Write about what?

Having seen discussion boards in which people spend time arguing about the merits of fictional characters, I would assume that a number of readers prefer these imaginary people to real ones. Fictional characters may be braver, more beautiful, or have greater ingenuity than real people so it is easier to become attached to them. But the real advantage is they don’t talk back and readers can imagine them however they desire. But, the same is not true for the people who create the stories. I can attest to a number of times that authors have related incidents in which characters they have created refuse to behave in the manner that the author envisions.

Characters live in the author’s heads, sometimes ignore their directives and even argue with them as the author tries to capture them with words. These finite words are the only way that reading audience may become acquainted…

Sometime in the eighties I noticed a shift in the focus of television sitcoms–the humorous situation was gradually being replaced by humorous banter. Witty retorts were more important than amusing events. In fact, often the events would be minimal. The entire plot may have been based solely on the character’s illusions, often nothing happened but clever conversations. Sometime the events in comedies actually struck a painful nerve. But, the audiences continued to laugh as the actors cut each other down a notch with witty retorts.

This is not the first time that ‘witty’ words have been prized over plot. Oscar Wilde, a 19th century Irish writer and poet wrote many poems, essays, short stories and plays. However, other than the fame achieved through his one novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his hit play, The Importance of Being Ernest, Wilde is mainly known for his epigrams, wry observations…

One of the quickest ways to make your writing voice stand out from the crowd is to master the use of literary devices. Some devices are just fancy names for specific types of diction and syntax. For example, anastrophe is a type of hyperbaton in which the position of a single word is changed from the normal syntax for emphasis. It is also the formal name for the distinctive syntax that marked the speech of Yoda in Star Wars.

However, there are many more literary devices that have potential. These involve selecting words for their actual sounds, as the sloshing, crackling, twinkling onomatopoeia words. I fondly think of these as the ‘musical’ literary devices. Longer words, with many syllables ending in vowels, like onomatopoeia, sound elegant, while short consonant bound ones, such as slang, carry a cocky connotation. I’ve witnessed people discussing whether it is more important to be intelligent or smart. To…

“Say what you are going to say, say it, and finally say what you have said.” I don’t know how many times I’ve heard this rule for organizing the written word repeated in the educational realm. But rules are meant to be broken. Following this rule consistently will end up putting your readers to sleep. So many formulas to create structure in writing breed boredom instead. Good writing requires movement towards a goal, without being completely predictable.

There are multiple types of graphic organizers to assist the writer in brainstorming: such as branching, bridging, and bubbling. However, consider exactly how the reader would comprehend a composition if you wrote it with one central idea and all the related sub-ideas jutting out in different directions? This would be like constantly returning to home between every leg of a road trip. There is no way to get away from the fact that…

The way we string together words and the type of words we use contribute to the “pace” of writing. Longer sentences with a plethora of subordinated clauses provide an intellectual sound to the writing. The reader must take more time to ponder the concepts presented, making the ideas seem as complex as the style,  and also making the reader slog through the work.

Short sentences with direct verbs are the antidote to a dragging pace. However, few readers can stomach an entire work of short choppy bursts.  When dependent clauses are avoided, flow is sacrificed. The trick to dealing with pace-changing techniques is knowing when the writing can be improved by putting on the brakes–to let the reader savor the experience of reading–or speeding up the pace for drama.

A good exercise to show how this works is to take a paragraph out of academic writing and rewrite it. Revise it by…

While diction determines word choice, syntax determines where the words are placed. Language without syntax are words strung together with no method to the madness–in other words, nonsense. Our normal syntax mimics what we have heard before. Unique syntax requires mixing up that order without creating nonsense.

Do you recall Yoda’s distinctive style of speaking in the Star Wars movie series? Simply take the predicate object or predicate adjective at the end of a sentence and move it to the front. Voila–Yoda speak. “But what is a predicate object and predicate adjective?” you ask mystified. Basically it is everything in a normal syntax that follows after the verb.

Learning how to use syntax to create a unique voice requires a fundamental knowledge of grammar. I recall creating lengthy diagrams parsing complex sentences in my junior high days. But, diagramming went out of vogue (probably due to lack of time) just like…

Diction is one of the building blocks of voice that pushed far enough can become a two-edged sword, making the written word dangerously inaccessible to readers. When teaching Shakespeare’s plays to students I frequently pointed out that it was not the formal speeches that were hard to comprehend. Rather it was the lines full of common slang and innuendos of Elizabethan English that the students failed to grasp. After all, the bard did write to entertain the “man on the street.”

Beginning with the Renaissance there was a movement toward more formal diction in writing, and then sometime before the twentieth century writers started backing away from that same kind of diction. You could blame or praise Mark Twain for this, but he was not the only one in concerned in this swing. Today, the media has morphed into users of an informal brand of Standard English that is sprinkled…

Tone of voice… you have probably heard this phrase used frequently, such as in “I don’t like your tone of voice.” As a child I often assumed that phrase was the adults’ way of reprimanding someone whose statement was not malicious or false, but brought up an inconvenient truth. In speaking, tone is typically associated with a certain timbre, pitch or intensity that expresses an attitude, such as amusement or disdain. However those cues disappear if the words are written.

How are we to betray underlying emotions in writing? That is one of the keys to creating a distinctive writer’s voice.  Authors often use imagery to create the tone through their descriptive passages.  It does make a difference if the setting sun is “red as a ruby” or” red as blood.” A skillful writer uses imagery, full of connotative words with emotional undercurrents, to draw their characters and set the…