Community picked writing
- Not a member? Join here
- Login
- Help
- Follow WEbook:
General Writing Advice: Improve Your Writing
Living the writing life, ways to improve your writing, and more.
Melissa arrived at the office five minutes late, as usual. She opened the door and walked down the hall. She put her laptop down on her desk and sat in her chair. She double-clicked on her Outlook folder, and brought up her cluttered to-do list. Stage Directions Blog was written right at the top. Great. She’d been looking forward to this for a long time. But first, she had to do something about breakfast. It was no good writing on an empty stomach. She pulled her whole wheat bagel out of her backpack and unwrapped it. She put a napkin in her lap. She tore off a chunk of bagel and put it in her mouth. She chewed. She swallowed. Soon, the bagel was gone, and it was time to write the blog entry. She opened Microsoft Word (despite the program’s nightmarish incompatibility with Typepad’s text editor), and put her hands on the keyboard. She began to type.
Cut!
You follow all that, readers? Or did you scan right down to the bottom, thinking, “All right already with the napkin in your lap! Get to the good stuff!”
If you answered the latter, I don’t blame you. That paragraph is a living, breathing specimen of a prose writer’s mortal enemy: Stage Directions.
Any time you narrate a physical action that gets a person from point A to point B, you’re using Stage Directions. Of course, sometimes it’s necessary to include some stage directions. But many writers – especially novices – use far too many stage directions in their writing.
The term Stage Directions comes from – you guessed it – playwriting, where stage directions are used to tell actors what they should do with their bodies during a play. Some plays include more stage directions than others. The most basic stage directions provide cues only for when a character enters or exits the stage. But plays never provide detailed directions for every single action a character should make during the play. Why not? Because actors and directors would revolt! “Don’t micromanage me!” they would exclaim. “I can create my own interpretation of my character’s actions! Give me some creative freedom!”
Your readers are sort of like these actors and directors. If a person you’re writing about goes from the kitchen table to the back door, you don’t need to tell your readers about how they stood up, walked around the table, walked into the hall, opened the door to the laundry room, etc. Your readers are perfectly capable of filling in the blanks with their imaginations. In fact, the process of doing this is one of the major pleasures of reading. Don’t rob your reader of that pleasure by micromanaging his or her imagination.
How do you know what stage directions to put in, and which to leave out? Practice, practice, practice. You might start by putting a lot of unnecessary directions in, and then taking them out in editing. Wise, helpful readers can help you find places in your writing where you use too many stage directions. As a general rule, you should include only those physical actions which are absolutely necessary for a reader’s comprehension of a scene; and those which reveal something interesting about your character or his/her situation. If you’re still uncertain, pretend your characters are capable of teleporting both through time and space. If you can teleport them somewhere without totally confusing your reader, or missing something crucial in the story, don’t describe the steps it would take for them to get there.
Now try this on for size:
Melissa arrived at the office five minutes late, as usual. She glanced at her cluttered to-do list: Stage Directions Blog. Great. She’d been looking forward to this for a long time. But first, she had to do something about breakfast. It was no good writing on an empty stomach. She tried to make her whole wheat bagel last, but before she knew it, it was time to write the blog entry. She opened Microsoft Word (despite the program’s nightmarish incompatibility with Typepad’s text editor), and began to type.
By Julian_Finn
Never use language in your prose that's noticeably more complex than your characters.
As writers struggle to find their voices and develop definitive styles, it's tempting to use "impressive" vocabulary -- sort of a textual scream that says, "See! See! I English good!"
Instead of focusing on showing off your language chops, it's usually a good idea to use language that syncs with your characters. If you're writing about gruff, gritty, morally complex characters, make your prose gruff, gritty, and sharp. Alternatively, if you're writing about pretentious, snobbish characters, it makes more sense to be more stylish and haughty with your language.
This rule is especially true if you're writing in the first person. It makes no sense for your rude, uneducated doormat protagonist to use five syllable words to describe a tree.
By Nick Daws
The art of writing is bringing your words to life on the page. And one of the best ways to do this is to write with all the senses. In other words, don't just write about what your characters see. Describe what they hear, smell, touch and even taste as well. This is a guaranteed way to make your writing more vivid and exciting.
Here's a quick example:
Tony offered Malcolm one of his roll-ups. Malcolm had previously refused, but because he felt guilty about dropping Tony's paintbrush, this time he accepted. He didn't enjoy it at all though.
Now here's the same scene again, with the senses of taste and touch added. By the way, this paragraph comes from the published novel Painter Man by UK author Jeff Phelps:
Malcolm had already refused one of Tony's roll-ups, but now felt so bad about the brush that he accepted. Between his lips it had the texture of toilet paper. It tasted disgustingly of Tony's Old Spice aftershave.
