Category: Creative Writing

Layer Details Like a Police Sketch Artist

Police Sketch Artist

Boise, Idaho, Police Sketch Artist Tonya Newberry

Part 2 of 3: Add Detail to Your Descriptions

As promised, here is Part 2 of our powwow on adding detail to your descriptions. In Part 1, we discussed the importance of using detailed sensory images, motion verbs, and concrete nouns to evoke a reader’s emotions.

One Detail at a Time

Think of your story as a blank slate to which you are adding details one at a time. It’s similar to the way a police sketch artist sits down with a crime victim and together they try to render the face of the attacker. The artist takes out pad and paper (or computer, nowadays!) and the subject describes the shape of the villain’s face and the size, shape, and color of his eyes. Next, she gives details about the size and shape of the rogue’s nose, mouth, eyebrows, and ears, and whether he had any facial hair or scars or identifying marks on his skin. Finally, the victim describes the criminal’s hair color, length, and style. At each step during the process, the artist adds another layer to his drawing until the likeness appears just as the crime victim remembers her attacker.

This is what you’ll do with your description—add layers one at a time until the description is just as you picture your character or scene. Continue reading Layer Details Like a Police Sketch Artist

All (About) the Juicy Details

American Flags
Patriotism Flies High

Prove it to Me

Which statement is more convincing?

  1. Alec is the most patriotic man you’d ever want to meet.
  1. Each Memorial Day, Marco hangs three American flags from his front porch, one for each of his schoolmates who died in Iraq; sings with his church group a medley of The Star Spangled Banner, America the Beautiful, and America at the local VA hospital; and serves a ham and eggs dinner at a soup kitchen.

When you’re reading a story and the author wants you to believe a character is patriotic, do you simply take the author at his or her word? Or do you want proof—actions that show the character actually possesses the quality?

In All the Light You Cannot See, Anthony Doerr writes, “Don’t you ever get tired of believing, Madame? Don’t you ever want proof?”

Most of us want proof. Humans are wired to respond emotionally to concrete images, not abstract ideas. We like our images to move. And the more details we add to those concrete action images, the more proof we offer, the more solid those images become in our minds.

Why do people love soap operas and reality shows? We want the gossip, the dirt—the details. When my friend goes on a date, she calls me, not just to say, “It was nice.” She wants to tell me what her date said and how he said it or if he talked too much and whether he paid for dinner and if he kissed her and…all the details. After a football game, even though my husband just watched every play of the game, he watches the post-game show that will rehash all the details. Continue reading All (About) the Juicy Details

Why You Should Listen to Authors Talk

Stephen King
Stephen King at UMass Lowell

Lend Me Your Ears

How often do you listen to other writers speak? I don’t mean reading what they’ve written, but listening to them talk out loud—hearing the words drip from their lips. When authors share prepared remarks or better, speak off the cuff, you get a whole different insight into their writing—and your own.

I was hunting interesting websites to share with my Creative Power Writing Facebook friends last night, and as things happen, one idea snowballed into another. Weird Al Yankovic’s Word Crimes video popped up and I bookmarked it as a future post; then I thought, Hey, maybe I should look for more videos!

Stephen King

So I typed “writing” into the box on YouTube. The usual writing instruction and tips videos popped up, but also videos of authors giving speeches and doing interviews and 3-5-minute inspirational clips. A half-hour video of Stephen King answering audience questions at The University of Massachusetts Lowell revealed how King balances story and poetic language, how he develops characters, and why he loves kids as protagonists. He may be scary, but King is a funny guy, too! At one point, he started gushing a little too much about kids and had to stop himself: “I’m starting to sound like Michael Jackson, so I’d better shut up.”

Continue reading Why You Should Listen to Authors Talk

Guide to Writing Competitions, Literary Agents & More | Poets & Writers

Swan
Swan at Millrace                                                                       photo: Everett Robinson/all rights reserved

My Dear Writers,

I’m taking the holiday weekend off and not writing a blog post today. Instead, I’d like to point you to a great resource. Poets & Writers online is packed full of information for creative writers. The page I’m referring you to, Tools for Writers, links you to the following:

  • Literary Journals and Magazines
  • Small Presses
  • Conferences and Residencies
  • Writing Prompts and Exercises
  • Literary Agents
  • Literary Places
  • Book Review Outlets
  • Poets & Writers Guides (handbooks)
  • Top Topics for Writers (articles)
  • Grants & Awards
  • MFA Programs
  • Jobs for Writers

Oh, and you can also access the magazine… 🙂

Is this a treasure trove, or what?

Like us on Facebook

I hope you’ve also noticed–and clicked!–the link to my new Creative Power Writing Facebook page in the left-hand column. Through it, I’ll be regularly connecting you with great sites like Poets & Writers, inspirational quotations, writing prompts, invaluable tips and articles, contests, best writing books, and more!

Enjoy.

See you next week. In the meantime, get something published.

What Makes Writing Outstanding: An Analysis

The Poisonwood Bible
The Poisonwood Bible

I wish I’d written that!

What makes a piece of writing outstanding? For fiction, there’s an engaging plot, layered characters, a theme that touches our hearts, scintillating dialogue. Nonfiction needs a novel premise and intriguing points backed up with well-researched information. Many authors can accomplish these. But what lifts an author from being merely a popular writer to a place among the all-time greats?

It’s the quality of the writing. What marks them as master wordsmiths is the way they manipulate words and use rhetorical techniques to expert effect. This may seem difficult to quantify, but we can identify some of the strokes that make the rest of us sigh, “I wish I’d written that!”

Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

Let’s analyze a powerful excerpt from one of my favorite authors, Barbara Kingsolver. In The Poisonwood Bible, Leah’s missionary father has moved his family to the Congo. They have endured all manner of hardships, including fire ants, a flood, hunger, and little Ruth May contracting malaria after hiding her quinine pills. Now a green mamba has killed Ruth May. Leah narrates:

A honeycreeper sang from the bushes outside the window. It seemed impossible that an ordinary, bright day should be proceeding outside our house. Mother spread a small, soft hand onto hers and washed the fingers one at a time. She cradled and lifted the head to rinse it, taking care not to get the soapy water in Ruth May’s eyes. As she dried the limp blond hair with a towel, she leaned in close, inhaling the scent of my sister’s scalp. I felt invisible. By the force of my mother’s desire to conduct this ritual in private, she had caused me to disappear. Still, I couldn’t leave the room. After she dried and wrapped her baby in a towel she hummed quietly while combing out the tangles and plaiting the damp hair. Then she began to cut our mosquito netting into long sheets and stitch the layers together. At last we understood. She was making a shroud.

Continue reading What Makes Writing Outstanding: An Analysis

What Are the Most Beautiful Words in English?

Beautiful Words
Beautiful Words

Scooped!

“The Most Beautiful Words in the English Language.” The article title jumped out at me on LinkedIn. Damn! Dana Dobson had scooped me! I had planned a blog post on just that topic.

Luckily, my fears were unfounded. To Dana, beautiful meant someone recognizing her as a public relations expert: “’Are you THE Emma Boldnoggin?’ he asks. ‘I’ve heard great things about you!’”

So instead of defenestrating me, Dana provided the perfect opening for my post—the old adage, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” (in this case, it’s more likely the ear)—as I ask,

What are the most beautiful words in the English language?
Read on to learn my Top 10.

An unscientific survey of my ebullient Facebook family and friends, as well as people I met out and about, revealed that everyone has the quintessential list on the tip of his or her tongue.

Continue reading What Are the Most Beautiful Words in English?

I (Used to) Hate Poetry!

 I Hate Poetry

I hate poetry.
Flowery phrases forming phlegmatic facets
Run-on sentences defying punctuation
Fragments with as many meanings as choices on a Chinese menu
Mixed metaphors, silly similes
Secret symbols must be deciphered
Why can’t a cigar be a cigar?

I hated poetry because I didn’t understand it. It seemed like poets went out of their way to make their ideas inscrutable. Maybe they did this on purpose to make themselves seem more important or to make their scholarly club more exclusive. Why, the lines didn’t make grammatical sense or form complete ideas. And talk about run-on! By the time you reached a period (if ever), you’d have forgotten the beginning of the idea!

Continue reading I (Used to) Hate Poetry!

The Writing Fail that Will Make You Sound Like a Kindergartner

TattooFAIL!
Tattoo FAIL!

Danger–Epic Writing Fail Ahead!

Writing ain’t easy–even if you love it. But at least you usually know whether you’re doing something well or not. One thing, though, might be slipping beneath your radar. If you don’t pay attention, it’s guaranteed to make your writing fail. See if you can figure it out before it’s too late. Here’s an example:

He wrote some lovely sentences. Those words sing clever news. I do hope that you read ’em all. They’re stuffed with everything!

Would you continue to read WowPow if I wrote like this? (Rhetorical question!) Did you notice how sing-song-y it sounded? But what exactly is wrong with the writing that makes it fail? Can you figure it out if I break apart the paragraph like this—?

He wrote some lovely sentences.
Those words sing clever news.
I do hope that you read ’em all.
They’re stuffed with everything!

Now the problem becomes evident—the sentences are all the same length. This gives them a regular, bouncy rhythm, not unlike The Cat in the Hat [Happy birthday, Dr. Seuss!] or “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Delightful when you’re a toddler, like my granddaughter, but not so endearing, otherwise. Now, I’ve created this extreme example as an illustration, but you’d be surprised how many writers unwittingly think in measured ideas. They might sail “in and out of weeks, and almost over a year” [Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are], have a minotaur at the center and be full of ten-dollar words, but if those sentences are all the same length—epic rhythm fail. [You make your own joke here.]

Continue reading The Writing Fail that Will Make You Sound Like a Kindergartner

Give Your Writing Creative Power with This Magic Number

Dies Irae
Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) Latin Requiem Hymn

What number do these have in common?

  •  mile limit of international law
  • Hector’s body dragged around Troy’s walls
  • geometrical figure regarded as perfect by the ancient Greeks

Did you guess?

Let me make it easier.

  • Cerberus
  • Shakespeare’s witches
  • Billy Goats Gruff
  • Goldilocks’s bears

Got it now?  Continue reading Give Your Writing Creative Power with This Magic Number

What’s the Story?

What's the story?
What’s the story?

Hi, Readers.

Getting this blog out on Thursdays isn’t working for me. Most of you seemed to prefer Sunday night, too. So, I’m returning to publishing late Sunday nights for Monday mornings. Look for my next post this Sunday/Monday.

In the meantime, I’m posting a photo here as a story prompt. Here are some ideas, but don’t limit yourself to them:

What is happening here? What has just taken place? What is about to occur? Create a realistic story, a fantasy, a fairy tale or a horror tale. How did these figures/puppets get here? Are they sentient or simply dolls? Tell a story in which the figures are not what you’d expect. Make them main characters or minor props. What role does the setting play in your story? When and where does the story take place? Make the mood be as it appears in the photo or change it drastically. Add a specific item that changes everything. Who will tell your story?

Have fun with this! I can’t wait to read your work!

Email your story to Susan@CreativePowerWriting.com. I’ll print the most original, interesting stories in a future blog entry.

Photo Credit: Pasquale Vitiello via Magdeleine