The 14-Day
Creative Writing Intensive
Day Eight
Welcome to Day Eight
of the 14-Day Creative Writing Intensive.
When you write creatively, you aim to begin a process that the reader completes. You and the reader are partners. You create the first portion of the story, and the reader imagines it in his or her head. Without a reader your story is half-created.
Compare this to watching a movie. Watching a movie or TV is passive because the picture is imagined by someone else and then shown to you. You don’t have to do anything but watch. Your imagination isn’t involved in anything to the same degree as when you are reading fiction.
One of the most important parts of writing creatively is learning how to create a picture with words that has just the right amount of detail to spark off the pictures in the reader’s head. You want to make your reader feel something, and to connect with the characters in your story.
This week you will learn skills to help your story come alive for the reader.
‘No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.’ – Robert Frost
Topic 2:
Nine Writing Skills Every
Creative Writer Must Develop
Topic 2 focuses on nine ways to paint a vivid picture for the reader.
These nine creative writing skills are simply a starting point for exploring what makes for exceptional fiction writing.
‘Writing well means never having to say “I guess you had to be there”.’ – Jeff Mallet
Lesson for the Day
Skill 1: Use Anglo-Saxon, not Latinate Words
English is unusual in that many words with the same meaning appear in two forms – an Anglo-Saxon form and a form derived from the Latin (latinate).
- Anglo-Saxon will have ‘tell,’ Latin will have ‘relate.’
- Anglo-Saxon will have worried, Latin perplexed,
- Anglo-Saxon’s simple talk will become the complicated Latin converse, and
- hide becomes conceal.
- In its extreme forms, used by people who wish to play down the severity of something, kill becomes exterminate.
Look at these first lines from songs rewritten using Latinate language:
Latinate: Unable to control my erotic attraction to you.
Anglo-Saxon: Can’t help falling in love with you.
Latinate: Using his low-volume vocal rendition of a popular air as a deadly weapon against my person.
Anglo-Saxon: Killing me softly with his song.
Latinate words are dry and formal and are very useful for giving information clearly and unemotionally, or for hiding the truth behind a smokescreen.
You’ll see that while the Latinate version may impart the information accurately, it doesn’t draw a picture in your head. This is why authority figures like school principals, policemen, businessmen and judges choose the Latinate version of English.
By contrast, Anglo-Saxon words are simple, direct and vibrant. They create a picture in your head.
This is why, in creative writing, we use Anglo-Saxon words – everyday language that draws in the reader.
If you’d like to know more about why English has two different forms of many words, go to https://www.grammarly.com/blog/germanic-vs-latinate-linguistic-purity-in-english/
Skill 2: Show, Don't Tell
When the reader relates to a scene or situation and feels bonded to a character, they become engaged in the story. One of the best ways to draw the reader into your writing is by using a technique called ‘Show, don’t tell.’
Think of it as the difference between someone showing you a movie, versus them telling you the whole plot of the movie.
In writing, when you show instead of telling, you create the scene, instead of simply describing it. You’re ‘showing the movie,’ instead of ‘telling’ someone what it’s about.
E.g.
Telling:
Miss Hill was a bit worried about what they would say at the Stores when she didn’t turn up for work. Miss Gavan didn’t like her and had always been unkind to her. She decided she wouldn’t miss her job that much.
Showing:
What would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she had run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool, perhaps; and her place would be filled up by advertisement. Miss Gavan would be glad. She had always had an edge on her, especially whenever there were people listening.
‘Miss Hill, don’t you see these ladies are waiting?’
‘Look lively, Miss Hill, please.’
She would not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.
(excerpt from Dubliners by James Joyce)
As you can see from this example, dialogue is one of the best ways to show not tell.
Here’s another example:
Telling:
The car hits him from the right and he gets flung off his bicycle. He flies through the air.
Showing:
The blow catches him to the right, sharp and surprising and painful, like a bolt of electricity, lifting him up off the bicycle. Relax! he tells himself as he flies through the air (flies through the air with the greatest of ease!), and indeed he can feel his limbs go obediently slack.
(Excerpt from Slow Man, by JM Coetzee)
Task for the Day
The Power of Show, Don't Tell
The following excerpt is from Charles Dickens’ novel Hard Times. Dickens writes that the teacher, Mr Gradgrind, is ‘A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four …’ Dickens then presents the reader with the dialogue below.
Read this dialogue, and then describe in 150 words what you think the teacher, Mr Gradgrind, is like. You can even describe how he looks, speaks and moves. As far as possible, use Anglo-Saxon words in your description.
As you write, note how Dickens must have subtly painted this picture in your mind, using none other than the ‘show, don’t tell’ principle.
‘Girl number twenty,’ said Mr Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger, ‘I don’t know that girl. Who is that girl?’
‘Sissy Jupe, sir,’ explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and curtseying.
‘Sissy is not a name,’ said Mr Gradgrind. ‘Don’t call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.’
‘It’s father as calls me Sissy, sir,’ returned the young girl in a trembling voice, and with another curtsey.
Story for the Day
Your short story reading for the day is
‘Gooseberries’ by Anton Chekhov
Points to ponder as you read the story:
What kind of words does Chekhov use? Simple, everyday words or Latinate words? How does the author show and not tell? How effective is he at creating a picture in your mind? Would you write the story differently?