Tag: descriptive writing

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The Intentional Writer

My Best Tool for Describing My Characters’ Emotions

The intentional writer

Do you struggle to find the right words to describe your characters’ emotions? I certainly do. Description and portraying emotions are not my strong suit. Since I know this is a weakness, I’ve looked for tools that help me improve this skill.

My best writer’s tool for helping me over this hurdle is The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide To Character Expression by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi.

What is an emotion thesaurus, and why do you need one?

The blurb on the back cover reads:

One of the biggest problem areas for writers is conveying emotion to the reader in a unique, compelling way. When showing our characters’ feelings, we often grab onto the first idea that comes to mind, and out characters end up smiling, shrugging, nodding, and frowning far too much.

Guilty as charged!

My first drafts contain far too many instances where characters are shrugging, smiling, nodding and frowning. That is why the emotion thesaurus is so helpful.

What does The Emotional Thesaurus offer?

This extremely practical book provides an alphabetical listing of 75 emotions from Adoration to Worry. Each emotion provides a two-page spread listing the following information:

  • A definition of this emotion
  • Physical signals (bouncing a foot, fanning oneself, a scathing tone…)
  • Internal sensations (fatigue, heat rising behind the eyelids, grinding one’s teeth)
  • Mental responses (irrational reactions, self-loathing, a lack of concentration)
  • Cues that this emotion is acute or long-term (an inability to move on, failing grades)
  • Cues this emotion is being suppressed (sitting unnaturally still, smoothing one’s clothing)
  • A list of emotions this emotion might escalate to (For example, disgust could move to scorn, fear, or anger.)
  • A writer’s tip related to the emotion.

That’s a lot of very useful information packed into two pages!

How can The Emotion Thesaurus help you?

One of the basic writing mantras is “Show, Don’t Tell.” The Emotion Thesaurus helps us do exactly that, giving us words to show a person’s anger with actions like sharp gestures, cutting people off when they speak, or flaring nostrils.

In addition, the authors point out that majority of communication between people occurs with nonverbal signals. Therefore, dialogue alone can’t portray all a reader needs to know to experience a scene. It’s critical to include emotional details in our writing via descriptive language and action.

Learning to describe character emotions in specific and compelling ways will also help us avoid writing pitfalls such as reliance on cliches (mad as a hornet, steam coming out his ears, quivering knees that knock together).

And with 75 emotions to choose from, the book helps us select emotions of the proper intensity for the scene, thus avoiding melodrama (emotions that feel too intense) or monotony (where all emotions remain the same intensity instead of rising and falling like real life).

I hope I’ve convinced you how useful this book can be. Now, excuse me while I follow my own advice and replace some of the smiling, nodding, shrugging and frowning with more interesting and compelling descriptions.

But wait, there’s more!

The Emotion Thesaurus concept proved so popular that the authors have adapted it to cover other subjects, such as:

  • Positive and negative traits
  • Conflicts and wounds
  • Setting

You can find more about The Emotional Thesaurus and all the companion products at the authors’ website, Writers Helping Writers.

If you want to take your emotional descriptions to the next level, I suggest you get a copy of The Emotional Thesaurus today.

Lisa E Betz

Lisa E. Betz is an engineer-turned-mystery-writer, entertaining speaker, and unconventional soul. She inspires others to become their best selves, living with authenticity, and purpose, and she infuses her novels with unconventional characters who thrive on solving tricky problems. Her Livia Aemilia Mysteries, set in first-century Rome, have won several awards, including the Golden Scroll Novel of the Year (2021).

She and her husband reside outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with Scallywag, their rambunctious cat—the inspiration for Nemesis, resident mischief maker in her novels. Lisa directs church dramas, hikes the beautiful Pennsylvania woods, eats too much chocolate, and experiments with ancient Roman recipes. Visit lisaebetz.com.

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Guest Posts

7 Tips on Describing Surroundings in Your Novel

Guest posts

The story setting in literature describes the where and when of a character and action. The setting of a story establishes the fictional environment built in the reader’s mind while they read the novel. However, it is not easy to flesh out or describe your setting.

