Now, just like me, I see a lot of blogs and posts out there striving to grasp at mastery. I'd like to share some of the things I know about writing. It may not be evident, thus so, I will share what may see obvious to me and others who write often, or are successful in writing. I just want to go through some simple things, and then rant a lot about how I believe we all need to tweak (I mean the whole world of authors) our writing styles to fit our newer generations, so we don't lose them.
I'll keep this simple and we'll do things step by step, blog post by blog post. This won't be the last "how to".
First I'd like to get into the narration vs dialogue vs reader creativity in building your world for the reader.
Narration the most boring of all forms of describing what's going on in your story that we'll be talking about in this post.
Dialogue the more fun way of explaining and describing what's going on in your story.
Reader Creativity the most skilled writing method of explaining and describing what's going on in your story, though, the most risky.
They sat at the table, to eat their food. It didn't taste well, it was cold. And smelled funny. The wooded bench hurt her butt when sitting prolonged periods of time, so she tried to hurry while eating, and often was the first one to ask to be excused from the table.
Now, this is narration description, obviously. Even though it just came of the top of my mind, no thought process with it, it's still not very fun, is it? It's obviously boring, very descriptive no action. This... Is what I also like to call TELLING the reader. You don't want to tell the reader things often, not now and days at least. I know, I know, you've read a few books and have a favorite author and you maybe wish to write similar to that author and you've probably read pages and pages on end of narration and description; being told.
I understand, narration is necessary, and in defense of some of our old school epics (you know, like prior to the internet, video on demand, gaming, just basically, a vast things to do besides sit in your room or living room by the fire reading) narration was far more interesting 30+ years ago for that fan base.
I can see it now. Like I'm there, in that time. Soaking it all up, every word. After all, I'm sick, home from school and I have nothing else to do. My entire day can be stuck reading Morris's The Wood Beyond The World, with it's "mini-giants" (Ogres we call them today, or from Tolkien's epics), and when that's the only world I have to escape in, I'm going to enjoy every single word of it.
But let's get realistic, unless your audience is hardcore book worm, over 70 years old old, or your friends or family. You cannot write this way. You cannot write like them. Their style is from another time.
You want to develop a relationship with your reader as well, and you don't develop relationships talking to someone, you develop them talking WITH them. Speak WITH them, as much as possible, not TO THEM. It's rude. :)
"Hey, dinner is a ready, have a seat."
"Mom, Marry is sitting in my spot again!"
"Marry, stop teasing your sister..."
"But mom, my spot hurts my butt, her's is softer!"
"There's no difference in spots, all the spots are the same Merry. Now, hurry up and eat your food before it gets cold.
It's a cold night, so get the food in while it's still hot." Mother demanded.
"Can I please be excused now Mother?" Marry asked.
Now, with this dialogue, you see I'm able to explain almost everything I did with narration. Only with conversation of between the characters in the story.
These are just simple examples. Obvious not creative. And, the reader doesn't have to use much mind power to imagine what's going on. It's simple, yet, boring.
Here we have a mix between the two.
Marry's knees pressed against the table I swear this thing is shrinking on me she thought. She starred at her little sister. She's got the best spot, once she gets up to grab a napkin from the kitchen like she always does, I'm going to steal her spot.
Tracy proceeded towards the kitchen to grab the napkins.
Marry pounced on the opportunity to steal her spot.
"MOM!" Tracy yelled, "Marry's trying to take my spot again!"
Marry, acting out as if she thought she could get away with it, "Oh c'mon Tracy, I'm so much taller than you, and my spot hurts to sit on and I need to point my knees to the sides as to not cramp them up--"
Their Mother sighed, "Children, just take your spots at the table, hurry and eat your food it's cold this evening and you need to fill your stomachs with warmth tonight."
Marry, scooted to her spot at the table. Protesting quietly by shifting her bottom back and forth and eating her food quickly. "Mother, may I be excused now?"
With this style, or I guess you can say structure, we understand Marry is the main character almost immediately because her thoughts are in the narration. Though there is a level of reader creativity in this, it blows away as I say rather quickly.
Blowing away.
A term I developed for myself, within my mind entirely and have never shared before.
When you write as much as I have, so many thousands of pages, you start to pick up an ability to think ahead as you write. It's a fun feeling to, because you know where you're going with the story and can build up the reader creativity.
Now, you'll want to test this skill out quite a bit. You can irritate people immensely if you time this wrongly. But if you time it right.... Well, that's where the gold is if you ask me. Keeping in mind, I'm still believing and thinking that this generation of readers do not have time, nor do they need to be told what things look like and sometimes, even feel like.
You need to understand the readers level of experience to do this. Doing so, I guess you're aiming for a fan base, or perhaps you have a fan base and you understand what they like. I mean, ok. Let's think about it. Do we need to be explained what magical things look like in great detail in 2018? No, we have CGI and awesome fantasy movies that 20 year olds today saw in the theater at 11. Like, LOTR for example. A whole generation of people grew up with this stuff, and I'm just going to say, they will NEVER read the book. EVER, not because they're lazy, or poorly educated or lacking focus/concentration. No. It's because they DO NOT NEED the level of narration and description.
Think of it as a relationship. You don't want to sit with your friend or perhaps to be partner and have him or her tell you for hours about something in great detail, say, an experience or event - that you personally feel you've experienced and or were present at. You know what I mean?
You can argue all day long that our old school epic fantasy writers are the way to write. But, doing so, you're just avoiding moving on and adapting to the newer generations of force fed graphics and CGI entertainment. Of, on demand entertainment, online gaming, and a serious distaste for repetitive literature.
Now that I've probably written 200-300 words too much in trying to explain something, I'm not aiming for the newer generations. I understand how I'm writing RIGHT NOW is repetitive. It's, filled, it's ... probably just a tad bit too much for the average 20 year old. Luckily, I'm not aiming for the average joe. I'm aiming for you writers, who hopefully like me always just have way too much to say. :)
So, back to "blowing away".
"Blow it away."
I do this quite often in my character building. Many may disagree, but I think people especially my target group has an excellent ability to build how my characters look. I don't get into great detail with how they look. I don't like to describe them in narration. I'll do so with how they act, how they talk and how other react to them.
I'll give an example from my latest post in COT here, Chapter Five.
Squars, character came, character gone.
Other than narrating that he is tall, quite tall. I use his personality (violent), chewing on a metal rod, body language and how he treats his crew members as methods for allow the READER to create their own image of how Squars looks. I mean, I could use filler techniques and describe lots of detail of how this guy looks in MY MIND, but. I can save my target audience irritation, time and and use that time to fill in other details I feel I must.
With the younger generation, they've experienced so much visually, and giving an attitude, a demeanor, body language to a character and their minds will automatically create how this character looks. I understand, most can do this. Though, most do not understand that this should be a technique of writing to capture our younger generation.
I started allowing the reader to build the image of Squar, quite quickly. Then, allowed the reader to stop trying to create the character by blowing the focus away. You can actually feel the moment I do this. The paragraph it happens in.
So, let's say you read Chapter Five (I recommend you do it! Otherwise you're just cheating yourself out of an experience in writing) From this point:
And to this point: YOU KNOW, IN YOUR MIND exactly how Squars looks. Don't know? So. If this is how Squars appears in your mind, then I've done my job, playing with my words, incredibly well. Haven't I? When I use the term blow away, blowing away, it got blown away -- I'm letting the reader relax their creative minds. They will get frustrated if they have to focus on too many things at once. So, allowing them to be creative in your writing is important, it is how the relationship builds. But you must blow it away too, allow them to understand or let go of their guessing. Or they will put your story away. You can make it more obvious than I do as well. But don't trick the reader into creating something in their minds to fill your story, then fill it with something else than they've imaged. Either you're going to allow the reader to build this story with you, in real time, or you're not. Thanks for reading. Welcome all rants to dispute my claims. After all. Who wants to be a conformist?
Heavy set.
Dirty ass, dark cloths.
Dusty.
Dark colored hair.
Wide jaw-lined face.
Wide, large mouth.
Hair shaggy looking, though not long.
Rather large big boots.
Blue eyes. though, not super light/bright blue.
Hope I'm helping. Please comment if something is hard to understand. This type of writing styles is rather fringe and esoteric. meaning, for most it's a feeling, not a logically taught skill. It can be trained.
Welcome all rants telling me I'm wrong.
Welcome all rants telling me I'm insane.
Intriguing article! I think my biggest problem is being stuck with narration style. Obviously, I'm just too used to do things visually. 😛