is it that makes them look that way? Without adjectives and adverbs, youâre driven back to verbs as a means of expression and you might find yourself describing the character in terms of actions: body language, gestures, posture, activities. It forces you towards imagery, away from the literal into the metaphoric. For example, if you find yourself writing âhis hair was the colour of dirtâ, rather than âhis hair was brownâ, this is illuminating. Why have you chosen to compare his hair with dirt, of all the things you could have chosen? Does that indicate how you feel about this character?
As you write, you might find yourself being forced by the restrictions of the exercise to alter your character by inventing new details, things that can be described without adjectives and adverbs. You may find yourself writing about another character altogether. Follow where the exercise leads â the new character might be more interesting than the original one.
Now that you have an idea of what can be done without adverbs and adjectives, you can choose to put a few back in. Theyâll be the ones that you really need and theyâll also probably be much more vivid than the ones in your first draft, because of the new insights youâll have had by doing without them.
5 Rewrite the description again, using whatever adverbs and adjectives you wish. You may find that this time youâre writing about a third character, a composite of the two.
Description can sometimes be a trigger for a story: thereâs an impulse to write a description, and later on you see where it will take its place in a story.
6 However unlikely it seems, write a scene in which the character youâve just been describing is in the living room you described earlier. Put the two elements together and see what happens.
The more bizarre the combination is, the more likely it is to be interesting. Now, of course, the description will start to become action, as the person and the place start to interact in some way.
8. Plot
âRising actionâ
The concept of plot has its detractors, says Kate Mosse â but every writer needs a taught framework of cause and effect on which to hang their words
A story is just the stuff that happened; plot is the intrigue of how and why. Yet in writing courses and workbooks, plot is often the poor relation of those apparently superior skills of characterisation, dialogue and style.
Sometimes plot dare not speak its own name, going incognito as âstructureâ or âplanningâ. Stephen King, in On Writing, calls it âthe good writerâs last resort and the dullardâs first choiceâ. Ouch! For him, plotting is incompatible with the spontaneity of creation.
Yet a good plot is exactly what draws me to a novel in the first place. And keeps me there. Without it, no amount of sizzling dialogue or exquisite description or beautiful language is enough.
It wasnât always like this
What are the oldest stories we know of? Aboriginal Dreamtime tales are rich in incident â the characters do things and their actions cause change. Greek myths are full of challenges faced and met by interchangeable heroes. In his Poetics, Aristotle himself refers to plot as the most important element of drama, trumping character or setting or even language. The 4th-century polymath coined the truism âbeginning, middle and endâ and recommended that the events should interconnect.
Fast forward to 1863. Gustav Freytag developed Aristotleâs three parts into five: exposition, rising action, turning point, falling action and resolution. The exposition introduces the main characters â who they are and what they want. The plot is about how they try to get it. In screenwriting, we talk about the status quo, inciting events, through lines and crescendos. Itâs no coincidence that the story told in the sonata form I studied as a junior violinist goes like this:
As you write, you might find yourself being forced by the restrictions of the exercise to alter your character by inventing new details, things that can be described without adjectives and adverbs. You may find yourself writing about another character altogether. Follow where the exercise leads â the new character might be more interesting than the original one.
Now that you have an idea of what can be done without adverbs and adjectives, you can choose to put a few back in. Theyâll be the ones that you really need and theyâll also probably be much more vivid than the ones in your first draft, because of the new insights youâll have had by doing without them.
5 Rewrite the description again, using whatever adverbs and adjectives you wish. You may find that this time youâre writing about a third character, a composite of the two.
Description can sometimes be a trigger for a story: thereâs an impulse to write a description, and later on you see where it will take its place in a story.
6 However unlikely it seems, write a scene in which the character youâve just been describing is in the living room you described earlier. Put the two elements together and see what happens.
The more bizarre the combination is, the more likely it is to be interesting. Now, of course, the description will start to become action, as the person and the place start to interact in some way.
8. Plot
âRising actionâ
The concept of plot has its detractors, says Kate Mosse â but every writer needs a taught framework of cause and effect on which to hang their words
A story is just the stuff that happened; plot is the intrigue of how and why. Yet in writing courses and workbooks, plot is often the poor relation of those apparently superior skills of characterisation, dialogue and style.
Sometimes plot dare not speak its own name, going incognito as âstructureâ or âplanningâ. Stephen King, in On Writing, calls it âthe good writerâs last resort and the dullardâs first choiceâ. Ouch! For him, plotting is incompatible with the spontaneity of creation.
Yet a good plot is exactly what draws me to a novel in the first place. And keeps me there. Without it, no amount of sizzling dialogue or exquisite description or beautiful language is enough.
It wasnât always like this
What are the oldest stories we know of? Aboriginal Dreamtime tales are rich in incident â the characters do things and their actions cause change. Greek myths are full of challenges faced and met by interchangeable heroes. In his Poetics, Aristotle himself refers to plot as the most important element of drama, trumping character or setting or even language. The 4th-century polymath coined the truism âbeginning, middle and endâ and recommended that the events should interconnect.
Fast forward to 1863. Gustav Freytag developed Aristotleâs three parts into five: exposition, rising action, turning point, falling action and resolution. The exposition introduces the main characters â who they are and what they want. The plot is about how they try to get it. In screenwriting, we talk about the status quo, inciting events, through lines and crescendos. Itâs no coincidence that the story told in the sonata form I studied as a junior violinist goes like this:
Similar Books
