Reading With New Eyes

A "couple of years" ago, I started writing for real. For years I had written technical things like marketing plans or federal assessment reports- exciting stuff. Then I decided to try writing fiction and let's just say they're significantly different. Or the difference is as vast as the cosmos. See?  Different.

In addition to taking up the concept of writing, I also started reading different books. I think I've mentioned previously that I read a lot of historical non-fiction. From the awe-inspiring "Flags of Our Fathers" to "Coming of Age in Mississippi" to more biographies than I can count, I'm a history nerd.

Then work called, and if you know me, work is work! So I started reading more fiction so I could see how other authors have done their thing. It seemed reasonable. I fully acknowledge that I had/have a lot to learn.

Somewhere in there I realized that I don't fully read for fun or at least not entirely. My goodness, how could they use "just" or "only" so often? Why are their not enough dialogue indicators? Can you fit any more clichés into your story? When I found a full blown typo in a best seller I just about went crazy.

It's so easy to notice just the bad. It's like the rest of life, I guess. Instead of noting the 99 things I did right in a day, I dwell on the one thing that went wrong. There's an argument to be made that we learn from our failures and it's a good one. But there's also an argument to be made for celebrating good work. I mean, that's the whole purpose of writing, right? To turn simple words into beautiful, meaningful sentences and phrases?

So what makes those beautiful moments? Boy, if I knew that, I'd be basking in the south of France with the millions from my string of best sellers. But I do acknowledge a few things that are the basis of good writing/the things that make a sentence great.

Detail- the goal being to make the reader see exactly what you're talking about. Is it a green car or a car that was as green as a northern Minnesota forest? A little rock or a dime sized piece of polished quartz? Some birds or a pair of goldfinches
watching each others back as they eat from a sock feeder?

Detail can also mean doing research and using that to give realism to anything. I lived in Kansas for two years in graduate school. I worked with some folks from Arkansas and other southern states and use their phrases and words to make southern characters come alive. "We're fixin to go to the store. Y'all want to come with?" Nobody in Minnesota would say that. Or describing the shops and street artists on the pedestrian mall in Boulder, CO, nestled in the mountains. The devil truly is in the details!

Character Descriptions- again, the details help in the quest to make them come to life. The reader has to nod and say, "yeah, I know that guy." The guy from work or Bill, the night janitor who always sings to himself as he works? The girl next door or Kenzie, the pimple faced girl with the greasy black hair next door who liked to blast her 80s music?

Relationship- the goal being to establish how characters are connected. Carlos or my nimble fingered lab partner in biology class? Gretta or my cousin on my mom's side who taught me to play the guitar and be in a band? Duane or the kid who stole my lunch money twice a week and once punched me so hard in the stomach that I threw up? 

Meaningful relationships are the heart and soul of any good scene. They evoke strong emotions; good, bad or otherwise. I'd like to thank the great folks at Stevie Ray's Improv for drilling this idea into my head!

Conflict- the root of every story. Without conflict, there's no good reason to move a story along? Captain Ahab would have been on a nice, South seas sailing trip except for his hatred of the whale. Hazel and Fiver would just have been rabbits trying to secure a new home except for evil other rabbits. Every book, every chapter needs conflict to push things along!

I can's say that I have favorites. There are times in both fiction and non-fiction that I stop to reread a sentence because it's beautiful or poignant. "Breathe in the sweet perfume of fresh air" from '1984' or '...covered in a thin veil of frost" from Stephen Ambrose's "Wild Blue." You can smell it or get a feel for the cold. Love them!

For me, the details that books can convey are what makes them better (99.99% of the time) than the movie. They inspire the reader to form the image instead of spoon feeding it to them and that allows the reader to use their brain more. It's what I hope to do some day soon!