As a novel writer, it’s tempting to want to go straight to the plot and describe your character in detail. However, your story and the character news need to coexist within a space – the story’s setting. Being able to describe your story setting correctly adds vibrancy to your love and keeps the audience engaged.

Learning to describe the surroundings and setting of a story is, therefore, an essential skill that authors need to have. The descriptive words that you use are capable of showing character, mood, and appearance. A well-described setting will draw the readers in and keep their rapt attention inside the scene.

A good setting uses different elements to create a picture that’s clear in the readers’ minds. It also provides a good background for character and plot development. It is the framework for different narrative elements to come into play.

How to write a good setting or describe the surroundings in a novel?

With an understanding of what a good setting is and its role in writing a novel, we will now discuss how to write one.

In writing your setting, you’re descriptive, so you will use descriptive words that you can combine in different ways to create the vision for your story’s environment. However, there are several tips that you should use to make it more descriptive without boring your audience.

  1. Start early

You shouldn’t go too deep into your story without describing the setting. It would be best if you did it from the very beginning of the scene. Once you launch into the scene without describing the setting, it becomes too late when you need to do it later on in the action. You would have lost your readers at that point already. If you don’t describe the environment from the start, you will have characters talking and acting in space, and it becomes difficult to place it later on.

  1. Include specific details

In describing your setting, it’s not enough to start early: you need to be specific in your description. Using generic words will fail to engage the readers, and you will end up with a bland and unfocused description of your setting.

Including specific details adds some spice to the setting, makes it more exciting for the readers to flow along with, and helps you create a unique fictional environment.

  1. Incorporate sensory details

Your description will be more effective if you are able to use sensory details. You must be able to use the five senses when describing the environment or settings to your readers. This will help them to become more immersed in the fictional environment that you’ve created. Those seemingly small details about the smell of the wood in the old house, the chirping sound of the crickets at night, etc., all go a long way in making your setting more exciting and immersive for your readers. This will make it more straightforward for them and open them to the plot you’re building within the setting.

  1. Build your description with the story

Building on your descriptions gradually gives you more descriptive power. You can’t and shouldn’t take a whole page to describe the background. A paragraph is enough to introduce the setting and give the readers an idea of where they are, and then continue to build the story’s description.

If you mention that the character was outside a building that looks abandoned, don’t forget to build on that with more abandonment signs once they walk into the building. The setting description doesn’t stop at the start of the scene: you carry it along as you build the story in that scene.

  1. Show the setting, don’t just say it.

You have to do more than list off the description for the readers. You must show it to them. If the characters are in a hostile environment, make the readers see how the environment interacts with them. Be more descriptive. If the set includes a factory, show how the factory affects the environment. Show how it smells, the gas it emits, how it makes the sky look, etc. Rather than say there’s a factory around, show how it affects the story and its relevance in the setting. Or even better, show your setting through the viewpoint of your characters!

  1. Get inspiration from a real setting.

If you are looking for inspiration to describe your fictional setting, then you should look at the nonfictional world around you. You’re trying to describe an old church in your novel; while it might not be the same as the old church down your street, you should take a stroll to the church. You’re likely to see things in real-life locations that could trigger ideas and give you inspiration for your fictional environment. It’s the same way that you draw the behavior of your character from examples in real life. You can get inspiration from places that you visit in real life, too.

  1. Select the details to describe

One thing about describing a setting is that there are more things that you would not mention than the ones you’ll tell. Don’t be tempted to mention every detail. Be selective about what you share. Describe only details that are relevant to the story or help make the setting clearer. You could give accurate descriptions while sharing many unnecessary details. Being accurate doesn’t make it necessary or exciting. You could end up with a very bland description of the setting that doesn’t win over the readers. The fact is, your readers don’t care about the information. They want the mood and the atmosphere.

Conclusion

Writing a good setting description is essential to creating the story, plot, and character within that scene. So if your setting description is bland, it will affect the story that you are creating altogether. It also determines if the readers go on with reading the novel or they close the book. So knowing how to write your setting is of utmost importance as an author.

