telling’ rather than ‘showing’.
There is
also the notion that some writers are too flowery with their descriptions –
known as Purple Prose, but this is often down to an individual’s
perception. What one person finds over
the top or ornate, another will find beauty. The truth is that description is
only bad when it’s written badly.
Description
is such an integral part of a story and should never be ignored. If you are a
writer, then carefully choosing the right words in the right order that brings
the scene to life should be easy. This should be second nature.
In part 2
we’ll look at how to approach description, how to make it effective by showing
rather than telling, how to make it visual and not over the top, and the kinds
of things to avoid to get the best from your descriptions.
Next week:
How DO you write? – Part 2
I love to describe things when I write. I use to tell myself that if I can't see what I write, then it's not worth adding. Sometimes it even happen that I illustrate how I see a place etcetera (even if it's not perfect), but it helping me a lot. Ones again, thank you very much for all great advices. /Angel L. Ericson
ReplyDelete