Tips for Balancing Action & Exposition

 

 

 

 Tips for Balancing Action & Exposition || Descriptive Writing
by Deborah Lyn Stanley

Readers are looking for powerful stories and narratives; descriptive details make them successful.

Our narratives and stories are the creation of scenes, exposition, and the telling that shapes the narrative. It’s up to us to shape events with details that describe the action, the characters, and the scene’s why. Scene is the action; exposition is behind the scene. Scenes bring the reader a firsthand view of the action. Exposition describes the what and the why—a summary.

Stories constructed mostly of scenes can wear out the reader with action and dialogue. Writing made up of mostly summary description needs to contain enough tangible detail to bring the reader into the vision you are presenting but not be boring. The strength of our writing is in the balance.

I recently read two novels that were action packed and fun, good guy—bad guy stories. Both were exhausting! I had to just stop, and let the book rest before I continued. They were fantastic diversions but…

So, consider a balance between action and explanation, background and front lines as you build your piece.

How’s your word basket growing? Is it filling with scraps of paper—one word per scrap? The basket could become your go-to place for inspiring creative descriptions in a story or metaphor: paradox or poem. What words catch your attention? Grab it and add it to your basket. Consider sensory adjectives, strong verbs, and nouns.

It’s best to avoid:
•    Description dumps.
•    Tangents—Stay on point.
•    Slowing down your story or narrative—Rather, pace it and keep the piece moving.

An excellent book for descriptive writing growth:
•    Word Painting, by Rebecca McClanahan

Earlier Post links in this series—Descriptive Writing for Fiction and Non-Fiction:
Tips for Figurative Speech: http://www.writersonthemove.com/2020/08/tips-for-figurative-speech.html
Write Strong:   http://www.writersonthemove.com/2020/10/tips-to-make-characters-real-write.html

Deborah Lyn Stanley is an author of Creative Non-Fiction. She writes articles, essays and stories. She is passionate about caring for the mentally impaired through creative arts.
Visit her writer’s website at: https://deborahlynwriter.com/   
Visit her caregiver’s website: https://deborahlyncaregiver.com/
Available on Amazon --- Mom & Me: A Story of Dementia and the Power of God’s Love  https://www.amazon.com/author/deborahlynstanley

Facebook: Deborah Lyn Stanley, Writer    https://www.facebook.com/deborahlynwriter/?modal=admin_todo_tour

 

 

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Senses & POV Tips - Descriptive Writing

   

 

Senses & POV Tips for Descriptive Writing  By Deborah Lyn Stanley

We strengthen our writing by using descriptive details that develop the topic.
Today let’s talk more about using sense words and choosing the point-of-view.

Use description for fresh, active and believable prose. Write what you see, smell, taste, hear or touch, and include details:
•We write to help the reader see what we see.
•We augment sight with smell to build the vision. Smell has the longest memory of all the senses. English Leather cologne takes me back to dating years with my husband—home-baked bread and chocolate chip cookies too!
•Writers often describe smells in terms of other smells, either good or bad.
•We commonly describe taste relative to memorable occasions by naming the food.
Besides naming the taste or dish, writers often describe taste as sweet, sour, salty or bitter.

What if we use descriptive words for smell and taste that are outside common usage? What if color and shape are borrowed from sight descriptions to indicate a smell or a taste?  Ex.: “squat, plumpy, fluted” “Aroma of lemon blossom flavors my tea.”  “Cloves sting my blistered lips.” “I’m thirsty for sleep.”
Explore outside-the-box-descriptions—and share what you come up with.

•Touch is intimate because to touch something or someone, we must be close. It requires trust.
•Sound often plays a significant role in the writing process. It enhances mood: anywhere from tranquil to suspenseful. Prose can be musical in itself with rhythms, diction, and tone, or mechanical noise, all for the purpose of leading the reader deeper into the story.

The Basics of the three main Point-of-View Methods:
• In a first-person point-of-view, the story perspective is from “I or we”. The writing is filtered through the storyteller’s awareness, with a narrow field of vision from a single point. This can help unify your story by choosing which details to include in each scene. In addition, it helps you organize the details into the sequence the teller notices each detail. First-person POV requires the narrator to be present in every scene or rely on secondary information to relate the feelings or thinking of the character.

•Second-person point-of-view narration is usually you as the main character, placing you in the events of the story.

•Third-person point-of-view narration is an objective report of the story via outward signs and description. This point-of-view freely relates any external and visible information or events happening to anyone, anywhere. It uses multiple camera views, capturing unlimited pictures for the reader. The narrator is free to discuss the past, providing accounts of people, places, or things. But, cannot reveal what anyone in the story thinks or feels.

Enhance your writing—incorporate metaphors, similes, and comparisons.

Earlier Post links in this series—Descriptive Writing for Fiction and Non-Fiction:
Make it with Specificity:  https://www.writersonthemove.com/search?q=make+it+with+specificity
Write it with Research I:  http://www.writersonthemove.com/2020/05/write-it-with-research.html

Write it with Research II:  http://www.writersonthemove.com/2020/06/more-research-tips.html

Deborah Lyn Stanley is an author of Creative Non-Fiction. She writes articles, essays and stories. She is passionate about caring for the mentally impaired through creative arts. 

Visit her writer’s website at: https://deborahlynwriter.com/   

Visit her caregiver’s website and read the Mom & Me memoir at: https://deborahlyncaregiver.com/

Facebook: Deborah Lyn Stanley, Writer    https://www.facebook.com/deborahlynwriter/?modal=admin_todo_tour

 

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