Leon Collier is a blogger from the UK, and assignment writer at dissertation service the UK. He loves to write about everything: pop-culture, history, travel, self-development, education, and marketing. When not writing, you can find him behind a book or playing tabletop games with his friends. Follow him on Twitter @LeonCollier12.

Categories
Courting the Muse

How to Level Up Your Descriptions Through the Ancient Art of Ekphrasis

Some writers are blessed with a vivid visual imagination. Just by willing it, they can render scenes in their mind’s eye with the pixel-perfect fidelity of CGI. They see their characters with photographic precision, from the slope of their shoulders to the snarled ends of their hair. Their settings have the texture and specificity of real asphalt and dirt.

I’ve always envied this ability, but I can’t say I’ve ever enjoyed it myself. In fact, I’ve been cursed with an incredibly impoverished visual imagination. Even as a reader, I never instinctually convert the sentences I encounter into pictures in my head. Learning that a character is “blonde”, or a farmhouse “weathered” just gives me an abstract bit of info to file away— no different than being told that she’s a Sagittarius or that it was built in 1897.

Despite my inability to conjure up mental images, however, I’ve never been told that my writing comes across as excessively abstract. In fact, I’ve been praised for the precision and evocativeness of my descriptions. I’m determined not to let my lack of visual imagination prevent pictorially gifted readers from connecting with my work. That’s why I’ve learned to work around my inability to see pictures inside my head.

What’s my secret for faking it until I make it? I think of it as a spin on the ancient technique of ekphrasis, from the Greek for “calling an inanimate object by name”. The etymology makes it sound incredibly poetic, and it’s true that ekphrasis has been used to greatest effect in verse. But at its core, this rhetorical device just means to describe a work of visual art in detail. As an example, you might look at John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” possibly the most famous instance of ekphrastic poetry in the Anglophone tradition. But I prefer John Ashberry’s “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” based on a 16th-century painting by Parmigianino. It opens with the following lines:

As Parmigianino did it, the right hand

Bigger than the head, thrust at the viewer

And swerving easily away, as though to protect

What it advertises. A few leaden panes, old beams,

Fur, pleated muslin, a coral ring run together

In a movement supporting the face, which swims

Toward and away like the hand

Except that it is in repose….

I’ve never written ekphrastic poetry myself. But to work around my lack of visual imagination, I use a trick that feels analogous to ekphrasis: I write using reference images, much the way an artist might consult them when they sketch. You see, my problem lies in mentally conjuring up images from the blank canvas inside my head — not in translating extant images into language. That means that, if I want to describe something accurately, I need to be looking at it, the way an artist might consult a photo to get a pose just right.

Sometimes I do write about a work of visual art, in the traditional ekphrastic mode: I might model a bit of scenery off a landscape painting, or give a character the face of a marble bust. Most of the time, though, I just use a photo from the internet to get a detail like the right texture of driftwood, the exact shape of a snarl.

Even if you’re not cursed with my particular brand of imaginative inability, give this spin on ekphrasis a try: it’ll make your visual descriptions that much sharper. And if you find yourself wading deeper into the art historical archive in search of references, you just might find yourself inspired to write a whole story — or a poem — based on a painting.

Lucia Tang is a writer for Reedsy, a marketplace that connects self-publishing authors with the book industry’s best editors, designers, and marketers. To work on the site’s free historical character name generators, she draws on her knowledge of Chinese, Latin, and Old Irish —  learned as a PhD candidate in history at UC Berkeley. You can read more of her work on the Reedsy Discovery blog, or follow her on Twitter at @lqtang.

Categories
Courting the Muse

How Reading Perfume Catalogs Can Help You Show, Not Tell

Emily Dickinson knew how to find inspiration without leaving the house. In her thirties, the reclusive poet withdrew into the quiet of her childhood home, holding conversations through her closed bedroom door. But she also carried out lively friendships through letter-writing, and even traveled — so to speak.

Dickinson, as much a landlubber as any, wrote movingly about the nautical sweep of reading, something we as writers know well:

There is no Frigate like a Book

To take us Lands away.

But there’s another vessel that can carry our imaginations to distant lands without moving our bodies at all: perfume.

