Guest Bloggers

Guest Blogger Daniel Ari: Sense And Specificity . . .

Guest Blogger Daniel Ari writes about Sense And Specificity: The Soul of Great Writing Great art is about balance. Okay, great art is about a heck of a lot of things. But one thing that makes great writing stand out from the superfluity of all writing is that it strikes a balance between emotional abstraction and concrete specificity. We want to read about things like devotion, honor and transformation. But the actual words devotion, honor and transformation aren’t concrete enough to sweep a reader away. As I discussed in “How to Make Your Poems Stand Out: Advice From a Reader” for Writer’s Digest online,  abstract nouns can’t be grabbed, and they don’t grab readers. And what’s worse, they tend to come in flocks. Once a writer writes honor, then love and respect want to come in. Then deep, forever, and mutual are at the door, having chased away all the beautiful…

Guest Bloggers

Crafting scenes a reader can see—and sense by Constance Hale

Crafting scenes a reader can see—and sense by Constance Hale Place looms large in all the work I do—whether in travel writing (when I’m trying to capture the essence of another country or culture), or in narrative journalism (when I often begin with a scene to draw my reader into the story), or even in Facebook status updates (when I try to sketch a place with a few poetic images). When crafting scenes, many writers make the mistake of loading up adjectives. But, as always, nouns and verbs do the best detail work. Take for example this description by the Indian writer Arundhati Roy, in The God of Small Things: “May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst. Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity…