Tag: writing help

How to Stop Boring Your Readers with Scenic Description

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Photo by David Herrera

Photo by David Herrera

You go to visit some friends you haven’t seen in awhile, and find yourself sandwiched between your hosts on the couch with a giant scrapbook over your lap like a seat belt, as they show off the half million pictures of snow-capped mountains they snapped on their most recent vacation.

While we introverts may actually appreciate this in lieu of starting a conversation, it isn’t exactly entertainment. And here’s the awful truth:

You may be doing it to your readers.

In writing, this sin is known as scenic description. No matter how artfully you describe those snow-capped mountains, if it’s longer than a few sentences and not relevant to the plot, it’s boring.

The difference is, your readers don’t have to politely “ooh” and “ah” for two hundred pages. They can simply shut the book.

That brings us to two rules for scenic description:

Rule Number One: Less is more.

Don’t interrupt the climax with a description of janitorial supplies purchased in bulk; just give the reader a sense of the area—if possible, mix it with action—and move on.

Rule Number Two: Scenic description should do more than describe scenery.

Whenever possible, make description do double duty: for instance, use it to illustrate your character’s mood.

This doesn’t mean make it sunny when your hero is happy and rainy when he’s sad: you can use any scene and any type of weather to convey any mood, simply by changing your tone. A sunny day can either warm the cockles of his heart or blithely mock his pain.

Let’s take a noisy tavern as an example:

The creak and slam of the door cut out the howling wind and heralded the music within, so loud he had to shout his order in the barmaid’s ear before taking a seat by the great fire. The crackling of the wood lay down a kind of beat for the lutenist at the other end of the room, who dared the revelers to keep up with his quick fingers. Thudding boots made empty tankards dance on the tables, and spirited singing from the depths of barrel chests dissolved into thunderclap laughter each time a lyric was slurred.

Versus this:

The hinges screeched, the door slammed, and the clamorous indoors suddenly choked off the soft moan of the evening breeze. He had to scream his order to the barmaid, and even as he huddled, sweating, next to the coughing fire, he couldn’t hear his own thoughts over the revelers at the other end of the room, whose discordant bellows and guffaws shook the rafters, dwarfing the lute accompaniment to a tinny whisper.

Notice the facts are the same, but the words I use to deliver those facts have different connotations. First, the positive connotations of words like heralded, great, quick, dance, spirited, laughter. Then the connotations feel of words like clamorous, choking, scream, sweating, coughing, discordant, guffaws, tinny.

The result: you feel, rather than read, the mood. Another example of Show, Don’t Tell.

What are some other ways scenic description can do double-duty? Tell me in the comments!

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What’s as Dangerous as a Fairy Tale Ending – and How to Avoid It

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Photo by Joe Penna

Photo by Joe Penna

Today’s topic comes to us from Jubilare:

“I worry a lot about the dysfunction of my characters being taken as an approval of dysfunction in relationships.…One can avoid idealizing the flaws, sure, but how does one accept that humans and relationships are flawed without sending out the message that people should be satisfied with potentially abusive relationships…without seeming to say ‘look at the nice romance you can have with people who have X dangerous flaws’?”

We have a tendency to write about seriously flawed people. Depressed addicts with childhood scars and abandonment issues. Let’s face it: they’re just more fun.

But through this, we risk giving our readers a skewed view of the world. Just as sugary-perfect princess endings can train little girls to believe their lives will be perfect once they get married, moving tales of troubled souls can lead readers to believe dysfunctional relationships are the only real kind; that the best they can hope for is to find poetry in the pain. Worse, they might even believe such relationships are romantic, something to chase after.

What guy doesn’t want to hold the manic pixie dream girl when she cries?

What girl doesn’t want to soothe the nightmares of the war-torn bad boy?

Now, some readers will romanticize dysfunctional relationships no matter what you do, just as some will find sexual innuendos, political statements, or religious dogma in places you never intended to put them. That can’t be helped.

But we have a responsibility to do what we can: both to faithfully represent reality and to give readers the courage to improve that reality.

Here are three ways you can do that when writing about dysfunctional relationships. Try using at least two wherever the need arises.

Know the signs.

Read up on the signs of abusive relationships so you know whether or not you’re writing about one. Also research the typical physical and behavioral struggles that come with your character’s flaws. Show realistic consequences; don’t pull any punches when it comes to the pain of living in an unhealthy relationship, even if your hero is the one inflicting that pain.

Show an alternative.

Use secondary characters to show a healthier version of the flawed relationship in question. For instance, if your hero’s parents had a horrible marriage, and he struggles with knowing how to treat the girl he loves, give him a happy aunt and uncle, or a best friend with a good marriage. Give him (and your readers) something to aspire to.

Include a victory.

Every story has a physical plot and an emotional one. A dysfunctional relationship is an emotional plot. Don’t just leave it as-is at the end: make your hero come to terms with these problems at the climax, have him make an ultimate decision, and lead him to at least a small victory in the end.

A note about victory:

Be careful how your hero comes by that victory. Real healing is difficult and painful; it doesn’t happen instantly. Her love alone can’t make him stop drinking. His love alone can’t pull her out of a clinical depression.

But maybe it can help them take the first step.

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Got a writing topic you want talked about? Drop it in the Suggestion Box.

Review: Dictionary.com’s “Writing Dynamo” program

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 If you’re on Thesaurus.com (owned by Dictionary.com) as much as I am, you’ve probably seen their Writing Dynamo program advertised. Tagged “Your personal writing coach,” the program professes itself to be “Accurate, effective, web-based proofreading.”

