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Vivid Writing

3 years ago

I now know how to get an idea for a story. I'm actually writing a story right now. It was going well but I started to notice that the writing was getting bland. Here's a portion from the story:

As you grip the rope, you think a normal dive would be bland, but you liked bland. You pull it back and swing. The air felt good in your hair. You let go. You dive into the water and do a little spin. You swim up and spit out the water that got in your mouth. Stephany claps. 

 

"Bravo!" Stephany exclaims.

 

"What's my score?" You smile.

 

"10,000!" Myla exclaims.

 

"100,000!" Amirah nods.

 

"Hmm...0." Stephany laughs.

 

You push Stephany into the water. Amirah and Myla laugh. 

 

"Hey!" Stephany laughs.

I noticed that I used "laugh" a lot. How do you make your writing more impressive, vivid, and overall interesting?

Vivid Writing

3 years ago

http://chooseyourstory.com/forums/writing-workshop/message/26355

Let Gower help you, and click the link above. Grammar will help. It allows you to vary sentence structures so your whole story doesn't just read "You do this. You do that. Etc." You can also look up synonyms anywhere you repeat a word several times (like bland and laughs). 

Vivid Writing

3 years ago

How do I make my writing not always "You do this, you do that"?

Vivid Writing

3 years ago

Grammar can help. Being creative with your descriptions can help. One way to mix it up is to change up sentence structure. Another is to add more details that are revenant to what you are doing. I'll try to provide an example, but I'm not the best writer ever myself.

Your example is, "You do this, you do that." 

First of all, this is two complete sentences connected with a comma. You need a period or semi colon between them. Also, the word and eliminates one "you."

"You do this and that."

Already better (in my opinion).However, let's change things up a bit.

"Doing this, you create the opportunity to do that as well."

This says the same thing, but it changes the order and adds a bit of detail. Now, it's stated that you did "this" to lead to the chance to do "that," which implies that they had to be done in order. You could also add detail about each item separately.

"Doing this, you feel exhaustion set in from the effort. With sweat pouring down your back, you do that."

This last one implies that both tasks are physically difficult. It adds something about what the reader is feeling. One thing to be careful about with this is telling a reader what they "think." If I write, "You think that this is hard." Your reader might think, "No, I wasn't thinking that." I try to avoid telling the reader what they "think" and tell them what they are feeling, hearing, seeing, tasting, etc. My goal is to make them think something based on that.

I'm 90% sure that IAP said something about this as well, but I hope this helps.

 

Edit:

IAP did tell you to focus on your senses and to imply things. That advise is great. Saying something like "your hands are numb" gets rid of the need to say "it is cold". Likewise, you can say something like "you gasp for air" or "your legs feel like jello" rather than "you get tired".

Vivid Writing

3 years ago

I realize the example you posted is still in the rough and will be edited, but picking a tense and sticking with it is important. Also, if you choose present tense, then there's a certain amount of tension already built in. And another little tip: write without using words like "but" if you can, it only slows down the reading and cues the reader to disregard what you've already said.

As far as making your writing more vivid, try using your senses and what they evoke rather than describing things outright. Draw on your past experiences and feel what you're writing. The readers will pick up on it almost magically. And there's always "less is more", leave something to the reader's imagination instead of attempting to paint the perfect picture. Readers have this uncanny ability to envision your world more...well, vividly than you can describe it to them with mere words.