Make Your Writing Sing

Guest Post by Sally Jadlow

Have you ever listened to someone sing slightly off-key? As writers, we don’t want to be that kind of “singer.” Here are a few tips to tune up your writing.
First, you need more than a good story line to hook your reader. Dynamite characters, written with great style makes your story come alive. This is true in both fiction and non-fiction. Plan and edit with care.

    Before you write:
·    I find it helpful to make out a character sheet on each main player in a story. For starters, decide on his eye, hair color, and general appearance. Now go deeper. List his goals. His dreams. What motivates him? What are his views about life?
·    Decide what your main character’s goal is. Does he want to get the girl? Does he want to attain a certain thing in life? Maybe he needs to overcome a fear.
·    To obtain the goal creates conflict. Conflict is key to a story. Maybe he’s at odds with another character or the elements of nature. He could even be at war with himself.
·    Your main character needs a secret; even if you don’t state it directly in the story. That secret might influence his actions. For instance, the character may be deathly afraid of Tarantulas.  He turns down a chance to go to New Mexico because they have Tarantulas there.
·    What is your character’s worldview? Say you give him a Christian worldview. He finds himself in a compromising situation. How does he deal with the problem as opposed to an atheist? Does he refuse to lie, and so jeopardize his goal?
·    Remember every character has a flaw; no matter how perfect they may appear to be. Show that flaw during the course of the story. Maybe “Mr. Perfect” has a girl on the side, or he watches porn late at night on his computer.
·    Every villain must have a good quality. He may rob banks during the week, but bring his mother flowers on Sunday.
·    You may find it helpful to map your character on a personality test like a Myers-Briggs. For instance, an introvert will react to a situation in a different way than an extrovert.

When you’re ready to write:
·     Set your characters in a scene. You don’t need tons of description, just enough to draw your reader in. Imagine you are drawing a pencil sketch of your scene instead of a detailed oil painting. Let your reader use his imagination. It helps in setting a scene if you describe the lighting. Does the light peek through edges of the blind, or cast long evening shadows across the carpet? If it’s a dark part of the story, you might want to make it night.
·    Use lots of dialogue. Pretend you are a fly on the wall. Listen to your characters speak. They use contractions like “I can’t.” They speak in fragment sentences. If they are in an argument, do they answer the other person’s response, or do they crash ahead with their point at all costs? Go to a public place like a coffee shop or a mall and listen to how people really speak. Dialogue creates white space on the page. White space draws readers. People might not admit it, but they like to eavesdrop on conversations. Let them hear your characters.
·    Include the five senses. When you hear, “cinnamon rolls” does your mouth water? What about “raw sewage,” “silk brushed her skin,” “ear-splitting scream,” or “tall, lanky frame.” We are physical beings, so use the senses to the fullest.
·    Show a character’s reaction with body language. Do a search on Google for “body language signs.” For instance, crossed arms signal unbelief or a defensive attitude. Even if readers haven’t studied body language, they will understand the unspoken signals when they read it on the page.
·    Construct active sentences. Here’s an example. “Tommy started to go down the street.” A better construction might be, “Tommy sped down the street.” The second sentence has a more active verb, the sentence is shorter, and shows more motion.

    After you write, edit:
·    Lay your piece aside for a day or two. You’ll be able to see things to change easier after it cools a bit.
·    Now, print your piece to begin final edits. You can see mistakes better on paper copy.
·    Go through your piece and look for over-long sentences. No sentence should be longer than 15 words.
·    Use a simpler word instead of a longer one.
·    Get rid of passive verbs. Avoid helping verbs like “is, are, was, were, be, am, been.” Replace with the most active verb you can. Usually a word ending in “ly” or “ing” has a lazy verb lurking about.
·    Avoid passive sentences. Each sentence needs to have a subject acting on an object. “Jimmy eats the banana,” is active. If the subject of a sentence is acted upon, it’s a passive sentence. The passive of that sentence is, “The banana was eaten by Jimmy.”
·     Check your work with spell check. If you computer is set up to do a readability check, a window for than feature should pop up. If the readability window doesn’t pop up, set it by doing the following steps in MS Word. Go to the circle in the upper left of your screen. Click the bottom of the pop-up window under “Word Options.”  Go to “proofing” on the left side of the window. Check, “show readability statistics.” Then click “OK.”
Aim for these numbers:
    Words per sentence: 15 maximum
    Characters per word: 4.5 maximum
    Passive voice: 5% maximum
    Flesh Reading Ease: 80% minimum
    Flesh-Kincaid Level: 6 maximum (This is grade level; 4 is better.)
    
Take the time to plan your story and carefully edit your piece well. It will make your writing pleasing to not only the eye, but also the ear.

Sally Jadlow is the author of God’s Little Miracle Book and God’s Little Miracle Book II,
as well as a historical fiction The Late Sooner. All are available at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com in paperback and e-reader format. She teaches creative writing to children and adults. She lives in the Kansas City area. Her website is SallyJadlow.com.

Comments

[Theodore J. Cohen]

Sally,

If I had to pick one from among the many good suggestions you made, it would be this:

'Use lots of dialogue. Pretend you are a fly on the wall. Listen to your characters speak. They use contractions like “I can’t.” They speak in fragment sentences. If they are in an argument, do they answer the other person’s response, or do they crash ahead with their point at all costs? Go to a public place like a coffee shop or a mall and listen to how people really speak. Dialogue creates white space on the page. White space draws readers. People might not admit it, but they like to eavesdrop on conversations. Let them hear your characters.'

I love to listen to people speak . . . and to watch their 'body language.' As well, I enjoy just sitting in a Starbucks or airport terminal, watching people. Sometimes I'll pick out two people, perhaps a couple, and make up an imaginary conversation they may be having. Are they discussing work? Are they arguing about something, money perhaps?

We writers are a strange bunch, to be sure. I guess it's something I picked up as a freshmen while attending the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. In English 101, one of our assignments was to write a 500-word hypothetical conversation between a man who came home from work late and tired, and his wife, who wanted to discuss a problem she was having with a merchant. To say the least, the results were interesting.

Just as people like to look at people (when looking at advertisements, say), I think people like to 'listen' to people when reading. So, I tend to focus more on dialogue (vice narrative) in my books, and frankly, it's where I am able to have more fun with my characters. At times, in fact, they almost take on lives of their own.

I congratulate you on a fine article.

[Valorie J. Wells]

Thank you so much, Sally! The timing is perfect as I fight the avoidance urge in facing my umpteenth re-write on a historical novel. I will keep your article close beside me as I re-vamp per Maril Crabtree's expertise edits. ugh! Back to work!