Smell, as Helen Keller once observed, is “a potent wizard that transports us across thousands of miles” — often to places we’ve never been before. Perfumers use this teleportational magic to tell a story, bottling up exposition, climax, and denouement to bloom through the air as top notes, heart notes, and base notes.

Perfumes are succinct, vivid, and memorable — all show and no tell. As storytellers, we can learn a lot from how they work. How to distill an experience into a few drops of salience. How to ensnare someone’s attention from the opening and keep hold of it as the story unfurls. How to evoke emotion directly, by playing to the senses instead of the mind. Still, there’s one problem when it comes to transmuting perfume into writing inspiration: scent is notoriously difficult to capture in words — at least if you take a direct approach.

What happens if you list out a perfume’s component scents? Violet, ylang-ylang, rice powder. The words are pretty enough, but they feel abstract, even sterile — no living fragrance clings to them. The ingredients might tell us what the perfume smells like, but they don’t show us how it feels to dash it along our wrists, to wait as the heat of our bodies makes it dance across our skin. When it comes to scent, words so often fall flat.

Luckily for us, copywriters in the fragrance industry have grappled with the inexpressibility of scent for years. As creative writers, we can learn a lot from the perfume catalogs they assemble, which translate stories told in scent into our chosen medium of language.

As an example, let’s look at a perfume built around the violet, ylang-ylang, and rice powder scents I brought up either. These notes take on a starring role in Blanc Violette, a powdery floral scent developed by the indie perfume house Histoires de Parfums.

Instead of simply listing out its olfactory components, the perfume’s catalog entry uses evocative language to capture a delicate and playful mood:

Amidst the subtle games of shadow and light playing out in the underbrush, heart-shaped flowers flourish, showing off their delicate lines on a lush blanket of chlorophyll and Violets.

An image of purity and innocence, White Violet enhances the skin with a delicate freshness, at once iridescent and scintillating, and powdery and creamy.

An evening perfume caught between shadow and light, and innocence and seduction: a sweet, powdery and witty fragrance.

Whether or not you know what violet smells like, this catalog entry develops striking but accessible imagery — the heart-shaped flowers, the play of light and shadow — to convey how wearing it feels. When we grapple with linguistically elusive concepts in our own writing, we can do the same: showing what we mean through powerful imagery instead of telling it in spare and lifeless words.

Failing that, we can always spritz on a bit of perfume to inspire us as we power our way through our drafts. Why not write in a cloud of Paper Passion, which captures the aspirational scent of new books?

Lucia Tang is a writer for Reedsy, a marketplace that connects self-publishing authors with the book industry’s best editors, designers, and marketers. To work on the site’s free historical character name generators, she draws on her knowledge of Chinese, Latin, and Old Irish —  learned as a PhD candidate in history at UC Berkeley. You can read more of her work on the Reedsy Discovery blog, or follow her on Twitter at @lqtang.

Categories
Romancing Your Story

Writing Romance in the #MeToo Era

Once upon a time a romance novel plot included a heroine who wanted the hero to kiss her, but she had to pretend not to want that. She had to object. She had to act surprised. That was a reflection of the times. Women were expected to protest to protect both their virtue and their reputation. Women who wanted physical touch were wanton.

Those standards and mores faded in the late 20th century when women could actually enjoy a toe-curling kiss in romance novels (and in real life), along with other physical expressions of love.

But now we’re in the 21st century with sexual harassment, assault, rape, consent, dubious consent, and #MeToo stories in the news every week. Gone are the days when a hero can force a kiss—much less himself—on a heroine in a romance novel.

So how does the current day romance writer handle physical affection in our stories? If our hero has to stop and ask permission to kiss the heroine, it slows the story and action. Especially if then he asks if he can touch her “here?” “How about there?” And it’s not realistic for the female protagonist to instigate every caress, kiss, or cuddle either.

So what’s a romance writer to do?

Well, I have some suggestions.

First, get very good at writing visual signs of attraction.

Your hero needs to be able to tell the heroine is attracted to him. Study body language and non-verbal cues.

He can do things like move in for a kiss, then pause, raise his brows in a question. She smiles back as an invitation.

