Writing Excuses 12.7: Description Through the Third Person Lens

2017-02-15T11:14:00Z

Posted by: mbarker.livejournal.com

Writing Excuses 12.7: Description Through the Third Person Lens

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2017/02/12/12-7-description-through-the-third-person-lens/

Key Points: Learn to let the character's voice, thoughts, and feelings come through when describing, especially in third person. Combine characterization and description! Get specific with what the character notices and does. Pay attention to what they notice, and what they miss. Describe the small things, let the reader imagine the large things. Focus indicates thought -- what the character sees, what they hear. Exercise: try and include every sense in a scene. But don't spend too long! And beware going overboard on all the senses all the time -- no one licks a vase. Add your infodumps in third person to emotion, action, dialogue -- dribble them across a scene. Pick out the important information and avoid the irrelevant infodump. Losing viewpoint? Check the emotional investment in the scene. Make sure you have the right scene. What happens when the main character knows something, but doesn't let the reader know? Frustration! Use focus, something else compelling to keep the main character going, and sometimes, it's just background for the character, no matter how surprising it is for the reader. Or... give the reader the information! Often knowing the secret makes the action more compelling. Or make that other plan a contingency. Think surprising, yet inevitable.

( The third person thinker? )

[Brandon] We are out of time. Mary Anne, you were going to give us some homework?
[Mary Anne] Well, I was just going to say that I love Ursula Le Guin's book, Steering the Craft. It's a very short little how-to-write book. She's got like three chapters with exercises on various variations of third person that I find really helpful. I still… I assign it every semester and I do them again with my students every semester. I get something out of it every time.
[Brandon] Well, excellent. That is your homework. Go read some Ursula Le Guin. You will always find it time well spent, I have found. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

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Writing Excuses 7.5: Sensory Writing

2012-02-01T16:45:00Z

Posted by: mbarker.livejournal.com

Writing Excuses 7.5: Sensory Writing

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2012/01/29/writing-excuses-7-5-sensory-writing/

Key points: sensory writing, evocative writing pulls the reader into the scene and engages them. Sensory information and description is interesting. Challenge their senses! Keep the reader engaged. But don't overstimulate. Avoid literary diabetes. Err on the side of excess, you can always trim later (Luxury!). Look for details that are important to your character's emotional state or the plot. Details that get the reader into the character's skin. Try "not looking directly at it." Don't show the monster, let the reader fill it in. Hammer it home with a glancing blow to reality?
( A glancing blow at reality? )
[Dan] All right. Well, that's all the time that we have, so we're going to wrap up. I actually have a writing prompt...
[Mary] I am so proud of you.
[Dan] So I am not going to throw this at you, again, Mary. What I would like you to do for your writing prompt is, you have a character whose vision is obscured... They're blindfolded, they're in a closet or a trunk or whatever, and they're trying to figure out where they are using all their other senses. So. There you go. All right. This has been Writing Excuses. You are out of excuses. Now go write.

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Writing Excuses Transcripts

Writing Excuses 12.7: Description Through the Third Person Lens

Writing Excuses 7.5: Sensory Writing