Part I of this description section talked about putting life into your novel. Part II delves more into emotion and characterization. Description can connect with readers when it evokes emotion, and it can also deepen characterization by helping expose characters’ attitudes. When you use detailed descriptions in your novels, think about the affect the details have on readers. Develop them to get the most emotional impact you can. And how do you do that?
You create an emotional impact with the reader, by being selective with which details you chose and the emphasis you place on them. Remember that description and details are not only presented with the eyes. What we see is only one of the methods you use to bring the scene to life. Include the senses in description. In Description I, I used an example of a woods. Take that woods and add other senses besides sight. The scent of the woods lingers in your memory whether in the heat of summer, the moldering odor of autumn decay or the damp, mildew aroma of spring.
The woods are filled with colors from the white mushroom almost hidden in the grass to the umber hue of a tree trunk, the shades of spring green leaves to forest green. Then consider textures. Scrap you hand against the rough bark, run your finger along a maple’s smooth leaves as you feel the ridge of veins. Pick a peach from the fruit tree and stroke the fuzz, feel the tickle on your fingers and your mouth as your teeth snap into the sugary juice, and you smell the sweetness.
Where does this take you in your recollections? Does the description take you back to past experiences? Can you recall how you felt. Where you with someone else? Draw in the emotion it triggers in your mind.
Along with pulling emotions from senses, description creates word pictures that heighten a reader’s pleasure in your novel. Instead of seeing the woods tree by tree notice the clusters of trees, picture the open spaces in the landscape. Is this a meadow or a place filled with underbrush? The meadow is a setting for lovers to have a picnic while underbrush is a place to find a dead body. Leaving the woods, look at a bookshelf. Besides book what is there that helps to define the character—photographs of family, trophies from sports successes, knickknacks that hold memories for the owner, a pair of small scissors tarnished with age, a wooden box filled with pebbles? What do you learn about the character? How does this affect the character’s relationship with the owner of the items on the shelves? Will readers be aroused by the description you paint?
Description without purpose should create a sense of place only. He followed the path through the woods of maples and birches and heard in the background the skitter of animals as he trudged along in his thoughts. This is enough to let the reader picture his walk.
But description can be used to heighten characterization and emotion. When used well it can foreshadow danger—think of the underbrush in the woods—or set the mood for a romantic scene. When description, no matter how you use it, provide the reader with word pictures that trigger their own memories or experiences, you’ve done your job. Use description wisely.Description II: Purposeful Details
Description can connect with readers when it evokes emotion, and it can also deepen characterization by helping expose characters’ attitudes. When you use detailed descriptions in your novels, think about the affect the details have on readers. Develop them to get the most emotional impact you can. And how do you do that?
You create an emotional impact with the reader, by being selective with which details you chose and the emphasis you place on them. Remember that description and details are not only presented with the eyes. What we see is only one of the methods you use to bring the scene to life. Include the senses in description. In Description I, I used an example of a woods. Take that woods and add other senses besides sight. The scent of the woods lingers in your memory whether in the heat of summer, the moldering odor of autumn decay or the damp, mildew aroma of spring.
The woods are filled with colors from the white mushroom almost hidden in the grass to the umber hue of a tree trunk, the shades of spring green leaves to forest green. Then consider textures. Scrap you hand against the rough bark, run your finger along a maple’s smooth leaves as you feel the ridge of veins. Pick a peach from the fruit tree and stroke the fuzz, feel the tickle on your fingers and your mouth as your teeth snap into the sugary juice, and you smell the sweetness.
Where does this take you in your recollections? Does the description take you back to past experiences? Can you recall how you felt. Where you with someone else? Draw in the emotion it triggers in your mind.
Along with pulling emotions from senses, description creates word pictures that heighten a reader’s pleasure in your novel. Instead of seeing the woods tree by tree notice the clusters of trees, picture the open spaces in the landscape. Is this a meadow or a place filled with underbrush? The meadow is a setting for lovers to have a picnic while underbrush is a place to find a dead body. Leaving the woods, look at a bookshelf. Besides book what is there that helps to define the character—photographs of family, trophies from sports successes, knickknacks that hold memories for the owner, a pair of small scissors tarnished with age, a wooden box filled with pebbles? What do you learn about the character? How does this affect the character’s relationship with the owner of the items on the shelves? Will readers be aroused by the description you paint?
Description without purpose should create a sense of place only. He followed the path through the woods of maples and birches and heard in the background the skitter of animals as he trudged along in his thoughts. This is enough to let the reader picture his walk.
