 Action/Adventure: July 18, 2007 Issue [#1834] |
  Action/Adventure
This week: Edited by: W.D.Wilcox  
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"When the question is therefore asked, 'Are writers made or born?' one should first ask, 'Do you mean writers with talent or writers with originality?' Because anybody can write, but not everybody invents new forms of writing."
--Jack Kerouac |
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Words Are Like Music
Music is the universal language. As writers, we compose poetry like songs, stories like sonatas, and novels like symphonies.
If you think of each word as a note, then language is the piano, and the writer now has a medium, just as a painter has his variety of colors and a sculptor the physical presence of wood or stone.
On the writer’s keyboard, nouns carry the most weight because we can see, smell, touch and feel the deer, the tree and water. They can be taken anywhere and merged with anything. The tree beneath the water, the water leaping like a deer, the wind stalled in the tree.
Just as a poet uses words that sing and have rhythm, so too can storytellers.
Let’s describe a common ordinary garage:
It was redolent of the crisp limy scent of cold concrete, the sweet-and-sour fragrance of old motor-oil stains, and the faint but still lingering astringency of insecticide from a termite fumigation.
And huge clouds bulging with rain.
The pregnant belly of the sky hung gray and fat over the land as its water broke to announce the birth of new rain.
How about a bright smile?
Behind the sweet curve of her smile were laser-whitened teeth brighter than irradiated piano keys.
Or the sky...
The veiled sky folded down to meet the hidden land.
How about the wind?
The wind howled and muttered as if cursing in a brutal language.
The wind screamed like a woman being gutted an inch at a time by a madman with a dull knife.
Connect ideas together like a melody. Give them rhythm and alliteration.
During the cold continuing echo of the conversation, her frozen smile cracked, crumbled.
Or use other verbs to help describe the first verb...
A worse fear gripped him, clawed him, tore at his mind.
We've all felt snow fall on our face.
Snowflakes delivered cold kisses to her face, melted on her cheeks.
Writing can resonate like a song. Listen to this melody:
As if the night were a living thing, and moody, it rose out of its sodden lethargy and worked up a peevish wind, hissing at the windows, clawing at the house walls with prosthetic hands that it fashioned from tree limbs, and by the shaking of its great black coat, rattled barrages of rain against the glass.
Find new ways to bring your nouns to life. Never use a metaphor or simile that you’ve seen somewhere else before.
Remember, words are weightless; the material world they represent is bulky, unmovable. As space yields to nouns, time and pace are controlled by verbs, and their tenses and energy.
Add melody to your writing. Make your sentences sing.
(I will be gone for a bit during my birthday week, fishing and gambling with my brothers on our annual fishing excursion. I will write and tell you all about the depravity I went through when I return  )
Until next time,
billwilcox
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Let's Go On An Adventure
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[Excerpt] The gun dropped into my hand, and I liked the way it felt so solid and good as I held it. The next package had only one layer of cloth, so I was able to attach the silencer by the time Doug had walked halfway up the path. There was darkness over the lawn and most of the porch. I only had to move further back into the corner to keep out of his sight.
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[Excerpt] The house started shaking, glass from the windows shattered as the twister growled with all its fury. Rebecca ran in the hall, grabbing the closet doorknob for support feeling the floor shift beneath her feet. Picture frames flew off the walls, striking her in the back. She slung the door open, crawling under the hanging clothes, pushing some to the side as she pulled the door closed behind her.
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[Excerpt] Again, unable to control her own limbs, she stepped up and threw her leg over the sill, unable to open her mouth and beg for a life that did not deserve to continue. She did turn her face back to that of her mistress, blood and snot caked beneath her nose, on her cheeks, her eyes swollen to mere shiny buttons. Morgen made a tired shooing gesture, and Marsa nodded.
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[Excerpt] I cleared leather and slung a hollow-point slug whistling toward his fuzzy forehead. A surprised look spread across Runt's face before he snapped straight, said something that sounded like "Ooooeeee!", then cratered where he stood.
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[Excerpt] I allowed myself a few seconds of satisfaction as I watched her head explode into a red mist. Ed started sobbing and moaning, and I fervently hoped he’d just stay there as I crawled back into the woods. When I couldn’t see the gas station through the trees anymore, I got up and began jogging. It was almost five miles to the dirt road where my car was parked, and I didn’t want to be anywhere around when the cops showed up.
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[Excerpt] The icy teeth of the river bit at my skin as I swam to her rescue. Lifting my head, I could see the waterflow had pinned her between two small boulders that rose above a backwash of whitewater.
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Reading With The Email
Vivian 
Submitted Comment:
Thank you, Bill, for the great ideas of slowing down the action but leaving the reader feeling as if the action is speeding along. ~~ Viv
likenion
Submitted Comment:
Super!!! I am a descriptive addict and now I know I can do that freely. Thank you! Thank you! This was the best newsletter for me ever!
larryp
Submitted Comment:
Very good newsletter Bill. You are right, slowing time down brings the reader into the scene, makes him part of it. It takes practice to learn this part of the craft, but once a writer understands how to 'slow time down,' his/her stories take on a new level of adventure.
Thanks for featuring my story "J.T."
Larry
Bluesman 
Submitted Comment:
Great Newsletter. One thing nice to find out was that I was slowing things down at times and didn't even know it. Thank you for the pointers.
See Ya!
K.C. 
Submitted Comment:
Hey W.D.,
Wonderful article on drawing out actions scenes! There have been so many stories I have read here that would be riveting if they could only improve the action. Merely the examples had me on the edge of my seat! Great advice for any writer.
COUNTRYMOM-JUST REMEMBER ME 
Submitted Comment:
First time I have read the Action/Adventure Newsletter and will not be the last! A fine read, and I love your idea of slowing down time, to enhance the story, to capture the reader's attention and hold it - Yes, that does the trick!
Well done!
Countrymom
wildbill
Submitted Comment:
W.D. Good insight. Did you know there is actually a phenomenon called psychetachia where the brain reacts to critical adrenalin-creating moments by seemingly slowing down the speed of the event?
I've experienced it a couple of times (one was a spinout in a race car at about 130 MPH)and it felt like watching a slow-motion film. Police are sometimes leary of people's recitation of crises events because they can remember every small thing that happened within a few seconds.
kiyasama
Submitted Comment:
I'm always wary about 'TOO MUCH' description in a story especially when the writer tends to become redundant. However, this newsletter put things in perspective and I can see how 'slowing things down' a bit can be quite effective. A very informative letter, Bill and thanks again for plugging my story.
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