Lucid Writing Advice III

When we read, we want to see what we read. When we read we want to hear what we read. When we read we want to feel what we read. When we...I guess you get the idea of what the reader wants. And as you can tell, it’s demanding.

A writer tries to imitate life as best he can. This is a must. To do so you must come to understand a few pointers. Observe the following passage:

Not much description, with the exception of the word ‘glided’ to show that Samantha was walking quickly, but quietly. Let’s take this passage to surgery:

Let’s inject ‘dark’between ‘the hallway’. ‘With a scream’shows little of what has happened when Samantha has fallen, and I’m sure that the writer will like us to know that she fell quite a distance. Let us say ‘with an echoing scream’.

‘She fell into the hole’ seems quite clumsy, lets cut ‘hole’and reconstruct it into ‘abyss’. Now we receive this:

Now the reader can clearly see exactly what the writer has wanted them to see. The hallway is dark, Samantha is in a rush, her screams echo as she falls.

Here’s another passage:

This writer could have been better off if he left the paper to itself: blank.

‘Wilhem brought his sword before him’ may seem to do justice to this passage, but it lacks description. Let’s change it to ‘With a crisp ring, and a flash of reflecting sunlight, Wilhem brought his sword before him.’

‘On the surface of the blade, he saw the anger on his face.’ is like looking into the hollow of a dead tree trunk. Its filled with nothing but dead air. Here it is rewritten with description in mind: ‘On the polished surface of the steel blade, he saw the glare of anger shadowing his face.’

Here’s that passage rewritten:

Although he we have increased the word count, the passage seems to flow faster and smoother because we have injected description. The reader can hear the sound as the weapon is pulled from the scabbard, the flash of light as the rays of the sun strike the blade, and the anger on Wilhem’s face.

What you don’t want to do is pile everything on at once. If this writer had written that Wilhem saw his brown eyes, the scar around his left eye, and the bruise around his mouth all in the reflection of the sword, we will be bogging the scene down. And as you can probably tell, Wilhem was probably ready to use that sword to his defense if he was angry.

Keep this in mind: Keep it simple, yet make it worthwhile.

Good dialogue is good, believable dialogue is better. People rarely speak for minutes on end. Keeping dialogue simple, and yet essential to the story, will empower the scene. Here is a scene written will awkward dialogue: