TECH: It's Only A Paper Moon?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

original posting 7 April 2009

Setting the scene

Writer's Digest, November 2005, pages 22 to 23, in the Freelancer's Workshop column, and article by David A. Fryxell about scenes. How do you give your readers a feeling of place? Six points:

1. Start with setting. Like the establishing shot on a TV show, sometimes you can start with setting. Usually you need to have something happen relatively fast within the scene, but you can still say where things are happening right up front.
2. Be specific. Avoid generalities. Specific, vivid details make the scene feel real. The example David uses is don't write, "birds sat on the car." Be precise, "two goldfinches sat on the hood of a blue Mustang convertible." Which one gives you a feeling of reality?
3. Put it into motion. Let something happen on the stage, have characters interacting, and suddenly that scrap of setting description isn't static anymore.
4. Attach setting to dialogue. Someone says something, they said, and a little bit about the setting. The sugar of the dialogue helps the scenery description medicine go down?
5. Easy on the adjectives. Select strong details, and leave out the piles of adjectives and descriptive blather.
6. Use all your senses. Not just what you can see, but what you can hear, what you can smell, what you can feel -- and don't be afraid of using a strong metaphor.

So there you go. Now what to do about it? Well, as an exercise, take your work in progress, and look at that scene you're working on. Does it have a setting? Apply David's six points to help your scene really fit into the setting that makes it come alive.

And write!

EXERCISE: Now how did that happen?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 8 April 2009

Writer's Digest, February 2008, page 77 offers this contest prompt:

"Start your story with 'When I first told my family about [fill in the blank], they didn't believe me.' End your story with 'And that's how I ended up [fill in the blank]." From The Pocket Muse by Monica Wood

Start by filling in the two blanks. What did you tell your family about? And what did you end up with? Remember that the two blanks don't have to be obviously related. In fact, a good way to do this is to start by making a list of five possibilities for each of the blanks, and make them somewhat unusual -- the elephant in the living room, the aliens who lived at the end of the street, whatever makes you feel interested and intrigued. Then pick one from each list, and start filling in the path from one to the other.

Just what happens between what you first told your family about and what you ended up with?

Write!

a rainbow around the moon?