Movies and television are great tutors for this kind of thing, because they’re a visual medium. Watch your favorite rom com and take notes. How does she show her interest? How does he make his move without being creepy? Is it clear that she welcomes his move? How does she convey that to him?

In one of my favorite movies, Notting Hill, Anna and Will are clearly attracted to each other. They engage in flirty banter. They laugh together (she throws popcorn at him in a movie while he’s wearing his SCUBA goggles). She invites him “up,” after a movie date. Then in a classic plot twist, her boyfriend arrives on scene. Will exits, stage left, with the trash. The next time we see Anna and Will together, she’s single. (Thank goodness, or we wouldn’t like her at all.) In this instance, they both debate making the first move, but are unsure. It’s played out clearly onscreen. When Anna tiptoes downstairs, Will thinks it’s his idiot roommate and groans, then says, (more or less), “Bugger off. Go away.” When Anna replies, “Okay,” Will quickly recants. Anna perches on the edge of the couch where he planned on sleeping. You can imagine, as does the viewer, (most of) what happens next.

 Even though Notting Hill is more than a few years old, it does a great job showing the dance of consent. Probably because Anna is a celebrity, but that doesn’t make it any less of a tutorial for the contemporary writer now. Maybe more so.

In Susan Mallery’s current release, Meant To Be Yours, when the hero, Jasper, moves to kiss Renee, he says, “I may be reading this all wrong …” as he puts his hands on her waist and pulls her close. This gives Renee time to back away, if she doesn’t want him to kiss her. We know she does, so this works great to show her consent.

Of course, historical romance writers have a bit more leeway, because of the conventions of the times. But still, they’re writing for contemporary readers with contemporary sensibilities and would be wise to keep all this in mind.

A rake can be a rake, but he should still be a gentleman.

A lesson for all the eras.

Carrie Padgett lives in Central California, close to Yosemite, but far from Hollywood, the beach, and the Golden Gate Bridge. She believes in faith, families, fun, and happily ever after. She writes contemporary fiction with romance. Carrie and her Stud Muffin live in Central California with their cat and dog and within driving distance of their six grandchildren.

You can find her online at:

Twitter: CarriePadgett

Instagram: carpadwriter

Facebook: WriterCarriePadgett

Amazon Author Page: Carrie Padgett

Categories
Fantasy-Sci-Fi

How Writing Blind Will Take Your Fantasy to the Next Level

When it comes to writing, some of us like to picture it in our head and write what we see, while others like to plot every scene before ever sitting down to the keyboard. No matter if we’re a “plotter” or a “pantser,” writing well requires something we often overlook but learned way back in kindergarten–the five senses.

Recently I asked some beta readers for feedback on the first page of my WIP. Many of the comments were positive. They loved the action and felt drawn in from the first sentence. But while many felt intrigued in the story, several also said they didn’t feel like they understood the world.

They couldn’t see where the action was taking place.

As a writer, that’s on me. I could see it all in my head, but I hadn’t communicated the location well enough to my readers. What had I missed? Some of the five senses.

Readers want to see where the story is taking place. They want to hear the wind in the trees and feel the snow crystalizing on their skin. They want to taste the last drops of water your MC shared with his fellow traveler.

A good way to do this is write with your eyes closed.

If you’ve ever tried to take a nap in a crowded room, you can relate to just how much your sense of hearing works overtime. The same is true with sight. When one sense is dulled, others heighten. New writers are often great at describing what things look like, but not what they smell, taste, or feel like.

Smelling the remains of a carcass on the dragon’s breath is much more evocative than telling a reader the dragon has scales.  

It’s easy to forget one sense when focusing on the others. In my example, I’d focused so much on smell and touch I’d mostly forgotten about sight, one of the most important senses when it comes to orienting a reader in the first paragraphs (especially in fantasy and sci-fi!).

Feel free to steal these tips when writing sensory details:

One: Write the first draft focusing on sight only.

Two: Write the second draft focusing on hearing.

Third: In the third draft work in touch.

Fourth: Don’t forget the all-important sense of smell!

