A place to discuss the craft of writing: tricks, philosophies, styles

[pink_silk_glove]

My MO has always been to write what I want, the way I want and worry about category later.

Exactly the same here. I write my ideas and then worry about where they fit later. I never compromise my ideas just to make them fit somewhere.

 

[AG31]

If you want to think about the craft of writing, in particular, showing vs telling, compare Ann Cleeves' first book, A Bird in the Hand, with any of her Shetland or Vera Stanhope books. In a forward she acknowledges that this first series has flaws. I recognized her insight into personalities, and was fascinated by her depiction of the bird watching culture in England (twitching), but I skipped to the end after about a 3rd of the way through to see who dun it and quit. She spends much of the book telling us what the characters are feeling or thinking instead of describing it. The voice is always the narrator's, not the individual characters'.

I got out two of her later books from the library, hoping that the difference would leap out at me. The difference in the experience leaped out at me, I was immediately engaged and happy to turn the page. But just exactly how she pulls it off wasn't so clear. But I thinking making the effort to define what's going on would be helpful to anyone trying to improve their writing.