Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Voodoo

Voodoo

It is difficult to explain just how light the touch must be on the transmitter sticks to get an RC Airplane to respond. Think of coming up to an intersection and applying the brakes in a manner to achieve a smooth deceleration and seamless stop. Then take this to an order of ten and you get some idea of how slight the motion has to be. A jerky heavy handed movement of the stick is sure to launch the airplane into a maneuver that if not deftly corrected will result in a catastrophic crash.

This is true about writing. For example in sensual prose a little bit of the graphics goes a long way. The writer needs to know what he wants to show taking place in the bedroom but not get carried away. Keep in mind that two people engaged in an act of intimacy have been drugged by euphoria producing hormones. This effect gives the flesh slapping of the participants a much different spin than a fly would see on the wall. The reader is like the fly and the more the reader is expected to become involved the more that same euphoric effect needs to be given by the writer to put the reader in the same mood as the participants. If the reader is not prepared properly then just like a partner brought cold into the experience the intimacy and joy of the union will be lacking and the whole effect will be lost.

Another example is using dialect. I know many great writers have used it to good effect but a little bit goes a long way. If every word requires the reader to hick-up and squint to grasp the meaning then that is too much. Once the reader gets a taste and the idea forms, then the writer needs to dial back a bit so the meaning of the story doesn’t become clouded by the difficulty of the read.

The operative word in both examples is deftness or having a light touch as a writer. As a youngster I thought that if a beer tasted good and produced a high then a case must produce the same effect multiplied by a factor of twenty-four (24).

Another example that comes to mind is sentences that have no clear focus and are filled with modifying adjectives and adverbs. A writer needs to take the time to write sentences with good word choice in which a single idea is expressed. Most adjectives and adverbs could be deleted and the sentence would suffer no ill effect. Those with more than one idea need to be broken into two sentences. Syrupy writing is a bad in prose as it is in poetry.

For example a sentence might read, “… as the orange orb of sunset settled gently into the still distant horizon, John wondered what his girlfriend, Julia, was up to and pondered what unexpected delights the night would bring…"

How about, “John watched the sun set, radiating like a yellow disk. As the light refracted its shape lost roundness, like a glob in a lava lamp. that’s how my heart feels, he thought pensively. Julia has her voodoo on it. “