Karinwritesdangerously

« Learn to alert your reader as soon as possible in a sentence to any change in mood from the previous sentence….Always make sure your readers are oriented. »

No, this post isn’t about mind-altering drugs — it’s about mood-altering prose!

On Writing Well by William Zinnser is one of my go-to handbooks on crafting clear, sparkling prose. And one of the things I love about it is that, just like EB White in The Elements of Style, our boy William isn’t wishy-washy. He has definite ideas about what makes for muscular, readable prose and he lets you know it. Here are some of William’s tips on using “mood changers” in your writing:

Tools of the trade — There are a host of words that do a workmanlike job of signaling to readers that a mood shift is afoot, so that they aren’t confused or surprised by your writing: “but,” “yet,” “however,” “still,” “nevertheless,” “instead,” “meanwhile,” “now,” “later,” and “today.” 

Bring in the “buts” — “Many of us were taught that no sentence should begin with ‘but.’ If that’s what you learned, unlearn it — there’s no stronger word at the start. It announces total contrast with what has gone before, and the reader is primed for the change.”

Use “however” sparingly — If you find your prose is peppered with too many “buts,” William suggests strategically replacing some of them with “however.” “It is, however, a weaker word ans therefore needs careful placement. Don’t start a sentence with ‘however,’ — it hangs there like a wet dishrag. And don’t end with ‘however’ — by that time it has lost is howeverness. Put it as early as you reasonably can — as I did three sentences ago. Its abruptness then becomes a virtue.”

“Yet” and “nevertheless” are great simplifiers — “Either of these words at the beginning of a sentence — ‘Yet he decided to go’ or ‘Nevertheless he decided to go’ — can replace a whole long phrase that summarizes what the reader has just been told.”

Time-frame tipsters — “Meanwhile,” “now,” “today,” and “later”– all help to signal shifts in time frame and can save readers needless confusion. “Now I know better.” “Later I found out why.” Phrases like these help make sure your reader is oriented.

Equipped with these handy mood-altering helpers, let’s all write on!

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« Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know. » Ernest Hemingway

Today, July 21, is Ernest Hemingway’s birthday. He was born in 1890. He knew about struggling and getting stuck when it comes to writing. He also managed to snare a Pulitzer Prize and a Nobel, so he knew how to get through the rough times.

Whenever Hemingway did get stuck or felt he wasn’t being authentic enough in what he was writing, he used a simple approach to extricate himself: “If I start to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.”

Great advice! In general, Ernie was sympathetic to other writers who wanted to hone their craft — and over the years, in bits and pieces, he passed on generous doses of wisdom. These gems have been gathered together in a helpful, easy-to-digest book called Ernest Hemingway on Writing. 

One of his most-quoted tips focuses on how to much to write: “The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day…you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don’t think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.”

He also believed strongly that writers write too much and don’t read enough great literature. His remedy? Reading the masters like Tolstoy, Flaubert, Mann, Joyce, Fielding, Mark Twain, Stendhal and Dostoevsky.

Bravo, Ernest! And now emboldened and energized, let’s all write on!

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« If there is no struggle, there is no progress. » Frederick Douglass

Who wants to struggle, if they can help it? So much easier to take it easy, to give things up when they become a struggle — when they resist giving us the satisfaction we want.

And yet. And yet. As my good friend and mentor Dr. Rob Gilbert says, there’s nothing more satisfying than wrestling with something you truly care about. How true I’ve found this to be in my own life! And if you think about it, it’s probably true for you as well.

Why? Because as our friend Frederick says so well, without struggle, “there is no progress.” Struggle is like the irritant in the seashell that creates a pearl. Or the pressure on carbon that, over time, creates a diamond. Without struggle, there’s no growth, pure and simple. 

Think of a novel you love — and think of the conflicts you found riddling its pages. What would a story be without conflict? An empty shell. It’s conflict that propels a story forward — that makes things happen, forces decisions, and raises consequences. And the bigger the conflict, the bigger the story. As in art, so in life.