No prizes for identifying which of these descriptions brings the scene more vividly to life! Writers are always taught to show, not tell, and writing with all the senses is one of the very best ways you can do this.
Don't kid yourself, anything we write/post/publish and offer to their world as our own combination of words ultimately has to be thought of as entertainment. If this makes you cringe, read on. Your writing does not have to make the reader happy, sad, angry or relieved, but it does have to take the reader somewhere and it does have to move the reader in some way. Your main character(s) have to move towards something. S/he can progress or regress but there has to be change. There can be movement towards birth, rebirth, revelation, disappointment, death or disaster, but the work must move in some way. Something has to happen.
It is possible that the essence of the work is a simple revelation: The character remembers something, or sees something, or does something, and it can be a very small thing, but the impact must be felt and it must lead to some kind of transformation, however minor.
We writers are selfish beasts, and of course, we write to express ourselves. But while our writing can be healing and therapeutic for us, we must remember that we are taking the reader along on our journey and s/he must feel stirred by what we write. You must always ask yourself, where I am going with this and why is the reader going to care?
By ducktoes
Read
Read with a critical eye. This will ruin a lot of your
blissful reading experiences, but consider that just one interpretation of the
maxim, "Ignorance is bliss." Once you set down the path to becoming a writer,
you will never experience organized storytelling elements the same way again.
When you read a great book or watch a movie with impressive storytelling, try
to figure out how this or that particular emotional impact is accomplished in a
given scene. Keep in mind that you gain as much (if not more) from recognizing
how not to do things as you do from figuring out how it's done
successfully.
Run
Wild
Be experimental. Try everything, but allow for growth.
Realize that many of your ingenious ideas will seem flat to a future, more
experienced you - but see them through anyway. Now is the time to play. You
will begin to cultivate a unique aesthetic of writing, and by the time you're
through trying to circumvent the rules with cleverness you'll have taught
yourself just what the function of those rules really is.
Revise
Great writing comes from meticulous rewriting. Most of the
words in your favorite books have been scrutinized and re-scrutinized until the
author is satisfied that they are saying exactly what they need to say in order
to advance the story or develop the characters. This isn't cheating. Getting
the story on the page accesses a different area of your brain than editing and
re-writing. The former draws on the excitement of telling and discovery; the
latter sets itself to the task of making the work as refined as possible. If we
could, we would express our great dramas to one another by pressing our
foreheads together and meshing our wavelengths. Since such a psychic bond is
not practical, at least not on a large scale, we must rely on the tried and
true elements of craft.
Secret Habits of an Effective Writer
Keep a spy notebook. Write down anything that inspires you or captures your interest. If it appeals to you, chances are good it will appeal to your readers as well. Don't be afraid of copying out someone's conversation word-for-word.
Let your unconscious be your guide. Sometimes, when you sit down to write, you have no idea where you are going. That is fine. Don't worry about. Your unconscious has a plan.
Underline in books. Paste poems to your laptop. Inspire yourself whenever you can. Cut out little poems or interesting paragraphs from the newspaper, and leave them in your drawer. Writing is lonely work, and examples of other people's great writing will keep you company.
Write every day and save some for tomorrow. Even email is writing. If you have no time to write creatively, write the best email you can. Be as funny or observant or as trenchant as you can in three lines. If you are working on a short story or a chapter, stop while the writing is good. And make yourself a list of one or two ideas to work on tomorrow. This way, you will always have something to look forward to.
Keep a "Save/Salvage/Use/Recycle" Folder. Sometimes we write a short story, a poem, a novel or an essay, and it just doesn't work. But there are great lines in it - great, memorable, reusable lines. Sometimes, there are crystal-clear paragraphs, vivid descriptions, funny punch lines, clever puns - all sorts of wonderful combinations of words that you wrote. Save these. These lines/observations/thoughts will be your breadcrumbs on the path to writing. If a story/paragraph/essay/novel doesn't work, you still have great stuff in it. Save that work and use it in something else. Either cut the good work and paste it into a notebook, or just highlight it and stick it in a folder. You can also paste it all onto a document and save it in the computer, but you are better off having it printed out. You will find a use for your good, unused work someday.
Wherever you go, take notes. Geography is key. Whether you go to the Jersey Shore, a strip mall in Pennsylvania, the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, the rolling hills of Southern Vermont or a café in Paris, write what you see. Take specific notes on the light, the trees, the flowers, the mountains, the beaches, the ocean, the lakes, the animals, the buildings, smells, the roads, the food, the people---and keep these notes. You never know when you might need geography or topography to give your work a sense of place, and physical descriptions of places you visit now will be very useful for you are trying to vividly describe a place.
Ready to start writing? Sign up today!
Become a fan
Follow us
Become a fan