Write On This ... Exercise

Elementary, my dear Watson

Allowing your reader to turn detective, even in a mainstream literature work, will give them a new appreciation for your writing. We all like feeling clever, and solving a few 'inside jokes' or 'clues' gives a reader a pay-off that will have them feeling a connection to you as the author. If you wonder what I mean about that, think how fiercely Dan Brown, Terry Pratchette, and JK Rowling fans stick up for any moments of questionable grammatical style and storyworld authenticity. So, if you're writing a comedy, pop a joke in Chapter 13 that relates to an earlier scene set up in Chapter 2, or if your Professor has found has been stumbling around trying to connect the dots, allow your reader to come to the same point of realization at the same time as him, if not a split second before. You might think that this is hard to do in shorter fiction, but the rules still apply. You can get reader pay-off in lots of small ways that you are probably already familiar with. Extending metaphors is one of these:

Don't mix your metaphors. If you have started to compare something with something, follow it. Follow it to the smallest detail and your reader will be pleasantly rewarded. If you come use verbs that are associated with the initial metaphor all the way through your paragraph, it will work wonders. For example, here's an excerpt from one of this month's Short Shot entries that does a great job of extending a metaphor:
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Write
Write a paragraph/scene in which you extend your metaphors, allow your similes to echo a theme, and use verbs that contribute to the same theme.


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