I made this a brand new post so @mosellegreen and I can add on without derailing anyone else’s point. :)
I hope this is useful for other writers!
There’s nothing wrong with description. Vivid description, lurid even. The problem is where you’re putting it. Think of the words on the page as your “camera”. You are the director of a film. Lots of things are happening in any scene. The camera decides what is the “foreground”(with the main action and characters) and what is “background”(with the background characters and setting). Your job is to focus that camera on the most interesting part of that scene. That means some basic description of the background and setting is necessary to “set the scene”, but you want to spend most of your description on the main action and characters. So, short sweet descriptions to sketch the scene itself, and much much more description of the main characters/action.
This also depends on your audience/genre. In a period piece romance novel, you’re gonna want to spend time lovingly describing that heroine’s dress for the ball. That’s an important indication of her personality, her upbringing, her social status, the type of ball it is, and it’s something the audience is gonna care about because her big entrance to the ball is important! In a thriller spy novel, what the heroine is wearing to the fancy shindig she’s infiltrating is less important than noting that the room has only two exits, that it’s filled with the rich and their body guards, that it’s dimly lit, that they don’t search items in the coat room, ect. What needs to be focused on changes with your audience/genre/scene purpose.
In that same romance novel, it might be important to describe the heroines big ball entrance, but not her every day attire. A simple description would suffice or none at all unless her clothing comes into play later!
-Sentence length variety.
It can be very easy to fall into the trap of writing sentences that are around the same length. But don’t just vary sentence length just because! Sentence length is an important part of setting tone and pace. Longer sentences take longer to read, and tend to be more relaxed(except or the sort of anxious ramble-y run-ons people have when they are panicked!). Shorter sentences are usually read as more tense/terse/angry. People get snippy and clipped when mad. It’s also a demonstration of personality. Someone who loves to hear themselves talk or who is more well educated might speak in long sentences with multiple semi-colons. A small child will speak in much shorter sentences.
Action descriptions or sudden surprises should mirror the emotion by being shorter length. This also means the time for longer vivid descriptions are typically in calmer situations. When reflecting, when hashing something out calmly to plan, when describing the beautiful vista of the secret world your heroes just discovered. These are guidelines though, because I’m praised for my tense situations, suspense, and action scenes, and I’ve never written a short sentence in my life!(lol) Instead, I build suspense and tension in action scenes through near constant long(er) sentences. Reading longer sentence causes “fatigue” in the reader, and during an action scene, that fatigue can help translate into growing tension and suspense. It also doesn’t give them a time to “rest” to recover from one shocking reveal to the next. That doesn’t mean there are no short sentences at all!(the sentences are still shorter than my average sentence…) Just that the entire action scene isn’t done in short clipped sentences. It’s more like longer sentences with short ones thrown in for effect. To really emphasize an action or add punch to a strike.
This is something that takes a while to master. Second person isn’t common, though there are exceptions in certain fandoms like Undertale, but first and third are. I almost never write in first or limited third, but that’s because it doesn’t suit the types of stories I write. What PoV you pick should be based on what type of story you’re trying to write.
First person is intimate and claustrophobic. The “camera” in this case is the eyes of the main character. It’s like if the story was about you. That’s perfect for the adding tension to a Thriller, Mystery, or Horror story. The reader only knows what your main character does and experiences, making the world inherently more limited and terrifying. Its intimacy is also perfect for a romance novel where you really want to get into the main character(s) head for all their emotez.
Third Limited is great for action/adventure novels. Your camera hovers around a single person, but it’s not them. You can see around them and describe things that exist around them that they might not necessarily notice.(in first person the details you’d describe are filtered through the personality of the main character. A hard boiled detective is not gonna notice the brand of shoes his client is wearing(I mean unless he’s Sherlock lol). A fashionista could know what brand, cut, and what runway year a piece of clothing debuted.) You can still only see inside that specific person’s head. The camera can look around and look into one person, but it’s still pretty focused.
I typically write in Third Omni, but that’s because I tend towards very large complex stories with multiple characters, settings, and events happening all at once. If I was stuck in First, lots of necessary details wouldn’t be conveyed. If I was in Third Limited, I wouldn’t be able to balance out my (large) cast of characters as well. I also tend to “head hop”, and no one cares. *shrug* It’s not as big of a deal or as confusing as people make it out to be.(dive in and out of the minds/perspectives of separate characters in a single scene)
I said Second Person is common in Undertale fandom, and that’s because of both the game itself, and the mechanics. Second person uses “you” and ascribes the actions to the reader. This is perfect for Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novels and fanfiction like in Undertale where it’s explicitly self-insert.