But description can be used to heighten characterization and emotion. When used well it can foreshadow danger—think of the underbrush in the woods—or set the mood for a romantic scene. When description, no matter how you use it, provide the reader with word pictures that trigger their own memories or experiences, you’ve done your job. Use description wisely.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Descriptions I: Bringing Experience To Life
We'll take a break from Suspense for a while and take a look at description. While description is important to give the reader a picture of where the character is rather than having "floating heads" as they are sometimes called when the location of a scene isn't provided, description can do so much more. By using various techniques when using description, you can bring it to life and provide the reader with important information that they can use to understand the character.
Description as a sense of place allows the reader to delve into the experience with their imagination coupled with their experience. But description also helps to visualize characters and feel the emotion of a situation.
When you observe life and bring it into your story, you witness it in variety of way. You see it in it’s details—a forest made up of a variety of trees, leaves different shapes and different shades or green or in autumn shades of burnished hues. Within the trees, you spot wildlife. Squirrels and chipmunks skitter through the branches. Birds chirp from the end of a limb. Rabbits, possum and skunks hover beneath them. You spot bird’s nest. You see the fragments of a fallen kite. You view a soft drink can between the roots.
As you view this, you also bring to this scene your own recollections from the past. Experiences you’ve had hunting in a woods, walking through them, running scared in the dead of night as limbs grope your body, all of these experiences mean something to you—they impact you—as they linger in your memory.
This sight coupled with memory then pulls at your emotion. These experience have meaning. You might recall the person you were with on the walk or while hunting. One person may have become a lost love or a lost friend. Another may have died. Another, an unknown shadow as you bolted in the darkness.
The setting then plus the experience memory adds to the person’s emotions. It opens the door of something you remember with pleasure or the opposite, something that triggers negative feelings.
With this in mind, look at the descriptions in your fiction. Are you applying these elements to your story? When your characters experience what they see and their senses come into play, the scene should arouse their emotions and affect their attitudes. A simple walk in the rain can trigger a happier time when they were young jumping in puddles and laughing with friends. Sitting on a porch swing could take the character back to the day his life was vibrant and healthy not this day as he lay dying in a hospital. The pleasure reverts to pain. Use your descriptions to evoke emotion and to deepen characterization.
As you create these experiences, you also tangle the readers’ emotions and attitudes to your story. They relate. They experience along with the characters and create the emotional outlet that keep them turning pages.
Description as a sense of place allows the reader to delve into the experience with their imagination coupled with their experience. But description also helps to visualize characters and feel the emotion of a situation.
When you observe life and bring it into your story, you witness it in variety of way. You see it in it’s details—a forest made up of a variety of trees, leaves different shapes and different shades or green or in autumn shades of burnished hues. Within the trees, you spot wildlife. Squirrels and chipmunks skitter through the branches. Birds chirp from the end of a limb. Rabbits, possum and skunks hover beneath them. You spot bird’s nest. You see the fragments of a fallen kite. You view a soft drink can between the roots.
As you view this, you also bring to this scene your own recollections from the past. Experiences you’ve had hunting in a woods, walking through them, running scared in the dead of night as limbs grope your body, all of these experiences mean something to you—they impact you—as they linger in your memory.
This sight coupled with memory then pulls at your emotion. These experience have meaning. You might recall the person you were with on the walk or while hunting. One person may have become a lost love or a lost friend. Another may have died. Another, an unknown shadow as you bolted in the darkness.
The setting then plus the experience memory adds to the person’s emotions. It opens the door of something you remember with pleasure or the opposite, something that triggers negative feelings.
With this in mind, look at the descriptions in your fiction. Are you applying these elements to your story? When your characters experience what they see and their senses come into play, the scene should arouse their emotions and affect their attitudes. A simple walk in the rain can trigger a happier time when they were young jumping in puddles and laughing with friends. Sitting on a porch swing could take the character back to the day his life was vibrant and healthy not this day as he lay dying in a hospital. The pleasure reverts to pain. Use your descriptions to evoke emotion and to deepen characterization.
As you create these experiences, you also tangle the readers’ emotions and attitudes to your story. They relate. They experience along with the characters and create the emotional outlet that keep them turning pages.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Brainstorm - A Writer's Tool
Most author's heads are filled with story ideas. The problem is finding time to write, but on occasion, the mind goes blank, and writers need a little kick, something that will trigger new ideas. This brainstorming program called The Brainstormer is a tool that can trigger ideas. The wheels can be spun at random or if you like two of the three combinations but prefer the third option to be more useful, then spin each line independently. Theme, location or situation, and character or story are the three options and together can stimulate a plot idea..
