Writing Tips - Instilling Immediacy into your Writing

When writing your story, you want to grab the reader and suck him/her into your book. You want your reader to experience your book as it's happening. Word by word. Emotion by emotion. Action by action. To do so, pay attention to the following three areas:



1. The Story's Structure

2. Description

3. Writing Style


The Story's Structure 
Right from the very first Chapter, your story must grab your reader. If you're not grabbing your reader look at the following:

Point of View: If the point of view is clear and consistent from the story's beginning, readers won't be forced to guess whose perception they are seeing through.

Conflict: Action proceeds from characters in conflict - and pulls readers into your story. If you have the conflict clearly in mind, and pose it clearly for the reader, you will reach for the more active phrases and situations that create immediacy.

Exposition and background: Long descriptions of character or setting background intrude on the reader's illusion. Many writers feel it is important to the reader to being their stories with such passages. Readers do not need the entire background of your fictional world to appreciate the story's movement. The opposite is true. A single sentence, if well-imagined and worded, can do that far more immediately.

Create Compelling Description
Animating objects is just one way for resting immediacy through description. Consider these others:
Create charged images: A charged image evokes all the other elements of your story - theme, character, conflict, setting, style, and so on. As the reader moves through the story, the charged image discharges its potency gradually, keeping the reader involved and intrigued.

Make descriptive sentences rhythmic, as opposed to mechanical.

Filter all description through point of view.

Be brief.

Writing Style
How you arrange your words, phrases, and sentences also contributes to the sense of immediacy that keeps readers engrossed in your story. There are certain styles and techniques you can use to create a forward flow:

State things in chronological sequence

Use active phrasing

Keep transitions crisp

Impinge phrases

Juxtapose elements

Use reveals and surprise to sustain the reader's immediate attention

Use repetition to emphasize certain elements

Avoid distractions and deadeners


Making fiction immediate is a tremendously awesome task. The biggest problem the author has is that he/she tens to own the emotions, imagination and intellect of the reader. We delude ourselves that what we put on paper will be as intensely immediate for the reader as it was for us.

You can overcome much of this occupational hazard by imagining as your write, an audience of strangers. Try to feel their living, breathing presence and respond to their craving for an immediately intense experience.

Writing Resource: The Writer's Digest Handbook of Novel Writing

Writing Tips - How to Set Your Story

The definition of setting is "a backdrop against which your characters perform."

When writing your story, you must make sure there is a sense of place. It's essential. Setting denotes time, establishes mood and provides atmosphere.

As a writer you must make sure that your setting isn't simply paragraphs of description. Interweave with your characters and their actions.

Helen Haukeness writes in "Setting Your Novel Straight" that many writers who can write well about plot and character overlook the significance of setting.

She has identified eight problems that you, as a writer, may encounter and the solutions.

Let's begin.

1. Failure to Understand the Depth of a Setting.
Setting is more than buildings and roads, trees and flowers, or mountains and valleys. Setting means detail. Remember this word: specificity. When creating setting, involve all the senses: furniture, weather, people, tools, toys, clutter, lighting, odors.

As a writer, you want to elicit a response from your reader. You do this by creating a reality for them with your writing that is plausible.

2. Using Stereotyped Descriptions.
Create a sense of place with your writing. Either write what you know using environments you are familiar with, or do the research necessary to become familiar with unfamiliar settings. Ms. Haukeness suggests that writers keep a notebook of rile folder of brief descriptions, observations, and evocative images. Listen and observe wherever you are in order to absorb your environment through your various  senses.

3. Failure to Use Words as Symbols of Atmosphere and Mood.
Infuse life into your words when describing setting. Create an atmosphere that bursts into your reader's imagination with wondrous colors. Detail is important, but don't overwork your reader when they read your narrative. A smart reader will know when you're writing is overdone and no longer involves them in the story.

4. Failure to Evoke All the Senses in Descriptions of Setting.
When you think of setting, it brings to mind a picture. However, the visual image is only part of what you have to use to create a sense of place. Use all the senses available: sounds, smells, references to taste. Make the reader actually live your story instead of being an innocent bystander. Once again, let me remind you to not overdo it. Let your words build your background in your reader's mind.

