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Kalayna Price introduced an interesting wordsmithing concept in the Sept 27, 2012 Magical Word post “Backloading for Power.” Go read it, because we are going to work on this for today’s writing exercise. (URL: http://www.magicalwords.net/kalayna-price/on-wordsmithing-backloading-for-power/)
WRITING EXERCISE: From your work in progress, choose a paragraph that could use more “umph” and use the Backloading technique. Comment below on how it went.
WRITING EXERCISE
Time for the December 50-word prompts writing exercise.
Quick reminder of the rules: Write a flash for each picture. Aim for 50 words, give or take five extra words. Don’t read my attempts until after you do your own. Writing them directly in the comment section below will help you focus on the flash aspect – just getting words out.
VISUAL PROMPTS FOR 50-WORD FLASHES
(Light in winter trees & Couple photos are from freedigital photos . net)
(African girl with Teddy – ID 9775075 © Lucian Coman Dreamstime.com (license paid for))
My Attempts
First Light: It was too early for dawn, the light too bright, coming from the wrong direction. The trees huddled under the snow blanketing their boughs. What was happening sent a chill down to their roots. Should I leave my shelter to find out what the light was or run? (48 words, first published 12/26/2023)
May I have your attention: Grabbing his tie, she pulled him closer and their lips met, touched for the first time. He gasped in surprise and she took advantage of his open lips, jumping for the taste she always wanted. Coffee and cream. Sugar and hazelnut. Around them, people clapped. Maybe she shouldn’t have done this by the office coffee pot but the boy just wasn’t getting any of her hints. (words 66, first published 12/26/2023)
Orders: Please don’t hurt me, her eyes begged, digging a hole straight to my heart. Her parents had done right by the little one – freshly washed, her hair neatly braided, her clothes in good repair. Her bear nearly broke me. Why was she allowed to bring her toy? Fucking orders. (words 50, first published 12/26/2023)
Series: 50-word Prompts
Photo by Ryan Snaadt on Unsplash
Write and rewrite were sitting in a tree, write fell down and who was left? REWRITE. Write and rewrite were sitting in a tree, write fell down and who was left? …
In April, during the A-to-Z my brain went stupid. I could no longer write good, but I could rewrite good. For over a week, when I have absolutely no extra time thanks to taxes, everything written had to be rewritten. Which is really obnoxious for flashes. The point of flashes is one and done. In this case, it was two and done – and all the rewrites ended up being three times as long as the original flash..
I had all the information the first pass, but it needed to be different. What had been produced was too passive. The dialog sucked or was non-existence, all the action was told instead of shown.
Anyway, the point of this Writing Exercise is to get over the innate bump of “I wrote it, why do I need to rewrite it?” If you know it isn’t good enough, rewrite it. Just bite the bullet and put the new, better words on paper.
This isn’t to say keep writing the same scene forever, but if you know how to fix it, FIX IT. Get that fix on paper instead of going “someday, maybe”.
WRITING EXERCISE: Find a scene, no more than 500 words, where you are unhappy with how things play out because it is missing a skill. Rewrite it.
My Attempt: Oopsie (11/8/2020). First version was 117 words – no dialog, no action, basically a news report of what already happened. But I needed to write it to get all the pieces in play. Second version was 525 words. Dialog, action, conflict, beginning-middle-end. Not even a scene in the first version, versus all the parts of a story in the second.
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In a Magical Words post from December 5, 2011, David B. Coe postulates that “the most effective, memorable characters” have four attributes: Secret, Wall, Loss, Desire.
Secret – The character has something they are hiding from the world, or the world has hidden from them.
Wall – There is a barrier separating them from the world. (I think this attribute is necessary for main characters to give them the focal point of the story.)
Loss – The world has taken something from them in the past or present.
Desire – They have something they desire that drives them. (The loss puts the breaks on.)
He goes out to more specification, and then gives a number of examples of works being published in 2011.
WRITING EXERCISE: Examine your present work-in-progress (WIP). Does your main character have any of these traits?
My attempt: Robyn from Mom Eyes. Her secret is her powers, especially some aspects of her powers. Yes, as a child she is sharing the information, but maybe she really shouldn’t. Wall – her powers are creating a wall, but she already had a wall because of … Loss – losing her brother and her mother impacted her teen years. She will never forget to be kind because of it. Desire – not to be alone. To prevent others from experiencing her loss if possible.
Photo by Alexander Jawfox on Unsplash
I’m going to be honest with you. I really don’t understand “theme”. Theme is Big Literary Discussion, and I hated that part of high school English. I read to enjoy and escape, not figure out if the story was about the “futility of purpose” or “limitations of self-destruction.” To me, and my autistic-spectrum mind, the blue curtains were just blue. As an developmental editor, only once have I come back to an author and said “this is your theme” … and we needed that to pull together a story going off track. The writer hadn’t even known, but as soon as I said it (well, meandered through writing an email trying to nail the developmental issue until it hit me), he was like “exactly” … and hurried off our message-chat to fix the problem.
Sometimes my book club talks about themes, and I try to contribute. Mostly I restock my plate with the snacks everyone brought around that time.
Misty Massey wrote a Magical Words post on October 4, 2011 entitled “What Does It All Mean” discussing theme. Commentors included AJ Hartley and pea_faerie, both of whom are English college professors with doctorates – but they are also writers, so they know how to make discussion on theme interesting. (URL is: http://www.magicalwords.net/misty-massey/what-does-it-all-mean/)
For the most part for me, genre writing is about entertaining. To be entertaining, the reader needs to be engaged. Engagement happens when more than just balloons and explosions are happening, when there is meaning buried between the words even if the reader doesn’t see it, their hind-brain does. And that meaning often is a theme.
“People are equal.” “People are not equal.” “Be kind.” “Be forceful.” “Think of others first.” “Self-care before other care.” “Health is wasted on the youth.” “Old age makes one stagnant.”
All that wonderful jumbled mess that is life.
WRITING EXERCISE: Review you present work-in-progress (WIP) to see if you have any themes.