This post breaks down three adages about “good” writing, and provides an exercise to supercharge your writing, at any phase!
1. Good writing is focused writing.
This universal truth goes beyond personal preferences of genre, voice, tone, and style.
Focused sentences control story time and remain in a character’s point of view. Control of story time includes remaining “in scene,” as well as artfully transitioning in and out of scene.
Strong sentences are essential, but focus is why sentence structure comes at the top (last tier) of the book-building pyramid.
Authors can write strong sentences that focus readers’ attention on what matters in the story (and cut sentences that don’t) after doing some foundational story work.
2. Good writing lets the reader know what a POV character thinks, wants, knows, realizes, believes, and understands …
...without over-using verbs such as think, want, know, realize, believe and understand.
That’s because thinking, wanting, knowing, realizing, believing, and understanding are abstract concepts.
3. Good writing encompasses abstract concepts in details specific to story.
Ok, so how do writers avoid abstraction and generalization in favor of the specific and tangible in their writing?
Here is one of the best and most accessible ways I know to achieve this milestone of “good writing”:
Have your POV character react to, and make meaning from, what’s happening immediately around them, in the present story moment.
Early drafts are full of things that happen, but story events often don’t have a clear impact on the POV character.
Characters must react to, think about, challenge beliefs, understanding, realizations, and develop new goals and desires as a direct result of story events.
Never assume a reader understands what a POV character thinks, wants, knows, realizes, believes, and understands. Because these things must be specifically linked to the details of their unique story.
Let’s look at an example from Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.
Second paragraph, opening page:
On a late December afternoon, in the waning twentieth century, Sam exited a subway car and found the artery to the escalator clogged by an inert mass of people, who were gaping at a station advertisement. Sam was late. He had a meeting with his academic adviser that he had been postponing for over a month, but that everyone agreed absolutely needed to happen before winter break. Sam didn’t care for crowds – being in them, or whatever foolishness they tended to enjoy en masse. But this crowd would not be avoided. He would have to force his way through it if he were to be delivered to the aboveground world.
The reader gets a sense of Sam’s attitude: what he knows, wants, thinks, and understands, all without using these particular verbs.
Words like clogged; inert mass; gaping; and foolishness do that work.
Zevin’s sentences are structured in ways that avoid using abstract verbs, yet still bring the reader into Sam’s unique POV.
Try this supercharged writing exercise from Chuck Palahniuk offered on his Litreactor Blog.
The post is a decade old, but still one of the best writing challenges I know.
The exercise is simple: for six months, write (or edit) to avoid abstract “thought” verbs.
Palahnuik begins his post: In six seconds you’ll hate me. But in six months you’ll be a better writer.
He’s right! Check out the original post here.
Let me know what you think!
Master a step-by-step method to structuring scene shifts in under an hour!
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