You’ve spent hours on your paper. You’ve checked spelling, punctuation, and grammar. You rearranged sentences to maximize readability and harness sentence flow. The next item on your list is to insert sensory detail to liven up your text. Wordscape The five senses are: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Landscape painters capture the colors, textures, and essence of a particular place. Gourmands combine color, texture, taste, and smell into a fine dining experience. In the same way, great writers use all five senses to create a wordscape. Okay, I just made that word up. My point is, in order to put your reader in the character’s shoes you must use…
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Revising for Sentence Flow
With no sentence flow, Dick and Jane are dull as tofu. But that’s how I learned to read. It’s a wonder I ever developed a passion for it. Most sentences are two to six words long. See Spot. Spot is Dick and Jane’s dog. There’s a limited word list—this is Dick Jane Spot run house— you get the idea. It begged to be read in robotic monotone, and who wants to listen to that? Repetition may help you learn to hit a baseball, but Dick-and-Jane-style repetition just makes you want to throw up! Structure Luckily, I was exposed to other great literature: A Thousand and One Arabian Nights, Grimm’s Fairy…
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SPaG
SPaG is writer shorthand for spelling, punctuation, and grammar. It is the most basic level of revision. Most word programs have built in spell and grammar checks. They may even alert you to punctuation errors such as not using a question mark where you need one. Spelling Let’s look at spelling first. You may think spellcheck is your friend. Beware! Unfortunately your computer cannot distinguish between rode and road; sink and synch; or weight and wait. It is your job to proofread for meaning. The English language has hundreds of homophones, words that sound alike but are spelled differently. If you’re unsure of proper spelling look it up! Some homophones…
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Quotation Marks
Whether you’re writing fiction, a letter to the editor, or a heavily researched report, it is important to know how and when to use quotation marks. Dialog In fiction, quotation marks are used exclusively for dialog. That is to say, they surround a character’s spoken words. For example: I shove the photo in Evan’s face. “Who is she?” I demand. “Alex,” he says, his face a giant question mark. And you slipped this into my locker because. . . ?” he actually squirms under my glare “You said you wanted pictures.” In this example the character’s spoken words begin and end with quotation marks. Anything outside of the quotation marks…
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Writers Read
Reading can take you places without ever leaving the comfort of your home. You can travel forward or backward in time, sail the oceans, cross deserts, and scale mountains. Writers read with intention. We notice language, story, mechanics, and tone. Language The language used in science fiction is very different from the language used in romance novels. Get to know your genre by reading. A lot. No, I really mean it. The more you consume in your genre, the more natural the language becomes. Some books are written in a flowery style while others are lean and sparse. Some use similes, metaphors, or analogies where others use simple, plain language…
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Strong Verbs
Strong verbs make your writing sing. Since verbs drive the action in your story, it’s important to choose them carefully. Walk, look, and turn are not strong verbs. Neither are talk, watch, think, or realize. Yet beginning writers use these weak verbs all the time. What are Strong Verbs? A strong verb is one that does double duty. It defines the action but it also describes it. Let me show you what I mean. We can write, “Ashley looked at the letter.” Look defines what she did, but doesn’t describe it. Some writers are tempted to solve this dilemma by writing, “Ashley looked at the letter longingly.” The verb, look,…
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Persuasive writing
You’ve heard of the power of the pen? I’m pretty sure whoever wrote that was talking about persuasive writing. We are surrounded by persuasive writing: advertisements online or in print; movie posters at the theater; social media feeds; book reviews; letters to the editor; political campaign ads. Anytime someone tries to convince the reader to their way of thinking, that’s persuasive writing. Persuasive writing is a balancing act. Essentially you are making an argument without being argumentative. Let me explain. Let’s say you want to persuade school administrators to keep chocolate milk on the lunch menu. The key is to acknowledge the downsides of chocolate milk. Then state your position.…
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Show Don’t Tell Part IV
I want to challenge you to use the sense of touch in your writing. The obvious uses are texture and temperature. But there’s so much more. When you think of the sense of touch you may think of your fingertips. The sense of touch goes beyond what you feel with your fingertips. Texture and Temperature Floors are hard, roads slick, and pillows soft. That’s texture. Sometimes a simple word will describe texture, other times you may use a comparison. For example, the floor was hard as a tombstone might be appropriate in a ghost story. But for a light-hearted tale you might describe the floor as hard like rock candy.…
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Opportunity
I had the rare opportunity to attend an author presentation this week. Our local Deschutes Public Library System hosts renowned authors each winter. A pair of $25 tickets literally fell into my lap the day before Richard Russo spoke. Opportunity Knocks A friend of a friend couldn’t use their tickets so in a roundabout way they were passed on to me. I snapped them up and invited my writerly friend and critique partner to share in my good fortune. Richard Russo is a Pulitzer Prize winning author. So it’s a big deal. An evening with Mr. Russo We settled in for an entertaining presentation. Mr. Russo began with a standard…
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Show Don’t Tell Part III
Use volume, pitch, rhythm, and rhyme to embed your reader in a sonic landscape. Show Don’t Tell is a writing technique to draw the reader onto the page. Imagine a snowy day. What do you hear? I heard the tap-tap of snow hitting my brimmed hat, the squeak of boots in snow, and the sheer quiet of a world muted by falling flakes after a first snow. Several days later the sounds morphed. The snow had a crust of ice that crunched under my boots. Birds sang from snow covered branches. Traffic hummed on the highway a mile away. Volume and Pitch Show emotion with your dialog. For instance, words…
