Read a little, learned a lot

I feel better tonight after I did some more reading from Bernard Selling's "In Your Own Voice". I'm quickly learning that the amount of knowledge I have about writing could be fit on the head of a pin. For example, each time I go back and read something I wrote, I invariably change the content because I don't like the way it came out the first time. I thought that was editing. No. I'm rewriting. Editing corrects the grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc. I apologize to anyone who read that insight and rolled their eyes. I'll take any suggestions or help available and if you eye-rollers haven't already deleted me forever from your hard drive and want to offer it up, please feel free to throw some my way.

Obviously, drawing the reader in as soon as possible is the key to a good story. Selling stresses beginning with a powerful moment, either with dialog or a line of action, creating a strong sense of feeling to extract empathy from the reader, and provoke questions that will spurn the reader further. Getting all that into the first paragraph will entice the reader to move onto the second paragraph, where the "backstory" will fill in the details of events that happened before the story actually opened.


Information is good. Too much information is bad. I once heard someone say "write tight", meaning use concise language to get the point across with as few words as possible. The same goes for creating a story. Selling stresses focus, creating a beginning, middle and end to each episode of writing, keeping to the topic without introducing other unrelated events. Kind of like a chronological time line.. Bouncing from kindergarten to high school and back to third grade would be confusing. Keep order. Order is good.


I was encouraged by all I read today, because some of it comes naturally to me. I've been referred to as a drama queen, but I think that when it comes to getting emotions down on paper, I'm pretty good at it. Everything else, not so good. I'll keep trying, though....keep on writing, keep on writing, keep on writing.....