Friday, September 17, 2010

My creative writing teacher Dr. James Tipton talked to us about using the five senses. He demanded using this tool made what he called a concrete scene.

Placing us in some place and time, even if it was fantasy, using the five senses could give you the feeling of really being there.

What's more I got a better sense of what he meant when I began reading his book Annette Vallon.
This is a historical fiction novel based on a read woman.

She helped save Lords in the French Revolution and smuggled people out of France who were enemies of Napoleon Bonaparte.

She seems to be a fascinating woman. What is amazing about his novel is the detail of the surroundings.

A sentience of description of people, even the feel of the fabrics of Lords coats and what they were made out of. But the detail isn't so overwhelming that it bores one.

Generally he likes to say, " You go from one concrete scene to another, there has to be purpose in a scene. One scene leads into the next and so on."

What he said he found out and I discovered on my own, is when you get into generalities in a scene, in a story, your story not only becomes boring to your readers but to you as the writer.

I hope this is useful to some of you out there.

Oh,and if I can suggest something, start reading poetry. In fact start writing it as well. Heck take a class on it.

I have found that when I write poetry, my short story writing blossoms like spring time flowers, when I stop it becomes rather bland. Just a thought.

As Paul Harvey would say,
Good day.



2 comments:

  1. I, too, have found writing poetry helps with writing prose. You have to choose just the right word in a poem and that teaches you to do so when writing a story. Good advice!

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  2. Thanks Sheila. Yeah it's about saying as much as you can with as little as possible, which is called the economy of language. Some people may poo-poo it but it any thing shorter than a short story is poetry anything shorter than poetry is Haikku anything shorter than Haikku is either me signing my name or procrastination. LOL.

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