Sharing Writing Narrative
Clear
concise narrative builds believable characters. Establish the tone of your
narrative and dialogue and stick with it throughout your book. Follow the
advice in, Elements of Style, by Strunk and White. Follow the rules of grammar outside
of the quotation marks.
Avoid linking verbs. Use action verbs. Action verbs speak directly to the
reader. Make your writing live and keep your readers involved.
Most action verbs are obvious and describe some action taken by characters in
your story.
For example: run, walk, punch, and hit.
Non-action or linking verbs like: to be, is, was, were, could, would; should be
used sparingly.
An example of an action verb sentence is: John ran to the door.
You might say he walked, ambled, sauntered and all would be action verbs.
Some action verbs are harder to discern.
For example grew as an action verb: The farmer grew several prize winning
tomatoes.
And grew as a linking verb: The prize winning tomatoes grew in the farmer’s
garden.
Test for action or linking verbs by replacing the verb with the appropriate “to
be” verb.
The first sentence becomes: The farmer is several prize winning tomatoes. It
makes no sense, proving that grew is an action verb.
The second sentence becomes: The prize winning tomatoes were in the farmers
garden. This version makes sense, so in this sentence grew is a linking verb.
There is no rule of grammar stating that you should never use the passive voice
in your writing. However, clear and concise work better in most instances. If the
occasion occurs, where you would like to emphasize the object of your verbs
direct action, then by all means use the passive voice. You might use the
passive voice when your sentence structures become too repetitive. Otherwise,
use the active voice.
The passive voice looks like this:
The enemy was defeated by our troops. Or Caesar was stabbed by Brutus.
The active voice would read:
Our troops defeated the enemy. And Brutus stabbed Caesar.
Using active voice makes your narrative powerful, direct, and easy to
understand. Try to stay away from passive voice. If compelled to use the
passive voice, know why, and do it sparingly.
Tone
Set the tone of your narrative from the start and be consistent throughout your
story.
For Example - Tough ex-cop/private eye:
Way back in the 1990’s when Dave still found his courage in Kentucky bourbon
straight up and a beer back, he transferred to Dade County, Florida, were he
trained police cadets for Miami PD and did limited time with Miami Homicide. He
stayed busy teaching a criminal justice class at the local community college,
way up in Hollywood.
"Hard work gives life meaning. Everyone needs to work hard at something to
feel good about themselves. Every job can be done well and every day has its
satisfactions." Osceola McCarty Laundress and philanthropist
Write some words. Then, push on for a few more words. When the going is hard,
hard workers get going.
In Fitz-James O'Brien's
classic tale of terror "What Was It?," the narrator finds himself
musing on the nature of horror: "There must be some great and ruling
embodiment of fear -- a King of Terrors -- to which all others must succumb.
What might it be?" As someone who has spent much of my professional life
-- in fact, much
of my life -- thinking and writing about horror, I get asked a variant of this
question all the time: What's the scariest movie ever made? What's the most
terrifying book you've ever read? Come clean, Professor -- what really, really
scares you?
Well, Halloween is upon us, so here's my utterly subjective
guide to what does, and does not, make for successful horror:
Childhood is terrifying
As is adolescence, and most of us devotees of horror begin at a young age. As I
type this, my desk is strewn with DVDs of TV programs and
films I first saw as I was growing up in the 1970s: "Dead of Night,"
"Supernatural," "Thriller," "Robin Redbreast,"
"The Owl Service." On my shelves, I have a complete set
of Herbert Van Thal's The Pan Books of Horror Stories, which I devoured aged
about 11, and which were very much my way into the adult world. On Saturday
nights across the 70s, the BBC would show a Horror Double Bill, generally a
Universal classic starring Bela Lugosi or Boris Karloff, followed by something
newer and racier, like a Hammer film. My parents always went out on a Saturday
night, and so I watched all these films. In the early 80s, we got a video recorder,
and our local video store seemed
to stock nothing but horror movies. I watched them all, even (especially!) the
ones subsequently banned under the 1984 Video Recordings Act -- the so-called
"video nasties." Any book or film able to tap into this connection between
childhood and horror has already gone a long way towards succeeding -- just ask
Stephen King.
Atmosphere is all-important
This is why ghost stories are inherently more frightening than, say, zombie
movies. This is also why horror fiction is uniquely suited to the short form,
where old-fashioned unities of time, place, action and reading-experience are
paramount. Under the right circumstances, M.R. James is the most
terrifying writer in the world -- if you're alone in the house, late at
night, preferably in front of an open fire. What's important here is what Freud
called the uncanny, the ability to create a mood of uncertainty, in which we
can no longer be sure of our own senses and interpretation -- did I just see
that, or didn't I? What's that noise? Is someone outside? I could've sworn that
door was closed last time I looked. Am I alone in the house?
Shocks are not frightening, and
neither is gore
Anyone can sneak up behind you, shout "BOO!" very loudly, and make
you drop your ice-cream. I won't deny the effectiveness of the occasional
well-timed shock, but these only work in the context of an atmosphere which has
already unsettled your audience. They should be used sparingly. Likewise gore.
There are two risks here. The first, and most significant, is that you're in
danger of making your audience laugh: the line between gore and giggling is a
very fine one, which many splatter movies and zombie movies exploit to great
effect. But a film like Peter Jackson's Brain Dead is funny because Jackson set
out to make it funny; as a film-maker, the last thing you want is an audience
tittering at your film's most shocking moments.
The other danger is cheap nihilism -- using gore and nastiness
to cover up the fact that you have nothing to say. There's nothing particularly
new or clever about nastiness -- as the audiences for Euripides's "The
Bacchae" or Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus" will testify, it's
been part of the writer's arsenal for centuries, if not millennia.
Genre is your friend
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