I want to write more about style, just continuing from the last article and with next suggestion.
Suggestion 7: economy of style. Think back to the old man on the barge from an earlier blog: “On a sleepy, sunny afternoon I was sitting on the banks of a canal, when a barge came chugging gently towards me.” You can see it in front of you. But if I were to ask you, what colour was the barge, you would probably stop and think, “Well, I don’t know! Does it matter?”
Writing gives the immediacy of real experience - but is able to do so in just a few words, without irrelevant detail. You can see the trees shimmer in a Monet landscape – but a photograph can be flat and dull, because the camera does not pick out the essentials as the painter compels the eye to do. In the same way, when your mind is fed only the essentials, you achieve a heightened sense of reality.
Very little is needed to make you feel that “I am there“. The reality which you have created as a writer is different for every reader, but everyone gets excited and interested. Economy of style helps create the excitement, the “you are there”. Continue reading A Writer Offers More Ideas About How To Write Fiction
