the writer's block |
The blog
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the writer's block |
The blog
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One common pitfall writers continue to get stuck in is exposition quicksand. What is exposition quicksand? Well it can be a number of things. Sometimes it is when a writer tells the reader what happened in summary, glazing over the highlights and then moving onto another ‘part’ of the story, which is also just a summarization of events. Other times its descriptions saturated with adjectives and images that are down right beautiful but honestly, unnecessary. And then there are moments where the writer info dumps about the world and how it works.[1]Whatever the case may be, before we know it we are neck deep in information that our readers probably don’t need in order to understand what is happening in the story.
A little while back I reviewed Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects, commending her for her ability to create characters that are exponentially flawed and yet so undeniably likable. Camille Preacher, Flynn’s narrator, is a frustrating character not only because she withholds information from the reader but also because there are countless moments where she makes catastrophically bad decisions. The short answer to the question above is—you guessed it--no. What matters, is what floats your creative boat and falls in line with your writing process. However, if you’ve clicked on this post, odds are you probably want to know why one is not better than other, which category you fall in and/or the pros and cons of each. All of which are valid questions. So let’s get to it, shall we?
“Would you mind reading out loud?” For three years I asked students this question. Their eyes would bulge out of their sockets and they would sink into themselves like a turtle retreating into its shell. During new-tutor training we were taught that every student and piece of writing—and in every tutoring session—is different. So the approaches we took and strategies we offered would also vary. But there were a few touchstones that occurred within every session and reading the work out loud was one of them. |
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