Here's a few samples that I found in the spin:
Theme: Flight Location or Situation: rusty Character or Story Element: cubicle
Theme: Fedility Location or Situation Americana Character or Story Element: harbor
Theme: Vengence Location or Situation: dying Character or Story Element: fishing boat
Theme: Abduction Location or Situation: hippy Character or Story Element: kitchen
http://andrewbosley.com/the-brainstormer.html
Give it a try, and if you like it, add it to your writer tool resources.
Here's a few samples that I found in the spin:
Theme: Flight Location or Situation: rusty Character or Story Element: cubicle
Theme: Fedility Location or Situation Americana Character or Story Element: harbor
Theme: Vengence Location or Situation: dying Character or Story Element: fishing boat
Theme: Abduction Location or Situation: hippy Character or Story Element: kitchen
http://andrewbosley.com/the-brainstormer.html
Give it a try, and if you like it, add it to your writer tool resources.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Part XI Suspense - Creating A Villain
A “bad guy” appears in all suspense, mystery and thriller novels. He can be focused on one individual, a series of individuals, the country or the world. The villain, as you know, must have redeeming qualities as well as evil attributes, and often he can hid beneath another persona and is not suspected. If the story introduces a character who seems evil, sinister or suspicious, you can almost bet he’s not the villain.
To create an edge-of-the-seat suspense, the author spends much time crafting the villain. A villain must be a worthy opponent. This has been covered in other articles on this blog, but it is worth reminding. The villain needs to be cunning, amoral or believes he has the right, and dangerous.
He must have valid motivation for his desired crime or continuing crime, such as: revenge, righting a wrong, protecting his possessions or loved ones, vindicating an action he believes went unpunished. He must have the opportunity to have committed the crime, and the appearance of innocence. This is why sometimes the protagonist becomes a suspect. He can be the charming insurance man or the kindly crossing guard. He can hid beneath his role in the story while the author provides only hints of information that can be put together like a puzzle to help tilt the protagonist in the right direction. The villain can be involved in the characters lives and appears innocent, but in some types of suspense, the villain can be known to the reader and unknown to the protagonist. Yet creating the villain follows the same procedure.
Killers can use many methods of committing murder. Select an appropriate method of perpetrating the crime (the modus operandi) that fits your character. Provide the villain with the kind of knowledge, know-how, strength and ability to be successful. Make his choice plausible. If he poisons someone, how would he know the poison will work? What career or opportunity would he have to steal or purchase what he needed? The old movie and play Arsenic and Old Lace is the story of two elderly women who poison lonely men with elderberry wine and bury them in the basement with their mentally-handicapped brother’s help.
Villains can be diabolical or as sweet as the two sisters in Arsenic and Old Lace, but make them real by providing them with realistic motivation, ability equal or greater than the protagonist, and a credible modus operandi to fit their physical and mental ability.
To create an edge-of-the-seat suspense, the author spends much time crafting the villain. A villain must be a worthy opponent. This has been covered in other articles on this blog, but it is worth reminding. The villain needs to be cunning, amoral or believes he has the right, and dangerous.
He must have valid motivation for his desired crime or continuing crime, such as: revenge, righting a wrong, protecting his possessions or loved ones, vindicating an action he believes went unpunished. He must have the opportunity to have committed the crime, and the appearance of innocence. This is why sometimes the protagonist becomes a suspect. He can be the charming insurance man or the kindly crossing guard. He can hid beneath his role in the story while the author provides only hints of information that can be put together like a puzzle to help tilt the protagonist in the right direction. The villain can be involved in the characters lives and appears innocent, but in some types of suspense, the villain can be known to the reader and unknown to the protagonist. Yet creating the villain follows the same procedure.
Killers can use many methods of committing murder. Select an appropriate method of perpetrating the crime (the modus operandi) that fits your character. Provide the villain with the kind of knowledge, know-how, strength and ability to be successful. Make his choice plausible. If he poisons someone, how would he know the poison will work? What career or opportunity would he have to steal or purchase what he needed? The old movie and play Arsenic and Old Lace is the story of two elderly women who poison lonely men with elderberry wine and bury them in the basement with their mentally-handicapped brother’s help.
Villains can be diabolical or as sweet as the two sisters in Arsenic and Old Lace, but make them real by providing them with realistic motivation, ability equal or greater than the protagonist, and a credible modus operandi to fit their physical and mental ability.
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