Writing Lesson 3.14-Well! That’s Odd…

If all goes as planned, this week we’ll begin remodeling our new home.

Let me share a picture that I think ties in with our writing lessons–a Spanish Mission arch on the fireplace, a Dutch door, and a Colonial mantle!

This struck me as odd the first time I saw it, but I couldn’t figure out why. I had to study the elements before I realized that “One of these things is not like the others” as Big Bird used to sing. Shoot! NONE of these things is like ANY of the others! 🙂

Maybe I’m reaching here, but sometimes I run across odd incongruities in my writing, too–especially when I read my work out loud (and if you don’t, you should). I’ll be reading along, and something seems to stick out. I trip over it. Then I go back and study that section. Almost always the problem is one of two things:

• My character would NEVER say what I wrote–or at least not in the way I wrote it. I need to “listen” to the people in my head and rewrite the story in the way they would tell it.

               OR

• My writing suddenly sounded like someone else. (This usually happens when I’m not confident about a scene and just write to get it down.) For some reason I occasionally lapse into the voice of whatever I’m currently reading–a very good reason, by the way, to read quality books that stretch you as a writer!

Either way, I’ve forgotten important elements of personality and style–either mine or my characters’–and I need to edit until the scene feels cohesive.

Exercise:

• Read your most recent scene out loud to yourself
• Does anything “stick out” or “trip you up”?
• Find out why, then experiment with different ways of fixing the problem!