Janet Benton's Blog: One Writer's Path - Posts Tagged "writing-tips"

The best writing advice I’ve gotten came from my former professor Valerie Martin, and I’ve passed it along many times to those who work with me on their books. In one of the writing workshops I took with Valerie, she said something like this: If someone tells you that a feature of your story isn’t believable or isn’t working, don’t assume you need to take that part out or alter it greatly. Instead, consider how you might do a better job of convincing the reader that it does fit and is necessary.

For instance, she said, people don’t read the first line of Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” and say, “I don’t believe Gregor Samsa woke up and discovered he was a cockroach.” Why don’t they say this? Because Kafka convinces us immediately in concrete ways: “One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug. He lay on his armour-hard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his brown, arched abdomen divided up into rigid bow-like sections. From this height the blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place. His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his circumference, flickered helplessly before his eyes.” (Translation by Ian Johnston) As Valerie asked us, What’s not to believe?