Fifth: Finish it off describing the taste of fear, the salty tinge of saltwater on the tongue, etc.

The more you incorporate this exercise into your writing, the more likely it’ll become second nature to you and you’ll find yourself combining steps one and two, or three and five, etc.

Everyone experiences different struggles when it comes to incorporating the senses, but keep at it. After all, all writing is rewriting!

Sarah Rexford is a Marketing Content Writer, working with brands to grow their audience reach. She studied Strategic Communications at Cornerstone University and focused on writing during her time there, completing two full-length manuscripts while a full-time student. Currently she trains under best-selling author Jerry Jenkins in his Your Novel Blueprint course and is actively seeking publication for two books.

Instagram: @sarahjrexford
Twitter: @sarahjrexford
Web: itssarahrexford.com

Categories
Romancing Your Story

Does ‘Sweet’ Mean Boring?

The first reaction I get when I tell another romance writer that I write sweet love stories is often a blank stare, then a small grin and a murmured, “Hmm … is there a market for that?”

The short answer: Yes.

Because sweet doesn’t have to mean boring and flat. There can be plenty of sexual tension in a sweet story. The parameters of what’s acceptable, even in Christian fiction, has widened considerably in the last few years.

I recently read a book by a popular author that left the door wide open during the consummation scene. There was nothing graphic, but also no doubt what was happening. Another of my favorite historical authors took us up to the moment of consummation, slammed the door, then opened it again the next morning to show the reader that the night did not go as expected. (Not coincidentally, both of those books were from the same publisher.)

How do we put passion and tension on the page without graphic descriptions and naming body parts?

It’s all about the feelings. Both physical and emotional.

  • Tummy flutters: yes.
  • Tingling lips: yes.
  • Heightened awareness of the other: sure.
  • Blood rushing: depends on where. 😉
  • Longing for closeness: Yep.
  • Feeling safe or as if coming home: Absolutely!

Let’s dissect a kiss scene.

This is from my novella, BROOKE RUNS AWAY. It takes place near the end but is not the final scene. The plot centers on a reality dating show. We’re in Brooke’s point of view.

I cleared my throat. “You can visit me. I … I’d like that.”

“Really?” He reached for my hand, then pulled me to stand next to him.

His gaze drifted to my lips and my stomach fluttered. (A SMALL PHYSICAL RESPONSE)

We’d laughed. We’d bowled. We’d shared meals and dates.

We’d never kissed. (TAKING A MOMENT TO LET THE TENSION BUILD)

He bent his head and I lifted my mouth to meet his.

Our kiss was soft at first, tentative. (TWO SMALL, LIGHT ADJECTIVES) Then he deepened the contact, pulled me closer, as if after one taste, he had to have more. (A SIMILE TO COMPARE THE KISS TO SOMETHING KNOWN)

I threaded my arms around his neck and met his want with my own. (NOT GRAPHIC, BUT YOU KNOW WHAT SHE MEANS)

After a long moment, we pulled back. He rested his forehead on mine. “Wow.” (A SHORT RESPITE)

I had no breath left, so I smiled. (ANOTHER SMALL PHYSICAL RESPONSE)

His gaze darkened (AGAIN, NOT GRAPHIC, BUT YOU KNOW WHAT HE’S THINKING) and he let go. “Wait here.” He strode back to the house. (WAIT … WHAT?? A COMPLICATION)

I watched Austin’s back disappear through the kitchen door. Was it something I said?

For the first time since we stepped outside, I noticed the camera and its steady red light.

No.

Our conversation, our questions, our kiss … they were private. (UH OH)

My breath caught in my throat and my pulse pounded, urging me to run, run, run. (ANOTHER, STRONGER PHYSICAL RESPONSE) 

Try this exercise on your own.

Dissect some kiss scenes from your favorite books. Figure out what emotions, feelings, and sensations the author conveyed. Then go over your own scenes. What can you add? What can you delete? How can you keep tension on the page?

Because while sweet romance may not “pulse and throb,” it’s never boring.

