Writing Better Part 2

FINDING YOUR EMOTIONAL TRUTH

The distressing, difficult aspects of being human are exactly the parts of the story people want to hear. It’s why crowds gather at disasters, and why people read - to vicariously experience other lives and explore the full spectrum of human emotion without risk of true pain.

To write an emotionally true story, ask yourself these questions, and then use the answers to add depth to your characters:

01) What terrifies me?;

02) What disgusts me?;

03) What news stories make me wince or change the channel?;

04) What is my biggest secret?;

05) What would I never do?

WRITING THE STORY

CHARACTERS

CRAFTING CHARACTERS

The fiction writer builds characters in a similar manner to the way people’s lives take shape: in increments.

Five rules to characterization:

01) Character is the most important element in fiction - the strongest story will seem weak if the characters are weakly portrayed;

02) Character is created through specific details - the fiction writer selects details that reveal the greatest possible amount about the minds and bodies of the characters, and which have the greatest possible connection between the characters’ lives and the readers;

03) Details accumulate meaning through the use of periodic and cumulative structures, and through the willingness of the writer to repeat details;

04) The idiosynchratic arrangement of details and the sentence structure in which they are embedded create voice;

05) Voice is everything - the strongest characters and the cleverest plots will be worthless if the reader does not remember the story’s voice.

Every sentence written about a specific character should reveal details about that character. There are two ways of revealing details in sentences:

01) Cumulative sentences - in which a simple sentence is enhanced to reveal details all at one;

02) Periodic sentences - in which a simple sentence is enhanced to reveal details slowly.

A simple sentence consists of a subject, a verb, and an object. A cumulative sentence adds detail to the end of a simple sentence, while a periodic sentence inserts details into the simple sentence.

Examples:

01) Simple: The woman walks through the woods.

02) Cumulative: The woman walks through the woods, her blond hair draping her face as she stumbles between the pines, gasping and holding the stitch in her side.

03) Periodic: The woman, whose blond hair drapes her face, walks in short steps - in fits and starts, stopping occasionally to gasp and hold the stitch in her side - through the woods, the pine sap sticking to her clothes as she rests briefly against a tree.

Which sentence structure you choose will go a long way toward defining the voice of the characters, and ultimately the voice of the story.

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