Thursday, March 24, 2011

Natural.

Sometimes when I go back over my prose it seems clunky when I read it again. I'm working on it being more natural, but it's difficult to get outside my own brain and read it from the viewpoint of someone else. I don't know if it's really clunky, or if I'm being hyper-critical.

I wish I knew how to effortlessly immerse you in my character's world and viewpoint using a healthy mix of conversation, description and exposition, but it sometimes seems like they all just get in the way of each other. I want to give my reader insight on what kind of person the character is, but somewhere in there I get bogged down. I wish I had a word tool like a leaf blower... write down everything I think of, fire that sucker up, and blow away every last nonessential thing. You know?

In the meantime, I'm continuing to struggle with strengthening my prose, and in turn making it seem more natural. I guess practice is just about the only thing that's going to make it better.

2 comments:

Al said...

Practice makes all the difference.
But even then what is needed is redraft after redraft.

Hart Johnson said...

try reading it out loud. It is a little awkward and the cats will stare at you funny (do you have cats?) but it really makes a huge difference in the ability to tell whether it is natural or not.