Crafting your words
“Words need to be crafted, not sprayed. They need
to be fitted together with infinite care.”~ Norman Cousins
When I am writing a short story, novel or blog post I generally just blaze away with the writing, trying to get down the ideas or story before it escapes.
After finishing, I go back over the text and edit, edit, edit until I’ve ironed out all of the spelling mistakes, typos, grammatical blunders and missing or wrongly used punctuation. All in a day’s work.
Then starts the interesting stage: rewriting.
Some sentences or even whole paragraphs or passages just don’t work, they don’t sing, they lack sparkle. They are limping along barely able to support themselves, let alone adding to the story. (Notice that last sentence? Originally I had ‘dead in the water.’ Shoot those over worked cliches. )
I used to hate rewriting. Now I look forward to the process because I know that it will certainly add so much to my writing.
Writing poetry
When writing poetry you are faced with a totally different world.
- Poetry is concise; there is no room for waffle.
- Poetry is precise; it has to use the exact right word in the right place.
- Poetry is concentrated language; every word must count.
- Poetry must be ‘carefully crafted’ and not words sprayed at random.
- Poetry must consist of words ‘fitted together with infinite care.’
To approach poetry in any other way is not only careless, it is laziness.
Good writing.
Short Story endings
One of the lecturers I have this year often starts her lecture with a writing exercise. It is a creative writing class in prose fiction after all, so this is entirely appropriate. Rosanne uses a variety of approaches, each writing exercise is stimulating. It is also very good writing practice under pressure. I love these exercises, and I have become keen at sharing my writing later during the workshop session after the lecture.
Last week Rosanne wrote a sentence on the whiteboard. She then challenged us to write for about five minutes – ending our piece with that sentence. Here are some interesting (I hope) and challenging (I hope) story endings. Use them in whatever way you like. Try them as warm up activities for your current writing project.
- Which one will I poison first?
- That is how the school burnt down.
- I will never go there again.
- That is the last time I ever saw her.
- It still amazes me that I lived to tell this tale
- I never expected to hear from him again.
- The precious key slipped from her hand, bounced once and disappeared over the edge of the jetty.
- Just when I’d given up all hope, the phone rang.
- Sometimes life is stranger than fiction.
- I was left staring at the solid door that had just been slammed in my face.
It was the first one we were challenged with. Here is what I wrote. Remember that we only had five minutes. This left little time for story or character development and none for rewriting.
Tuesday started like any other day: shower, breakfast, cuppa, paper, crossword and then don’t forget the teeth. All was going well, on schedule, according to plan, just like any other Tuesday.
Until.
Until my brother-in-law came to stay with his tribe of brats. All seven. Four boys and three girls plus two over active Jack Russells who always decided to wait until getting here to relieve themselves – on the new carpet.
‘I’ve left Susanna,’ he announced matter-of-factly. ‘Nowhere else to go. So I’ll have to move in with you. I’ll use the spare room shall I?’
I stared in disbelief. This was the fifth time it had happened. I couldn’t stand my brother-in-law. The Brat Pack was uncontrollable. The Jack Russells beyond control.
‘Which one will I poison first?’ was my immediate thought.
Have a go – let me know in the comments how it went.
Good writing.
Short Story Starters
It has been quite a long time since I last posted a list of Short Story Starters. These have proved to be very popular with my readers. I hope that these writing prompts are helping you to get going with your fiction writing on those occasions when you just don’t how to start.
Here is a list of these story starters all in the one place:
- Sixteen Scintillating Short Story Starters
- Seven Short Story Starters
- Seven More Short Story Starters
- Another Seven Short Story Starters
- More Short Story Starters
- Still More Short Story Starters
- Eight Short Story Starters
I intend to add to this list in future articles, so remember to bookmark this site – or use the RSS feed (on the side bar).
Good writing.
Updated November 2013.