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It Was A Dark And Stormy Night
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John Caruso
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Jul 06, 2004 13:27 PDT
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It Was a Dark and Stormy Night
Sometimes, you need to go to the wrong place in order to find out where
you want to end up. Sure, I may sound like I’ve finally lost it (or, as
many may say, still lost it), but there is a method to my proverbial
madness.
Sit down and purposely write something bad; not just bad, awful. Try to
make it stink. If you don’t know what to write about, select one of
these starters:
--Gary stared at the ceiling, unable to sleep because of the thoughts in
his head.
--Roberto knew he shouldn’t accept Lorelei’s invitation to dinner, but
he had his reasons.
--Phyllis wanted to keep her anger in check, but the department of motor
vehicles isn’t conducive to the concept.
Now dash off your worst bit of writing. It may come in only a few
minutes or you may savor it for some time longer. Just make it horrible.
Not as easy as it sounds? You’re right. That’s because it can be hard to
break those rules that we’ve taken so long to build up. Did you
thoroughly remember to blatantly overuse glowing, sizzling adjectives—or
supremely better yet, recklessly insert helpfully well-conceived
adverbs? Did you make sure you liberally peppered your work with its
lion’s share of clichés? Was passive voice slipped into every possible
sentence? Do your sentences—by the very nature of their length (buoyed
by parenthetical asides and off-handed additions) and breadth—tend to
ramble on and on as if they were competing for the storied crown of
highest word-to-sentence ratio as established by the distorted
combination of high school teachers (in all their grammatical and
pedantic glory) and inner critic (who will never relent and who—unlike
the teacher who stayed in high school while you eventually got to
leave—will be with you until you can learn to selectively banish him)?
Were your verbs boring? Did you tell rather than show?
Look it over. See where you can make your writing even worse. Now, lock
it up in your notebook and forget about it for a few days. After a
while, pull it out and look it over again. What did you do to make it so
bad? How would you fix it? Why would your fixes work? Rewrite the
paragraph/scene/story to make it better. Use precise language. Excise
excessive adjectives and adverbs. Enliven your verbs. Vary sentence
lengths. Don’t say, “Phyllis was mad;” instead, write about how her
fingernails dug into her palms leaving little bloody half-moons. You
could even do this exercise with your writing partner(s). After you each
write your “bad” copy, pass them around and edit to make them “good.”
By plunging into the depths then soaring to the heights, you’ll begin to
get a feel for what works, what doesn’t, and why.
John Caruso
joh-@coffeehouseforwriters.com
Copyright 2004, John Caruso
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