Vivid Writing

Image by tgagend from Pixabay

A picture is worth a thousand words! So what to do if you're a novelist and can't collaborate with an illustrator or cinematographer?

You write vividly.

What is vivid writing?

“Vivid writing and description capture a moment so perfectly that the reader's senses and imagination are stirred to acutely picture the scene and characters.”

Why write vividly?

The obvious excitement and exhilaration aside (vivid = bright, intense, vibrant, dazzling), by writing vividly – and visually – you can move your reader, draw them into your story world and empower them to make-it-their-own – even filling in gaps left by the author. That ownership and clear visualisation means your story will feel real, your characters alive and will endure way beyond the end of your novel.

How to write vividly

You've written your first draft – or perhaps you're editing as you go along – so how do you ensure words on a page transform into vivid images?

Show don't tell. It's an oldy but a goody. Stop the exposition. Stop telling the reader what to feel. Show them the magic because seeing really is believing.

Write what you know. If you're an expert in cake decorating, snowboarding, nail art or rare fungi then you know the quirky language and insider facts about your specialism that will really bring it alive in your reader's mind's eye. Whether it's bonking your board or burger flipping. Lambeth Method or over-piping. Stamping. Or hyphal knots. The simple and mundane for you can become a bright new world for your reader.

Turn comedian. Stand-up comedians are experts in observing the everyday but highlighting it in such microscopic detail that we think – Oh my God! Yes, that's hysterical. E.g. "Garlic Bread?" By observing real people, and even watching observational comedians to see how they do it, you can tap into the collective consciousness and create authentic characters and scenarios.

Pierce your reader with your own memory punctums. Like the Punctum described in Roland Barthes's book Camera Lucida on photographic theory,

Punctum: "the punctum of a photograph is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me)”.

I'd like you to pierce your writing with personal oddities (juxtapositions) and the unexpected. No matter how different we all are, we will respond with our own history and memories to others' personal experiences. Think back to your time in school or university etc – there will be funny or unusual instances that you have welded in your brain. What was the accidental odd element that kept it in your memory? What caught your eye today as you went to the shops? Pierce your writing with similar and they'll linger with your readers too.

Invent metaphors. Common (cliched) metaphors, and similes, are easily overlooked – we hear them so often. So, create new and fresh metaphors (and similes) to hook your reader's attention. Common: as fit as a fiddle; as sharp as a tack. New: as fit as an Ironman triathlete; as sharp as a Gillette Venus Extra Smooth. Similarly, try and avoid the most obvious descriptions such as heart raced, she froze etc. Break the expected.

Contrary characterisation. Create vivid characters who don't fit outmoded (bigoted, sexist … racist) stereotypes. With cultural appropriation in mind, respectfully ensure that your diverse characters are given the opportunities to be who they want to be. That way they're memorable for all the right reasons.

Use all the senses. Don't just paint a picture. Arouse scents and aromas. Textures and touch. Bird song and syrupy sweetness.

Words create their own pictures and feelings.

• Use onomatopoeic words.

• Read up on Wolfgang Köhler's Bouba/Kiki effect, our almost innate synaesthesia-like recognition of shapes in words.

This is something I do all the time and will sift through my thesaurus until I find the word that conjures the picture and sensation I want the reader to experience.

E.g. Lazy = short, sharp, staccato and rebellious. Languid = long languid lunches, rolling on and on. Drowsy = complete confusion, the letters don't have a constant pattern for me (Drows is choppy whereas y is chill). Yep, I'm a bit weird but according to the Bouba/Kiki effect many of us visualise these shapes in words without realising it.

So what if we have to use a thousand words!

The novel as an artistic medium is truly unique. We hand our imaginings over to our reader and trust them to run with it in their mind. This is teamwork. Real viewer interaction. Together we build vast, expansive worlds that cinema, TV, VR and gaming can only dream of for the price.

To vivid novelists!

I originally wrote a version of this piece for the Society of Children’s Book Authors and Illustrators’ (SCBWI’s) online magazine WORDS AND PICTURES as part of their KNOWHOW series. Check it out here. As a proud member of SCBWI, I recommend you join if you’re a children’s author or illustrator (or aspiring).