Carrie Padgett lives in Central California, close to Yosemite, but far from Hollywood, the beach, and the Golden Gate Bridge. She believes in faith, families, fun, and happily ever after. She writes contemporary fiction with romance. Carrie and her Stud Muffin live in Central California with their cat and dog and within driving distance of their six grandchildren.

You can find her online at:

Twitter: CarriePadgett
Instagram: carpadwriter
Facebook: WriterCarriePadgett
Amazon Author Page: Carrie Padgett

Categories
Child's Craft

Childhood Memories Made New

Inspiration for the stories we write often comes from our own childhood experiences. But, times change; cultures change; technology changes. So, those stories from twenty, or forty, or sixty years ago must change if they are going to speak to the hearts of 21st Century children.

Try this exercise to help you make those funny, sad or frightening stories from your childhood come to life for today’s readers.

Pull out an old photo from a childhood event. If you don’t have a photo sketch the scene on plain paper. (No one’s judging your artistic abilities here.)

It’s usually easy to remember the who, the where, the when, even the what. But for this exercise we want to dig deeper.

Close your eyes and try to remember every detail of the event. Then, remember how you FELT when that photo was snapped.

Was it a special occasion? A surprise occasion, maybe? How did you feel while anticipating it?

How did you feel if the event didn’t turn out the way you had hoped? Or, was it such a terrific thing that it far exceeded your expectations?

What if this was a sad event? Just how sad did you feel? How did you act? Did you cry? Did you run and hide? Did you get angry?

How did the people around you react to you? And how did you react in turn?

The key to re-writing our childhood events as contemporary stories is to remember, capture and effectively SHOW our feelings from that past event.

It’s okay—even advisable—to change the details, even exaggerate them—but to keep the emotions you experienced.

It is the emotions in our stories that beckon to today’s children—not the exact details.

Jean Hall lives in Louisville, Kentucky. She is represented by Cyle Young of Hartline Literary. Her premier picture book series Four Seasons was recently signed by Little Lamb Books. Jean is a member of the SCBWI, Word Weavers International, and the Kentucky Christian Writers. Visit Jean at jeanmatthewhall.com, on Facebook at Jean Matthew Hall, and on Twitter as @Jean_Hall.

Categories
Talking Character

Dos and Don’ts for Describing Characters

A writer must find the perfect balance when describing characters, especially when introducing them to a reader for the first time. The reader needs enough information to grasp who the character is, but too much information and the reader will likely skip to the next paragraph.

Or worse.

We writers know a lot about our characters. We’ve spent days crafting their descriptions, personalities and back stories. But when it comes to the descriptions we include in our stories, we must remember that we know much more than the reader needs (or wants) to know.

Here are a few tips to help you create awesome character descriptions

DON’T simply give a detailed description of the character’s physical appearance. This police sketch approach lacks emotion and does little to explain who the character is.

DO paint a picture that evokes emotion. Show who the character is rather than tell what they look like. Use dialogue or action to give the reader insight into their personalities.

DON’T introduce the character for the first time in a bland, forgettable way.

DO introduce a character by mentioning the most significant traits, and do so in as memorable a manner as possible.

DON’T include a catalog of irrelevant details. The reader will assume every detail you supply is important. If you mention the character is left-handed, the reader is going to expect left-handedness to be significant somewhere down the road. If it’s not going to be mentioned again, skip that detail.

DO choose only the most telling details, the ones that give is important insight into the character’s personality and attitudes, or that will become significant to the plot. If

DON’T create several characters who are so similar the reader gets them confused. (Unless that is a key ploy for your particular story, in which case the POV character should probably have problems keeping them straight, too.)

DO give characters a unique, easily described characteristic that helps the reader keep track of who’s who.

DON’T tell the reader details about a person that the POV character doesn’t know. Such author intrusions may have been common once upon a time, but they now feel forced or preachy.

DO describe a person through the lens of the POV character. The main character may have a very biased and inaccurate view of other characters, but that is OK. By flavoring each description with the main character’s thoughts and attitudes, you not only introduce other characters but also show us something new about the POV character.

DON’T allow all characters to describe a person in exactly the same way. Each POV character is likely to notice—and ignore—different aspects of a person’s appearance, behavior and personality.

