Have you ever wondered how they do it? You know, those ones… the books that reach out, grab you and suck you in from beginning to end, that invade your dreams and make you feel like you are living the story. The ones that haunt you even after you have finished them and put them safely back in the bookshelf.
It is not only about story and characterizations, but in the harnessing of all the senses. But it is not enough to simply put these things in – you have to take care how you put them in. For example:
‘Looking at the photograph of Jenny, Tom felt sad. It was three years since her disappearance.’
At face value, these two sentences probably look okay and would easily disappear in a manuscript without a second glance. But perhaps we can improve on them…
‘She smiled up at him, her face forever frozen in black and white. A deep sadness engulfed Tom even now, three years after his beloved Jenny had vanished.’
It is the words you hardly notice that bring a manuscript to life, those that engage you without you even realising it. In the second example this is achieved by using:
- Multiple senses
- Visual – ‘black and white’
- Kinaesthetic: Physical sensation – ‘frozen’
- Kinaesthetic: Emotional feeling – ‘sadness engulfed’
- Cognitive (the explanation) – ‘three years after his beloved Jenny had vanished’
- Stronger words
- ‘she vanished’ rather than ‘her disappearance’ (this also makes it active rather than passive)
- doing away with the weaker ‘looking’ and ‘felt’
This way, we are there with Tom, experiencing his sadness, rather than watching him from a distance.
So, my writing tip today is…
Learn to recognize weak words and practise replacing them with strong ones. Drop adjectives and adverbs (start by looking for words that end in ‘ing’) and wherever possible, avoid using the word ‘felt’.
Okay so that probably qualifies as three tips, but who’s counting?
Meanwhile, poor Tom, right? It kind of makes me want to explore this further… what do you suppose happened to Jenny? Which brings me to another point: Generating Curiosity.
But we’ll leave that for another day.
theresewelch.com 
Great advice….I am beginning my first novel so I need to absorb as much as I can! 🙂
Congratulations on beginning your novel!
The Internet is a great University (used wisely) – it is certainly where I learned many of my own writing skills. Good luck and enjoy the journey.
Really a great post. I was just discussing with my wife yesterday what it is that makes a story sing to her. It came up because I just finished a short story, she read it, and her reaction was wow! The neat thing is that I really felt ‘wow’ when writing it. And so we set and talked about everything from prose to characterization and plot. In the end, I arrived at, this story was just particularly identifiable by my wife, it was for me. But thinking back as I worked through the second and third drafts, I know I consciously tried to tighten things up. Whic generally results in dropping adjectives and adverbs. At any rate, this is a great post, and one that is near and dear to the heart of all writers; makeing our stories live and breath.
Isn’t it great to get that ‘Wow’ reaction when someone reads something you’ve written?
And it’s even better when you realise that the little bit extra – the consciously tightening up – has paid off.