fandomhigh | Creative Writing--So Simple Even You Can Do It! (Probably)

"So, like, writing can be really boring."

And good morning to you, class!

"I mean, other people's writing. Writing itself can also be boring, but that's what drinking and sex are for, but that's a future class topic." So, that was in your future kids. Something to look forward to. "It's like our last class--" three classes ago, now "--when we talking about how boring and overused words like 'said' and 'asked' were. As bad as that can be, some writers go out of their way to make their writing extra lame. It's like they were kids and a bunch of cool adjectives and adverbs beat them up a lot and stole their money and never let them sit with the cool kids or something and now these authors have a vendetta against them. Don't be like those assholes, class. You wanna make your writing exciting? You gotta kick your words up a notch. Really make it pop."

Someone had been watching fashion design shows until the wee hours of the morning and it had made an impression. Just be glad she hadn't figured out how to work 'smize' in yet. "Why tell me your hero's eyes are blue when you can talk about his 'aquamarine orbs that darkened as he spoke'? Why say your heroine is running when you can tell me that she's dashing furtively around the corner? And sex scenes! I want to know how slowly her fingers slid over his thick, taut, well-defined abs. I want to know how tightly he wrapped his fist in her waist-length curls of deep, glossy, mahogany reddish-brown silky satin hair. How velvety is his tongue? Huh? Huh? No one knows if you just say, 'he licked his lover'! Instead, you gotta put detail and emphasis on stuff like that. Color, scent, texture, all that stuff needs to come through. But there's never an action or a noun that can't be modified and made better. Let's say your heroine asks someone 'Is that for me?' how is she saying it? Sultrily? Disgustedly? Furiously? Excitedly? Dubiously?" Navaan had pulled a thesaurus out and was flipping through the pages now. "If she's lying on the bed, is she doing it exhaustedly? How about sulkily? Bonelessly? Angrily? What's on the bed? Satin sheets? Cotton blankets? Nothing at all? Is the mattress bare? Is it stained? Is it old? Are there springs missing? We won't know unless you tell us! More is better, right? So then the more detail you can shove in there, the better the scene. This goes, like, triple if you have a word count you're trying to make."

"People are always whining 'show, don't tell,' but then your illustrator storms out because your works are 'obscene' and 'unfit for any but the most debauched' so how're you supposed to show stuff, huh? You gotta paint a picture with words or whatever and you can't do that without adjectives and adverbs, a writer's best friends. I mean besides the booze and dirty toys, but let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet. You need something to look forward to, right?"

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With any icon keyword that contains an adjective or an adverb. "Puny Knife"

Sparkle, "My Undivided Attention."

Anders, "perfect angel"

Garik Loran, "my adoring public"

Rapunzel, "eyerolly sass"

Well, it's more a rant today. But, seriously, who does that illustrator think he is anyway? That was medium-debauchery at best!

Navaan has provided some samples by a couple of hack writers she'd found. Choose a paragraph (or more!) and make it better by adding in some good adverbs and things!

Edited 2014-09-25 10:10 (UTC)

The wind rose in the night and a three o'clock in the morning with the rain coming in sheets there was a bombardment and the Croatians came over across the mountain meadows and through patches of woods and into the front line. They fought in the dark in the rain and a counter-attack of scared men from the second line drove them back.

The wounded were coming into the post, some were carried on stretchers, some walking and some were brought on the backs of men that came across the field. They were wet to the skin and all were scared. We filled two cars with stretcher cases as they came up from the cellar of the post and as I shut the door of the second car and fastened it I felt the rain on my face turn to snow.

Face grinned and stretched before he started work, no one did over-the-top, long-winded melodrama like Imperial propaganda writers. By the time he'd had finished with his paragraphs the piece was at least four times the length and half the original words had been replaces by longer and 'more interesting' synonyms.

He'd also managed to add in some loving yet completely out of place descriptions of wet clothes clinging to well-formed muscles. He figured Navaan would appreciate that.

They had never before avowed their inclination so openly, and Ethan, for a moment, had the illusion that he was a free man, wooing the girl he meant to marry. He looked at her hair and longed to touch it again...

Anders gravitated to the one about feeling like a free man. (Look surprised, everyone.)

His method of fixing the paragraph included putting in a long digression about Ethan's status as an apostate mage, and why that system was untenable. But he did mention the girl's hair was thick and the color of fresh-turned soil, so that was something.

Landing on the roof of Henry's forty-story apartment house in Westminster, they went straight down to the dining-hall. There, in a loud and cheerful company, they ate an excellent meal. Soma was served with the coffee. Lenina took two half-gramme tablets and Henry three. At twenty past nine they walked across the street to the newly opened Westminster Abbey Cabaret. It was a night almost without clouds, moonless and starry; but of this on the whole depressing fact Lenina and Henry were fortunately unaware. The electric sky-signs effectively shut off the outer darkness.

Now that you have a better idea how it's done, write your own paragraph from scratch, chock full of descriptive words.

But don't interrupt his muse!

Anders' muse was actually extremely interruptable. Possibly because it was less a muse and more a sequence of pokes at the thesaurus and dictionary on his new phone as he tried to find more and more synonyms and adjectives.

...She's looking up synonyms for dirty words in her thesaurus.

Hemingway, Wharton, and Huxley? ALL HACKS COMPARED TO THE GLORIOUS DOCTOR NAVAAN.

Creative Writing--So Simple Even You Can Do It! (Probably)

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Listen to the Lecture

Activity 1--Make it better

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Activity 2--Write Your Own

Talk to the Nurse

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Talk to Navaan

OOC