Right now, you may be struggling with something big or small in your writing life. It may be a thorny plot point or a ragged paragraph — or something tougher to handle — a character that’s lackluster or pacing that’s sluggish, or complexity that might be confusing to readers because you haven’t done your job well and expressed it simply. Been there and done that! 

Whatever it is, if you care about it, then it’s worth wrestling with. And the tougher the struggle, the sweeter the triumph when you finally figure it out and get it right. Like Winnie the Pooh stuck in a hole with a honey pot — at the end of the struggle, there’s a sweet reward — a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that’s oh, so fulfilling!

So let’s be like Jacob who wrestled with an angel and received a blessing in return. Let’s struggle joyfully as we all write on!

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If I can stop one heart from breaking,

I shall not live in vain:

If I can ease one life the aching,

Or cool one pain

Or help one fainting robin unto his nest again,

I shall not live in vain.

—Emily Dickinson

Reading aloud is so important that I’ve gathered some writing quotes about it to inspire us all to take advantage of this helpful writing tool:

“The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.”
Robert Frost

“Always write (and read) with the ear, not the eye. You should hear every sentence you write as if it was being read aloud or spoken.”
C. S. Lewis

“Ever since I was first read to, then started reading to myself, there has never been a line read that I didn’t ‘hear.’ As my eyes followed the sentence, a voice was saying it silently to me. It isn’t my mother’s voice, or the voice of any person I can identify, certainly not my own. It is human, but inward, and it is inwardly that I listen to it. It is to me the voice of the story or the poem itself . . . .” 

“My own words, when I am at work on a story, I hear too as they go, in the same voice that I hear when I read in books. When I write and the sound of it comes back to my ears, then I act to make changes. I have always trusted this voice.”
Eudora Welty

“I still read everything aloud. I have a fundamental conviction that if a sentence cannot be read aloud with sincerity, conviction, and communicable emphasis, it’s not a good sentence. Good writing requires good rhythms and good words.”
Richard Marius

“Every book should have its own voice — what you hear in your head as you read to yourself.”
Mary Lee Settle

One easy way to use reading aloud to improve your writing is to make a recording on your phone or with a tape recorder as you read part of a draft aloud yourself or ask a friend to read it for you. You can learn a lot if you have a “recording session” with a reader because you’re standing outside your work listening to it. That sense of distance can be so helpful and revealing! Ideas to ponder and apply as we all write on!

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Sometimes in the midst of an intensive push forward on a project, it helps to take a restorative break. The trick is to give yourself a breather without losing momentum. I’ve found that the best way to deal with the need for occasional time off is to give myself a mini-vacation. 

Slowing down on one leg of that road won’t put much of a dent in your overall timetable. Beyond this, we can reap valuable benefits from taking a mini-vacation here and there. You might dip into a book for a bit, take a leisurely walk, or listen to an inspiring tape.

A brief break can offer powerful benefits:

Refresh your mind: Sometimes, when you’ve been working intensively, you get “overcooked.” When this happens you just don’t have the mental energy to keep working at the same pitch. Instead of driving yourself forward until you’re in the red zone, why not take a little time to recharge and refresh your mind?

Refill your well of ideas: A relaxed mind is a creative mind. When you are constantly pushing forward at a high pitch, your creative juices can slow their flow. Giving yourself a short break can help make sure your creative pump is primed.

Lead to new insights: As many of us know, sometimes just doing something light and recreational instead of intensive and demanding gives your subconscious mind time to mull over plot issues or a tricky chapter — and come up with an ingenious solution. Sometimes, “doing nothing” can be doing exactly what you need to be doing to work through a problem. 

So, the next time you’re feeling as if you’re fading or your mind is sluggish instead of snappy, give yourself a mental-health break. Sometimes that’s all you need to shift back into high gear. Just be careful to get back on track quickly. Write on!