5. Failure to Write Scenes Through the Character's Eyes.
You are not a character in your story. You are not the main focus. Let your reader experience your story and setting through your character's perception.

6. Failure to Change Setting Throughout an Entire Novel.
Your character doesn't stay the same throughout your story. Your character evolves, changes, and has moods. As a writer, you must make sure that your setting does the same thing. As emotions conflict in your character, so must your setting contrast. If your character is indoors, take them outside. If your character is in the woods on a rainy day show the colors, scents, surroundings to your reader.

7. Using Fictionalized Geographic Names That Don't Sound Authentic.
Be creative when using the names of cities, towns, places, and such in your story. Use your imagination or if you'd like, mix and match names of cities and states.

8. Isolating Descriptions From the Narrative Line.
If you write a lot of narrative in your story, more than likely, the reader is going to skip over it to get to the action - The dialogue of your characters. Don't end up using all your narrative to set your scene. According to Ms. Haukeness, "let the background of your novel come to life through your characters' thoughts, dialogue, and actions."

Did you learn something new about how to set your novel? Did you learn what not to do?

Great!

Resource Used: The Writer's Digest Handbook of Novel Writing

Writing Tips - Character Motivation

How well do you know the character you are writing? Do you understand his/her wants, needs, desires, motivation? Have you delved into his/her background and found out all the secrets, the sorrows, and the loves found and lost? What makes your character do what they do? What stops them from doing something?

Do you understand your character's motivation?

Can you take an event from real life and put it in your story? What makes people believe a real life event but not when they are reading it?

I'll tell you. Because, in real life, people see the event happening. They accept it as a part of life. However, if you drop a "real life" event into your story, the reader will not accept the event because they didn't see it coming. The reader doesn't believe your character is capable of the actions you make them take.

Why?

Character Motivation.

You must build your character throughout your story. This gives your reader the ability to understand and empathize with your character. The reader gets to know your character and understands your character.

In order for the reader to understand your character, you must. If you don't know why your character acts like they do, how will you convince your reader to finish reading your book?

"In order to give your characters adequate and believable motivation for everything they do, therefore, you must give them the most typical and logical motivation - the thing most people would do under those circumstances." says Scott Meredith in his book, Writing to Sell.

Sott Meredith goes on to write, "It is only when the character's motives and actions are different from the norm - when he does something for an inadequate reason, or when he does exactly the opposite of what a normal person in that position might be expected to do - that it is disbelieved."

What happens when a person acts like they do in real life is acceptable. Make sure your character's actions are acceptable as well.

The only way to do that is to develop your character throughout your story and make their actions believable to the reader.

If your character is the hero of the story, then build your story around how brave your character is. If, three-quarters of the way through your story, you suddenly show that your hero acts in a timid way and doesn't rescue the girl, or punch the bad guy, then you've given your reader a reason to not believe in your character anymore and they will probably end up closing your book in disgust.

But, if you've developed your hero and shown the character's background as having a moment in their life that identifies why the hero didn't rescue the girl, then your more likely to keep the reader reading.

For example. Your hero wants to rescue the girl, but she's surrounded by snakes. And, in your hero's past he experienced a frightening time when he was trapped in a well as a child and the well was filled with snakes. You show in your story that the hero must fight with his internal conflict of being afraid of snakes and his external conflict of needing to save the girl. When you do so, the actions of the hero then become believable.

"Your motivation, in short, will be sound only if the character always acts typically - always acts like the kind of person you have shown him to be." writes Scott Meredith in Writing to Sell.

Now, let's take your snake-fearing hero. He sees how the girl is disgusted at his cowardice and so he's forced to be heroic. He overcomes his fear of snakes, rescues the girl, and they live happily ever after.

You've made your character act "drastically" different in a way that shows a change in character the reader can believe. You've given your character a way to reasonably manage his conflicts and change his character motivation.

In doing so, you've written a book with characters the reader can relate, believe in, and grow to love.

So, I will ask you again:

How well do you know your character?