Prompts

How to write fiction based on fact. Prompt #41

Part Two of how to write fiction based on fact.  Part One is Prompt #40. Alla Crone-Hayden began one of her first historical novels with this opening line:  On the cold Sunday of January 9, 1905, the pallid sun hung over the rooftops of St. Petersburg trying to burn its way through a thin layer of clouds.  The weather matches the mood of character, of story.  Perhaps draws you in.  Maybe you want to know more   .  .  .  does the sun succeed in burning through?  Second sentence:  By two o’clock in the afternoon the dull light had done little to warm the thousands of people milling in the streets. The second sentence answers the unasked question about the sun. Notice the word choices:  cold, pallid sun, thin, dull light . . . words match the mood or tone of the day/event. Alla used weather to match the narrator’s…

Just Write

Take a risk and go long.

In the January 2014 issue of Writer’s Digest magazine, Elizabeth Sims writes about “Miscalculations and Missteps.”  One is, “take a risk and go long.” “The value of a relatively long description is that it draws your readers deeper into the scene. The worry is that you’ll bore them. But if you do a good job you’ll engross them. Really getting into a description is one of the most fun things you can do as an author. Here’s the trick: Get going on a description with the attitude of discovering, not informing. In this zone, you’re not writing to tell readers stuff you already know—rather, you are writing to discover and experience the scene right alongside them.” Sims continues with “Go below the surface.” “A gateway to describing a person, place or thing in depth is to assign mood or emotion to him/her/it.  . . . The Bay Bridge was somber…