I don’t do detail

I was advised recently that I needed to do more world building; that I needed to let myself go, let the words flow and build pictures; all those sensory things that I’m told will draw the reader into the story.

It’s not the first time I’ve been told this. The wonderful Melissa James reviewed some of my work a while back and said the same thing.

So I am about to start revising my latest work and add some detail.

Trouble is, when it comes to detail, I always err of the side of not too much; mostly because I personally don’t read the detail in books. Whenever a paragraph starts with: ‘The house was...’, The landscape seemed...’, His hair was...’, I skip it. My interest is in the character; what they do next, what they feel, why they feel it. Where they are when they’re feeling it hardly matters to me.

So this is my dilemma. I don’t like the detail, so I don’t want to inflict it on my readers.

Does anyone else struggle with this? Or maybe you love the detail. Do tell. And any hints on where I can read more about this.

Straight-jacket anyone?

I’ve never understood poker-machine addicts.

My mother was one. On the sunniest and most spectacular of days, her favourite thing was to sit inside a dark room at a machine and drip feed coins into it hour after hour (I believe they take notes now – oh dear!).

She barely stopped for food in those days – a ciggy and a Riesling usually did the trick.

Not for me! You wouldn’t find me inside on a sunny day, sitting in front of a machine and....oh dear! I guess you would.

It appears I’m addicted to writing. Worse still, I’m addicted to writing competitions. To me writing competitions are the ultimate tease. It’s just like mum used to say, “One more coin – just one more. I can’t walk away now. The next one might be the winning coin.” I now hear myself saying, “Just one more writing competition. The next one could be it. If I walk away now, I’ll never know, or worse, another person could step up and take the winnings and I’ve spent so much time feeding words into this blasted thing...blah, blah, blah."

Oh dear! I think I need help. Straight-jacket, anyone? Better still (since it's hard to type in a straight-jacket) is there a Writers’ Anonymous out there anywhere?

Hello...my name’s Jenn...and I’m a writing-comp-aholic.

Sounds of Silence

After a recent discussion with fellow Bootcamper Jenn, I've been mulling over the use of sound in our writing.

It's important to remember to include mention of the senses in your writing: the smells, sounds, tastes, sights and tactile images need to be shown to the reader.

Characters going about their lives with no influence from sound will stand out to a reader. It's not natural.

But the inclusion of sound can be difficult. How do you describe some sounds? And how do you avoid the use of the same descriptive word, particularly when attributed to speech (eg grunt, snigger, sigh)?

Although sometimes I think the use of silence can be just as powerful as sound.

I thought it might be useful to point you to one site I have found helpful: The Bookshelf Muse (thebookshelfmuse.blogspot.com) which regularly composes thesaurus entries, and one of the subheadings for each topic is sound (although a fantastic site when writing any descriptive passage).