Alex Beadon Challenge Day 3 : A few jewels!

Haha, so this is another hard one, (one of the reasons I’m loving this challenge). I can’t really say I’m an authority on the subject of writing, but there are experts and there are relative experts. I can safely say I’m the latter at the moment, there may be someone who’s even more of a newbie than me that I can offer some tips to. So I guess this post will be a few tips on some things that helped me when it came to writing my first book.

Show, don’t tell

This was a piece of advice I came across alot when I started reading up about writing, and it can really help you to set the tone of your piece. On first glance the meaning may not seem obvious, I mean it’s a written story that you’re telling so how are you going to ‘show’ things. Well, the meaning of showing is basically getting a little deeper that just stating a fact. Remember you’re building up a world of characters that you want people to get familiar with. So for example:

Jill was scared as she walked down the corridor – This is an example of telling, you’re simply letting them know what’s happening.

However,

Jill trembled as she cautiously walked down the corridor – I haven’t mentioned that she’s scared, but you can tell she is scared because of how she is behaving. This is an example of showing. You can use this technique to create a closeness to the story, but don’t feel you have to overdue it. Sometimes it is okay to simply tell us what’s happening.

Use a break in the dialogue

If you have a fairly long sentence of dialogue and you need to add a he said or she said, always add it as early as possible. So instead of saying:

“No, I’m going to take you all back to the house and then I’ll figure out what I should do next.” he said.

Try:

“No,” he said, “I’m going to take you all back to the house and then I’ll figure out what I should do next.”

Don’t be scared to use ‘said’

This was a big error I was falling into. I felt I always need to use a variation of the word said whenever there was a dialogue going on. So in any dialogue I would use ‘he said’ a few times but the rest of the conversation would be: he stated, she commented, he added, she remarked. I even used words like rebuked.

Okay, I’m not saying never use these words, but there is nothing wrong with just saying, ‘he said’, ‘she said’. If you want to show that the person is speaking in a rebuking way, you don’t really need to state it. The rest of the dialogue and interaction should show that they are rebuking someone.

Try to use all the senses

When you’re writing a story you really want to draw your readers into the world and the lives of the people that you have created. To do this you need to stimulate all of their senses. So you want to let them know the odor that the neighbour’s car had the day your character reluctantly took a ride with him. Or the way his skin felt the first time she brushed her hand along his face.

Always keep it natural

A great way to do this is to constantly re-read what you’ve written or have a friend read over it and tell you what they think. Alot of the time when I am writing I just type it as it comes to my head. Then I’ll go over the chapter a few times and each time I’ll find something where it doesn’t quite sound right. A few examples:

Unnatural dialogue – We’re so engrossed in trying to tell a story sometimes we forget to simply write a dialogue in the way that people really speak.

Not using contractions – It can get tiresome reading ‘I will’, ‘I can not’, ‘I will not’. Just write ‘I’ll’, ‘I can’t’, ‘I won’t’. It will let the story flow better.

Using passive voice – I don’t know how I managed to write a few of my sentences this way as it sounded totally unnatural when I read them back. But I guess as your trying to explain something sometimes they just come out passively. Always lean towards an active voice instead. An example would be:

The bin was kicked over by the boy – Passive voice

The boy kicked the bin over – Active voice

Well, that’s all I’ve got right now. I hope someone has found some benefit from this post, and I actually am going to be using this as a feature in the future where I’ll be adding any tips or advice that I think will be helpful to new writers. Thanks for stopping by!

Liz.