20 Ways to Make It Better–Way #6

Into the Deep

Sometimes a writer skims on top of a subject. Or is too nice. Maybe the writing is glib and clever and even funny, or the story moves along from plot point to plot point, but the piece is shallow as a wading pool. The  facts are there, maybe even shocking or dramatic facts, but there’s no emotion beneath them.

If the piece lacks honesty  the reader may feel cheated. The writer, too. To discover what you really have to say, what matters to you, what your story is about, take some time and go deeper.

Here are a few ways to go deeper in your writing:

  • Put a comma at the end of a sentence, rather than a period, and go a little further.
  • Look for doors to go through, openings that take you deeper into the piece. After you’ve written a scene or a section, read through and see where openings to “show” offer an opportunity to go deeper.
  • Ask your characters the kind of questions that matter. Risky questions. (Ask yourself, too.)
  • Go for details. The telling detail. Write the concrete, the sensory, the specific. Upon rewriting and editing, you’ll choose the details that work hardest.
  • S-l-o-w  d-o-w-n. Sometimes we’re so anxious to get to the end of what we’re writing we go too fast, skipping over parts that cry out for deeper attention.
  • Do a sensory inventory. Bring the physical world alive through writing about the senses. Let the words you use to describe them create the atmosphere you want.
  • Don’t just write actions. Go inside. What does the character think? Feel? How does she respond? (If you’re writing nonfiction remember you’re the “character.”)
  • Write specifics rather than generalities.
  • Play off the landscape. Let the place or the setting deepen the story.
  • Look for pulled punches. Where did you play it safe? Did you cheat the scene or the character, or yourself?
  • Look closer. Close your eyes and write what you see on the screen in your mind. Write the pictures.
  • How does it feel? Ask yourself or ask your character. Breathe and feel the emotion, and write what you felt.
  • Dance with your shadows. Acknowledge the parts of yourself and your characters that are a little shady, less that what might be acceptable or appropriate. This is where it gets interesting.
  • “Look long at what pleases you, longer still at what disturbs you.” -Colette
  • Use metaphor and simile. Symbols and echoes.
  • Tell your secrets. Tell your character’s secrets. Be willing to be vulnerable on the page.
  • Follow memories, let them take you into deeper places. You won’t use all of what you unearth, but you can make use of it— sometimes just an image, a phrase, the tattered edge of something.
  • Risk writing long to go deeper. You can always go back and prune away. Better to write 1000 words and cut 900, than to leave out the 100 words that takes the writing to a deeper place.
  • Get yourself out of the way and surrender to the page.

Close your eyes and dive in. You won’t drown; you’re a writer, you can breathe underwater.

 

20 Ways to Make It Better — Way #5

Take Risks

Writing means taking risks. If you’re not willing to take the risks, chances are your writing will be bland and boring – even to yourself. It takes courage to take such risks. Risk-taking can lead to self-discovery. Taking risks means there is the possibility of learning a truth about yourself. Maybe something you didn’t want to know.

But most likely we’ll never discover a truth about ourselves that is too terrible to bear. We only fear we will. Or that we will expose something of ourselves to others that will be too terrible for them to bear, and we will be judged, perhaps rejected.

Sue Grafton warned us: “Often the writing process is filled with a sense of jeopardy.” But if you don’t risk anything, you risk everything.

My writing teacher told us “stay in the room.” Meaning, don’t let your characters or yourself leave the scene before it’s complete. In real life when there’s danger or conflict the safest action may be to hightail it, but in writing, safety is not a desired ingredient. So even if you have to take a few deep breaths and write paragraphs around what you need to say, “stay in the room” until you’ve written it. I once heard a story about a writer who tied the silk belt of his dressing gown to the arms of his chair so he would stay with it.

Interestingly enough, it is sometimes easier to take risks in writing when you’re writing in a group. Safety in numbers? Also, listening to the risks others take in their writing can mark a trail to your own cliff edges.

Risk writing something different—a different genre, write long if you always write short pieces, and vice versa, try fiction if you usually write nonfiction. Play with a twist on your usual style, a voice that’s been speaking to you in dreams. Take a chance on making a fool of yourself, writing something really badly (the first time). Risk telling the truth.

Cynthia Ozick said, “If we had to say what writing is, we would define it essentially as an act of courage.”

Take courage, be brave. It’s in taking the risks we find our true and honest voice.