While themes and thematic statements crop up throughout our stories, we can consciously weave them into our work to drive the desired effects in our readers. Once we make the choice of what themes and what thematic statement we want to write with, we can start layering them into our works, enhancing both our stories and our themes.
Tag: novel writing
Write Better, Right Now: Finding Your Story’s Themes
Like thematic statements, themes aren’t necessary, though readers may find themes in your work you did not intend. To help steer your story in the right direction in the reader’s mind, elect specific themes you want to explore in your story. Now, a theme can be any idea like love, dating, alcoholism, fighting, capitalism, or stoicism. The list goes on and on.
Write Better, Right Now: Finding Your Story’s Thematic Statement
The easest way to find your story’s thematic statement is by considering what you want to do with your story. Think beyond writing a good story. What are you actually setting out to say or do with your story to make it good?
Write Better, Right Now: Themes and Thematic Statements
Multiple thematic statements will cause a lot of confusion both for you as a writer and for readers trying to understand the story they are experiencing. Stick to one powerful thematic statement, deepened and developed by connected themes that show your thematic statement at different levels and aspects.
Write Better, Right Now: Descriptive Action
Using descriptive writing to show the characters’ movements through the story, setting, and the world, we’re giving our readers an added layer of description to cling to and experience the story. Descriptive action has ripples you can use to show other aspects of your story’s world.
Write Better, Right Now: Descriptive Writing to World Build
Descriptive world building is the easiest way to fall into a hole of describing information and moments not important or necessary to the flow of the story.
Write Better, Right Now: What is Descriptive Writing?
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.
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.
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