Recent social isolation has left us in our own bubbles with much less contact with other writers as sounding boards for our work. Living in an echo chamber, while it may make us productive in terms of word count (or not), may also have allowed us to drift back into bad habits we thought we had a handle on, or to fail to examine our words with the most analytic eye to rout out our writerly tics. And we all have those pesky tics, don’t we? No matter how experienced the writer, revisiting the basics can’t hurt, and may help us best express ourselves in the most effective way.
While what follows are not rules per se (although some may claim they are), they do give us guidance for our mission to grab our readers and compel them to read on.
1. Show Don’t Tell! There is no adage more often repeated by writers and editors. But what exactly do those three words mean? Which packs more power, a character who says “I am angry.” Or one, who slams his fists on the table, turns red in the face, and punches an adversary in the nose? Showing is engaging readers through sensory details and action, as opposed to summary exposition. Chekhov said, “Don’t tell me the moon is shining. Show me the glint of light on broken glass.” Minor details, those not critical to the plot or theme, can be delivered in exposition, but key details should be shown in all their detailed glory to immerse the reader in the moment.
2. Details Matter. Be specific, not vague, in the way your describe your characters, setting, and action. Would writing in generalities not appeal to more people and offend fewer? Absolutely not! The paradox of good writing is that the universal is found in the specifics. In Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Aging fisherman Santiago battles first a gigantic marlin to be able to feed his family after 84 days of going home empty-handed. He faces down a litany of sea creatures attracted by the blood of the felled marlin and barely survives. Few of us have had Santiago’s experience, but we all face struggles and must soldier on in the face of adversity. Hemingway’s themes of life, death, and honor in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds is found in the granular detail of Santiago’s fight with the sea and its creatures.
3. Use All 5 Senses. As writers, we want the reader to be right where we put them—in scene and in character. It’s easy to rely on the visual and the auditory and neglect the senses of touch, smell, and taste. The smell of roses left on a doorstep. The luxurious buttery flavor of a croissant on a first visit to Paris. The grating feel of a starched collar against a novice nun’s neck. Multi-dimensional sensory renderings of places and people will bring them to life and cause them to stick in the readers’ minds long after the last page.
4. Don’t Preach!. If we’re sitting down to write, it’s likely because we feel we have something to say, but if that something becomes a sermon, readers will feel talked at or down to, neither of which will keep them reading. Political overtones of the book aside, in Hillbilly Elegy, the author, J.D. Vance doesn’t talk at the reader to illustrate the human tragedy of the opioid epidemic, he takes the reader on the journey with him, through the landscape of his childhood giving examples of living, breathing human beings and communities devastated by the epidemic.
5. Read! Read! Read! Read in the genre you want to write in and far beyond. Read good books, essays, and articles and bad. Read writers you agree with and those you do not. Read like a writer—dissect books like a literary surgeon to understand what the author did that worked for you and what did not. A writer who does not read is much like a skier who waits in the lodge, fancy skis propped up beside him. The writer will never learn the writing craft and the skier will never fall. Safe, to be sure, but neither will grow to reach full potential which might just be possible of they both endure to slings and arrows of trying and failing and trying again, much like the iconic Santiago.
Write on! And stay tuned for a few more ‘bigger picture’ thoughts on the writer’s craft next month.