Deep Point of View

Image by slightly_different from Pixabay

Sod social distancing!

Here’s how to use Deep (aka Close or Intimate) Point of View (POV) techniques to drag your reader up close and very personal with your Viewpoint Character(s) (VPC).

What is Deep POV?

In Deep POV (DPOV) your reader experiences the story from inside your VPC. The character lives the story (and the reader vicariously) as opposed to the character/narrator telling the reader the story in standard POVs. It can be used with First, Third Limited, less so Second Person but not Omniscient. The reader sees, hears, feels, receives and processes information, and experiences, through the VPC’s perspective and that’s all filtered and coloured by the VPC’s interests, political stance, education and even physical limitations.

Standard v Deep examples:

3rd Person POV: Something sharp dug into Sarah’s spine causing a flash of fear to course through her body. She heard a man’s voice growl, ‘Move to the window or I’ll stab you.’

3rd Person Deep POV: A sharp prick at her spine, nerves needling, she froze. A man said, ‘Move to the window or I’ll stab you.’

Why use DPOV?

• Deep affinity between reader and VPC,

• Heightens emotion, drama and fun,

• Filters a complex story with large cast through a conduit character,

• Novel becomes a living, immersive experience rather than entertainment.

Principles of Deep POV

Limited Knowledge – VPCs (and reader) can’t know others’ intentions or feelings as they’re not omniscient (they can, however, speculate and misinterpret).

If someone squints and scratches-their-head or rubs-eyes with heel-of-hand we recognise these as confusion or fatigue without needing written explanation. So have your VPC react to these cues characteristically to both progress the plot and build intimacy with reader. Perhaps your VPC reacts by swearing inside their head and snapping at the person head-scratching – signalling to the reader the incomprehension happens regularly and your VPC’s impatient.

Inside-to-Outside View – Story always told from the VPC’s eyes looking out at the world. They feel themselves flush but can’t observe whether their skin turned pink or beetroot. Don’t break outside and look in on your VPC.

Interior Life – Internal thoughts and visceral bodily reactions. Your VPC feels their guts cramp and their pulse throb in their throat in response to fear rather than thinking I’m terrified. Use internal thoughts realistically. No one thinks I have to behead the gorgon, use her decapitated head to freeze my headmaster and break into his office to get my mobile back. Content aside, we don’t plan our objectives like that. We think Is he in his office?

Interpretations – Bias spun from the VPC’s perspective. As the conduit communicating the story to the reader the VPC’s prejudices, interests, likes, limitations … all shape the plot.

Immediacy – Use of active voice – over passive voice – ensures energy propels forward. Showing maintains an in-the-moment authenticity whereas telling feels reported.

(For more info on Active v Passive Voice click my Blog post)

Editing your Manuscript to go Deeper

Characterisation

Motivation – Know your VPC thoroughly (there’s no hiding in DPOV).

Personality and Experiences – Similarly, know whether VPCs are driven, Machiavellian, considerate, loyal? Fight or flee? Pets as child? Allergies/broken bones? Sweet or sour? Analytical/spaced-out?

Sounds overly detailed – in particular because you WON’T be listing these on the page – but the answers WILL affect the entire story because your character’s reactions and interactions relay their personality to the reader, drive plot and bring it alive.

Voice – dialect, education, friends, upbringing, career, sports teams … will all influence how your VPC communicates: scientifically, aggressively, colloquially, fast, breathless…

Presentation

Reduce Filter Words, Dialogue Tags, Proper Names and Italicised Internal Thoughts.

Don’t get between your character and reader by shoving a signpost in their face. Filter Words like saw, heard, felt, thought, imagined... remind your reader it’s a story. The same goes for complex dialogue tags. However, do use said/says when clarity necessitates. Use I/we/she/he instead of VPC’s Proper Name as much as possible, even in 3rd Person. Avoid Italicising Inner Thoughts (like I have in Principles of DPOV above). The whole story is the inner looking outward so don’t differentiate inner dialogue.

