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DESCRIPTION: ENHANCE YOUR STORYLINE
What exactly is Description? Is it just supplying colors, furnishings, backdrops? Or is it more?
For some of us, it’s the most difficult part of spinning a tale. I confess, I had to work to tone up my descriptions when I first fed words into a keyboard. And, though my first editor had already gone to contract on a manuscript, one of the things she requested that I do in the way of changes was to add in more description. “Don’t put it in via long paragraphs, but shorter ones dropped in to give the reader a visual and some breathing space,” she told me. “Your plot is galloping at a fast space. They need a spot to rest briefly.”
That was the last time any editor requested more words. Fortunately, they weren’t deleting the ones I gave them, either. Now I have readers gushing about my word choices in descriptions, which seems to say I learned that early lesson well.
In ENHANCE YOUR STORYLINE the focus is on YOUR ability to dazzle readers in the same way.
Look at this as if you were at a play. Someone had to design the backdrop, all of the moving parts of the stage, they had to decorate rooms or create the impression that the players were in a barnyard or in a mining camp or…well in a dim, dark neighborhood in mid-20th century New York City or 19th century London. They had to dress the actors. The script had to tell the actors what their voices should convey as well as the words they would say. There are marks on the floor telling them where to stand for the spotlight to hit them just right, or a trap door to open beneath them so that their fall from sight would be safe.
In movies they even add to these elements with music, which is difficult for us to do on the written page, but we can certainly let our readers know what the weather is like, what the cloth or the sand or a fist feels like striking a character. What the forest, the meadow, or the basement smells like.
The play couldn’t do that. The movie couldn’t do that. But we can do it with words.
Description. It’s subtle, it’s powerful.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Beth Daniels, aka Beth Henderson, is the author of 29 and counting historical romantic adventures and romantic comedies, many of which have snagged 5* reviews on Amazon. She has also dipped her quill into the mystery/Alternative History niches as J. B. Dane and Steampunk as Nied Darnell. She holds a BA in American History and a MA in English and Rhetoric with an Emphasis in Creative Writing.
After presiding over sixty plus popular online workshops about writing fiction, most of them at SavvyAuthors.com and various online Romance Writers of America chapters, she began retiring the workshops, turning them into the various Fiction Writing Aid Workshops in Book Form titles. ENHANCE YOUR STORYLINE is the 10th volume.
For some of us, it’s the most difficult part of spinning a tale. I confess, I had to work to tone up my descriptions when I first fed words into a keyboard. And, though my first editor had already gone to contract on a manuscript, one of the things she requested that I do in the way of changes was to add in more description. “Don’t put it in via long paragraphs, but shorter ones dropped in to give the reader a visual and some breathing space,” she told me. “Your plot is galloping at a fast space. They need a spot to rest briefly.”
That was the last time any editor requested more words. Fortunately, they weren’t deleting the ones I gave them, either. Now I have readers gushing about my word choices in descriptions, which seems to say I learned that early lesson well.
In ENHANCE YOUR STORYLINE the focus is on YOUR ability to dazzle readers in the same way.
Look at this as if you were at a play. Someone had to design the backdrop, all of the moving parts of the stage, they had to decorate rooms or create the impression that the players were in a barnyard or in a mining camp or…well in a dim, dark neighborhood in mid-20th century New York City or 19th century London. They had to dress the actors. The script had to tell the actors what their voices should convey as well as the words they would say. There are marks on the floor telling them where to stand for the spotlight to hit them just right, or a trap door to open beneath them so that their fall from sight would be safe.
In movies they even add to these elements with music, which is difficult for us to do on the written page, but we can certainly let our readers know what the weather is like, what the cloth or the sand or a fist feels like striking a character. What the forest, the meadow, or the basement smells like.
The play couldn’t do that. The movie couldn’t do that. But we can do it with words.
Description. It’s subtle, it’s powerful.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Beth Daniels, aka Beth Henderson, is the author of 29 and counting historical romantic adventures and romantic comedies, many of which have snagged 5* reviews on Amazon. She has also dipped her quill into the mystery/Alternative History niches as J. B. Dane and Steampunk as Nied Darnell. She holds a BA in American History and a MA in English and Rhetoric with an Emphasis in Creative Writing.
After presiding over sixty plus popular online workshops about writing fiction, most of them at SavvyAuthors.com and various online Romance Writers of America chapters, she began retiring the workshops, turning them into the various Fiction Writing Aid Workshops in Book Form titles. ENHANCE YOUR STORYLINE is the 10th volume.
58 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 25, 2016
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2 people want to read
About the author
Beth Daniels
39 books91 followersBETH DANIELS lends the expertise she gained as a professional novelist with 30 years and as many published books to her list of achievements. Add in a BA in History and a MA in English Composition and Rhetoric with an Emphasis in Creative Writing, over a dozen years as a composition instructor at the college level, numerous online fiction writing workshops at SavvyAuthors.com and for various RWA online chapters, and the stats add up. She knows her onions and can maneuver her way through nearly any genre or subgenre birthed. She is president of The Derby Rotten Scoundrels, the Louisville, KY, Sisters in Crime chapter, one of the founders of the writing group The Bards of Bardstown, and a very active member at The Vault, a fantasy specific writers’ group. Her numerous workshops have spawned a collection of Fiction Writers Aids e-books and other non-fiction titles about the art of writing fiction. Find her at www.Muse2Ms.com or Facebook.com/Beth Daniels or @BethDaniels1 on Twitter.
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