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“A good writer is basically a storyteller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.” Isaac Bashevis Singer

Great stories leave the starting gate flying — they have a momentum that carries us forward right away. They plunge us into a new world by offering a tantalizing taste of the adventure and emotional upheaval ahead. But coming up with a first paragraph, first page, and first chapter that deliver what readers crave — a bang not a whimper — takes true craft. Sure, there are some wonderful stories that start quietly and build from there — John Steinbeck’s East of Eden comes to mind — but most assertive authors strive to hook readers quickly and irretrievably.

The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, a useful guide I came across by Jack Bickham, describes three opening chapter approaches that he believes can stall a story:

Too much description: If description dominates at the expense of character and action, the reader may sense a lack of energy and forward motion.

Too much background: If you begin with too much backstory, you sacrifice momentum and risk having the reader sense that you don’t know how to start.

Too much quiet: “Good fiction starts with — and deals with — someone’s response to threat,” says Bickman. Convey a sense of disturbance early.

Definitely food for thought! And here’s some more opening advice from that master storyteller, Anton Checkhov: “My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying…one must ruthlessly suppress everything that is not concerned with the subject. If, in the first chapter, you say there is a gun hanging on the wall, you should make quite sure that it is going to be used further on in the story.”

Chekhov should know! Let’s make sure our openings have wings to fly as we all write on!

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Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?

William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d:
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By change or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest;
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

« The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes. » Marcel Proust

What wonderful words of wisdom from one writer to another! And how beautifully Proust proved his point in his own masterwork, Remembrance of Things Past!

So often in writing, we can find ourselves stuck in a rut—has this happened to you? We write ourselves into a corner, or a character doesn’t seem all that alive, or our plot seems clumsy and jerry-rigged. Our story and characters can seem flat and sluggish.

What to do? What to do?

Proust has the antidote!

We need to approach our work with “new eyes.”

We may have been mired in lackluster observations and language, or given our characters predictable reactions. We need to push beyond all this by approaching our stories and writing with a fresh, curious mind—with “new eyes”

When we do this, we take a “real voyage of discovery,” and how exciting this can be. We unearth things about our characters we didn’t know. We find new ways to shift our plot in a different direction and suddenly, new adventures and ideas appear. We may even find ourselves creating subplots and new motor characters which add zest and a bit of mystery to our tales.

Proust also reminds us that we don’t need to go too far afield for inspiration. We don’t need to travel to exotic locales to spice up our stories. There are wonders closer to home to be seen and described. They’re right outside our doorstep just waiting for us.

So let’s take a tip from that extraordinary observer, Marcel Proust, and find “new eyes” and fresh curiosity as we all write on!

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“A walk in the park may soothe the mind and, in the process, change the
workings of our brains in ways that improve our mental health.”
Gretchen Reynolds

A raft of studies highlight the influence green and growing places have on our psyches. In fact, there’s growing evidence that urban dwellers who are deprived of opportunities to spend time in green, natural spaces are at risk for their mental health. 

But exactly how can a visit to a park — or even just looking at a green plant in our work space — shift our moods? Does experiencing nature change our brains in ways that affect our emotional well-being?

According to pioneering research, the answer is yes. In one study, researchers investigated how a walk might affect the act of brooding — the broken-record replaying of problems — a familiar mental process to us all. The researchers decided to track activity in a specific part of the brain before and after people spent time in nature.

The results were impressive: Volunteers who strolled along quiet, leafy,
tree-lined paths showed less stress; their minds were soothed and they
experienced meaningful improvements in their mental health — their
“broodiness” scores were far lower than volunteers who walked a long a busy highway with high levels of noise.

The nature walkers did not dwell on the negative issues in their lives as much after their walks as they did before strolling around outside. The part of their brains that responded to stress was also quieter.

What is it exactly about a walk in the park that’s soothing and can
almost instantly lift our moods? It could be the greenery, the quiet,
the sun, the smells, the relaxing activities that people tend to enjoy
in this kind of setting. It’s probably all of these.

Whatever the source, it’s clear that one solution to relaxing and calmly focusing our minds to boost creativity and productivity in our pursuit of the writing life is to make sure we get a healthy dose of greenery on a regular basis. Write on! 

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