Finally, don’t stay in DPOV for the entire novel. It’s so intense you’ll have your reader rocking back-and-forth in a corner.

Instead, still relaying the story through the VPC’s eyes, ease out for a breather and divert the reader with action, dialogue, supporting cast and plot progression. This isn’t Navel Gazing POV where the reader’s stuck in the character’s head, but a way to take your reader Deep into a world where their heart’s in their mouth, they shed happy tears and have an uneasy feeling they’re being watched…

I originally wrote a version of this piece for the Society of Children’s Book Authors and Illustrators’ (SCBWI’s) online magazine WORDS AND PICTURES as part of their KNOWHOW series. Check it out here. As a proud member of SCBWI, I recommend you join if you’re a children’s author or illustrator (or aspiring).

Active & Passive Voice

Image by Ryan McGuire from Pixabay 

It's a new year. Everyone's raving about getting active. And it's not just the gym buffs.

With editing in mind, I'm thinking about Active and Passive Voice and how writers seem obsessed with keeping Active.

What are Active Voice and Passive Voice?

And why does everyone (almost everyone) tell you to avoid Passive Voice?

Active Voice (AV) is the most common voice used in English. It's what we learn as children. It follows the standard: subject (aka agent) did/does something (verb) to an object (aka recipient). Batgirl hit Supergirl. Apart from the potential super power fall-out we're comfortable with this.

Passive Voice (PV) is the exact same scenario presented in a different sentence structure: Supergirl was hit by Batgirl. The new subject of this sentence is Supergirl. But she's not the agent doing the action (verb) she's the recipient. So the subject has a passive relationship with the verb. This passive verb sentence is also known as Passive Voice.

Yep! Verbs are the ones with the active or passive voices (active verb in AV, passive verb in PV)! *brain explodes*

So how does this affect your reader?

Active (Verb) Voice

In AV the action flows from the subject (agent), through the verb, to the object (recipient). As reader we visualise Batgirl, see her hit (picture her fist or her Batgirl motorbike) then we imagine the hand/bike making contact with Supergirl. It's laid out for us on the page exactly in the order it happens. We're propelled forward with the action and we're ready to read what happens next.

Passive (Verb) Voice

On the other hand – along with it often being more wordy – PV messes with time and takes us from the present, backwards to the past. At the end of the sentence we're lost. Are we continuing in the past? Or returning to the present? The energy feels static or expended. Imagine we start out on a piece of stretched elastic and as the sentence progresses we ping backwards, only to have to find our feet and trudge forwards onto the next event.

So why do inexperienced writers slip into Passive Voice?

Politicians, Scientists and Lawyers love it. Perhaps this is why many new writers emulate their grammatical style to add an air of authority to their writing. AV in contrast feels so rudimentary. We learned those sentence structures in primary (junior) school!

How and when should you use Passive Voice?

Sparingly. AV is the simplest way to convey information to your reader cleanly and clearly. However, you can use PV and not end up with dull, static writing. It can even pack a punch.

When you have missing information or wish to add mystery

With PV sentences you can omit the agent (instantly negating the more wordy argument).

• As writer you may not know who hit Supergirl (the recipient). Say Batgirl (the agent) hit and run before you and the reader got to the scene.

• But it can also be because you want to withhold that information (who the agent was) from your reader to add mystery and tension.

Supergirl was hit.

You can't tell me that's a dull, undynamic sentence! Infuriating, perhaps – I want to know how and by whom – but bingo you've got me hooked.

The recipient is more important than the agent

If the recipient will get a bigger emotional response from the reader in the position of subject rather than the object, then use PV.

AV: Fire fighters rescued a puppy from a burning building.

PV: A puppy was rescued from a burning building.

See how the puppy is all we care about in PV (again that trick of omitting the agent and leaving just the recipient). But equally if we included the fire fighters at the end – the puppy is the subject and still the star.

A character has little autonomy

Presenting a character in PV you can, by association, highlight their passive nature or lack of power. And you can throw focus onto their plight by moving them to the subject position.