Learn the rules of punctuation. There’s nothing wrong with the exclamation point, but it really should be used sparingly. It’s like italics. It’s there to really draw attention and emphasize something. Both bold and italics should be used sparingly as well. I tend towards using italics more often and almost never bold face type. And I can’t remember a time off the internet where it’s more casual where I’ve used both at once. One or the other is really all that’s needed. And try to stick to either one or the other in your entire work. Either emphasize things with bold face type, or do it with italics. So, don’t never use them, just use them much less often. A couple times a chapter(of a few thousand words) is just fine. Learn when to use semi-colons, colons, commas, ect. It’ll make your writing clearer, give you access to longer sentences, and you’ll be able to be the anti-Hemingway if you want.(I’ve written sentences with over 50 words in them because it needed to be long and also because I refuse to stop the idea isn’t finished yet lol).
This is a harder one, and probably my last section. Characters come in two varieties. Flat characters(NPCs basically) or Rounded Characters(hopefully your main characters). Flat characters are always static, they are usually poorly sketched/defined, and they sometimes fall into straight archetype copies without deviation. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with flat characters! Every story needs them! The waitress at the little diner your main character stops in once for coffee doesn’t need a backstory with a motivating drive and a character arc. Some characters are meant to be props. And that’s what flat characters are; they are props. It’s not common(or well liked) in modern literature for main characters to be props. When you review fairy tales though, Main Characters are often Flat. They are often props. They have no character arc, and no real internal life. They were meant to teach lessons, like Aesop’s Fable characters.
If you are trying to capture the feel of a modern fairy tale or re-write a fairy tale, having a static and even flat character for a Main Character will probably be more effective. For the modern novel though, you’ll want a dynamic rounded character. “Dynamic” in this case means “has a character arc”. It means they change over the course of the story. “Rounded” means they have an internal life and a “full” character. This is much harder to explain and is typically where beginning writers run into trouble. They can get their characters to change, but they still feel kinda flat.
Real people, and Rounded Characters, are multi-faceted. They are contradictory. There exists in the same person the drive to make friends and the drive for isolation/solitude. The drive for ambition and fame, and the need for obscurity. The will to do, and laziness. Humans/people are a study in contradictions and balance. Even the biggest most extroverted ambitious people person needs time to themselves, privacy, and keeps secrets. In order to make a realistic character, a rounded one, they have to have balanced needs, and ultimately be contradictory. Humans have mental distortions and cognitive dissonance. They’ll believe two things, that when examined, ultimately contradict each other. Usually these distortions are minor, since cognitive dissonance makes us uncomfortable, but finding situations where these contradictions can come to the fore is what writing is about. And it’s where interesting character study takes place.
Someone who believes all criminals are evil, but that life is a right, might be flummoxed by a situation where someone stole medicine needed to keep them alive. Stealing is a crime, and criminals are wrong, but life is a right that can’t be abridged/denied. This person would then have to resolve this ideological contradiction in order to remain internally balanced.
Construct your characters with traits that can come into conflict. Construct your characters with traits that don’t “necessarily” connect. Someone could be a chef, and love motocross. They could be a kindergarten teacher, but be child free(a position of not wanting children of their own). Real people have collections of traits, hobbies, ideas that are horded from the culture around them. There isn’t necessarily a rhythm or reason for them, they just are.
Construct your characters to reflect the culture they live in. Someone who’s American might have very strong opinions about democracy, communism, socialism, ect. They might have very few real opinions on the leaders of an entirely different country though(Americans in general are myopic speaking as an American), but still feel nationalistic pride.(ie. America is the best country in the world). Someone who is LBGT and in the scene in the 60′s and 70′s might take part in Leather Culture, have a very different way of describing their sexuality/gender than we do now, have very different experiences with being “out”, experience their sexuality/gender differently than someone modern, ect. Remember, and this is super important when constructing characters, to keep the time, place, and culture in mind.
I lied lol. Research is the last section. All the previous sections pale in comparison to research. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read beginning writer’s work whose problems could have been solved by “do more research”. There is one person’s original work I read for who had their mermaids writing on parchment. If you didn’t know, parchment is made of leatherized animal skin. If it gets wet, it’ll revert to animal skin and rot. Modern paper products wouldn’t work either, and it would be impossible to tan sea creature hide underwater. They needed to have come up with another writing method, and seeing how their mermaids had magic…
This covers everything from simple stuff like “what timezone is this in so I know how many hours difference is between these two settings?” to complicated stuff like “how long does it take a human body to exsanguinate when the jugular has been severed?”
It covers what technology was available during a time period(another writer wrote about telephones and white picket fences being around during what was supposed to be a colonial setting! And then when they brought it up they actually wanted it to be the early 1800′s(not colonial America lol), but those things still weren’t around then!), what the common terms for different groups were and the slang. It covers gender roles during the time period, what countries existed, what colonies, who owned them. It covers how anatomy actually works, how poisons affect the human/animal body, how a certain type of government operates.
Research, research, research some more. And if you aren’t sure research some more. This is also essential for character construction, especially for groups of people you aren’t personally familiar with(ie writing someone gay if you’re straight, or black if you’re white).
To conclude, research is your friend. Don’t get so bogged down that you don’t/never write, but please for the love of Frank, do research. If I have to read one more beginning writer’s work who doesn’t realize X technology wasn’t around in Y period, or that gender roles demanded Z during this time in this country, I’m gonna die.