Were you excited?

I was.

Thesaurus.com is hands down better than MS Word’s synonym tool, so why shouldn’t they be better at everything else? Especially if they charge you for it every month! It even says it tests for overused expressions, sentence length and voice!

I signed up for the free trial to find out. I only played around with it for an hour or so, but here’s what I found out.

Disclaimer: It looks like the program was designed for students writing essays, not for fiction writers. But I only tested it on fiction. Take it as you like.

What it looks like.

What it looks like.

Problems

  • Can’t handle large text – it won’t offer feedback on much more than 3,000 words at a time.
  • “Upload Text” button didn’t work – the window popped up, but none of my documents were even visible.
  • Small writing area – the text box is kind of small and not adjustable.
  • Useless dictionary – The spell-checker flagged foreign/made-up words (like MS Word would), but when I clicked “Add to Dictionary” the red underline disappeared on that instance of the word only. Where the word appeared elsewhere in the text, it was still flagged.
  • Didn’t flag all of the foreign/made up words, which indicates it might not catch all misspellings, either.
  • Set to American English – and I couldn’t see a way to switch it to British English.
  • Flagged em dashes as spelling errors.
  • Flagged sentences longer than seventeen words – which could encourage you to be more concise, but there’s no law against eighteen-word sentences.
  • Suggested changing “would have” to “had.” Wrong!
  • Sometimes gave false apostrophe corrections – telling me plurals should be possessives and vice versa (don’t people have enough trouble with this already?!?)
Closeup of the sidebar.

Closeup of the sidebar.

It called the em dash a spelling error.

It called the em dash a spelling error.

The Best Part

It flagged words repeated in close proximity. If I used the same word twice—or even two words with the same root – within a few sentences, it flagged both and offered a synonym suggestion. It’s a pretty useful feature; one MS Word doesn’t offer. Wordle can help you identify words you use too often, but not at this level.

Quick tips appear beneath the sidebar.

Quick tips appear beneath the sidebar.

Conclusion                                                                                      

It didn’t live up to “accurate,” and I don’t know what parameters it uses to judge voice, but I don’t think the world has yet seen software sophisticated enough to judge voice as we define it.

Don’t use Writing Dynamo if you don’t already have a solid grasp on grammar and punctuation; you’re likely to get led astray by false flags. But if you just want a second pair of eyes – particularly for repeated words – this program is worth the free trial and possibly a one-month subscription ($4.99). I’d suggest waiting until your story/book is in its final editing stages, sign up, edit 3,000 words at a time, and then cancel your subscription.

However, the program is fairly new and they are accepting feedback, so they may improve it. I’ll keep you posted if I learn anything.

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Your plot is useless without this

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Image by Francisco Osorio

Image by Francisco Osorio

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A hundred strangers cling to one another as their runaway train thunders toward a dead end.

Across town, the only woman you’ve ever loved is strapped to a time bomb.

Save her, keep your heart from breaking. But a thousand other hearts get broken instead.

“My husband!” a woman screams as she runs up beside you, clutching a small boy to her chest. “My husband is on that train!”

Save the train, do the right thing, the city will throw you a parade. But all you’ll see through the floats and confetti will be the grief-ridden faces of your true love’s family and the knowledge that you’ll never see her again.

You inhale the deep breath you’ll need for the flight across town.

You’re frozen in mid-takeoff. You can’t take your eyes off the boy in the woman’s arms. He’s the age you were when your father was killed. Young, but you can see in his face he knows what’s happening. Because you felt the same.

Oh, snap. You curse and hammer the keyboard. You threw the little boy in to milk the drama, not to change your hero’s mind—but now you see there’s no turning back. This is going to mean rewrites.

For all the dramatic events that happen around your hero, there are equally dramatic events happening inside him. Events that move him to action. If you don’t keep track of what’s going on inside his head, you won’t be able to predict how he’ll react to any given situation, and by the time you realize it, you might be in a terrible plot bind.

Keep that from happening by mapping your hero’s emotional journey along with the plot. Here are a few guidelines to help.

Outline your hero’s history.

Three forces influence your hero’s decisions: logic, emotions, and morals. What makes sense? What feels best? What’s right? How each of this forces affects him is first determined by his past. So start by outlining his history with questions like:

  • What’s the most traumatic thing he’s ever experienced?
  • What’s the safest he’s ever felt and why?
  • What’s the worst sin he’s ever committed?
  • Which two people have the biggest positive and negative influence on him?
  • What does he want most?
  • (Here’s more help getting to know him)

Use his history to determine how he will react to each major plot point.

The severity of each situation relative to his personal demons will determine his decision. And every decision he makes will affect future events, which, in turn, affect him right back. As the story progresses and the stakes are raised, his decision process will change. Emotional turmoil clouds his moral judgment. Righteous anger clouds his logical judgment. It’s a tumbling system of cause and effect, playing on your hero’s weaknesses and leading to the climax.

Equip him for the ultimate decision.

At the climax, your hero must make one final decision between right and wrong. The forces influencing him are now one big mess of everything that’s happened so far. Of longing and pain and fear.

Make sure that mess includes the motivation for him to make the decision he is supposed to make. If you want him save the people on the train, kill off his father; plant the boy. But if you want him save the girl, you’d better plant something early on that will undermine his empathy for the boy and push him in a different direction.

And if you want him to find a clever way to save everyone (like they do in all the movies), you’d better give him a memory that inspires the answer.

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