TECH: 101 Tips (24)

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 12 June 2009

Writers' Digest, October 2004, pages 26 to 33, has a collection of short "nuggets of wisdom" related to getting published. Maria Schneider is the author of the compilation. Take a deep breath, and here we go:

"If you're a storyteller, realize that you're entitled to an array of techniques that will give your story more force -- techniques that taken together might be called 'word craft.' Commercial novelists too often water down their work with unoriginal phrases. They forget about parallelism, reversals and symbols, perhaps feeling that these are OK for the literature taught in high school English classes, but not useful if you want to make a buck. Nonsense. Turn up the sensitivity on your mental cliche meter. Become more artful with the structure of your scenes. Your novels will have a bigger wallop, and so will your wallet." Donald Maass

It's a rich, vibrant field of craft and art. There's more tricks in that literary bag than are thought of in your philosophy, and similar modulations of the message, my friends. From the poets, from the literary theorists, from the historians and the grand roll of the literary scroll -- you can use any of them that works for you! Don't be afraid to put a little extra polish on that spin. Worst case, you try it, read it again, decide it doesn't quite do what you want, and you rip it out again. You control the vertical, you control the horizontal... your readers have just entered YOUR WRITING ZONE!

So feel free to use the craft and the art of the literary world. It's all a part of your tool kit.