Descriptive writing is often stated as show don’t tell. But that’s kind of wrong, descriptive writing does involve telling. Writers tell the reader many things but dressed up in fancy clothing and paired with showing.
Category: Career Writers
Write Better, Right Now: Inner Character Voice
Nondialogue voice or your character’s inner voice is usually done in a way that aligns with how the character speaks with the rest of the characters in the story. But sometimes an author wants to show that a character has extra depth or perhaps isn’t who they appear to be to the reader or other characters in the story.
Write Better, Right Now: Dialogue as Exposition
Using character voice as exposition may seem like a simple technique, but more often than not, writers do this in a heavy-handed way. This leaves their dialogue stilted, dry, and an obvious story function that drains their prose. Blending story exposition and important story information allow you as the writer to keep your story engaging while feeding your reader what they need to know to stay grounded in your story and characters.
Write Better, Right Now: Developing Our Characters’ Voices
Once you’ve found your character’s voice, how do you deepen it to make it memorable and engaging? This is the second biggest hurdle a lot of writers face. They’ve found that cool voice and they’re like ‘Great! I’m done.’ But going the extra step to develop, deepen, and shape that voice around your story can create an even richer voice and engaging dialogue throughout your story.
Write Better, Right Now: Physically Describing Our Characters
When we’re writing our stories, we make deliberate decisions related to not just the big story event elements but the smaller aspects story like characterization. How do we want our readers to see or know our characters?
What You Need to Know About Writing Scenes
I’m a reader before I’m a writer, so I crave better scenes in all the stories I come across. So, here are all my articles available on scenes in one place. In each article, I push past the basic advice of there are only a set number of scenes or they have to happen in a particular type of order. What I teach are the functioning parts of scenes and how you can use them to heighten your story.
Write Better, Right Now: Interior World of Characters
The interior world of characters or their interiority is an important part of characterization. It gives the reader insight into who the character is when no one but the author is looking.
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Write Better, Right Now: Indirect and Direct Characterization
To kick our month of characterization off, I thought it’d be helpful to do our first topic on indirect and direct characterization—a common but often overlooked aspect of creating a character on the page. Many authors I work with rely on direct characterization to craft their characters on the page while leaving indirect characterization on the shelf.
Write Better, Right Now: Original Metaphors and Similes
To round out our month on topics to help bring your stories to life in your readers’ minds, I want to focus on original metaphors and similes. These turns of phrases and relational connections can create unique and one-of-a-kind sensations, emotions, sounds, and images just by using figurative language. But writers tend to write cliched metaphors and similes instead of stretching for a connection both original and on theme with what they are writing.
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