Choosing the Best Descriptive Details

First impressions, experts tell us, are usually formed in the first ten seconds. The law of "primacy" is at work here--what a person observes first is usually remembered most strongly. This applies to characters in your fiction, just as it does to people you meet in everyday life.

Your task is to create a "visual" for the reader (external), a sense of what is inside the character (internal), and something about that character that sets him or her apart (singularity). That last is crucial because great characters are unique. Even if you are using an "ordinary person" as your main character, you can--and should--give that character a strong individuallife.

So GRAB the reader's attention. If your character is bizarre in some way, that's always good. For more "normal" characters, you'll have to look closely to your imagination for the details that are, to use a general term, "unusual." Why? Because the usual is dull, cliched.

Character description ought to do at least double duty: give us a picture of the character and also indicate something about the character's inner life. Inner life comes from a combination of things: background, habits, living conditions, dreams. There is an infinite universe of connections from which to draw. These are the some basics of creating vivid characters.

from the Creating Dynamic Characters Workshop
http://www.WritersOnlineWorkshops.com

Writing Advice: Truth

There are a number of writers now who think that when they distort reality, it may magnify their power. Distortion is not the ideal of literature, because deep in his heart every writer wants to tell the truth. He is, in a way, a carrier of the truth, but he carries the truth in his own way, according to his emotions. A writer who will sit down and distort reality arbitrarily will never succeed from a literary point of view. When you read Tolstoy you see that although he's dreaming, he's trying his best to make his dreams as convincing as possible. I feel that now there is a tendency in literature towards distorting the order of things, not to create great art but to be "original" through distortion. Distortion and originality have become synonyms, while actually they are very far from one another.

from Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer

The Short Personal Essay

The short personal essay is the most publishable of all genres of creative writing. Unlike the market for fiction or poetry, there is always a place to send a personal essay. If you write something true and honest from your- heart (or funny bone), if there's a point to it, if the subject and word count is right for the market, it will eventually be published.

. . . .Though not adhering to the formal rules of the essays you wrote in English class, the personal essay is crafted and shaped: it has a beginning, a middle and an ending. The opening must draw the reader in, set up expectations for what the essay is about. The essay's tone and subject are clear in the first paragraph.

In the middle of the essay, something happens: An anecdote illustrates your theme. The reader wants to go through the experience with you, not be told about it from a distance. Use the devices of fiction. Set the scene. What were your five senses picking up? What was said? Use dialogue if you can. Be specific in your details and descriptions of people and places.

from "On Writing Personal Essays" by Barbara Abercrombie
The Writer January 2003

Your Characters Weaknesses

Don’t short-change your characters by choosing tepid weaknesses [for them]. Remember, the harder the struggle, the more emotion you can build.

from “Fiction’s Connecting Link: Emotion” by Kathy Jacobson


The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing edited by Meg Leder and Jack Heffron

On Writing and Getting Published

The Importance of Reading

Read. That's the single best thing an aspiring writer can do for his or her work. I once heard an editor say, "Read a thousand books of the genre you're interested in. THEN write yours."

I was astonished and pleased to hear her say this--because that's exactly what I did. During the years when I had no thought of writing for children, I read and read and read. Middle-grade novels. Hundreds of them--easily more than a thousand. Then I wrote mine--and it sold on its first submission. Luck? Coincidence? Maybe...but I doubt it.

My personal reading list draws from a wide variety of genres. I love middle-grade novels best, but I also read Young Adult novels and picture books. I read adult literary fiction, mysteries and nonfiction. I read poetry. I love books on food and travel. Whether a wondrous story or a hilarious passage of dialogue or a beautiful sentence or a memorable image, every bit of reading I do helps my own writing. The rhythm of language and the way words combine to communicate more than their dictionary meanings infuse the serious reader's mind and emerge transformed when that reader sits down to write. That's really the best possible advice I could give any writer--read. But I find that folks are often disappointed with this advice, so I'll offer a few more basic tips.

Discipline

I don't write every day because I also teach part-time. But on my writing days, I sit down at the keyboard in the morning and I don't get up until I've written at least two double-spaced pages. That's about 500 words, which works well for me. Find what works for you.

On bad days, I might get 480 words written and throw them all away the next day. (My theory there is, I figure I'm getting all the awful stuff out of me...) On good days, two pages becomes twenty. But--and this is key--when I sit down to write I never know for sure which kind of day it's going to become. I do my two pages no matter how crummy I feel about writing that day...and when I'm lucky, the act of writing itself turns the day into a good one.

Linda Sue Park's website (December 2000)


A Single Shard

What Makes a Story?

A story consists of a sequence of actions that occur when a sympathetic character encounters a complicating situation that he confronts and solves.


Writing for Story: Craft Secrets of Dramatic Nonfiction by a Two-Time Pulitzer Prize Winner by Jon Frankli

I Write Whenever It Suits Me

I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day; a novel should not be interrupted. When I cease to be carried along, when I no longer feel as though I were taking down dictation, I stop. (Francois Mauriac)