AV: The housekeeper thrashed Pip daily.

PV: Pip was thrashed daily.

A character avoids responsibility

Politicians love to make statements in the PV. You can show your character shirks accountability by speaking similarly in PV.

AV: "We/I/Someone made mistakes."

PV: "Mistakes were made."

(Ronald Reagan)(George Bush Snr & Jnr)(Bill Clinton)

PV: "… a serious mistake was made."

(Barack Obama)

(Note that missing agent in every one.)

While an active life and a mostly Active Voice is good for body, mind and manuscript, there are instances when it's valid to take things down a notch, chill out, and embrace a little passivity…

Active doesn't always equal good and Passive doesn't equal bad, and anyway, this journey is about each of us finding our writing voices not those pesky vocal verbs!

I originally wrote a version of this piece for the Society of Children’s Book Authors and Illustrators’ (SCBWI’s) online magazine WORDS AND PICTURES as part of their KNOWHOW series. Check it out here. As a proud member of SCBWI, I recommend you join if you’re a children’s author or illustrator (or aspiring).

Telling over Showing

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Show don’t tell they said. Who said? Everyone! Everyone? Well, perhaps not everyone... Because sometimes as a writer it’s better to tell.

Telling can work alongside or in place of showing.

Here’s when and why it's good to be a tattle-tell author.

First Draft & Plotting

Telling will help you reach the hallowed ground of writing The End. Don’t waste time refining a scene showing the first kiss between your MC (main character) and love interest in the first draft. Instead, write They finally kiss, head butt and he gets a bleeding nose. It’s a disaster. She loves it. and move on.

NB: This scene must not remain told, however. Redraft it later with showing as it’s a pivotal, highly emotional scene.

Redrafting

Telling to Condense

• Cutting word count (editors aren't likely to buy a 100k word MG (8-12yrs readers)).

• Speeding up dragging, boring sections (beta readers will flag these).

• Time travel: you need to move the story forward in time, hours, days, a year…

• Pace variation: you want to vary pace, ebbing and flowing from short-to-the-point telling sentences and longer detailed showing paragraphs.

Telling for Focus

• Contrast helps the reader focus on what's important. By showing important events in the story and in turn telling the less important details, the spotlight is cast appropriately.

• Important characters' (not just your MC's) emotions can also be shown and again less important characters' can be told. That way the reader is clear on who to pay attention to.

Telling for Clarity of Meaning

A clear, telling statement can bring all your readers up to speed, even the unobservant ones who haven't noticed your brilliantly subtle clues thus far. And your bright, detective readers will enjoy the positive affirmation that they're on the right track.

Telling for Directional Shift

Pivoting focus. To take the story in an unexpected direction you can use telling as a device to pivot the path of events and in turn the reader's focus. Yes, someone dying in a car accident, your MC discovering their best friend has kissed their boyfriend (apparently I'm kissing obsessed) or they've failed their exams … are all HUGELY pivotal events. So you'd presume they must be shown. But not if the focus of the story is on how the characters go on to deal with the fall-out. In this case you might tell the reader what happened and focus on showing life after the pivotal moment.

Unreliable telling

Telling can be helpful if you have an unreliable narrator (writing in 1st person).

Have your protagonist tell the reader how things are and allow the surrounding characters and their interactions to show/reveal that the narrator may not be telling the truth.

Telling out of Necessity

Sometimes the dreaded background exposition must be told – keep it to a simple line or two from the narrator. Don't shoehorn that info into dialogue.

Championing the dark side of telling!

Yes, showing adds vibrancy, emotion and reader investment in your writing but for something to shine bright you need contrasting shadows. Telling along with showing creates depth and texture. This is equal-opportunities writing, where telling is just as important as showing.

I originally wrote a version of this piece for the Society of Children’s Book Authors and Illustrators’ (SCBWI’s) online magazine WORDS AND PICTURES as part of their KNOWHOW series. Check it out here. As a proud member of SCBWI, I recommend you join if you’re a children’s author or illustrator (or aspiring).