DO show different sides of a character’s personality by allowing each POV character to display a unique attitude. One student’s favorite teacher is another student’s least favorite. By showing the teacher from both sides, the reader gets a more complex and authentic picture.

Most of all, DO have fun creating and describing your characters!

And DON’T give up. The world needs to hear the story only you can tell.

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Dear Young Scribes

The Writer’s Palette: How to Write Concise Description to Liven Your Scenes

As writers, we have the power to tear down the boundaries of paper and ink when we craft a description that triggers the imagination of our readers. That’s the power of writing a concise description.

I’m sure you’ve heard it’s best to limit your descriptions. Pretty prose does not equal a pretty story, and ultimately it’s your characters and plot that will push the story along.

So how can you write scenes in a way that accomplishes the job of description — to bring the story to life — without interrupting the flow?

Writing this kind of description is much harder than writing flowery prose that goes on forever — prose that most readers will skim. Instead, writing concise description will enable your scene to become 3D.

And you can do this without having to hit the “pause button” on your scene.

When I wrote my latest novel, UNWRITTEN MELODY, I tried a new technique. I created a “writer’s palette” before each scene I wrote. (This idea came from Susan May Warren’s Book Therapy tools, although she refers to it as a “scene sketch”.)

This writer’s palette is similar to an artist’s palette. Before an artist begins working, they mix their paints to create the colors they want to display on their masterpiece. These paints are arranged on their board. That way, while they paint, they can dip their paintbrush in their assortment of colors and apply it to their canvas. They don’t have to create the colored paint as they work; rather, it’s already prepared beforehand.

Similarly, a writer’s palette is our own assortment of “colors” that we can use to paint our scenes, and we can prepare this before we even put our pen to the page.

Here’s how you can do this:

(Again, I learned how to create a scene sketch through instruction at My Book Therapy.)

             1) Ask yourself, what scene do I want to paint?

Place yourself in an artist’s shoes. A blank canvas stands before you; what scene do you want to paint?

Close your eyes and envision the scene you’re going to write. Let it come to life in your imagination before you try to transcribe it onto the page.

What emotion/mood do you want to portray through this scene?

Now, open your writer’s palette. (This can be a page in your notebook or a new document in Word. While I wrote UNWRITTEN MELODY, I used the “Document Notes” tool in Scrivener to create these scene sketches.)

On this palette, answer the following questions about your scene:

  • Where? Why? Who? When? What? How?
  • What emotion/mood do I want to establish in this scene?

             2) Prepare your paints. What colors do you need to gather and mix?

Pretend you’re the POV character and you’re observing the surroundings through the lens of his/her perspective, worldview, personality, and attitude. What details does he/she notice? What descriptive hues do you need to combine so you can achieve the scene’s specific emotion/mood?

In your writer’s palette, prepare these details:

  • What does your character see? Hear? Touch? Taste? Smell?
  • What is your POV character’s attitude and view of his/her surroundings?
  • How do these sensory details emphasize the emotion of the scene?
  • Is there a metaphor/symbolism you can use to highlight this emotion?

             3) Record the details by choosing specific nouns and active verbs. In other words, gather your props.

While the scene is still in your imagination and you’re viewing it through the lens of your character, write down the scene’s details (keeping the emotion in mind as well). You’ll gather an array of details that you can potentially use as you write the scene.

But instead of writing “candles were lit and burning on the coffee table”, record the specific type of candle and its scent. And instead of writing, “long, draping curtains hung over the windows”, you can use its specific noun, such as, “pinch pleat curtains draped over the windows”.

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By preparing your writer’s palette beforehand, you’re more likely to write a scene that becomes 3D in your reader’s imagination. You’ll know which details to incorporate (the ones that highlight the mood and POV character’s perspective) and which ones would only get in the way of the story. Your description will ring as authentic, and you may even convince your reader that you have lived through the specific time and place.

If you’d like to see an example of how I used a writer’s palette to write a certain scene in UNWRITTEN MELODY, click here for the scene excerpt and here for the writer’s palette.

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How do you write description in your scenes? Do you create a writer’s palette or scene sketch to gather your “paints” before you begin to write?

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